Vasant Swaha Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. This is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. If you would like to see previous interviews or support our efforts, please go to batgap.com and I’ll give you more details about that at the end of the interview. My guest today is Vasant Swaha, who is down in Brazil at the moment and divides his time pretty much between Brazil and Norway, where he’s originally from. And before we get into the interview, I just want to express a thought that I was having this morning, kind of related to my role in doing this interview show. It reminded me of a friend of mine named Mirabai Starr, whom I interviewed last October. She gave a talk at the Science and Nonduality Conference entitled “Bees in the Garden,” and she said, “Like bees in the garden of spirit, we are designed to gather nectar from all the world’s spiritual traditions and allow it to become rich honey, with which to sustain ourselves and feed the hungry world. We are also endowed with the wisdom to recognize the nourishment and pass over the noxious weeds.” And I sort of feel like in my role in doing this interview show, I’m kind of like a bee going from flower to flower and, you know, connecting people with one another, cross-fertilizing in a way. And it gives me a lot of pleasure to hear from people who say that they met their teacher or they met someone they had never known about and had such a wonderful experience or profound awakening or whatever. So, it’s kind of an honor to be playing that role, and I’m sure the same will occur with Vasant Swaha, whom some of you may not have heard of yet. Here he is.

Vasant Swaha: I think you’re doing a great job, Rick. I just recently have seen it, but it is really like you are really connecting and making the world smaller in a positive way, you know. It’s so much negative things from the Internet, from the new technology, but this is the positive, so it’s really beautiful.

Rick: Well, thanks. It’s like we’re all on the same team, you know, we’re just playing different positions, you know. If you know baseball, some of us are on first base, some of us are at shortstop, and you know, but you can’t really run the team without all those positions.

Vasant Swaha: I had a really hard time to find my master in my time, you know. I had to travel all the way to India and it was very difficult, but now it’s an explosion.

Rick: It is, it is, isn’t it? And the fact that it’s an explosion kind of gives me a lot of optimism for the world. It makes me feel like, you know, despite all the serious problems that we hear about on the news and so on, something really good is happening that’s not making the news very much, but that is very powerful and gives us a lot of hope for the future. Don’t you think?

Vasant Swaha: Well, I think it touches more and more people, so in that way it’s beautiful, but it’s always the world is more and more negative and it’s also getting more and more positive, you know, so it’s a balance there.

Rick: Yeah, like the polarities are increasing.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it’s getting more and more unconscious and also you have the balance, people are waking up and they’re getting more conscious, but it has to spread and I feel you are doing your part in that, spreading it, like all of us are doing.

Rick: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the Bhagavad Gita where the polarities had increased to the point where supposedly the good guys and the bad guys were all sorted out in two armies and with God standing in the middle, you know, between the two armies and you know then there was this huge shift and resolution and balancing of tendencies and qualities and so something like that’s going on.

Vasant Swaha: It has to change, it has to change, otherwise it’s really going downhill, so it has to change.

Rick: Yeah, so you alluded …

Vasant Swaha: People are already changing a lot, like when I started, just yoga was a foreign name, you know, everybody is into yoga, I mean what they call yoga is just Hatha yoga, it’s just the physical, but at least it’s the beginning.

Rick: Yeah, and usually one thing leads to the next.

Vasant Swaha: We have to start with the physical body.

Rick: So you said you went to India to find your teacher, let’s get into your story a little bit because you do have an interesting story and you know, so people can get to know you a little bit better. So you’re from Norway, right, and as I recall reading your story you were pretty young when you became aware that there was a lot more to life than meets the eye and you began searching.

Vasant Swaha: Well I think I always had that in me, I wanted to be free, but I didn’t know what that freedom meant, and even when I was so little, like five, six, I wanted to leave my family, but I had a really good family, it wasn’t because anything was bad, but it was just the impulse in me that I wanted to, I remember something else maybe, that was something unknown, and when I was only 14, 15, I finished school, I couldn’t handle school and they couldn’t handle me, so then it started really, and of course I was my parents’ worst nightmare maybe, not that I was bad, but just that it was very different from the norm, it was very different. So I left very early and I always was positive saying I don’t need that, you know, I don’t need to study, it’s something else, and I didn’t find that before I found the Osho, you know, when I tried many things, you know, like getting lost and the hippie days and you know all these drugs and alcohol and all this, but it went very, very quick, just a few years, and then I met Osho when I was maybe 20 years old, and before that I had also gone to India, because I was pulled to India, especially to the Himalayas, and that was part of that too, it was something known that I couldn’t put my finger on, you know, but it was some old memory in me from the East or from the Himalayas, and as soon as I was in India I felt at home.

Rick: Do you feel that a lot of spiritual people have done a lot of work in past lives to, you know, create a certain momentum that just gets resumed in this life?

Vasant Swaha: Yes, yes, because I remember many things from the past, you know.

Rick: You actually remember specific things from past lives?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I also had been with my Master in the past and many people I have met, we have a connection from the past. I think that is natural and it’s the consciousness that wants to evolve, or the love, you know, the love connection.

Rick: Some people kind of reject the notion of past lives because they feel like, well, essentially there is no person, you know, there is no individuality, we’re just universal spirit, so how could there be past lives? Because that implies that something or other is carrying on from one body to the next. So how do you reconcile those those two ideas?

Vasant Swaha: Well, I haven’t gone so much into it, but as long as you are seeking and you haven’t found the truth or yourself, your true self, then it’s something that is seeking, that is longing. Yeah, when you have found your center then there is no more seeking, then you are not identified with the seeking anymore, you don’t long for that process. So maybe that is what’s carrying us on, you know, that connection, till you are self- realized, then something is broken, then you are home again.

Rick: Jumping ahead of our story, we’ll go back, but jumping ahead of our story, you know, it must have been quite a few years now since you became self-realized and yet do you feel that that realization was actually not the end of the road, that even since then there has been continued growth in some respect, integration, refinement, you know, deepening, clarification, anything like that?

Vasant Swaha: Definitely, because when it happened I had no idea that that was what was happening, because it’s totally new. And when you had a master like I had, of course you put him very up, no? Because he has given you so much and also he was like not only a master, but the master of the masters, I would say, it was huge. So, you could never, it was almost impossible that you could have that experience, even though, you know, I wasn’t there for enlightenment, it was just life that was happening in that way. And when I met one man, it was the 16th Karmapa, by chance, and they also had a connection from the past, the 16th Karmapa and Osho. In fact, he said that Osho was the greatest enlightened being in India since Buddha. That is big words, but when I met Karmapa, just by chance, I almost just was sneaking into his meeting with the friend who had been waiting four years to meet him, and by chance I was there, so I don’t know how it happened. And when I came in there, then it was Osho who started talking, and then I realized that these other enlightened beings, that was the first time.

Rick: Other besides Osho, you mean?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, yeah, because in those days it wasn’t many, it wasn’t this explosion that we are seeing now, or like you are doing, you’re talking with so many. So, for me that was really an eye-opener at that time, to see that this is more, you know, but what has been happening now after Osho left his body and after Papaji left his body is huge.

Rick: Yeah, I think it’s good for people to have that perspective. I was listening to an interview on skeptical.com with Dr. Jeffrey Martin, who’s a researcher who has gone around and interviewed hundreds, if not thousands of people who are supposedly enlightened or awakened to whatever degree, in a kind of a scientific way, with these surveys and so on. And he expressed some surprise that even among all these apparently enlightened people there tended to be a certain fundamentalism, a certain attitude that our way is the best, or you know, our type of realization is the best and everything else is a little bit less than that. And it seems to me that that’s a kind of a human shortcoming that creeps its way into a lot of spiritual groups and spiritual people. And I don’t know, do you have any comments about that based on your experience?

Vasant Swaha: Well, then they’re not spiritual, as far as I’m concerned.

Rick: Or perhaps not as spiritual as they might become.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, or they think they are, because you cannot have any opinions, it doesn’t belong to anything, it’s freedom itself, you know. It’s nothingness, that division, that separation has to go for the whole to appear, you have to leave for the whole to come. And then all this is just a joke, and even the Master then is no separation. So, it’s a paradox, because as what I have gone through, it’s like you need the Master, but you don’t need the Master, no? You are and you are not, it’s both. But as long as you are identified with a physical form or a mind or an ego, then that will help, you know, that is the beauty of the enlightened ones, that you get recognized, that is what satsang is, you come back to your own self. And nobody is teaching this in the world, as far as I’m concerned, except the gurus or the mystics or the Masters, you know.

Rick: Yeah, right, it’s not something you’re likely to learn in in high school, but there are a lot of spiritual teachers out there teaching this stuff. But I guess the point I was making is that there tends to be in many spiritual groups this sort of holier-than-thou attitude, and it’s just almost like if we were talking about food, some people are saying, well, they’re not just saying, “I like Indian food better than Italian food,” they’re saying, “Indian food is the best,” you know, if everybody really wants to appreciate food, they should just have Indian food, you know, because it’s better than all other kinds of food. So, to me that seems a little narrow-minded.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it’s very narrow-minded, but you have to know it, people are narrow-minded if they can say something like that, because it’s maybe his part or my part that you met that guru or that part or the Sufi or the Sun or the Buddhist, but this has nothing to do with it when you realize it, you know. It doesn’t matter what part you take of the mountain, yeah, it’s like that.

Rick: Well, speaking of paradox though, are there qualitative differences between paths or is it really a matter of, you know, whatever path you gravitate to? Well, you know, there’s a verse in the Gita that says, “Because one can perform one’s own dharma, the lesser in merit is better than the dharma of another. The dharma of another brings danger, you know, better is death than one’s own dharma.” So, it’s sort of like in one verse it says, “Okay, yeah, there could be qualitative differences between different paths, but at the same time you should choose the one that’s right for you and that will be better than one that is somehow intrinsically on some kind of objective scale more effective or higher.” That’s more of a statement than a question, but feel free to respond.

Vasant Swaha: No, I have nothing to say because when the student or the disciple is ready then the Master appears, it says, you know, and that was what happened for me. So, I can only talk about my own experience, you know, I have no, I mean God bless anybody who finds a Master or a teacher, that’s what I say, you know, it has nothing to do with that. As long as the path gets more and more light, as long as they get more and more happy, as long as they get more and more loving, compassionate, free, light-hearted, non-serious, God bless them, you know.

Rick: Yeah, so you shall know them by their fruits, as the saying goes.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, but like you asked before, it definitely took a long time for me to incorporate it when it happened. It’s not like, I see those people also that is like they come for one or two satsang and then they want to have a certificate that they are enlightened. It’s not like that, you know, because you are totally lost in a way, you know. I had to start functioning again without knowing myself, and that took a long, many years.

Rick: Yeah, and that’s not an uncommon thing either. I mean Eckhart totally went through that, he basically just sat on a park bench for a couple of years after his awakening and tried to make sense of it. Byron Katie went through that, and there are plenty of other, dozens of hundreds of other people who can report similar experiences. So what you’re saying is that awakening is not the whole package that a profound awakening has to be integrated and that can take years, right?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it is shattering when it happens, but shattering in a good way. And for me it happened when I was still in Pune, but also had left the body a year before. So I was in a limbo that I didn’t know what to do anymore, because in a way while I was there I was gone, the vasta was gone, and I had not much interest to lead the groups and the therapies and the meditation and all this. And then something happened that all my wires in my head got rewired in a way, and I didn’t find myself, I didn’t know who I was. I was like a newborn, clean baby in a grown-up body, and it was very interesting, because I went to the ashram and I said, “I can’t do this, what I’ve been doing up to now anymore.” And even there nobody understood, and I was feeling that this is why we are here, this is what the Master wanted to give us, it’s like something beautiful is happening, but they were thinking about the money and the groups and the business. So that was an eye-opener for me also, that even there in the communes or in the mystery schools, you cannot see, you can easily miss it.

Rick: In the mystery schools around Osho’s ashram, you mean?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah. It was very few people, it was just a few Indians I felt who had been with Osho in the early days, who maybe it’s more in their genes also, to see that some transformation had happened. So I totally retreated, just like Eckhart Tolle said, he sat on the bench, I sat on my balcony and watching the river, you know, like that. But then luckily, or I don’t know luckily, but then I met Papaji and he incorporated that.

Rick: Yeah, let’s probe into that a little bit. So first of all with regard to the awakening, how long had you been with Osho before he died?

Vasant Swaha: 12 years, 13 years.

Rick: That’s pretty long, and so I know you were his bodyguard at one point, so you were fairly close to him and one of his bodyguards. And so what kind of … did you also come to Oregon? Were you up at the ashram there?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, yes.

Rick: That was quite a scene from what I understand.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.

Rick: And so, and incidentally I should just interject here before asking this question, that sometimes when I’ve interviewed quite a few people who were with Osho, and when I do, I get feedback from certain people who say, “Oh brother, another Osho person,” and they have this attitude toward Osho that’s based upon things that we were hearing in the news during those days in Oregon and stuff like that. And yet generally the people I’ve interviewed have just nothing but positive feelings about him, and I respect that. I was with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during the days you were with Osho, and the two of them actually had some sort of rivalry going, where they would kind of make these somewhat disparaging comments about one another. And I kind of look back on the whole thing as, you know, with Maharishi, that he was a remarkable soul, an extraordinary man, but he was a man, and as a man he had flaws and shortcomings, and he was a human being, you know, with human foibles. Do you have that attitude toward Osho even, or do you see him in retrospect as having been really perfect and without any sort of shortcomings or flaws?

Vasant Swaha: No, I think everybody has that. You are in a physical body and you have your things, you know, so that is clear for everybody I think. It’s not like they say about Mahavira for the Jains in India, that when he got cut, then milk and honey was coming out, you know, and it’s not like that, they are not shitting gold. So, the master for me is that it can help tremendously to open your heart or your seeking or your consciousness, and because, I mean, look how difficult it is even for people to start driving a car or learning mathematics or playing a guitar. You need a teacher. And that is for me, as soon as I came into his energy field, and especially when I started guarding or being physical around him, it was like, it was so dense, so thick of nectar that I could cut it. It was like that. So, it’s like beyond any, I think, it’s nothing to do with that, I’m just talking from me, I don’t care.

Rick: Yeah, no, I totally know what you mean and I’ve had that experience myself. It’s like the darshan is so thick you can cut it with a knife, like you say.

Vasant Swaha: So, that goes beyond anything. It’s like when your heart, your mind, your soul opens, it’s like you’re not functioning from reason anymore, you’re functioning out of love or a longing for the truth. It’s like this, you have felt something that goes beyond the mind.

Rick: Yeah. I think that one thing that concerns people though is that there have been so many instances of people who have discarded reason and who have begun to take every utterance of their Master as the sort of Gospel truth, that can’t be disputed, rather than maintaining some degree of discrimination and discernment. I mean, the Buddha, for instance, was famous for saying, “Don’t accept anything because I said it, just measure it against your own experience and you should be the final arbiter of what’s useful and what’s not for you.” And there have been so many instances in which people have kind of gotten into trouble by following teachers blindly without any discrimination and have ended up being disillusioned or taken advantage of or something like that. And it has given some people the attitude that the whole guru scene is a thing of the past and is no longer appropriate in our modern day, modern culture. So I’m just airing those points for the benefit of those who have been pondering those issues to see what you have to say about them.

Vasant Swaha: I think it’s great, but any guru is opening the eyes, he doesn’t make them blind. So either the people are not, they need to follow blindly, they don’t have the intelligence to see through or follow their own, but the Master is there to open your own intelligence, both in the heart and in the mind. So it’s not like the Master says, “Yeah, maybe in the beginning,” because it’s like you fall in love, it’s the honeymoon. But as you go deeper, then it’s your own truth that responds. Any Master would say that, “Don’t follow me, but take, you know, look at it, what I’m saying, feel what I’m saying, meditate on it, go deeper, maybe it brings truth, maybe it’s your own experience.” And as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one truth, it doesn’t matter if it comes from Krishnamurti or from Osho or from Ramana, it doesn’t matter, you know, it’s like there’s nothing to do, God bless you if you have found the Master, you know. And I also know this with the Master, the Guru in the West, and I totally understand that, you know, that they are, but in a way we don’t need that anymore, but that can also be a totally a poop out, because you do need it, you do need it, and the one who is still enslaved by the ego or the mind, of course they don’t want a Guru or a Master, they don’t want to surrender, no ego wants to surrender. So, then how can they pull them up by their own shoelaces? It’s impossible. So, I have seen, I know that, you know, and I’m not identified in any role, but I can play different roles, you know, if it’s helpful. It’s like Ramana said, you need a thorn to put out another thorn maybe, you know, but who cares, you know, afterwards you will laugh about it. It’s like now I can laugh about Osho, that crackpot, it doesn’t matter, you know. It’s like that, because he worked and Papaji worked and Ramana Sabhasika worked, they are all friends, you know, on the path for me.

Rick: Yeah, good point, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, they say. Yeah, I mean, I for instance have a number of friends and have interviewed a few people who were with a guy named Adi Da, I don’t know if you know who he was, but sometimes he was called Bubba Free John, and he did some really crazy stuff, I mean, you know, really out there, really quite decadent, I wouldn’t even want to mention some of the things on a family-oriented show, but I’m very impressed with some of the people that were his students, you know, they really got something out of it despite the craziness, which is not to excuse or pardon craziness, I mean, I’m not saying that, you know, it should give teachers liberty to just do whatever the heck they please, and with the sense that, “Oh, I am perfect and whatever I do has got to be right,” that could be very dangerous, but surprisingly, sometimes people who have that, teachers who have that attitude still manage to turn out some pretty impressive students.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: And I’m not implying for a second that you’re doing anything like this, I don’t know anything about your scene, I got a very good feeling listening to videos and so on, in fact, it was really sweet, because most of the time when I prepare for these interviews, it’s kind of intellectual, you know, I’m listening to people give talks and, you know, all sorts of intellectual stuff, and it was just really sweet listening to some beautiful devotional music and seeing the joy and the love and so on that seems to predominate in your ashram, and I’ve had some very devotional loving times in my own life, and so it was kind of nostalgic and just very nourishing to experience that.

Vasant Swaha: Well, I don’t really have any teaching, I haven’t written any book, this is the first time I’m on Skype.

Rick: Really? Congratulations.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, you pulled me out of this, Rick. So, you know, I’m not much, it’s not like I have to come out, it’s an intimate thing, and for me love or the feeling, it’s intimate, you know, so yeah, books can do a lot, but that is just the beginning, you know, and they can read so many beautiful books, it’s all out there, everybody is giving out the book or all the beautiful masters that have been, but for me it’s the setting, you know, I feel like it’s now, because the truth is in the moment, it’s happening now, and that’s the energy that can transform that is happening here and now, and that is what is beautiful with this also, why I said, yeah, this Skype, let’s try that, because it’s happening now.

Rick: Yeah, I can relate to that, I mean I’ve lived in ashrams and around situations like that and I know that the energy can become very palpable, you know, very rich and thick, and you just bathe in that atmosphere and it can be very transformative, and I do get the feeling that you’re helping to create that sort of atmosphere in your places in Brazil and Norway, and people around you seem to be very happy. So, yeah, great. Something is happening,

Vasant Swaha: Something is happening, but I wouldn’t say I have an ashram, because I don’t want to be locked in an ashram. Okay. I’m creating both.

Rick: Some kind of facility.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I have long retreats, but then I also want people to be free and need to be free. It’s not like we are there all the time, you know, I have both. Like Osho, he created a huge ashram, but Papaji was totally against any ashram, anything like that. So, this was my two biggest influences, I would say. So, I have a balance. I have an ashram, but I don’t have an ashram as both. Yeah. So, they can also incorporate this in their life, in their ordinary life, because the ashram can also become like a safe zone, you know. You have to live your own life in the world and bring that what you learn in meditation and in self-inquiry and being together in love, bring that into the world and be more creative, you know. That’s the challenge.

Rick: Yeah, it can be like a womb or an incubator and you know at a certain point the chick is ready to leave the incubator, and if the chick tries to stay in the incubator it’s kind of a cramped situation, you know, it’s time for the chick to go out and start pecking around in the farmyard.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, yeah. I mean here anybody can come and go as they want, it’s totally freedom. Right. There’s no rules, no regulations, nothing to follow except your heart.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. So, when you were talking about your awakening that happened a year after you’d been with Osho, after he passed away, it sounded like it was quite sudden, like you were taking a shower, eating breakfast or something, and all of a sudden, pow, there was a big shift. Is that kind of the way it was?

Vasant Swaha: No, in fact I was in the middle of leading a therapy group in the ashram, a tantra and hara group, centering group, and then I got very sick, but I had been going through this dilemma like what to do now, or in inside questioning myself, what is it now that is happening, or who am I now in this new, and then I got very sick with dengue fever or malaria, and I was just laying at home and I wasn’t good taken care of, so it was quite serious, and in that process, when I came back after that sickness, which almost killed me, I think, I don’t know, but that combination together with that inner spiritual path or meditation or whatever, I don’t know, it created something that when I came back again, I was totally different. It changed in that week, it changed totally, and for the longest time I could just, I remember going down to the little bakery in this Indian street from my house, and I could use hours, and it was like 200 meters, and I could stop and watch the children and being in awe of this, or talking to the little cat, I mean it was just like a three-year-old again, it was totally amazing, so I felt super fragile, and you don’t even know it, but I knew where my space was and I knew how to get these things, and that took a long time to absorb or integrate or whatever you should call it, and that Papaji helped me a lot to do, and I met him.

Rick: Interesting about the sickness, a similar thing happened to Saint Francis, he was very, at least according to that movie, Brother Son, Sister Moon, he was very sick and almost died, and then he came out of it and kind of in a transformed state. I thought of the phrase, “Catharsis precedes metamorphosis,” or another way of putting it is, when the postman knows you’re going to move, he tries to deliver all your mail. But that’s interesting, and let’s talk a bit more about this integration thing, because it’s very interesting that you were so childlike and delicate and perhaps vulnerable, would be another word, and it took a long time to toughen up in a way, I’d say, to integrate, to be able to do normal stuff and yet retain that state of realization, right?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, everything was gone, the only link I had in a way that I knew was the link with the Guru, which I think why the Guru is there in the end, because everything goes, but this was something that was okay, it was okay, I could feel the presence of the Guru, you know, that this was okay, because nobody else understood, and I didn’t even understand, but there was something in me that it is okay, and it was a total acceptance, it was a very blissful space, but it was very new, and I was very fragile and very sensitive on all levels, physical, emotional, like you feel like you are see-through, and you can feel and sense what people are thinking, you know, beyond the words. So, that was also because you don’t want to, I don’t want to feel that, because it’s almost madness in people’s heads.

Rick: Too much, yeah.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, too much. So, I can totally understand why people have retreated when these things are happening, you know, away from the world, because you just want to have peace, and that came up in me too. I wanted to go back to the Himalayas, I just wanted the solitude of the mountains and the peace and people who live naturally in the mountains.

Rick: Did you find yourself crying a lot during that phase?

Vasant Swaha: No, no.

Rick: Okay, that happens sometimes, people have this opening and then they’re very vulnerable and the heart is like really tender and they can’t go to a movie for instance, because some simple scene in a movie will get them sobbing and will disrupt all the other people in the theater.

Vasant Swaha: No, that I don’t, but crying with children in the street or like this happened, you know, like a spontaneous thing in the moment, but I don’t remember like that. But I went to the mountains and I stayed there for a long time to integrate and I felt like I want to be here, I want to live here, but then it was something else happening that, “No, those days are finished, I have to go back to the world.” And I resisted also, “I don’t want to, no, at last I have peace, I don’t want,” but it was something that, and then I met Papaji and he helped me in a way.

Rick: Describe that, how did he help you? What was that process?

Vasant Swaha: Well, I was living half time in America and half time in India in those days.

Rick: Oregon?

Vasant Swaha: No, in Long Island, and because I was staying in America as a base to make money after Oregon for a long time, in the Hamptons in fact, so I studied there, super rich, the super rich, and then I had my rice and dal in India.

Rick: What were you doing in the Hamptons, cooking for people or something?

Vasant Swaha: No, I was doing sessions, teaching yoga, Tai Chi, meditation like this, you know, so and I could charge them a lot. But then when I met Papaji, I was on my way back to the Himalayas and then I had heard of course, because this was all in the circles about Papaji there, and then I took the train to Lucknow and I came there early in the morning and I think his satsang was starting like 7-8 o’clock in the morning, so I just reached the satsang house and it was very few people in those days that came, and we had the satsang, and when I was sitting there I was thinking, I’m not looking for a master, I’m not looking for a guru, I don’t look for anything in fact, but it’s something I’m here for, but I have nothing to ask, I don’t know, you know, I felt like, what am I doing here, but I’m here, and it was very right that I was there. And also it was this traditional Indian, like Hindu, with the guru, and it was a little foreign for me.

Rick: Really? Even after all that time with Osho it was foreign?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it was a different setting there, it was a different setting. But then after the satsang was finished and I was still sitting there just a few minutes, then one of his caretakers came and asked that Papaji was asking for you, to see you, and then I went into his room and he asked me, “Do you know where I live?” and I said, “No, Papa, I just came now, this is my first time.” And he said, “Then come.” And he grabbed my arm and took me out, and all his disciples were standing outside in Namaste, waiting for their master, and then he came pulling out, I didn’t even have my flip-flops with me, and into the car and went to his house and then he said, “No, you know where I live, no, you come for lunch tomorrow.” That’s how it happened, and next day for lunch I asked him a question, “I know this ocean, this ocean of peace, of love, but sometimes the past, the mind is coming, that you come, you leave the ocean.”

Rick: In other words, sometimes you found yourself getting caught up in the mind and losing the ocean status?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it was a very new thing, no? The balance, it wasn’t …

Rick: Right, totally stabilized.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, and then I realized that this is why I wanted to check, because he was like a lion, there was no bullshit there. And then he just looked at me, and of course in that situation I was totally intent, focused on him, on the question, and he said, “Just drop the ocean also.”

Rick: What did that mean to you?

Vasant Swaha: Everything disappeared, everything disappeared, that there was nothing left, and just we started laughing, looking into each other’s eyes, and we started laughing and laughing and rolling on the floor, thumping each other, just like totally blissed out. And then afterwards he wanted to feed me mangoes and peeling the mangoes, and we were both sitting there like little boys eating this, slivering the mangoes.

Rick: Messy mangoes.

Vasant Swaha: And I thought this is just fantastic, you know, and we had … he totally took care of me, but it was already happened, it wasn’t like for some people that come to him and things happen. But he recognized something there, and he just took me and helped me, you know, that was he was really a guru in that way. And we had many amazing times together. He even came to Manali, to Himalaya, and we were together there where I stayed. So, it was beautiful.

Rick: Nice. So, when he said “drop the ocean” and that somehow shifted something for you, was it just a kind of a momentary shift that you enjoyed when you were there in his presence eating mangoes, and when you left there it kind of got back to the delicate thing and sometimes getting caught up in the mind? Or was that like a second awakening in a sense, where it really shifted and didn’t … in a stable way, it just kind of added a new level of stability to your realization?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I just got a more deeper trust or acceptance of the state, you know, because even if the shift happens, the old, the mind has been there so long that it still goes on, but you are not so identified with it, but it’s also new. So, I feel like what you call self-realization or enlightenment, that is a new beginning. So, the darkness of the past is gone, the suffering is gone, and it’s amazing, because it’s no more darkness, it’s no more suffering, but still it’s so new, you have to incorporate, you have to learn how to function, because you still need the mind to function.

Rick: Sure, you need the body, you need the senses and all that.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, and it can be so big like it was in the beginning that I just surrendered to it, you know, it takes time to incorporate. And he gave me this push, very strong push again, that it is like it is, and you can let go totally, and the mind will function, do its job by itself, you don’t need to be, I don’t know what happened, but something happened, it’s the grace of the Guru, you know.

Rick: In some subtle way.

Vasant Swaha: It’s a transmission or something, I don’t know.

Rick: Yeah, I was gonna ask that, in some subtle way before he said that, do you think that you had had a tendency to kind of hold on a bit to the ocean and push away a bit at the mind when the mind was trying to do its thing, and he just inspired you to be more natural, so that you just didn’t have to manipulate and kind of instilled confidence in you that you weren’t going to lose this if you weren’t vigilant every moment to stay on your toes and hold on to the ocean, was there anything like that? He just kind of instilled a certain, removed some doubts and instilled a certain confidence in you.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, in a way, but after the first happening in Pune, it was totally, the mind never really taught you, but I had to also find something to ask him of that, because I was there, you know, so it was something that happened in that moment, like he himself said happened with Ramana when he talked with Ramana, because I don’t know, it’s like beyond what is said, it could be anything, you know, but something happened, something transpired there, and that was not, it was even more shifts happening on a deeper and deeper level, I thought. The last thing that went for me was kind of, I think the last thing that goes is doubt.

Rick: Yeah, that’s why I use the word doubt, it’s sort of like doubt is this dry rot, you know, which kind of keeps us from accepting it fully or something.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, accepting and that it’s real, you know, that you have this kind of doubt or the mind itself is doubt, or you have a self-doubt that how can this, it’s almost like how can this happen to me, but it is happening. So, that takes time to integrate, and that I remember also when that moment was where it was totally gone. I mean for many years I became very, very sensitive afterwards, I couldn’t even drink chai, which I love, or coffee, or beer, or anything. It took maybe four or five years, I was super sensitive, but then I started practicing again, so now I can drink beer even.

Rick: You start practicing what?

Vasant Swaha: Taking in some normal…

Rick: Oh, just doing some of that stuff.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, to get used to that again, you know, because you can take it totally the other way also, but then you become very reclusive, you know. I think that could also happen, you know, you become protected in that space, but I want to integrate it, it’s like the Buddha at the gas station, no? It’s like that, that is the new thing.

Rick: That’s the idea, yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Vasant Swaha: Some years later than that again, which I really had, it was just a very peaceful year then, because it was all new, and I was in India, it was a beautiful place, there were beautiful people, but then I was in the heart of India, and I was walking out to a cliff that was sticking out like a mini Grand Canyon, and I was laying down there, and I fell asleep on this cliff, on like an island out, and when I woke up there, it’s fantastic, it’s like not polluted at all by people. Then when I opened my eyes, I saw a little monkey baby with the mother eating some fruit just three, four meters away from me, and in that moment I felt like I’m in the paradise, I’m in the garden of paradise, everything was so simple, everything was just ordinary, everything was just so beautiful, everything was just so lovely. It was like then tears came, just of beauty, and that I remember then something just like melted totally, it was a total meltdown. Then the last, it is so beautiful, it is real, but without the words it’s impossible to talk about it, you know, I’m just doing my best.

Rick: I’m getting the sense of it, and I have a feeling that what you’re saying is that this incident with the cliff and the monkey was like another shift, and it was more of a heart shift. The previous one had been like I am the ocean, kind of in a way a mind shift into kind of a cosmic unbounded awareness, and that this was more of a heart awakening where everything, you know, there was an enhanced appreciation of everything. Would that be true to say?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, you have to, I mean first I think on the spiritual part people want to go from the denseness, from the suffering, from the problems, higher, no? So they want to go out, but that is a big job, that’s a struggle, they have to let go of all the what is holding them back, so that takes the work. If that happens, then again you have to incorporate that down again, because I see some people can just sit with it here in the intellectual, talking about it. It has to be incorporated into the physical, you know? So you become very human.

Rick: Yeah, you know how we were talking in the beginning about this change that seems to be taking in place in the world or in the kind of culture with awakenings becoming more and more common. I’ve seen a trend that is similar to what you just described, where there has been a phase where a lot of people have had kind of an awakening, but it has more of an intellectual flavor, or even if it’s experiential, it’s not integrated into the human, as you say, to use your words. And these days the word embodiment is all the rage, you know? There’s so many people talking about becoming embodied, becoming integrated, you know, living not just as spiritual beings but also as human beings, and somehow fully bringing the two of those into one larger whole. So it does seem to be the kind of the direction in which contemporary spiritual development is moving, in my experience.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, let’s hope so, because we should be human, you know? That’s why the heart is such a balancing point, you know? So you have the… it’s a lot of people that are talking, maybe they have it, but it’s just from here, and people they have already too much in their heads. They have to be more empty here, more full in the heart, sinking down to the heart or the belly, being yeah, just a natural living. It’s no big fuss, you know? It’s no big fuss. All the teaching and all the sadhanas and all the meditation, all that will go, you know? You will just be a natural free human being, you know? It’s no separation, we are all part of it. We’ve just been so long separated, keeping ourselves separated.

Rick: But you know, it’s a little bit of a delicate thing, because like for instance you were with Osho for a dozen years and then another year after he passed away and then you had your awakening. Now what if after six years instead of 13 you had sort of convinced yourself that you were awake and whatever doubts your mind was entertaining you thought, “I’m not going to have those doubts anymore, I’m already enlightened, there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, whatever I am experiencing, this is the reality.” And I’m actually using words that I hear people using these days, who I often don’t think have actually had a genuine realization, but as you were just saying, they’re very much in the head and they have read too many books and they have gotten a little bit hypnotized with this line of thinking. And so I see it as sort of a pitfall or a trap sometimes, a stumbling block on people’s path where we could call it premature immaculation, there’s this sort of premature assumption that I’m enlightened and I don’t need to do anything, as opposed to someone like yourself who maintained, as I gather, maintained a certain devotional or stance and didn’t assume anything and then when genuine realization came it was unmistakable. So have you run into this as a teacher, you know, and what would you care to say about it?

Vasant Swaha: A lot, a lot, and that is, I mean that must come from somebody because I don’t even say that I’m enlightened, what is enlightenment? I’m just a natural free human being, you know, it’s like it’s just words. Yeah, self-realization, yeah, maybe because you realize who you are or you don’t even realize who you are, you realize who you are not. And so it’s all the paradox to talk about, how to talk about it, the closer you come to the truth the more difficult it is. That’s why I say I’m not out there to spread that I have a big teaching or, no, it’s very simple, you know, it’s so easy that it’s so easy to miss also, it’s so close that it’s so close that closer than you think, so don’t think about it. It’s like all that has to go, you know, but people have all this and of course you see because we are so much special in the West, we are so developed in the head, that that is the first you have to empty all that garbage and all those thoughts and all that frustration, how can there be any peace when people go around with all that? That’s the first thing, that is what is the work, you know, that is the sadhana, first to empty yourself and then only you can start being more sensitive and listening more deeper and meditation can start. That meditation comes later, first you have to do work on yourself, you have to see, you have to grow, you have to empty all the garbage and how can they have any, I mean it’s ridiculous as it is, you know, when people say this. I have nothing to say, you know, but they are already too much mental, you have to empty that, because when you touch somebody in the heart, when you talk from the heart and you know you have established the connection there, then there is more trust, it’s a relaxation, because it’s not my opinions and your opinions, it’s the truth, you know, it has nothing to do with any teaching, any religion, anything, it’s just now, here, open, free, beautiful, and then you feel it, you get goose pimples.

Rick: Gooseys they call them, yeah. So, I’m kind of reminded of Christ saying that except you be as little children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven, and I’m sure that doesn’t mean peeing in your pants, it means having a sort of an innocence and kind of a naturalness, which brings with it an openness, you know, like not a thing of, “I have all the answers already, so who am I going to listen to?” but more like, “What do I know for sure?” you know, so I think I’ll listen to whatever comes along that sounds, you know, useful.

Vasant Swaha: I mean that’s always in India, they said, when you are ready, when you can accept that you don’t know, then only can you get anything out of the satsang, you know, you have to empty yourself to be available for something that is beyond you, you know, it’s a mystery, you know, you cannot learn it, but you can catch it in a way.

Rick: So, when somebody comes to you, let’s say in Norway or Brazil, and you know they’re brand new, how do you help them empty themselves, or how do they end up getting more emptied by being there, what do they go through so that they can become, you know, more fit to go deeper?

Vasant Swaha: We have a lot of different meditations, therapy, dance, creativity, sharing, self-inquiry, hypnosis, physical things, creative things, you know, all these things, the whole specter is more to get people more in tune with themselves, find that innocence again, which is the most important, because people, they are not happy first, you know, because when you get lost in your mind, you lose your heart, heart is happy, it’s spontaneous, it’s free, so the first thing is to lose the seriousness, I would say, to become like a child, to teach them that, to create a safe place where you can let go, and then that let-go-ness, I would say, goes deeper and deeper, yeah? First the holdings outside who I am, who I think I am, I have to behave like this or like that, and deeper and deeper, if you can’t even let go of that, how can you let go of your whole identity, which is what meditation is all about, to go beyond your image, you know? So, it’s a gradual thing, and that is again the paradox, because you are already there, but people have to loosen up, they are too tense. You understand?

Rick: Oh yeah, there’s a verse in the Gita which goes, “The unreal has no being, the real never ceases to be,” and you can read that as meaning that you’re already there, I mean there’s nothing but that reality, how could there be anything other than that? But that’s still a concept, you know, unless it becomes an experience, and it doesn’t necessarily become experience on reading that verse one time or contemplating that idea one time, wouldn’t you agree that there have been years if not lifetimes of conditioning layer upon layer upon layer that somehow have to be purified or cleared away before we can begin to seriously realize this stuff as an experience rather than as a concept?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, that is what is the homework I would say, to cleanse oneself. Many people come to Satsang, they want to go from that denseness to that beyond, because they are longing for that, like people before or maybe still longing for heaven in the afterlife, no? Because it’s so terrible here, why? Be happy here. So, you have to transform your own life into a happy life, then only, then it’s easy when you have happiness, when you have peace, when you are truthful, which people talk about, but to be truthful that takes some guts, you have to be really truthful, but in that truthfulness then you cleanse yourself, in that cleansing the spirit gets stronger, you have to be strong in spirit, then you become integrated human being. Most people are not integrated, they are all scattered, there are many, many personalities, and all the personalities have to go to become that simplicity again, that innocent, that childlike nature, that spontaneous nature that is present in the now. So, it is a gradual thing most of the time, but when it happens it’s instant, it’s

Rick: Yeah, well, I mean if you’re taking a boat across a river, then or you know across an ocean, then it’s gradual as you go across, but when you get to the other shore, boom, it’s instant, you’re on the shore. So, there’s no contradiction there, and you don’t jump out of the boat halfway across the river thinking, “Well, this should be more instant, I’d rather just be done with this, I’m jumping.” You know, you’d be in trouble if you do that.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, so I think my main thing is just to share the love and the happiness, because out of that love and happiness and togetherness and in love in life again, that you are loving your life, then creativity comes, and then the energy starts moving by itself, higher, freer. So, this is the first thing, is to create the right base for it, that people are free, they feel free, they feel happy, you know, and there’s been so much suffering and you see that now, it’s like a depression, stress, it’s never been like that, you know, Prozac nation, you know, it’s like that.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, so many people have insomnia, yeah.

Vasant Swaha: All that, you know, it has to change and people have to start taking responsibility for that change.

Rick: Yeah, so I get the sense that the role you’re playing is to create an atmosphere which is saturated with love, and in which, if people place themselves in that atmosphere, then the tight knots of tension and stress and constriction can relax a lot more quickly and safely than they could in other atmospheres that they might ordinarily be in.

Vasant Swaha: Yes, and in that relaxation then you can go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and that is stopping, you know, to stop. But how to stop is almost impossible if you don’t have a place to stop where you want to stop.

Rick: In other words, what you’re saying is if you’re caught up in your usual everyday life it’s very difficult to make that sort of transition, but if you can take a break from that and get in a loving, protective, supportive atmosphere, then it becomes easy. Is that what you just said?

Vasant Swaha: It is easier, yeah, that is why it’s always easier in communes or in spiritual gatherings or in meditation with fellow travelers in the sangha, you know like this. Of course it is. Not that one should get stuck there, no, but you need that help. I mean if it’s your life, yeah fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but like Buddha said the best if, you know, as a seeker on the path, the worst is to be with the unconscious, you know, find conscious people. If you don’t have conscious people, if you don’t have people that are coming more from the truth, then stay alone, make your own little beautiful place, you know, you can do your thing, come back, have a meditation, dance in your apartment like that. But even better than that is to have a gathering, a sangha, a commune of fellow travelers, it’s supposed and you know that. And then if you have a Buddha there also, of course then you have a …

Rick: All the better.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it’s like that, no? It’s very simple.

Rick: Yeah, and that is so traditional, I mean in every culture I think that understanding is expressed in one way or another that the company you keep makes a big difference, and if you can be in the company of the enlightened, however that’s defined, it’s going to be very conducive to your growth. And if there’s a teacher there, like you say, a Buddha, a Master, someone who has really awakened to a profound degree, then it’s going to be an even more powerful atmosphere. So it’s a great blessing to be able to be part of such a thing.

Vasant Swaha: It is. It really is.

Rick: Are you married? Do you have a partner or anything like that?

Vasant Swaha: I have a partner.

Rick: Okay, been with a long time?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah.

Rick: So I just want to say to my friend Dan who is fielding the questions, if anything has come in go ahead and send them, I’ll ask Vasant those questions. Someone said, I read someplace that you went on to spend some time with Ramesh Balsekar also after Papaji.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, well he was on my way there in Bombay. I was living more or less in India a very long time. I had a traveling a lot, so I went to him also and we became very good friends, enjoying each other. But it wasn’t anything new for me, but it was just a beautiful man, you know, I wasn’t seeking anymore. So I remember he just came always to hug me, it was like that. There wasn’t any questions, but it was the love of truth or to be with somebody like that, you know, so I had met many known and unknown like that. I know also people in India that lives very quietly with just five, six people around them, beautiful enlightened beings, you know, so you have the whole scale.

Rick: Yeah, do you feel like there’s a particular advantage to having a really small group like that or is it really like just as they say, different strokes for different folks and according to what you’re attracted to. That a big huge crowd kind of thing could have its value and also a very small intimate one could have its value according to what you’re attracted to.

Vasant Swaha: I feel the intimacy is incomparable because it’s human, you know, it’s like how it always been. It’s like Papaji said that truth never lives in big gatherings, you know, it is small and that’s my feeling. I don’t say it has to be that because I know people can get a lot out of a big gathering also when people speak the truth, but it takes time, you know. I stopped traveling around having a satsang here and there and in that city, in that city, because people they just came, “Oh, are we going to go to satsang? Are we going to go to the movie tonight?” So I want the people who are more devoted to themselves or to the truth.

Rick: You mentioned that being in your – you didn’t call it an ashram – being in your facility is not a permanent thing. People go out in the world and do their normal thing, but do you have like a core group in each place, Norway and Brazil, who stay there year-round or what?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I think it’s like the bees for the honey, you know, when the honey is there, the bees come. So, here in Brazil, it’s a whole village around, it’s happening and it’s beautiful. It’s really a place of freedom, maybe a hundred people have come here. It was nobody when I started here.

Rick: Nice, so they’re building little homes and buying homes.

Vasant Swaha: They have houses and schools and work and everything, you know, and give sessions and teach yoga and all the things that all these people do.

Rick: Cool.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, and the same in Norway, but in Norway it’s more difficult because we are more in the beautiful mountains, it’s not so easy. Here it’s more, and in Brazil I like, it’s like I always say it’s my new India, you know, because it’s pleasant and there’s good fruits and vegetables and people are very relaxed. So, it’s very easy, we are very well treated here, to say it that way, you know, because some places in Europe, in America, they have this old Christian, you know, denseness, and that is not here at all.

Rick: Yeah, really, it’s interesting, I know when I spent some time in India, and first of all, when you first go there, there’s like this feeling of softness in the atmosphere, you know, it’s just like, ah, soft feeling. And then you come back, you fly back to the United States, you land at Kennedy Airport or something, and you start driving around, there’s this kind of denseness or hardness or grossness or something that’s in the atmosphere that contrasts quite noticeably when you go back and forth like that.

Vasant Swaha: It is different energies in different places, of course, and India for anybody, I think, on this path, or who is into themselves, meditation, self-inquiry, it will feel like coming home, because it is special there still, even though it’s changing a lot, of course.

Rick: Getting westernized.

Vasant Swaha: Getting westernized so quickly, you know, but you still you have that, because for thousands and thousands of years, and it’s the only place I have been where I come into a place, a temple, an area, or in the Himalayas, and I can feel like “Whoa!” it’s been like this for thousands of years, you know, like I’m embraced, that’s how I feel, you are embraced, if you are sensitive to it you get embraced by it, the peace.

Rick: Yeah, I think it’s worth dwelling on that point for a moment, just that you know, a certain place can get, I don’t think this idea will be too alien to the listeners, but a certain place can get just saturated with Shakti or with certain quality, as you say, if there’s been something going on there of a spiritual nature for thousands of years, it just gets soaked into the rocks, so to speak.

Vasant Swaha: It does, it does, and that is very much in certain places in India, and they have that, I remember Papaji, I went to Gangotri which is the beginning of the Gangas, which was quite a nice walk, and I filled a kind of a container for him with this holy water which just came out from the glacier, and because I knew he had this love, like Mother Ganga, which is not like that for me, but I love it, but I felt like this area where the Gangas is coming out from the glacier is very unique, it’s a dance of good spirits, you know, it’s yogis who have died, mystics, enlightened beings, it’s superb, the whole area there, and when I came down again and I told him I brought this from Gangotri, he was ecstatic like a child, and first thing he took, he was drinking it and splattering it to everybody who was in the room, like blessings, you know, and for him it was so real and so beautiful, you know, to see this. It’s like you know it, but for an ordinary person, a Westerner, they think it’s just silly, but it’s from your soul.

Rick: I’ll tell you a funny story, I have a couple hundred friends who live in ashrams up in Uttarkashi and another guy who lives up in Gangotri a lot of the time actually, he sent me a Facebook message recently, he said there’s a beautiful sadhu in Gangotri who loves your Buddha At The Gas Pump stuff, he lives in Gangotri year-round, much of the time with no electricity, his kutya, which means a little hut, is buried in snow, he lives there, he’s one of only six people who live there throughout the winter, but somehow he found your site and loves it. I thought that was kind of cool.

Vasant Swaha: That’s great.

Rick: Yeah, I mean somehow he has electricity, somehow he gets an internet signal through a cell tower in the area, so kind of amusing.

Vasant Swaha: Really, really nice. I have a very dear friend there also who is an enlightened being, but he just has five or ten people around him there in that area between Uttarkashi and Gangotri and he’s not interested anymore, you know, it’s like that’s what I mean, I know enlightened people that I met one in fact that was sitting under a blanket, he didn’t want to say anything, he even wanted to hide when you came, and then you have people who want to speak to the whole world, you have everything. Yeah, I mean there’s stories of, I guess it was in Yogananda’s book, of people who throw rocks at anybody who tries to come, they just want to keep them away, you know, it’s just not their dharma to deal with big groups.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I keep the middle way.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, somewhere in between. Well, you know that thing I started out with, peas in the garden, I really get the sense, maybe we can talk about this for a few minutes and let’s see if any questions come in, maybe no questions have been sent in this time, but you know we’re all, I mean if we understand God to be omnipresent and all-pervading and so on, then we’re really all just sort of reflections or expressions of that divine intelligence and the more we, you were talking earlier about purification, the more we purify or clarify our instrument, the more kind of full we can be as an expression and the more we can be a kind of a servant of God or a tool of the divine. And I’ll bet you have a sense of that very profoundly in your own life, that it’s not really you doing anything, it’s more like you have just somehow put yourself in the position to be useful to divine intelligence and you’re just kind of spontaneously carrying out the impulses of that kind of like deeper, more profound intelligence. Does that kind of ring true with you?

Vasant Swaha: Totally, totally. And that’s the beauty because one has no more problem, you are just a servant, servant of love, servant of truth, servant of grace, servant of God, call it what you want, but nothing can be more. That’s why we are here.

Rick: And there’s something very blissful and joyful in that, isn’t there?

Vasant Swaha: Yes, everything that is true, everything that is right, everything that is God, everything that is love is blissful, no? They say, “Sat Chit Ananda” in India, the last is Ananda, bliss, it’s higher than truth even, you know, and it’s you cannot talk about it, but it’s the ecstasy of just feeling oneness, of being part, of being at the service of the good, of the beauty.

Rick: Yeah, that’s really sweet and sometimes people downplay that. In fact, I have a friend who recently told me he was getting a lot of flack on Facebook because he was talking about bliss a lot and some people’s understanding of realization doesn’t really include bliss very much. They think of that as kind of more of an emotional thing, whereas realization is just this cognition of reality that’s not terribly heart-filled. But you know, you read the lives of the great, even the great non-dualists, Shankara, Ramana, Papaji, Nisargadatta, and they all have this devotional side that in which they reveled in the bliss and the joy and the Ananda, as you say, and found great sustenance in that, great sweetness.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, those who say, they don’t know what they’re talking about because I’ve been rolling on the floor with Papa In bliss, and so many of these non-dual or Ramana, they don’t know. It becomes dry, it becomes mental, it’s not integrated. When that bliss gets absorbed into your whole body, you become a blissful being, you know, you don’t need to wait to become an angel. It is blissful, then life itself is bliss, you know, it’s joyful and that’s how it should be, it’s a gift. And you are grateful, you know, it’s a gratefulness and that gratefulness can only come when that love is there. I don’t know, I never think about it, I’m trying to formulate words, you know, I’m not…

Rick: No, you’re doing a good job, and the reason I like talking about this is, well firstly it doesn’t get talked about too much, but these qualities of bliss and gratitude and devotion and the whole, there’s a whole realm of sweetness and sumptuousness that is sometimes left out of spiritual discussions, but it really is a kind of a delightful feature of the whole thing of spiritual evolution in my opinion. I mean there’s nothing dry or heartless about full realization, it’s like a life of joy, and I’m not speaking necessarily from any sort of personal authority, I mean I’m a work in progress, it’s a matter of growing happiness and growing bliss for me, but I’ve had enough tastes of it and seen enough examples of it to know that it’s something well worth aspiring to, and that one minute of life in that state realized fully would one would derive more happiness than an entire lifetime in many ordinary states.

Vasant Swaha: That’s how it is, just one taste and it will change, and that’s why I said this with the more the intimate gathering or what is you know in India they call satsang, if it’s real satsang, that nectar is dripping, then just one taste and people transform, they change, they have to change, because they’ve been living in lies, they’ve been living in illusions, so just one taste something change and that can be a start to a more happy life, you know, freer life, real life. So, we need to get recognized that, you know, to be open, so even spiritual, like you say, even spiritual people have these ideas, it doesn’t make sense, you know, we have to be open to so many teachings, you have a mirror, he was just dancing ecstatically in bliss, you had Ramana Maharshi, he was just sitting there, you know, but he was very juicy, and for me what is more juicy than to be part of this? It doesn’t make sense, you know.

Rick: He was a great devotee of Arunachala.

Vasant Swaha: Don’t hold back, you know, I just want to shake them. You are both, you know, you have the physical but you have the ecstasy also.

Rick: Yeah, and Shankara, I mean, who was considered the founder of Advaita, he wrote all sorts of beautiful devotional poetry and was really a great bhakti, a bhakta, as well as being a great jnani.

Vasant Swaha: I see no separation from that, from bhakti and jnani or Advaita or Sufi, I see no separation. When they are like this, you know, it’s like you have love and you have meditation, you have self-inquiry and you have bliss, you know, it’s like they come together. On the path you can talk about these things, but in the end it’s essentially you are blissful and one day you are totally in the silent. It’s like that, you know, it’s just different aspect of God, I would say.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a beautiful talk I heard one time about realization of God and it was phrased in the way that, you know, as once awakening has occurred the ability to appreciate really begins to ramp up, it really begins to become much more profound and the appreciation just accelerates and accelerates to the point where the desire to know God becomes really acute. And the example used as if, you know, someone was watching, appreciating some artist’s work and thinking, “Oh, this is such a great artist, I would really love to meet this artist, his work is so beautiful,” you know. And eventually the artist hears that, keeps hearing that, “Some man here in this village appreciates me so much, I think I’ll go and meet him and, you know, surprise him maybe.” So God comes to meet someone who is really capable of appreciating, God or the artist, comes to meet someone who is really capable of appreciating his creation. So I just thought I’d throw that little story in there, you might like it, but you seem to be a great devotee, you know, and yeah.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I’m a devotee of truth, of life, of love, of joy, of ecstasy, of all, you know, it’s all, in the oneness is all, and you are attracted to it. It came a time, I’ll tell you a little story also with Papaji, that after this love affair and this caretaking of Papaji, then when I came to India a year later, I had this, I was always going to visit him before I go to the Himalayas, just out of respect, out of love, nothing, I didn’t look for anything, you know, just like pranam. And then I came to Delhi and I realized that I can’t go there, I don’t, I’m not going there. Why? Yeah, why? This was like inside my head, you know, I should go there because I always go there, no, but I don’t, I cannot go, and it was very strange because it was, I couldn’t go there and I didn’t know what. Then I went to my place in the mountains in Manali and I was wondering what am I doing here, you know, it’s like why didn’t I go there, why? I was supposed to go there, but I was supposed to go to Lucknow first. And just two days after I came, I went to the hot bath, they have these hot baths there from the springs, and I opened the door into the bath and out comes Papaji straight into my belly, belly to belly, and he said, “Swaha, you are here? Did you know I was here?” And I said, “No, I didn’t know, I didn’t know you were here. Come!” That was it, and then he took me to his hotel, and then that was amazing, and then I really felt like, here now, even the Master, I cannot escape, you know, it’s effortless, even the Master comes to me, because that’s how it was in those days, I had that deep respect, which I still have for anybody like that, of course. And we went to his hotel, and he had a few devotees with him, and I said, “This is not so nice, I have a much nicer place.” So, I took him to the place I stayed, which he liked a lot, and he just moved in there. And here I was, we were staying together in the same house, and then I took him around all the sides in the mountains, because I had a car, there was also a little jeep, you know, an Indian jeep. So, that’s how it is, you know, it’s like you don’t know, but if you just trust, if you are surrendered to that, if you are a servant of that, it will happen, you know, it’s impossible. Even if you don’t do anything, it will happen.

Rick: That’s a very cool story, and it sort of shows in a way how an awakened person’s life can work, where you just feel to go this way, and for reasons you can’t understand, you go this way, and yet then you see maybe in retrospect, “Oh, so that’s why I went this way, you know, because this and that happened, I met this person, or such and such happened, and so on.” And so, you know, it kind of makes you wonder, well, really, what is the mechanism of that, you know, letting the dogs in and out here. What is the intelligence that is orchestrating such a thing that was causing your mind to say, “No, I’m not going to look now,” and you know, just kind of like move the pieces of the puzzle together so that you can see what they met at that place in the Himalayas. It’s cool to contemplate.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it’s something there on a higher level, you know, that is happening, that you are not so used to yet, because now these things are much more smooth, you know, it’s happening. But at that time, a few times, it was really like that, your mind, because you had the plan,

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Vasant Swaha: And then your reality, “No, you are not going there,” so it was like this. So you have to trust, you know.

Rick: In my own life I’ve gone through phases where that’s been happening, you know. Well, for instance, doing this show, I had this idea that I was going to do a little radio show on the local station here in my town that has about a 10-mile radius, and I kept pushing on that, and I kept getting resistance, and it wasn’t working out. And finally some friend said, “You know, you’re thinking too small, put this on the internet, it’ll become much more worthwhile.” So I ended up doing that. So, you know, it kind of was a no-brainer to do the radio show. I mean, this is a very spiritual town I live in, a lot of people who would find it interesting, but it was like something was, or causing the people at the radio station to resist the idea, and, you know, it was the perfect thing. I’m so glad they did. But then other times in my life I’ve followed whims and tendencies that I thought might be some kind of divine guidance, and they weren’t so much. So, you know, it’s nice when it becomes more and more and more clear, so that you’re not just kind of muddling around thinking that it’s God guiding you.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah. Well, it comes to a point where it’s only God guiding you, because there’s no more you in the way.

Rick: No more you to muddle, yeah. Yeah. Can’t say that I’m totally there yet, but it’s moving in that direction.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, soon.

Rick: Okay, well, is there anything else you’d like to throw in that we haven’t had a chance to talk about that you feel like you’d like people to hear?

Vasant Swaha: I’m just happy that all this is happening and that there’s more and more people awakening and that we can share the love and the joy, and in this way also that it spreads and that we feel each other and support each other. And today is the 21st of March and that was the enlightenment day of my Master, and without my Master I wouldn’t be here. So, it’s for all the enlightened ones, past, future, moment, I’m very happy and grateful for all of the enlightened ones. So, I think we should all be grateful for them from any traditions, any path, because the only work for one is to uplift the consciousness and that people become more happy, free, self-realized.

Rick: Great, that’s a nice blessing, so thank you for that. So, let me just make some wrap-up points. I’ve been speaking with Vasant Swaha, he’s in Brazil at the moment. Someone told me it’s about four hours south of Rio.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it’s the most beautiful place, of course.

Rick: And check out his website, I’ll be linking to his website from his page on batgap.com, it’s a really beautiful website and I’ve asked him to send me the name of his web developer because I have people who would like to have their websites look like that. And when you’re not there you’re generally in Norway. Do you sometimes lead tours to India or anything like that also?

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I was just in Thailand just a month ago and I go to India, so it’s Brazil, Norway, India and Thailand.

Rick: Is that a bird? You’ve got birds, I’ve got dogs.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I heard, he wanted to go out.

Rick: Yeah, I know.

Vasant Swaha: It just starts raining now.

Rick: Oh, you have something over your head, I hope?

Vasant Swaha: It’s beautiful, yeah, it’s beautiful.

Rick: Good. Okay, so for those who’ve been listening or watching, this is an ongoing series. I think I’ve done about 280 of them now, so if you go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, you’ll find them all archived and organized in various ways. You’ll find a link to Vasant’s website, you’ll find a list of upcoming interviews, quite a few of them, some of them scheduled as far away as next September. And the ones that are done through Skype we’re making live now, streaming, so that people can send in questions and there’s a form on that upcoming interviews page that you can use to submit questions during the interview. There is also a donate button which I depend upon people clicking if they feel so inspired in order to support this whole venture. There’s a place to sign up to be notified of each new interview by email. There is an audio podcast of all these interviews so that you can just listen on your iPod or Android device or whatever, there’s a page that gives you all the options for that and a bunch of other things, explore the menus and you’ll see what’s there. So, thanks for listening or watching, thank you Vasant. It’s been a great joy.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, it has been. Nice to meet you.

Rick: Yeah, hope to meet you in person someday, give you a big hug.

Vasant Swaha: Yeah, I was thinking the same, so it has to happen. May everybody be happy and let’s relax now.

Rick: Okay, thank you very much. Namaste.

Vasant Swaha: Namaste.