Gangaji:

Interview with Alexandra Hart for AHP

Gangaji

Alexandra:	Gangaji, I want to speak my incredible gratitude. All of my life I have been in search of who I am. I've had the blessing of moments of realizing Who I am, being in the presence of That, and being That, but there is something so immediate and without aid of any other "tricks" that has been part of the gift that you have brought to me. It has been tremendously meaningful to me that you are a parent, a Western woman from my generation and subculture. You know me, you know my life. Those barriers of circumstance have been removed by your example. One of ours made it!
Gangaji:	That's wonderful. Thank you. The teaching or the transmission is confirmed when you say, "My barriers, my excuses, my ideas of what was in the way of recognition of Truth and service of Truth are just removed." Just in a flash. Yes.
Alexandra:	I think that may also be one of the values of this interview for AHP, because you have been through a sequence of life events that is parallel to the lives of many of us, and I think it may be helpful for us to hear a brief history of your experience.
Gangaji:	My life is probably very much like your readers' lives, at least in bits and pieces. I grew up in Mississippi and married and taught school for a while in Memphis, Tennessee. There is a strong sense of place in the South, but I felt so out of place. The circumstances of my family weren't so great - a lot of alcohol and noncommunication. I didn't have a happy childhood by any means. Once I got to San Francisco in the 1970s, I mean, the minute I stepped out of the car, I knew, at last! This is what it feels like to feel you're in the right place. That was when I started my active search, that was identified as a search, for spiritual understanding rather than the search for the perfect husband, the right job, a perfect child, perfect looks, the perfect social position. My life just shifted. Of course, the '70s were a very alive time in California, and the focus was not on jobs, husbands, children, and looks, but really on what is going on inside. It was then I first took mescaline and LSD, and it was a tremendous, wonderful experience for me. I could feel something melting in my brain. And it was good that it was melting. There were moments of panic, but if I could just relax, that panic would instantly turn into bliss, and acceptance, and realization - a depth of being that my life up to then hadnÕt touched. So, it was very good news. I was also with like-minded people. It was very different from Mississippi. So, I am very grateful for whatever power or mystery or grace that contributed to that. I ended up living in Bolinas [California] for a number of years. By then I had divorced my first husband, Eli and I were together as a couple, and we were very interested in Eastern thought and Tai Chi. The Tibetan master Kalu Rinpoche came to Bolinas and actually appointed us to head a dharma center. We had a little Tibetan dharma center in our bedroom with five O'clock meditations and chanting. It was a good life, a very intense, good life. And yet, what had been glimpsed, whether with sacred substances, or in meditation, or being with Kalu Rinpoche or different teachers, still was tenuous in my life. It was very easy for my thoughts to go back to suffering. Past relationships - with my mother, with my past in general - still hadn't been cut. We did a lot of psychological work then and through the next decade. Co-counseling was one of the wonderful ways of releasing unacknowledged emotions - very useful.
Alexandra:	Putting you on a equal, peer to peer basis.
Gangaji:	That's right. I hadn't had any psychological work except for a brief time when my first husband and I split up. My therapist turned out to be just a regular Freudian kind of guy, but it was helpful for the transition time. The co-counseling was a way to be, just to let it out, and it was great. After about a year co-counseling began to seem that it was cycling back on itself, that it was all about emoting. About that time I also became involved politically with the protest at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant. I became a nonviolent trainer for Abalone Alliance, and ended up spending ten days in jail. There were sixteen women in an eight-woman cell for ten days, and it was quite wonderful. We put on workshops, did co-counseling, and taught some Taoist exercises. There were a couple of Lesbians in the group so we put sheets over some upper bunks so they would have a private place to be. It was really quite beautiful to be there in this confined space and see that we weren't confined at all, that we had our resources and each other. Also I noticed, being involved in the political scene, that there was something self-righteous about our position and that we actually liked having an adversary. We liked having us and them so the us could feel good, could feel self-righteous. And it didn't feel good, really, it was a weight. Maybe it feels better than the pain of feeling wrong, but it's still not right. Not in line with the truth. So I became disenchanted, as I later became disenchanted with different spiritual groups: the same kind of self-righteousness and separation, something off. We moved to Mill Valley, and I opened up an acupuncture clinic. In the meantime I had gone to England and studied acupuncture. Eli had worked with neurolinguistic programming, so he was seeing clients. We had a little clinic on Sacramento Street in San Francisco and were making lots of money. We had a house in Mill Valley with an enormous mortgage. After five years of this, in about 1988, we were both exhausted and realized that something had really gone wrong. In our disenchantment with spiritual and political groups we had shifted our allegiance to the yuppie or materialistic group. There was a lot a pleasure in that. We had a lot of great meals. Eli was a wine collector. We had a wonderful little house, but we just looked at each other one day and said, what has happened? This is not it! We had always loved Hawaii and how simple we felt there. We decided to stop everything. We made a lot of money selling our house, then we moved to Hawaii. Eli was giving workshops at Esalen and different places, so we just assumed we could live in Hawaii without the overhead. By then I was really ready to stop all work. I had also become very disenchanted with my work and identification as a healer. I saw the same kind of "off-ness" in it. I love acupuncture - I get acupuncture now. But somehow in identifying myself as the healer, there was still a seed of both self-righteousness and defense from a kind of emptiness. So I gave up everything. I also stopped helping Eli with his workshops. I stopped considering myself a teacher, trainer, a leader. Just stopped everything. It all seemed like an enormous burden - and not quite true - even though people were always helped all along the way. In the meantime we had come into contact with the Enneagram. It is possibly the most humbling system in the world - which is very wonderful. I could see that everything I had identified as really me, was not really me, but was just a pattern of strategies to avoid some kind of abyss or emptiness, some kind of not-knowing. It was my personality, in my character, I was disillusioned. It is very useful to be disillusioned. Eli was still teaching the Enneagram in his workshops, but everything else we stopped - all practice, all identification with groups, political, spiritual, therapeutic. It was clear that we didn't know what to do, so we went into retreat and both asked for a teacher. We moved to Hawaii in '89 and it was in January of 1990 that Eli went to India and found Papaji, and then I followed in April. What a moment to meet Papaji! In the instant of meeting him there was a deep release, a relief, a being welcomed home. I realized that whatever this being had to say to me was very important, and it was why I had traveled to India, why I had previously stopped all professional identification. He said very clearly, very firmly, "You are freedom. You are truth." He said it in such a way that it penetrated all my habits of denial. It penetrated even any idea of freedom and truth. It wiped out the whole slate. It left only freedom and truth.
Alexandra:	So, what is the role of the master or teacher in self realization? You don't seem to set yourself up as that. It is not possible for all the people to come to experience you individually, person-to-person, as a teacher.
Gangaji:	At first, I met with people individually who felt they needed it, but I was not satisfied with these meetings. Really what they wanted was better expressed in the group. Somehow when they asked for an individual meeting it was as if they had an individual problem that was different from the individuals' problems in the group, and I found that not to be true. As you say, it would be impossible to meet with everybody individually, but I discovered that it does not have to be a personal relationship, that the problems that people speak of in satsang everyone can identify with.
Alexandra:	True enough.
Gangaji:	Yes. It is the same problem; it is the problem of running away from the abyss or void or emptiness or nothingness. Of course the strategies, the attempts at solutions are infinite, and that's the individuality. But if you get at the core problem, it's always the same. So I stopped the individual meetings very quickly. They were very tiring and they were also perpetuating a certain kind of myth of needing individual attention or a physical one-to-one presence. While that can be beautiful, it is not needed for awakening.
Alexandra:	There is something one can hold in that situation of I am special. Better than or worse than.
Gangaji:	Well, all of that comes up in satsang. It is important to recognize that you are special, the most special, the only special. And with that recognition it is important to see this person next to you is absolutely special and the only special, the only one! They go together. That's why I like the interactions in satsang and am not interested in just speaking to people and walking out. I want the group interactions so that this true specialness of Who one is can be recognized without the boundaries.
Alexandra:	And yet it did seem to be the face-to-face meeting for you, with Papaji.
Gangaji:	Yes, it was that face-to-face meeting. There were a few other people there, but I felt very special. He made me his pet in that first meeting. I got to come over earlier than other people. I left after a period of time and came back to visit him after about five months. He never even invited me over for tea. Actually, when I met him that time he said, "What are you doing back here so soon?" It was wonderful because I saw how I had constellated around I am special, and these other people are not quite as special. I am the specialness, and I will come to him and get more juice and then go and give this to other people. This is not accurate. So, I want people to come to satsang and to both feel special and to feel how that is a universal quality, that that is the Self, that specialness, and that is in fact what we love in each other and what we fear in each other. Papaji, you know, comes from a different culture. He was raised a Hindu, where gurus or masters are very much a part of the culture, and he plays that role as well as playing Papa or playing friend. He plays guru quite naturally because it's a part of his culture. It's not part of our culture. Some people experience me as sister or friend. Some people call me teacher, some people call me master, but all of that is really nothing. That's not the specialness. The specialness is the Self recognizing Self.
Alexandra:	I've had a sense for some years now that we're needing to grow up out of this parent-to-child relationship, student-to-teacher - that if we can grow out of that adolescent state into a maturity, we will take responsibility for ourselves in a way that we won't as long as there is someone up there who knows better.
Gangaji:	Yes. I agree. That's very important, but I would also say that maturing can't be forced. Because in the West a number of people see the absurdity of ritual dependence on someone else to live one's life, there's been a kind of leaping out of that relationship. Yet I know also that the traditional relationship of guru-devotee can be very useful. That's why when people call me Mamaji or call me teacher or master, I don't say anything. I let them project onto me whatever it is they project. My responsibility is simply being who I am and not buying into any projection as real. No projection is finally real, but projection does play a very important role. I believe it has gone so wrong in the past with our parents and with our immature teachers because they have believed the role to be real, because their parents or teachers did. That's what got transmitted to them so there's a heaviness with the role and a manipulation with it and therefore a corruption of the role and a corruption of its power. But if the role is recognized to be a role, then it's nothing, really nothing. It's important that people recognize, Ah, this one that I thought was above me is, in fact, my own Self! My own Self! One of Papaji's major gifts to me is that he has never allowed me to be dependent, and he also has never allowed me to be independent. Those are both positions of the mind.
Alexandra:	Yes, the mind loves dichotomies. It is what, I believe, brings it into existence. Can you define satsang for our readers?
Gangaji:	The word sat in Sanskrit means truth and sangha means in association - such as in association with like-minded people. Satsang means in association with truth. It is where we come to speak truth, to hear truth, to be true. Where we retreat from all the play of illusions, the play of appearances. That's the beauty of satsang. It offers a place where the illusion is recognized as experience but not acknowledged as reality, where Truth is acknowledged as reality. The purpose of formal satsang, satsang with Gangaji or whoever else, is really to point to the satsang that is always present. Ramana spoke of the cave of the heart. In an instant you can retreat into the cave and have satsang.
Alexandra:	Some people seem to go to psychotherapists as a kind of doctor of the soul. Religion seems to have taken a back seat to other kinds of exploration, at least in this subculture. Do you see a role for psychotherapy as an interface with Spirit?
Gangaji:	Oh, I think psychotherapy is very, very useful - if the therapist is in a continual process of surrender. Psychotherapy as an institution - I don't know if it's useful or not. Maybe it's outlived its use; but if psychotherapy is used as a way of cutting through the bondage of the past, which is the purpose of psychotherapy as I understand it, to cut through the bondage that keeps one unnecessarily suffering, then psychotherapy is not separate from satsang! Of course, there are many techniques that can be used. If techniques are used to simply make a better cage or a better prison, then I think psychotherapy, like politics or most manifestations of religions, is actually defeating its intent which is freedom, truth. Have as your intention to be free, and then whatever appears, trust that there is that within you that is driving you to freedom and that it will make use of psychotherapy or whatever else appears.
Alexandra:	Can we have mental health without dealing with Spirit?
Gangaji:	No. No. We can have some kind of semblance of ego aggrandizement, which people often call mental health. We look into our world and see that what gets called mental health is often just extreme, eccentric delusion. There is not real happiness there, just a kind of driven-ness because underneath the delusion is a distrust of simply being. There is much identification of who one is as job, with money, as position, or as relationship.
Alexandra:	The product.
Gangaji:	That's right, the product. To be truly happy you must recognize who you are with nothing.
Alexandra:	I wish to be of service, but sometimes wonder whether I am self-serving. How you can tell when you are in service to That and when you are in service to the ego?
Gangaji:	If your intention is to be in service to Truth, when there is a subtle or subconscious following of the ego, it shows up in suffering, in weightiness, or in justification, or defense, or holding. There has to be some kind of mental activity, some evaluating - justifying, maybe, is the key word. Then you can ask yourself, "What is it I'm justifying and what is the need to justify?" Is one's life really turned to serve the Truth of who one is or is it turned to serve some imitation? You cannot be happy unless you are serving the truth of your being, however that service looks. The form is secondary. There's no real happiness without that. There's pleasure, of course, and pain; but happiness, true happiness, has to be serving the true Self. So, I would say, you don't know, you can't know, until it reveals itself. And your willingness not to know is actually your willingness to be open and see.
Alexandra:	It often doesn't look like what I think it will, and I feel sometimes a desire for clarity into the future - this is where I'm going, this is what it "should" look like. But I never have clarity any more than in the moment.
Gangaji:	Yes, well I don't either. Some people have clairvoyance and can see clearly into the future, and some people don't. It isn't necessary. I have no idea what anything will look like tomorrow, or what will happen to this Gangaji phenomenon, the Gangaji Foundation, formal satsang, I have no idea! And, finally, I recognize there is no need to have any idea. Even if I have an idea, it's just some kind of limited evaluation based on what I think should be happening or is happening. There's great release, really, in not seeing into the future.
Alexandra:	That's a great practice for me. As I grow older with very little material security for the future, there is a tendency to fear that I haven't taken care of things properly.
Gangaji:	A whole generation is looking at that now. Great numbers of our generation actually turned to issues of spirit and service, and now the bodies are aging. At a certain time bodies can't work the way they have worked, and there's a need for security for the body; but, what to do? Are you going to trade any of it for the kind of security you think you need?
Alexandra:	Our AHP membership is in large part made up of service-oriented people. What about the deeply felt imperative to change the world in an effort to ease injustice, pain, wars, hunger, that sort of thing. A criticism of a life of the spirit that I've heard is that going for alleviating personal suffering is selfish. How does satsang respond to social problems?
Gangaji:	Often trying to alleviate the suffering of the world is selfish! It's a noble thought - clearly much better than an intention to contribute to the suffering of the world. But often people are trying to fix the world so that they can feel better. Fix the world so that it will stop bothering them so that it will give them some peace so they can read the paper without being disturbed. That's still personal.
Alexandra:	Or so that you can be the savior.
Gangaji:	Oh, definitely. Then everybody can see how special you are. I don't believe you can fix the world. I believe that the only thing that is possible is to recognize who you are and that is, in fact, the world. What you see in the world that you dislike is in fact your own mind in operation. What is at the root of that is a strategy to avoid nothingness, emptiness. Discover who you are by facing this nothingness, this existential emptiness, by facing it directly and discovering the resplendence of that emptiness, that nothingness. Then, if you like to play in the realms of politics, or social action, or therapy, of course, you are free to play, but you are then playing with a different attitude. You're not fixated on changing them. You definitely may have positions and opinions and judgments, but they are not fixed as reality, so there's an openness to really see. We've had multiple ideas of fixing the world throughout time, and see what that's led to! That's what we're now trying to fix! The arrogance that we know how it should be is the same old arrogance. There's some humbling that is quite beautiful when you recognize that it's only yourself that you're trying to fix. Who you are, in truth, who everyone is, is whole and perfect and beautiful. And if that can be recognized, then it is possible that self-torture can stop!
Alexandra:	So, in a sense you're saying that human suffering and evils and all of that are a result of self-torture.
Gangaji:	Yes. A sense of self-loss and then some strategy to recover it results in some form of self-torture.
Alexandra:	So much of what you teach is to neither grasp nor reject.
Gangaji:	Yes. To simply directly experience phenomena of all kinds is a very simple, basic teaching. In spiritual groups often there is a masking or denial of emotional phenomena to try to produce a state of equilibrium. Usually with anger and the past experience of seeing how indulged anger leads to suffering, there is this subtle denial. Instead of indulging or denying, instead of following thoughts or taking action based on indulgence or justification or denial, it is possible to simply experience anger (or any other emotion) to consciously face suffering rather than subconsciously run from it. The willingness to directly experience - to neither run toward nor away from the present, immediate experience - is the willingness to neither grasp nor reject.
Alexandra:	Something you spoke about that just dazzled me was about hatred and how hatred is always at base self-hatred.
Gangaji:	That's true. But I would say in clarification that it's not really Self-hatred, but the hatred of the image one has of oneself; it's the disgust with that, the humiliation of that, but not the experiencing of the humiliation and disgust. The hatred is a defense against the deep humiliation of identifying oneself as this animal thing called human with all its particular aggression and nastiness. It is not true Self-hatred but of who one has imagined oneself to be; hating who one believes oneself to be. Since that hatred is unbearable, it is projected outward into the world, seeing them as hateful.
Alexandra:	One of my spectacular moments of being in the presence of That was brought up for me in one of the recent satsangs. A woman was speaking of longing and of loneliness. I had been sitting with a question about this longing to be seen. When I get into trouble in my relationship, I often find that I am feeling this longing to be seen. She started by speaking of loneliness and you related that to longing. I recalled a moment when I realized that I was all there was. There were people around, but there was no one there but Me.
Gangaji:	That's right!
Alexandra:	It was incredibly beautiful and the responsibility of it was overwhelming. In that moment my personal creation myth came to me, which goes: Finding Ourself alone, we gathered up half of Ourself and flung it to the ends of Our imagination, and made an entertainment out of finding Our Self again.
Gangaji:	Beautiful! That's right. That's right!
Alexandra:	And when we get really tired of the game, all we have to do is say, Who am I? and find our way back home.
Gangaji:	Yes. Yes. This is the crux, this is the whole of my teaching, right there, what you have said.
Alexandra:	It has been useful to me to remember my creation myth from time to time.
Gangaji:	It's useful to remember because for eons it's been played as the search for yourself. So now you actually turn to find yourself, you turn home! We have within our whole genetic structure this searching, however distorted, ugly, or sublime the search has been; now you actually stop and are at home! Yes.
Alexandra:	Everything follows from that, because that creates duality, polarity, and if we have not hidden Ourself well, there would be no game!
Gangaji:	That's right! The game of Lila!
Alexandra:	So, sitting there with this question that began to answer itself, I realized that that longing to be seen was more accurately the longing to see myself.
Gangaji:	That's beautiful, beautiful.
Alexandra:	Can you speak about the contrast between searching for comfort and the desire for freedom or peace.
Gangaji:	The search for comfort has at its root the search for freedom or peace. The search for comfort is a distortion, and because it's a distortion it overlooks the freedom and peace that is inherent, because when discomfort arises, which it must, (if there's comfort, there must be discomfort), when discomfort arises, then the activity of the mind to grasp for comfort begins, and with that, there is no freedom or peace. That's the trick, the trick of the mind.
Alexandra:	Is there anything else that you'd like to speak to this particular audience?
Gangaji:	Oh, I'm just so happy that you're speaking to this audience. I'm happy to meet you and to hear you speak what you have realized. This is really good news!
Alexandra:	I continue to be overwhelmed with the good fortune of meeting the River of Knowledge that is Gangaji! I realized that if I had the opportunity to speak with the person I would most want in the world to speak with, it would be you! And, here I am!
Gangaji:	Oh, beautiful. I am honored.
Alexandra:	My dream is realized.
Gangaji:	Yes, your dream is realized in so many ways. That is what I have heard from you today. That's the true security!
Alexandra:	Namaste
Gangaji:	Namaste

The Gangaji Foundation takes care of inquiries re: Gangaji's itinerary, videos or cassettes of satsangs, availability of her book, You Are That!, and donations to support these activities. They may be reached at The Gangaji Foundation > 505A San Marin Drive suite 120 > Novato,CA 94945 > 415-899-9855 or 800-267-9205; > info@gangaji.org; www.gangaji.org.

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