Mooji: Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space

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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Mooji. Mooji worked in London’s West End as a street portrait artist for many years then as a painter and a stained glass artist and later as a teacher at Brixton College.

Mooji is a direct disciple of Poonja, the renowned Advaita master, or Papaji as his followers call him. Since 1999, Mooji has been sharing satsang which means meetings in truth in the form of spontaneous encounters, retreats, intensives, and one-to-one meetings with the many seekers who visit him from all parts of the world. His style is direct, clear, compassionate, and often humorous. With Sounds True, Mooji has written a new book called Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space: What You Are Before You Became where he guides the reader into the adventure of deep inquiry sparking direct realization through stories, wisdom teachings, and responses to the common questions on the spiritual journey.

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Mooji and I spoke about his experience of discovering his true nature, what he calls being kissed from within, and a magical experience that brought a tangible deep peace that has never faded. We also talked about how he understands that we have an unchanging part of us while also having a changing part and how this coexists for him.

Mooji also led us in a guided pointing out of just being as a way to begin to taste our timeless true nature. Mooji and I also discussed spiritual bypassing and what he means by being wind-assisted as we contact our beingness.

Talking to me from Portugal, here’s my conversation with Mooji.

Mooji, this is the first time I have ever had the chance to interview you before and I’m really looking forward to it and want to begin just by thanking you. Thank you for making the time to have this conversation.

Mooji: Thank you so much. I’m very happy to be interviewed by you. Looking forward to our conversation today.

TS: Now I did a series a couple of years ago and it was called Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean?, and I interviewed 20 plus people about this topic of spiritual awakening trying to get a sense could we define it and do people even mean the same thing when they talk about their breakthrough experiences of awakening and how it’s changed them. I discovered actually that people mean a lot of different things by this phrase “spiritual awakening” and so I wanted to start our conversation by knowing what spiritual awakening means to you.

M: Thank you.

I’m also aware of the term being applied and expressed to mean different things by different people but in my way of using the term awakening I start off always by saying that what we are is awakening in the sense that we imagine it is something that we do or something that happens to us and that brings us into a state of complete tranquility, of complete evenness of mind and what people often say to be you completely in the heart and these are popular ways of expressing that.

I say that we are that. In essence, this is what we are. It is so seemingly unchallenged the idea we have of who we are that we are primarily our bodies and the conditioning that arises for us in our bodily identity. That belief in our self as a person makes it very difficult to actually accept what I would say when I say that you are already that which you are seeking. People feel that it is some just kind of spiritual koan or cliché or something but actually, I really do mean that. That what we are searching for is already what we are truly but the one who is seeking is less true than the thing that is being sought. This is what is very difficult to get across.

Very often people, let’s say, we have what we call an awakening experience and where there is a breakthrough in some deep insight, some profound insight or experience take place for us where the old way of looking is radically altered maybe just for a certain period of time and then we feel that we are experiencing a state of grace when our intuitive faculties come very much alive and we feel yes, this is it. That would be the most common response.

At the same time, for many people if not most, this state lasts only for a certain period of time. But what I speak about as awakening, I don’t use the term so often. I more speak about our true nature that once that is deeply grasped through understanding and intuitive, what I would say, refinement and conviction, even more than conviction, once that has taken place it continues to deepen and it never really fades. The state itself does not fade. What tends to fade is the attention tends to drift away onto other things and returns to the old regime of thinking and so it feels as though that is lost.

I don’t know if that really helps to clarify my position.

TS: I’d love to know more in your own experience this discovery of true nature, if you will. Is this something where you had oh, this is the moment. This is true nature. Oh, this is the moment where I changed and went across some kind of line where I started living and knowing my true nature all the time.

How would you describe it in your experience?

M: In my own case I would not really . . . it did not come to me like that, even terms like my true nature, enlightenment. These terms were not there for me. I knew in the first instance that an impact had taken place inside that was really clear in the most basic way. A change had arisen inside my heart and I knew in that moment that I’ve not experienced this kind of potency of experience before. I didn’t have many concepts about it. I wasn’t wondering what this was. I was just receiving, if you want to say, in a very receptive mode and very, very instantly happy about it. It was more a feeling of great peace and a heightened sensitivity in the way I was perceiving or experiencing the life within myself and the life around me so to speak.

I didn’t have any great words for that and I really could not talk about it. I didn’t have anyone to really talk about it with at the time. Really, that was the first. The first hit was that like for me and I just felt that I wanted to be in this state of being. Later, I found I could talk about this more but in that time, I didn’t have any great concepts and I also I was not so much prone to talking about these things. I really did not have the kind of words for that.

TS: Now this initial surprise experience of, you said, great potency, the potency of life. How did this happen, what happened?

M: Actually, I was not doing any kind of spiritual practice at all. It so happened that I was in those days, at that time I was more caught up in making artwork, paintings and sculptures, stained glass, this type of thing. I was just helping to put on a very important exhibition of Caribbean artists and I came home into where I was living there in London and my friend, my girlfriend said, “You know, oh, earlier today, someone came by and noticed some stained glass in the window, wanted to know who made it,” because it was obviously a new piece of glass.

She said, “Yes, my friend had made it and he’ll be back later.” This man said, “I’d love to call him and just to meet this person and to have a talk with him.” I heard this and just put it to the side and later that evening, this young man showed up at the door and he just introduced himself as Michael. He said, “I live very close by,” just a few minutes’ walk from where I lived. That he also made glass and also painted. I just liked him straight away. He was something very simple and open about his presence. I met him and he actually helped me to put this exhibition on that we were staging.

He immediately declared on the first evening that we talked that he was a practicing Christian and the fact that he was in the house where he lived they held a service there, a gathering there on Sundays. We’re just very open in this way. I saw him several times and always I found myself talking with him about . . . Well, he brought these subjects up and I found that I could talk with him very easily and very openly.

After a few months of visiting, one Sunday he came by and we were just like four people together in this room and we had a beautiful evening of sharing. I think principally, we were just . . . he and I speaking for the most part of it. Just before leaving I said to him, “Michael, when you pray again, could you pray for me?” He said, “Well, yes, yes, of course but why not now?” It was very fresh for me. I said, “Yes, yes of course, thank you. Thank you.” We stood up and he prayed. He put his hand on my forehead and he prayed something. I can’t remember what he prayed but he prayed for me. At the end of his prayer, I spontaneously also just asked for some guidance.

It was so deeply felt in my heart but it came up very spontaneously, just please help me and bring me more close to this understanding and so on. It was like that. It ended with him having a hug at the door and he left. I remember standing in the hall just behind the closed door and feeling really light and very happy. Just an exceptionally light feeling inside my being and I did not want to go to bed or anything. It was during later in the evening, but I felt so invigorated and at the same very peaceful. I just sat up for quite some time. I felt like this feeling was so, it was so unusually beautiful for me that way into the evening I still did not want to sleep. Like I’m sitting in this cocoon in this sort of very blissful state but eventually, of course, I fell asleep and in the morning I woke up and just noticed that there was a crack through the curtains and there was this stream of sunlight piercing this very dark room.

Somehow for some reason that just took my interest looking at it and feeling that I was looking at the sun like I’ve never seen it before. It was so beautiful with all the little dust particles floating up in that beam. I was very, very happy that the same feeling hadn’t gone away. That I had gone to sleep and woke up and the feeling was still very, very tangible, still very present so I felt a great joy about this and I remember going out walking in a park locally and just feeling just the most happy, in the most happy state. I did not really feel to be with the people. I was so much felt embraced by these feelings, these feelings of great joy and peace and then I just wanted to be alone and walk in that state. There’s just this tremendous peace that I felt entered into my heart and it has never left to this day.

Many changes took place in my life following that first meeting but this piece has never really gone away.

TS: Now Mooji, I’m curious how you understand this occurrence because lots of people I think might have something similar-ish happen during a magical encounter with somebody and it’s like the curtains part and there’s a sense of the beauty and grace of life itself but then that’s over, 48 hours later, 72 hours later, that’s over and they’re back to a more mundane drudgery-filled existence.

Yet, this didn’t change for you. What happened, how do you understand it?

M: I have to fill in some other pieces because I’d have to say that years before that when I was maybe 17, 18 years old, I used to go to my mother’s church, Seventh Day Adventist Church. We just had to go. It was not something that was a request. It was a requirement more to go to church. Sometimes I remember experiencing in church on a few occasions a similar feeling of just being caught up in this beautiful feeling. I remember leaving church and walking through the town afterwards and on Saturday full of noise and smells and traffic and everything and feeling cocooned but then it would just fade away.

On this occasion, nothing, it just did not go away. I can’t say why that is. I did not do any special practice for that. I just knew that I just was full of appreciation for that. I cannot say I practiced anything at all but if anything I could say is just I was so deeply surrendered, I would say, because it became all of my life in a very short space of time.

It’s like I sometimes describe it as being kissed from inside and my whole being was I feel every cell in my being was just tingling with this joy and this not excitement but a deep peace, very tangibly like I could pinch my skin and be filled with joy or something. Not a pinch, any bit of touch will be filled with this joy and this indescribable joy and peace. It did not go away.

At the same time I have to admit that my ego did not vanish immediately. I still had feelings about something wonderful that happened to me and I wanted to preserve this feeling, to have this feeling always but I wasn’t practicing anything to keep it. I just loved it and it just stayed. There were times when I felt that I would want to impart some of this joy to someone else and I see that it didn’t work like that. That by holding on to the hand that I would transmit something in a very innocent, a very naïve way and I saw that it didn’t always bring the result I imagined would.

I was learning very, very fast also, this is another thing. I was so totally consumed with this feeling and this experience and at the same time I wanted to absorb everything that I felt it brought up. I did not understand anything intellectually. I was not much one for reading books or something but at that time it felt a tremendous urge arose in me to find out more about it. Michael had given me a small book of the New Testament which I was a bit familiar with this anyway but it was like when I started reading it, the book that he gave me, I feel like I was also reading this for the first time and like a deeper understanding was present in my reading of it. That it was like something was helping me to understand more deeply what I was reading.

Then after finishing this New Testament I actually went and bought the whole Bible actually and read through that as though it was some kind of food that I was eating. That was really the birth of the interest in reading for me. I could never really read so much books on fictions. It was always something. It would only be about this to learn more about this.

TS: Mooji, you mentioned that after this pretty magical, I would say, experience, sounds magical, that your ego was still involved. You wanted to maintain this experience. You wanted to turn other people on. Did something happen that changed this ego function and role in your life that made it different for you?

M: Well, first of all, the experience wasn’t an experience that finished like you will say in the beginning, what that is, and when it lasted. It’s still ongoing for me. It has not really. . . . It gets transformed into a different way outwardly and even in terms of my feelings, these things can change. My ego, the ego feeling was not just only in the beginning, it actually went on for quite a bit in subtle ways, I could see that. I didn’t even know to call it ego at the time even. It was just I knew when the feeling of me was present when I felt I could do something because what was happening at that time very strongly was things which I regarded as miraculous was taking place for me.

I could see that there’s something, some energy field was being created around this body and also it was having an impact on how the life moved around me. That was my perception at the time. It was happening totally spontaneously. Where I felt the ego came in is when I felt that I, the feeling of I as a me, a personal me, could do something with this spell. Then I saw that it was not like that. Then as soon as I felt that this wrong me was getting in on the act so to speak, I saw that and it wasn’t working. There was a deep kind of frustration because I just wanted to get rid of that. There’s a feeling of just wanting to be free of that because it was more of an intrusion. Left to itself the life in me was simply unfolding by itself and something here made it very easy for me to surrender to that more.

I don’t know why but I was not wanting to control it. I was wanting to be more in service to it but at the same time needing to discern when the person was being very active in it and when it was just moving by itself so that went on for some time. Then your question as to was there a time when the ego was not playing or interfering in that way anymore. I would say that gradually, gradually it was thinning away and by the time, this was from 1987. All this began in 1987 and then by the time it got to 1993, I went to India for the first time. I did not know much about Indian culture or any Indian spiritually but I had this strong feeling inside that I wanted to go there.

I’d found a book about a great saint from Calcutta, Sri Ramakrishna, and somehow although his religious practices or beliefs were very, very different from my own upbringing something brought me to this book, The Gospel of Ramakrishna, and it really spoke to me after finishing the Bible. It was like, maybe it’s the word gospel or something but as I read it, I could really see through Ramakrishna’s eyes and I felt that the presence I felt through this book was very, very much a friend to me. It helped me to understand some things that made more sense inside my heart listening to Ramakrishna or reading about his life, you see. That was perhaps the trigger for my desire to go to India. I didn’t know anything about Indian gurus or in living ones, nothing like that. That was my naiveté about these things.

It wasn’t until going to India and seemingly by chance coming to meet some devotees of Sri Poonja and in such a way that I felt it was clearly a sign that I should go and meet this man and how I came to meet him. It was not love at first sight with meeting Papaji but it was impact at first sight and gradually, in staying with him for quite a few months, being in his presence and being in satsang with him, somehow he brought my mind and my way of looking into a new dimension of seeing and experiencing that I would say brought this feeling of ego, it really thinned out very, very quickly but I never like to say never, so to speak, and make any great statements about any kind of achievement.

TS: That seems wise. Now, Mooji, I can imagine someone listening who said, God, I’ve done so much practice, so much yoga. I’ve prayed with a sincere heart for some type of kissing from within like you’re describing without knowing that phrase, for something like that for some kind of transformation like that and have a sense of what Mooji’s talking about but nothing like that’s happened in my life.

Why did this happen to Mooji? What’s your understanding of that?

M: This is happening to many, many people. I felt even from my experiences in church this is happening to many, many, many people. I felt the difference was that when you’re a part of an organization like a church or something I felt that these experiences that sprout in people’s heart very spontaneously are often not given the space or encouraged to be alone more and to let it sort of mature in a very organic and natural way. There’s often a quickness to interpret that into a certain religious terminology or something and to put so many concepts around it and to categorize it in a kind of way that people are readily opened to be pulled in to those kind of conceptual frameworks and for me, it happened differently. I think that was my good fortune somehow.

As for people who have been practicing yoga and meditation and so on, now I meet many of them and I can say that I find it that it’s not difficult to guide someone into the no-mind state and to really bring them into the experience of their natural state but there is a sort of reflex in us that tends to go back to the old regime of identity. It is that perhaps because at a certain point, when you are so much in the living experience of self-discovery, there’s a side to our nature that is very seemingly committed to being a person in that way, and there’s a fear that comes up for many people that they’re going to lose that side of themselves, that identity as a person, that there’s a seeming love for being a person that somehow slows down or weakens the possibility of being really absorbed into the heart of, what I’d used the word absorbed into the heart, completes your realization of the self or something.

That has been my experience with really sitting with many people and watching what happens in them as I try to guide them back into their natural place because it is the most simple thing now. Speaking in from this period of my life and sitting with many people I find it is the most simple. It is the most natural. It is even simpler than simple.

The difficulty is not in the state itself, it is more to do with the habit, the sense of loyalty that we have to the idea we have of ourselves as a person, and the threat that we often feel that that is going to be annihilated in some way and then something clings to that, which effectively saying, not ready for this entirely not right now. Many people don’t think about it like this but when we look and we explore together they come to admit, yes, there is something that is clinging to some old ideas like that.

TS: Now Mooji, let me ask you a question because your book is called Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space: What You Are Before You Became, and you’re I think starting to really point to that in this conversation when you talk about pointing out to people this no-mind state but aren’t you also, Mooji, what you are now that you’ve become.

Aren’t you also Mooji the person? Aren’t you both vaster than sky, greater than space and this Jamaican guy who’s living in Portugal right now who’s teaching lots of people and has released a new book?

M: Yes, we can say these things. We can say yes, I am this Jamaican guy living in Portugal having these satsang gatherings or whatever. Yes and I don’t have any kind of resistance to that way of expressing about one’s self and of course, I don’t go around saying the things I’m saying to you. It has to be that there are many people who are already at a certain stage in their maturing and who understand the kind of things I’m talking about to some extent, at least intellectually. It wouldn’t just be just for anyone.

Now, in fact I’m very open to meet anyone and without preparation I find that something in us, a capacity is there where we are not relying on our personal experiences only. There’s a capacity in us to meet beings totally spontaneously and to meet them in an affinity with their present way of looking so that is something that happened that was not so evident before.

I believe your question was that having now said that I am this, I am that, which I am pointing others to discover within themselves that they are also this, does it wipe out, does it say now, this Jamaican person, whatever it is, is no more. Well, I can say yes and no to that because it is not an important set of concepts that I hold on to. I don’t need to believe or have any particular self-conception about myself.

In different environments and depending on who I’m speaking with, my conversations will vary quite a lot to adapt itself to the needs of that moment. It is not that there is a very rigid framework of an identity that I have. It is very, very flexible in its expression but yet at the same time, deeper down, it is unchanging also. On the surface it’s changing, might appear to be changing, but beneath the surface it is beyond changing and that’s not easy to convey.

Gladly, I don’t feel that I am compelled to convey that just to anyone but in the light of the kind of interactions and the satsangs that are held here, when that availability of receptiveness or openness is there in people then by itself, it flows quite spontaneously the kind of way that we would speak with each other and what would come out of it. It is not something prepared beforehand, it is totally spontaneous.

TS: When you’re talking about the unchanging part of us and then also, this changing part, if you will, I think that’s really what I’m trying to understand in your work is how both of those coexist in your understanding.

M: Yes, yes. It is a very, very natural thing because of course we have a dynamic body and a dynamic life. We have a background of this. The way we grew up in certain environments, we are taught certain things. We learn both from people we meet and also from things that arise naturally within ourselves. I don’t find that that is in any conflict with the realization of the self. The self is fundamentally what we are beyond any sort of conceptual ideal about life. I have discovered that and it is nothing so extraordinary.

I don’t want to even call it ordinary. It is just as it is. It is true. At the same time, it did not annihilate the dynamic expression of life where I have some children, I have friends or whatever and we can speak. Some things have changed naturally because when the human being comes to the realization of the deeper self or the pure self, it has an impact on your dynamic expression also. There’s no pretense here to kind of . . . to hide that or pretend that there is no deeper self as to, acting out what we would in the past. Sometimes we believe or we feel that there’s certain behavior that’s expected of us by the people who we feel that they are close to us and they know us or they feel they know you and then we play along with those expectations.

Well, those tend to dry up as your mind is returning more to its source which I call the self. A new strength is there to really stand by yourself and yet at the same time you may also be able to, of course, coexist with other beings and to relate to them at various levels and so on. The impact of that deeper realization, it does also infuse and pervade all our activities in the dynamic level also without any intention it gets, it pervades all our actions and having seeing that, I have found a joy in not having to prepare or to have an any notion of helping that. It seems to just go by itself.

TS: I know you mentioned that different spiritual students come to you and they have this interest and this hunger, if you will, to discover what is unchanging, what’s timeless, what’s vaster than sky, greater than space, but then there’s some re-entrenchment or reinvestment in this personhood and that was why I asked you this question. Well, is there some way that you’re both a person and vaster than sky, greater than space at the same time? You said yes, it’s very flexible.

What is it in people that keeps them re-entrenched in their personhood in a way that they’re not willing to let go into this huge vaster than sky, greater than space dimensions, yes.

M: Thank you for that asking this. Yes, because I feel that if you get a hundred people just arbitrarily from the crowd of people and you get arbitrarily a hundred people together and you present before them what you mean by spiritual awakening. In the most pure sense, what it really means and they could understand that and ask them, would they be really open for this. I feel most of them would say I’m really open for this because what you’re saying is that I’ll be really in my natural state, I’ll be unafraid. I’m discovering something eternal in myself.

I’m not afraid of people. I’m not so deeply affected by the opinions of people, not that I don’t care but I probably would not mind so much and that I have this natural joy and peace. Of course, most people would say that they are very open to that. Then we put it further that there are people who have been, have a background of searching for some form of spiritual fulfillment for some time and by the time they come to a place like where I am which is so focused on this, they may indeed have the feeling that I am totally, totally, totally here for freedom. What is magnificent about this is that as we begin to really look and I say, “Well, welcome.” We begin to look and explore together and that I see it in such simple ways and such available ways.

You see it’s not like them saying, “Look, you could do this for another two or three years.” I’m saying from today, if you’re open, you are going to discover something and it’s not an empty promise. We start to look and then people start to see, whoa, whoa, sometimes they really begin to see that it is really possible. They’re experiencing certain changes that are arising quite spontaneously within themselves and it feels really alive and meaningful to them and so in a short time they may come to a point where they feel, “Oh my gosh, if I go further than this, there’s a sense that there’s going to be a point where I’m not able to go back.” There may be a sense in them and in reality it is not a fearful thing actually.

From the position of the person, from the idea of a person, it feels like, wow, this is very costly. It’s a great sacrifice. I’m holding up all of my life and I like being me but I also want to be me being spiritually awake. As they begin to explore whether that is possible or not, you then begin to find that there are certain investments that people have in being a person and certain dreams and so on that feel like I’d like to give a bit more energy to this first because now I know what this feels like, I can come back to this, this is a big trick that happens for many.

There are others by the way who have perhaps been through what I’ve just mentioned or maybe not but that’s just at another stage, a more, what I’d call, mature stage in their sadhana, in their spiritual practice or their journey you may speak like that, and who have just such a potent urge to be free from the psychological intimidation of the mind or from this sort of hypnosis of conditioning or whatever. The urge within them is so potent, so powerful, that nothing will deter them from looking.

I have to also say there can be sometimes too much determination and if it’s too much determination to the extent that it is a person’s determination, that may also work against it. There are many factors that come into play that I don’t want to sit and say, this one is likely. This one is not likely. I’m often sitting in a group of large numbers of people and it’s such a mixed bag and yet something guides the conversations and interactions as they go. It seems as though everyone gets fed into their own way and according to their own capacity but there are beings, if you get a hundred people you may find in the end there’s probably eight or nine who are really, really burning to go further and the others will slip more towards the edge and are just waiting, waiting. Want to be in the waiting room more than in the real fire of discovery and this is something that I feel if a genuine research could be made, you’ll probably find that similar kind of findings would come out of it.

It is not only a question of personal determination. It is where it is the stage of maturity that someone is at that moment and of course, everyone I feel will grow from the experience. If they are not going to run away on the first day, they will come away with some expansion, some greater understanding, a more heightened sense of consciousness or something and that may feel to fade. It will be rare always that a number of people it’s not just putting intellectual or mental determination to something but somehow there’s an element of surrender in this that goes to surrendering into the experience of self-discovery that will be pulled in a much more, I want to use the word right now, mystical way.

A way meaning that I cannot easily explain that. I would not be able to say what that is exactly.

TS: Now you’ve used this word surrender several times, Mooji, in our conversation. Someone’s listening and they are ready to surrender more. Can you talk directly to that person?

M: Yes, but surrender is a very natural thing in life. We are surrendering to all the types of situations, sometimes challenges, sometimes just taking a chance or risk in life and it doesn’t need to be tightly held in some spiritual context. I mean I can equally say that all of life is spiritual also but I would say surrendering in the sense, not just that somebody comes and say I promise you this and you must surrender to this, not in that context, not that in type of preaching context.

As you are pulled more deeply by your initial openness and that if it is genuine, it seems like as you approach that so it is also pulling you inside. You feel a sense of a pull, you start to feel the signs that there’s something alive here. It’s a living thing. It’s not just something you’re making up. There’s a call and a response there and there’s a pulling in and there’s a deepening in that. By the very nature of being pulled more deeply into that deeper embracing, naturally you yourself, without any further outer encouragement want to surrender to it. It is a natural, it’s a natural expansiveness or growth or evolution, this feeling of surrendering to it.

Depending upon one’s temperament, that could take the shape of surrendering to an ideology or to a form or to even just sense of formlessness. It is not merely the object of the surrender but the kind of subject of the surrender also that you within yourself feel, yes, yes, I’m being pulled somewhere. I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like but there is already a deepening trust here and I feel to move in with this trust and to take that sense of risk and there’s something deeply exhilarating about this because the mind wants guarantees. If I take to go to step level five, what’s that going to be, and so on.

I’d say, well, I cannot tell you. You have to work more with your heart here and also that . . . and follow this vibration of trust more. I know that people can say yes, many people who have followed this vibration have been led into very dark places but that’s also a part of their growth and the wider picture maybe.

TS: Now, Mooji, you mentioned to me earlier in our conversation that it’s not that hard if you’re given a group of 100 people or whomever is listening right now to you speak to our listeners, it’s not that hard to point out this vaster than sky, greater than space, what you are before you became. It’s not that hard to point it out to people and that many people get it. I wonder right here in our conversation if you could give us a set of pointers for the person who wants to discover those.

M: Yes. OK. Well, let’s start like this because often people come for the very first time and I don’t have set exercises for them but as you speak now, I feel OK, if someone is here for the first time, everyone knows the feeling of existence. They may not have considered it in the way that I’m going to present it now but we know that we exist. Nobody had to teach you that you exist. It is an intuitive untaught way, the vibration in us, the feeling I am, I exist.

For some people I would say if we just start with the sense of being, the sense I exist and don’t decorate it with any stories or any imagination, just start with the basic feeling. Don’t allow it to connect up with any other concepts and to roll into some sort of imagination, just the sense of being. Just like sometimes we are doing this throughout the day not being so conscious about it but the mind needs to take a rest in a space of neutrality where you’re not engaged with any thought or any intention or anything from past or future or something. You’re effectively empty and this emptiness and this sense of neutrality, it’s pretty much the same kind of thing.

If someone were just to be sitting here and refused to—if thoughts come of course, you cannot say the thoughts don’t come, they come but I would then point you not to follow them. It is as though you would be like this vaster than sky feeling. You’re in this space of just space, vaster than sky, greater than space. OK, let’s use this as a starting point. Just a sense of space is there. Your thoughts and emotions which may come up spontaneously are just like clouds floating through that space.

Now the space doesn’t have any favorite clouds, they’re just clouds passing. The sky doesn’t follow after clouds, we are aware of that and there’s a tendency in us sometimes that your attention or habit something wants to follow them.

That which wants to follow them also is also another movement and you’re just like the great space. I say that just simply stay as that natural feeling of being. Don’t even imagine space because it is already spacious in itself and stay like that without allowing any concepts to develop into some shape or story. In the beginning, some people may find it quite challenging. The mind gets even more noisy at first but I just quietly ask them just to persist with it. If you feel like you stumble or you fall off to the side, just come back again into the state of emptiness and sit in that state for a while.

Sometimes I invite people to do this for five or seven minutes if they’re doing it for the first time and not when you are sleepy or something but just to choose a moment when you can sit by yourself and just be with this sense of consciously being present. You may call it conscious presence or the vibration, the feeling I am, the sense of beingness. If you do it in short bursts like for five or seven minutes, after this time you may just go out and go for a walk or take some water, have a cup of tea or do other things. If you persist with it, even for a short time, it will become easier and easier to the point where you can feel thoughts coming but you’re not running after them. Your attention doesn’t run after them and it’s held into this space, the sense of being, it’s just resting and being.

Gradually, this feeling of being will develop the more kind of potent presence over there, very joyful, immensely peaceful. Because you so enjoy being in that state, it will be self-encouraging so you will just want to spend more in it but I would still say, just spend seven minutes and then go for a bit and you can do this as often as you wish in a day. I would say five or seven minutes because most people can find five or seven minutes someway. Even the busiest person can find a bit of that space. I say that it is not difficult because children also take to this and enjoy and find immediate, an immediate response and then an immediate feeling of silence and spaciousness.

You know this silence, this stillness is so natural to us that we recognize it quickly. Of course, sometimes some panic comes into mind because we feel like we cannot find the usual context for being a person but you persist and gradually, you become more familiar with this state of feeling empty and don’t allow the mind to create any negative connotations about that. That would be a very simple way to start an exercise like that.

TS: Mooji, that’s so easy, enjoyable, and doable. Now someone says OK, five to seven minutes, I got it, I’m being. I’m relaxing. I’m just being here enjoying presence. OK, I can do that. What’s next? That’s going to tune me in to what I am before I became, just that?

M: Yes, yes. It may seem over simplistic or even maybe naïve in some way as an advice but therein lies its potency in fact because as you do this you may say, OK, I’m going to do that but then what’s going to happen after that? I would insist and say just do this first. Just keep doing that. you’ll find that the question such as what would happen next, they will gradually just thin away by themselves because even the feeling of next is a tormenter for the human mind because it is what is driving our restlessness which is so common these days that the modern mind, even while we’re having breakfast we are wondering what’s for lunch, when you’re lunch what’s for dinner. This is the kind of nextness, this kind of next vibration.

We are not aware that in the simple exercise like this brings you into a stillness, a silence which is not dead, it’s not a digital silence. It is pregnant with life but it is not restless. So as we simply follow this kind of exercise you find that by itself there’s a sense of a completeness, a sense of contentment and the usual kind of OK, now what? That will gradually thin away and you’re able just to be in the now without the later, you’re simply just in this nowness, very naturally.

You know as you continue to not just enjoy this but remain conscious of it, being consciously present with it. What will happen is that all this sort of superficial questions they just dry up and you’re left into this natural state of being and at the same time if something needs to be done, you can do it, it doesn’t take away from the state. You will find that actually your mind works even better because without this type of anchoring, the heart-mind state, we are so restless by cultivated nature now that we are not able to really pay attention to our natural state. It is as though something just comes, sweeps you along, that you are not allowed to rest in this.

As you come to rest more consciously in this space, you’ll find that there’s no conflict between this underlying piece and the more outer activities that you have to engage with, and I include outer activities even including your mental activities also will feel almost a bit outside of this and at the same time inside it in a strange way. This is a kind of paradox and really inscrutable to really just explain word for word. Inside the experience of being, everything seems to just fall into place.

TS: Mooji, this question is a little challenging if you will but it’s something I really want to ask you and I’m curious if you’re familiar with the term spiritual bypassing and if not, I’m happy to explain it to you.

M: No. You need to explain that. What’s that?

TS: It’s a term that was coined by a psychologist John Welwood to talk about how sometimes people get very engaged in the transpersonal or transcendent dimension, what they are before they became and they use that interest and that passion, if you will, for what’s transcendent to actually avoid certain growth tasks that they have developmentally as a person maybe in relationship or maybe in terms of their job and their work in the world, but especially in terms of relating to other people. They hide out if you will in empty space instead of relating to what’s right in front of them.

Sometimes I think that’s a danger in certain Advaita or non-dual teachings that there’s this potential for spiritual bypassing and I’m curious what you think about that.

M: Yes, I think you’re correct. It would be really dangerous. It would be very dangerous because if you’re not genuinely cured of ego, let’s put it in a simple way, of ego and you’re simply gifted at having a very sharp intellect that can grasp something as simple as the non-dual teachings can often come across and then use that as a way to avoid meeting life in a very natural way, I don’t see how anyone can keep that up for very long anyway, really. Because also the people who try these things out, it’s as though they carry a psychic smell about it.

The words may sound to be just as you may have read of what Ramana may say or a sage may say but it doesn’t tally up with the sense of presence that is speaking those words. You may be able to catch a few people who haven’t really gone themselves more deeply underneath the surface or the façade of personhood but with more mature seekers they would not go very far. You would see that that is really not authentic, it’s not true, and they themselves also will suffer life.

They may continue like this for a while to what you may call, I would say maybe but trying to bypass the sense of personal responsibility. I would not use this term so much because the one who has genuinely grasped and I really, I cannot relate and regard such a person as person in the old regime sense of the word person. It’s a very, very different way. I find that in such a person, let’s say, is going to be for me the true human being. They are so wide, so open, so vast in their expressions, so flexible, so capable of looking at things in a wide range of angles and perspectives because they’re not dedicated to any particular perspective so I’m looking at it from the contrary.

I wouldn’t see that someone who has really adapted and we met people like that who have read the books and who seem to know what to say which comes up often in satsang. Someone will come and try to challenge something and to speak in this type of way and it is so obvious, I believe, for most people in a mature sangha to spot them. If they are using that as a way of bypassing or excusing some things which life calls upon them to do I don’t think this kind of thing lasts for very long. I feel that it’s impossible to escape from your cosmic unfolding in some way, if I can use this term.

I might be charting on dangerous ground to say like that right now but what you are meant to experience and that could be what you are meant to experience for a while is to believe that you’ve got it and that you don’t need to do these mundane things in life anymore and so on.

If you meet these type of people you will generally find that there’s something very stuck in them, they’re not flowing and their state would not attract genuine seekers of truth. It would not even attract ingenuine ones even. I don’t think these people get very far, I would say.

TS: Now I have one other question about, if you will, a potential pitfall that I see sometimes and I’m curious your view, which is in this process of disidentifying, if you will, with this personhood that’s not in touch with our deeper sense of being. We’re disidentifying with our thoughts and we’re disidentifying with emotions we might be feeling as well. I feel angry about this. I feel restless. I feel frustrated. We’re disidentifying, we’re disidentifying. That people can become checked out, if you will, like they’re not present in a warm and available way but there’s like a weird vacancy and I’m curious what you think about that, that strange kind of vacant quality that can sometimes happen?

M: Yes. First of all, I have to comment on our own way of working and we don’t stress any mechanical kind of practice such as disidentifying, disidentifying, and so on but more to begin at the place of observing and to see that many of the thoughts that we cherish or the things that we believe, that they simply appear in the mind and you observe them and they come and go. I mean there’s a continuous stream of traffic and we can look at that and say, even the things that we thought about yesterday, our feelings were at a certain point in this morning or yesterday or so on, are we so in touch with that and it’s all gone, it’s all gone. Everything is moving along.

One begins by learning to observe and I put that observing is one of the great, if you want to say, practices, just beginning to observe but not to judge. First begin to observe gives you the space to look at the thought flow, the emotions and so on and without judging or what you may say dismissing them, just seeming to observe more and you become spatially aware that the observer is not caught in the bubble of the activities being observed. That is something that happens very naturally and universally when we speak of all the different spiritual practices, it is one of the most effective ways to really experience the sense of conscious presence as opposed to the whole sort of traffic of fleeting phenomenal appearances so it is important for people.

It is a way in which they grasp so beautifully and feel anchored in their hearts as opposed to just mechanically saying no, I mustn’t identify, no I mustn’t. I don’t feel any mature spiritual discipline or practice is really putting things in such a mechanical way. I mean there are times when one may feel to employ that or it may feel very natural to really, in a sense, look at that and not identify with certain ideas about the self. It is not so mechanical. It is a much more intelligent way of looking and the whole purpose of observing is to come to a place where the source of the observing is felt very, very pronounced way to be formless.

The enumerable forms that seem to appear and are being observed are also seen to be quite ephemeral. That’s not something you are making up. The power of the observation actually makes that very clear and with that comes a deepening of our sense of being. It happens very automatically so I would not encourage anyone just to mechanically denounce the sense of person or some ideas or some thoughts just mechanically because some thoughts are quite practical and very useful and even after awakening. You will use your mind and its more practical functions and its creative expression. All of this can still be there but I feel that to really have an identity that’s shaped only conceptually or in the mind, I feel we’re missing out a tremendous amount which satsang then brings back to you, in a sense you win your freedom back.

That I would not see as something that we would here worry about because it would not happen like that and also, that kind of practice will feel very unproductive. You see in any genuine, when I’m using the word genuine, endeavor or sadhana spiritual practice, I find that people become much more integrated in life and are more harmonious in their way, much more intuitive, have a much broader way of looking at life. They’re not easily rattled or become judgmental. Those superficial traits, they tend to get sieved out and the people genuinely become more kind, more loving because they feel less threat.

When someone, a human being feels less threatened then the love part of their nature can open up much more abundantly. I see that unless someone is practicing the bad way in a wrong way and not receiving correct guidance which I don’t know if anyone directly was giving bad guidance or something. There are teachers functioning at various levels of maturity and experience and capacity, no doubt as there are students who are similarly at different stages in their evolution in consciousness, so those variations will come and go.

We are looking now at the success, at where people are successful in their practice. I don’t like to even emphasize the word practice because that even can be misleading, largely for me.

TS: Now, Mooji, I’m enjoying our conversation so much I could talk to you for a really long time but I’m going to try to close this down but I’m going to sneak in two final questions here. The first one is in your book, Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space, you write that as you spend more time in this I am space that you pointed out to us, your whole life becomes wind-assisted. I underlined that because I thought that was such a beautiful image, being wind-assisted. I wonder if you can explain what you mean by that.

M: OK. Well, actually I would say that the regular, if I can use the word, life of people who are strongly identified with your egos, not intentionally but somehow by ego I mean you believe firmly as a fact that you are your body and the conditioning that took place in this bodily form makes you who you are and it is true up to a point. It is still a form of consciousness but it is a very restricted form of consciousness.

When we live like this, it is as though the way in which we move in life is programmed to move according to the capacity that is in our life to use our intellects in a most broad way. It can be very narrow and very rigid sometimes. As you become more familiar with that open space of being, that natural discovering more the I am–ness and in some cultures we know that the sense “I am” is also a name of God, it’s used as a name of God because all beings have this natural. . . . Because our name is I, I am, and it really stands for consciousness. I consciousness am. It is not personal, you see.

When I point out this exercise it really transcends religion and different categories. I mean every age group, every type of person can follow this simple guidance and very quickly, they come into the feeling of being, feels very tangible and non-separate from yourself. Maybe it even begins—in the beginning it might feel like it’s something that you have or a space that you go into. Gradually, this sense of duality is becoming much more natural for you that it feels like a kind of oneness.

As you persist with this, you’ll find now the question you ask me, when I mention that your life become wind-assisted. It is as though because you are not forcing life the aggressive tendencies begin to peter out and you’re living more in the natural cosmic unfolding like the life is simply unfolding rather than you’re pushing it about. You’re not trying to fan the wind, just let it blow or push the river, just let it flow.

You find that there’s a patience that is present and it’s as though that left with self, life is seen to take care of life. In our present . . . for many people in this fast life that we live I feel that very often we are forcing life into a shape, into premature shapes because of our impatience and the fear that if we don’t act quickly we might lose our chance, whatever that may be. In the state of presence invites us into a more tranquil state. It’s not lazy, it’s just a more tranquil state, a more patient state, where your life begins to be a witness and your energy is cooperating with that. Your natural pace is as though I would say you’re moving in synchronicity or in real time with the universal unfolding.

You just find that the life is much more smooth, it’s more beautiful, seeming coincidences happen, your intuitive powers seem to wake up, this kind of synchronicity with life. The quality of the beingness is bringing also new meetings with people or even better meetings with old relationships and new relationships are forming so much more easy. It really feels miraculous. That’s what I mean that the life becomes wind-assisted. It means that it takes out the grinding and the forcefulness and you begin to flow. The life really is an unfolding rather than like you’re pushing against some grain. That was what the term implied.

TS: Beautiful, thank you. Then just a final question, Mooji, this program is called Insights at the Edge and part of the title is that I’m always curious to know what someone’s current edge is and what I mean is their growing edge or what’s happening in their life that has them on the edge of the wave, if you will, in their life. I’m curious what that might be for you.

M: I’ll have to go to my dynamic side to answer this part of this question because when I really speak of our essential nature, this is the most real, this is the most true for myself and there, I don’t have any stories in this place. I don’t have any edge in this place. This is so true. It is so totally universal that I am never tired of inviting people to taste and be their natural state. It is not something unique to me.

If you speak about an edge I can speak about then I have to go and look into my dynamic expressions and see what that is. I would have to say that the edge if I can see one because you invite this question in me, in what way I can answer this. I would say that recently I’ve been looking at lot of YouTubes and a very wide range of subject matter. Someone may feel that I’m so interested or enjoy all these things but it’s not for that reason why I look. I feel that it gives a little taste of the different things that are really preoccupying human interest and attention like that. I see many things that really touch my heart in very striking ways.

Sometimes I see a lot of cruelty and unkindness and so on in the world and I feel that it does drive something inside me to want to address that but I don’t know because not everyone is going to respond to the words I’m speaking. I know that there is something that must come more forward, more alive, more applicable when you plunge inside your inner ocean, if you want to say it like that. These are phenomenal terms I’m using but they have a role to play, they have a meaning in the phenomenal expression of my life. I could only think in that terms.

Recently, here because I’ve been traveling for quite a long time and seeing people on a daily basis and many hundreds people like this. I’ve felt I wanted to take some time just to do what I used to do many, many years ago, maybe 25 years ago. I spent a good while just sitting and being alone and not doing anything in particular. It was a kind of incubation time. It’s like a sort of marinating in the things I started to talk to you at the beginning of this conversation I’m having with you. I feel that as a result of that time that I spent, not because I said I’m going to spend this time, but that time I felt was provided for me somehow by life. It’s on the strength of that time that all these years that have flowed onward from that time and all the work that’s taken place has flowed out from just the juice of that first kiss.

I don’t know if I need another kiss. I don’t know if that’s what it is but something just feels like right now it’s coming to a time and I’d like to take a retreat by myself and this is something very practical that’s happening here in Monte Sahaja and I’m encouraging as much of my team who are working full-on most of the time to go and to retreat with me in their own way.

We are coming to a season now which is a forerunner to a time when we intend to go back to India. We go to India each year for a month or two to share satsangs in a much wider way. I feel that this is the time that I’d like to do that.

As about cutting edge I’m liking this phrase that you use. I feel that our lives are being invited to be in this cutting edge in one way. Just that tiny bridge between phenomenality and non-phenomenality, if I can use the word right there, where beyond past and future something timeless is there but at the same time it’s like that which is time starts by drinking right there. I don’t know if these words mean something to you but I’m just speaking to you because you mentioned something and I said OK. If there’s something I can say it would be along those lines that in the phenomenal expression of life for me that would be the season for me to go inside.

Even as I speak this time I’m quite sure what it means anymore but there is something there, a being alone in this time or something.

TS: Well, Mooji, I so appreciate you speaking to me both from your dynamic space of personhood as well as the eternal space of just being. Mooji is the author with Sounds True of a new book called Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space: What You Are Before You Became. Mooji, I just want to thank you so much for this conversation and for all of your good work, for all of your generosity, thank you.

M: Thank you so much, Tami. Each interview or talk that I have it’s always something fresh and unexpected and so there are things I know that touched on through this talk we have . . . You have some of my team around here and they would say, “Oh, I never heard you say it like this before,” and so on.

I very much enjoyed the conversation with you and some of the questions you have asked have been quite beautiful for me. Thank you so much and looking forward to a time when I’ll actually see you face-to-face.

TS: I would enjoy that. SoundsTrue.com, many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.