Swami-G: It’s like, even Ramana, even Ramana when he was there he had some of the seekers would come and go “when I’m with you, you are so normal,” you know, “when I go away it seems something so special but when I’m with you it’s so normal.” Well yeah, of course it’s going to be normal, you are going to have normal conversations. He read joke books he laughed and, you know, had regular conversations with people. He didn’t sit in a trance all the time, you know.

David: And if he did go into a trance, as he did, when he transmitted.

Swami-G: Yeah, many times. Yes.

David: It was for the sake of others, it was for them to put their experiences of Expanded Consciousness when they were with him in a context so that they could glean a teaching from the whole event. But that’s all part of teaching, how a teacher dresses, behaves and comes across in their premeditated appearance, such as when you sit before of a group and teach, all that is on the level of the external teaching, that’s exoteric. What is esoteric is what is alive and realized in the Heart of that being that you can’t even go near in language, it’s just there, and if you are realized, it’s radiating and others are benefitted in that way.

Swami-G: Exactly, exactly. Ya, when the teachers teach and the students come, they become very aware of a transmission and the more often they come, the more open they become to more and more of transmission. And it takes place and that is something that they get and they can feel and is one hundred percent valid. It doesn’t matter, you know, there’s not more transmission if I wear one type of clothes versus another type of clothes, that’s just absolutely nonsense.

David: Even what you speak about.

Swami-G: Yeah.

David: You can go in and talk about Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the same phenomenon of light and energy and Radiant Being will be the teaching.

Swami-G: Yeah, yeah…

David: But this is a distinct capability of someone who really is Supremely Realized. To walk into a room and to sit and eat, to meditate or chat, to sleep or to awake, everything is the same. There’s no change in the substance of Consciousness.

Swami-G: No, there’s no change in it.

David: Now when I say that many of my students get confused because when I use that term ‘there is no change’ they think that they are then suppose to become aware of something on top of their awareness that doesn’t change. When is Awareness itself that is That, is not that you become supremely aware of Awareness, again that would fit back into the beginner’s approach, when they are episodically awakening. But when awakening starts to become seamless then there’s no place where you can discern awakening from non-awakening. That doesn’t mean that the ignorant are realized.

Swami-G: No.

David: There is still something called Realization. But here is where language breaks down, that’s the problem with this discussion, is not that there’s no difference between avidya and vidya, between living in the ignorant state and living in the awakened state. There is a difference, the difference is total.

Swami-G: Oh yeah, between night and day.

David: It’s night and day, right.

Swami-G: Between night and day, absolutely. People don’t understand that when everything falls away and deconstructs, implodes, however you want to say it, dissolves into Realization - that’s a singular consciousness and there’s no coming and going anymore - there’s no higher or lower, it just simply Is, it just simply Is. Up to that point you may have glimpses and you feel like everything is so expanded, you know.

David: Everything is one.

Swami-G: Everything is one. Oneness, you get that oneness thing, you know. Like when I was in India and, “Oh I’m Krishna and you are Krishna and it’s all Krishna and it’s all one,” but that’s not it, that’s not Realization. It’s not one in this and one in that and it’s subdivided, and you know, no, no, no, no. That’s Oneness. But there’s something beyond that, that That even deconstructs, That deconstructs and it simply Is. Which is indivisible, it can’t be divided, it’s Prior, it’s never been born it’s never died and that’s it, it just Is.

David: Realization negates itself in its own purity, its own radical purity. Because if you go on having the experience of realization then that is temporary

Swami-G: Yeah.

David: So, it’s a paradox, we come to this paradoxical mysterious level where Being cannot be broken up by any thought process. You are simply eternally absorbed in something that has no name and no form but the relative personality continues to function. You may even call yourself a particular name. Just because your ego is gone doesn’t mean that you don’t have a name, that you don’t know how to sign documents. You take on the illusion of an ego, you take on the illusion…

Swami-G: I always love that one, I always love that one you know, when they go, “well how can you do if there’s not a lot of thought process and stuff, you know, not this driving mind that’s going on any longer then how can you function?” Well, how does the heart beat? How does this happen? It happens, ok, it simply happens. There’s still a body there, you know, there’s still a body and a form and it goes through it’s prakriti karma, it plays out what it needs to play out, but it’s spontaneous, it just happens, that’s all.

David: And you are pointing toward the Shakti now which is part of a full understanding of awakening. You asked the question, what’s beating the heart? What’s pumping the blood through your body? It’s all happening without anyone doing it.

Swami-G: Right, there’s no doer there, you know, so this idea that there can’t be spontaneity and you can’t function unless you are constantly having to be a doer, is ridiculous, it’s ridiculous. If you go to a store you don’t have to think “let’s see I have to go past this street then that street, then that street,” you know how to get there, it just happens, it just takes place. Well, when Realization happens everything becomes spontaneous, it’s easy there’s no longer this persona in place that needs to have, figure out everything, it just, it’s like nature, it’s like nature.

David: The Enlightened Being would never think of themselves as Enlightened.

Swami-G: Well, there’s no me there to be enlightened, that’s what’s the, it’s like the cosmic joke. One wants to get to Enlightenment, “I want to get to realization, then I’ll be somebody,” one gets to Realization and there is nobody. You no longer exist, the story is ended, it’s finished, it never was.

David: Consciousness hides its own glory, it does not come across as being special.

Swami-G: It can’t be special, how can it be special when there’s nobody there? People relate to a body, they relate to a form and the persona was there as it is and it continues but the Consciousness is absolutely, radically changed.

David: And yet look at how apparently Ramana Maharshi has been put on the level of the super idol now. He is the only person that’s ever been truly realized. This whole revival of neo-Advaita is insisting that there’s a particular kind of look to Enlightenment, a particular kind of behavior and presentation that goes along with it and I think is very important to deconstruct that.

Swami-G: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there isn’t any one type of look and this is again coming back to the Vivekachudamani, please read that text, please read that text or the Tripura Rahasya which was one of the texts that Ramana happened to love, you know, that was one of his very favorite texts, the Tripura Rahasya, and read what it says. There is no one certain look, there is not, one certain persona. The persona doesn’t change, what changes is that Consciousness. And the Consciousness in any realized being is the same Consciousness, the persona maybe radically different between, you know, so radically different. But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it’s the same knowing, the same wisdom, the same understanding and one can’t, one can’t even ever put it fully into words, because it’s beyond words, it’s beyond words, one can’t describe it.