This month's interview is a continuation of the discussion with Gangaji, a teacher and author who shares her direct experience of the essential messages she received from Papaji, who received them from Ramana Maharshi. These are two revered master teachers in India. For more information on Gangaji, go to Gangaji.org. This interview is best savored like a fine wine: one sip, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. It may just free you.

 

Alan: You spoke about the vibrations we transmit -- of love or fear, for example -- making the point that generally what we give to each other, in our gossip or group meetings, is our misery. But if we are actually fulfilled, then what we offer to each other is our fulfillment and our joy, and that vibe is spread.

 

Gangaji: The problem is, you can’t impose that. We can recognize fulfillment, and we can even say, "That’s how things should be" and know that it is the goal. But if we try to do that, then it’s on top of our own misery or chaos. That’s why I invite people to open their minds to discover what they are experiencing. Sometimes it can be great discomfort or great fear: fear of death, or fear of living. I invite people to meet that, to inquire into that -- to just let attention sink into it, without thought.

 

It is just consciousness sinking into whatever is perceived. And for most people, the root of this is fear: some deep animal fear, maybe. This may not even be an illegitimate fear, but perhaps just the fear of being an organism. The willingness to meet this consciously rather than to be run by fear is the doorway to being free. It doesn’t mean that fear no longer appears, but it is no longer the master. It is no longer running the thought forms. Thought forms start with an emotion, and then we think something that fits with that emotion. I read about that in a study they did at Harvard.

 

When you realize the implications of this, you see how we influence one another. Your reality is being created for you by deep forces within you that you can turn and meet and no longer be ruled by. Then your reality, or reality itself -- the ultimate reality -- can be discovered. Not created, but discovered.

 

I believe that even the concept of being a co-creator -- and I understand the empowerment it implies, and I support that -- is just a certain phase. Finally, however, the willingness to be not a creator but a discoverer of what fear is, creates a certain humbling of the mind. You know that you are not doing it. You are not generating it. Then you are actually in a position to discover what is really here.

The willingness to meet this consciously rather than to be run by fear is the doorway to being free.

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In my experience, and that of many others, you discover the total fulfillment, peace, and harmony that are already present. They don’t need creating. Your mind can then open and surrender and be a servant to fulfillment and harmony rather than a servant to fear and chaos, or the avoidance of fear and the attempt to get something better than fear. It is easier to open and surrender, because there’s no effort required. However, it is harder in the sense that it means facing what is in your deepest being, and you may be afraid of that. You may suspect that it’s not good news. So you have to be willing to meet what you suspect is not good news to discover this extraordinary, unbelievable, and definable good news.

 

Alan: I love what you wrote in You Are That. You say, “It is essential to recognize the master alive within you, consciousness, the presence, all these words for THAT, at core: That nothing is really possible before that; before THAT recognition, you remain at the whim of society, culture, family, and” -- these are my favorite words – “conditioning agents.”

 

Gangaji: Conditioning agents -- that’s really good.

 

Alan: Yes. So once we start to not be blown by the winds of these conditioning agents, and our culture, and our society, something shifts and changes, and that’s what you are talking about.

 

Gangaji: You are no longer a slave. And when you are no longer a slave, you don’t have to work for the master of production, or of getting more. You feel like you are more! No attracting more, or keeping more. You can actually stop. You can rest in the deepest sense of THAT. You are free. And I don’t even mean you are your own master. I mean you are free! There’s no master and there’s no slave. The mind opens to THAT, and then you get to see what these different forms -- this Gangaji form, this Alan form -- are made for.

 

We all have different talents and different affinities. We are drawn to certain things. Some of us would like to be hermits. Some of us are political or social activists. Some of us are very happy just tending children. Some of us are happy just tending gardens. And that's as it should be. There’s room for all of us.

 

But in the tyranny of conditioning agents, you may be given a job that is simply for society, or your parents, or your husband or wife, or even your children’s idea of what you should be doing. There’s no freedom and no joy in that.

 

You may end up doing the same thing, but it is very different if it comes from a recognition of what you are made for, and how it is you best serve that joy -- how you best pass it on. There’s no formula for that.

 

Alan: If we come to our real presence, underneath these conditioning agents, things start to shift and change. We can make other choices about what we want to do. This gives pretty much all of us the ability to choose what we want.

 

I myself have been enjoying hanging out in bed more in the mornings. I don’t have to “do” as much right away, nor do I want to anymore. I mean, we have the radio show; I love it. My favorite thing is interviews and talking with people and changing frequency through words and conversation, even though they are just a representation of the moment underneath the words.

I want to read again from You Are That. You say; “Are you willing to tell the truth all the way down to the depths? Are you willing to be shocked by what it is that you really want? If you are willing to be laid bare by what your life is really about, where your attention is really hiding in the name of enlightenment, God, or peace; if you are willing to be humiliated and humbled by the mechanisms running you, then you have an opportunity to meet the primal fear.”

 

So talk about our willingness to cut through all that, and the fear around that. Because who we think we are, particularly if we are very wrapped up in our minds or intellects, is going to be challenged. This needs to fall away for us to discover the true presence you are talking about.

 

Gangaji: Well, it’s as if we live our lives in cocoons. There is a particular phase when a cocoon is absolutely appropriate, and we are nourished by it. But if we aren’t allowed to burst through that cocoon, it becomes the source of enslavement. That’s ultimately what happens to conditioning agents. As children, we need to be directed, disciplined, taught, and given boundaries. This is absolutely appropriate.

 

Certain societies have rituals when you grow into adulthood. You grow into elder-hood. But what I’m speaking about is even deeper, because it’s not based on chronological age. There is a certain readiness. For Ramana, it happened when he was 16 years old. For me, it happened when I was in my late 40s. It has nothing to do with chronological or biological age. There is a readiness, and there is a call. Maybe you don’t define it as a cocoon, but your skin is not big enough for who you are. This can be very uncomfortable.

 

We usually try to fix it by either ignoring it or throwing pleasures and accomplishments at it, but it really won’t leave us alone. We need to be willing to turn our attention toward it. That’s what I mean by a willingness to face our insatiableness, or the abyss of ourselves. If we are willing to face this and stay conscious -- just simply stay awake -- it is the gateway. It is the recognition that the cocoon is an illusion. It has simply been internalized by our own minds, our own thought process. It has no reality. So it’s not even about acquiring freedom. It’s about recognizing that you are already free.

 

As you said, it is the freedom to hang out. I think most humans like to hang out. Of course, many of us have an enormous amount of energy and like to work. We like to work, and we like to hang out.

However, being able to do what you want is not just a kind of “follow your pleasure” syndrome, because that’s still seeking fulfillment. Rather, it’s a recognition that you stop seeking all fulfillment. You ask yourself, “If I get everything I want, what will that give me?” Then you can see what it is you really want. If you are at the stage when you can even ask that question, usually what you want is peace, love, and rest, and these are already here.

 

Alan: Yes! You know, the cocoon metaphor is very interesting. There are a lot of people using it these days when they’re talking about the evolutionary spiral. Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman use it in a book titled Spontaneous Evolution. Barbara Marx Hubbard has also used the term. The caterpillar creates a cocoon and goes inside and turns to green mush. If you open it up prematurely, it’s a mess, incomplete. I am thinking maybe we are not even aware of ourselves in the cocoon at this time of great change, because everything hasn’t completed. Then the butterfly comes out. You know?

 

Gangaji: Yes. Beautiful! And I think we are afraid that there’s mush in there. However, by the time we have the intelligence to inquire, to turn our attention inside to see what is there, it is the essence of the butterfly. What seemed ugly and horrible is transformed into what is beautiful and great.

 

Alan: In one of your blogs, you say, “At every instant of our lives, change is guaranteed. We fight to keep it away, or work to get it here sooner, because we think we know what should happen. We are certain (sometimes rightly!) that the change coming toward us will ruin or kill us. We think and hope that the right change will fix us (or them) once and for all.” Later you go on to say, “That’s the rub. Other than death, there is no ‘once and for all’ regarding anything that is subject to change. If you take a moment now, you can ask yourself the question, ‘What changes?’”

 

We renamed our radio show back in 1991. It was Cosmosis at the time, and we were switching stations. We were looking for a name to emulate what was more real. We didn’t want to call it “truth radio” or anything like that, because that would be a little presumptuous. So we didn’t know what to call it. We had a little focus group, and we came up with Transitions, because that’s a deep truth. That is, everything is constantly in change.

 

Gangaji: Well, that’s right. Those are the laws of the universe. What is born will change and transition. And there is the possibility that, in the midst of being, we discover what “I am” and what is at the ground of these changes. What is change? From the time we were small children and first aware that “I am” until now, we have seen many changes -- certainly in our bodies and life circumstances, and also in the broader community or environmental circumstances. But if we tell the truth, the consciousness of “I am” is the same.

 

There are multiple, infinite experiences that have passed through IT in their changes. But IT -- consciousness or awareness -- remained silent, open, and free. So, yes, we get to the point of readiness, the mushy caterpillar stage, when there is a growing capacity in the human mind -- the human thought process or brain -- to actually reflect back on its origin or source.

 

This is when you discover the changelessness of yourself. Yourself as life. Yourself as what is present, through all the changes, not augmented by any positive change and not diminished by any negative change. That’s the joy of recognizing that, even though you and I will be gone as forms, who I am, which is life, and who you are, which is the exact same life, remains unchanged when all of these changes happen.

 

Alan: Sometimes in my own life, after the numerous interviews I’ve done and the many books I’ve read, there is an awareness or perception that arises out of looking back over all the past years and experiences in this body, mind, spirit, and incarnation. This awareness says, “Maybe I have seen it all” or heard it all. Maybe there is nothing new. And in that presence, one still chops wood and carries water. Or, as Jack Kornfield titled one of his books, After Enlightenment, the Laundry. The challenge sometimes is not to get stuck in a rut. Do you ever look at the past accumulation and say, “There is nothing new?”

 

Gangaji: I am continually amazed that there is nothing new. There is nothing new in terms of action. I mean, the laundry does have to be done, the beds do have to be made, and the bodies do have to be fed. And the horrors do continue.

 

What is always fresh and surprising to me, even though it’s my own self -- so it’s utterly familiar -- is the moment when I am not conceptualizing what is happening or thinking about what is happening. I am flooded by the freshness of what is present in whatever is happening.

 

The complete audio interview is available at Transitions Media interview gangaji-on-you-are-that.

Alan Hutner is the founder of Transitions Radio Magazine (TRM), and co-hosts and co-produces the show along with Elizabeth Rose and Levi Ben-Shmuel. TRM airs at 98.1 FM, Radio Free Santa Fe (KBAC FM), 8 to 11 a.m. Sunday mornings and streams live on the web, with all programs archived by hour at TransRadio.