Gangaji is a spiritual teacher of many surprises. Her Indian name belies her heritage as a platinum blonde daughter of Mississippi. As Toni Varner, she fled the South to end up in Marin County, and met her then-pot-growing, truth-seeking husband, Eli Jaxon-Bear.
They would search together for spiritual fulfillment in all the usual Marin County ways, until, for Gangaji, the search ended when she met the man she calls “Papaji,” Sri H.W.L. Poonja, on the banks of the Ganges, in India. Papaji told her to call off the search, to “just stop,” and discover that which had always been in her, and always been with her.
Gangaji is a mother, a grandmother, a divorcee, a wife—a woman who reads newspapers and goes to the movies, and who has made public her own marital issues. At the same time, she has attracted a global following with her simple message of core peace and silence. She has said: “This is the time of the ordinary awakening.”
Gangaji is author of several books, including Hidden Treasure: Uncovering the Truth in Your Life Story, You Are That, and The Diamond in Your Pocket. She speaks in Santa Cruz for the first time in over 20 years, Sept. 21 and 22 at Inner Light Ministries in Aptos. I interviewed her recently about what enlightenment means to her.
SCW: What is enlightenment to you?
GANGAJI: Enlightenment is many things to many people. But when I use the word—and it really is such a beautiful word—it points to the discovery of what is filled with light and presence. For many people, the idea of that discovery leads to ideas of a certain type of behavior or beliefs. But for me, it’s a recognition of this presence that is not separate from the body, but is yet free of the body, the core of consciousness, which is light. Not blue light or white light or even clear light … Light, again, is a word that points to the radiance of what is here. You can be enlightened about many things. But if we’re speaking spiritual enlightenment, it’s recognizing who you are. You are this radiance.
I remember reading about you sitting in Big Sur, seeing something so profound about yourself, and laughing and laughing and laughing. Adyashanti speaks of sitting in Cupertino, of all places, feeling like his brain was being re-configured. Sydney Banks said he “went through the dying process.” It’s hard not to think: Oh, that needs to happen. I’m going for that.
Yes, we start that way. And that can be very useful at the beginning. Because really, finally, the search for enlightenment is the search for happiness. I remind people often that on this planet, many people’s search for happiness is really a search for survival, for food for the next day, or shelter. But once we have been privileged or graced to reach a certain level of survival, which most of your readers have most likely reached—however much you may compare yourself to someone who has “more” than you—there is still this search for something that will “complete myself,” something that will “give myself” what it wants. And so I honor the search for enlightenment and the concepts that arise from that…But finally, there is a recognition that we have been searching through our minds for what is the source of our minds.
Nisargadatta Maharaj said: ‘When you become stabilized in your Self, the continuous commentary of the mind will stop.’ Can you speak to this shift, and what it takes?
It’s an act of grace, really. But there are ways that you can make yourself available for this grace. I think everyone reading must have experienced at least moments of this grace. Certainly, there are moments in a day when the commentary just stops, and we are just present in the moment. And then it may pick up right away, so that we don’t even notice there’s been a moment of pure spaciousness, of pure—simply being in the circumstances. It can be in work, in pleasure, in love, in fear—there is a moment where [mental] commentary is irrelevant. But we are very conditioned to pay more attention to our concepts about things, about the universe, about our feelings, or about our enlightenment or our un-enlightenment. In being imbalanced, and paying full attention to the commentary, the narrative about everything, we trick ourselves and overlook the ground, the sky, of spaciousness that this commentary itself is appearing in.
You have spoken of going beyond the story of our enlightenment or our un-enlightenment. That seems to include self-doubt and this human tendency toward self-hatred—the thought that at a very primal level, “there is something wrong with me.” You said when you really opened up to who you are, self-doubt left you. Could you speak to that?
This is the root of all the commentaries in our minds. When I say self-doubt left me, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have doubt or mistrust about aspects of my body, or my personality, or my abilities, as form. But my Self, to discover my Self, of that there could be no doubt. Since my Self is the totality of all being, it’s all just in relationship, and in play with itself. It’s impossible to fixate this with words, because it’s free of the words. The self-doubt that left me was a very deep sense that I needed—“I” needed—to do something to be complete, to get something to be complete, or keep something to be complete. Or, for a certain phase of my life, to keep something away to be complete. That just left, because there was a recognition that this had always been here. And however my body was failing me, or my emotions were failing, or my circumstances were failing, this was radiant and true. Not because I understood that intellectually, but because it was my direct experience. It is my direct experience. It’s not that doubt about events leaves. Doubt about who you are is revealed to be nonsense and a waste time and unnecessary. You were mentioning laughing at it. That’s the absurdity! We try to make ourselves complete, when at the core, we are complete.
Gangaji will be speaking at Inner Light Ministries in Aptos on Sept. 21 at 7pm, with a short performance by local musician Kirtana ($25 at door) and again on Sept. 22 at 5 p.m. ($20 at door). Pre-registration is not required.
