Humanity’s Spiritual Evolution of Love and Light with Sadhviji Bhagawati Saraswati

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 0:00
It is important to be angry about what is happening in our world tonight. To not be angry is to cut yourself off from the connection to the universe. Anger is a catalyst to remind us, ah, something is not right.

Alex Ferrari 0:12
The world is awakening, but we're going through a very difficult time.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 0:17
We have so much but we feel so disconnected,

Alex Ferrari 0:20
Even though we're more connected than we've ever had, the ability to do.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 0:24
The suffering that people are experiencing these days is that myth of disconnection. You can you can be free, and the choice is really up to you.

Alex Ferrari 0:54
Now, before we jump into this episode, if this conversation resonates with you, please like subscribe and share this with whoever you feel that needs to hear it. Your support helps us keep bringing this information out into the world and helps us awaken this planet. Thank you. I'd like to welcome to the show, Sadhvi, how are you doing Sadhvi?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:19
Wonderful, Alex. I'm so happy to be with you today.

Alex Ferrari 1:22
Thank you so much for coming all the way from India to be with us here today. Thank you so so much. I've been such a fan of your work for such a long time, and the universe finally brought us together, and it is just such a pleasure. I love your story, which we'll get going to get into today. We'll talk about your new film coming a new film. Listen to me, I'm a filmmaker. So sorry. Your new book,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:46
Maybe, maybe, maybe, as well,

Alex Ferrari 1:49
Maybe that was just a Freudian slip coming home to yourself, which is a great, simple answers to life's essential questions. You have such a fascinating story of where you come from. You're not native from India, no. So you started your life in a little bit different path, a slightly different path. So your first book was from Hollywood to the Himalayas, and not literally Hollywood, because you didn't work in Hollywood, but you were using that as an analogy for

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 2:20
I'm actually literally Hollywood, as in, although I didn't work in Hollywood, but you were in LA. I grew up in Hollywood. I grew up literally in Hollywood. I grew up in the Hollywood Hills. My dad is a divorce attorney to the stars, the people of Hollywood,

Alex Ferrari 2:37
The stars. Yes,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 2:41
I grew up in that world. I went to school with, oh celebrities, the kids, everybody exactly. So I literally Hollywood, oh yeah, in Hollywood. And I was actually very thankful to my parents, because as a kid, I was very precocious, and people would say, oh, you should do commercials. You know, you're cute and precocious in LA they are for automatically commercials. And my parents said, because, of course, I said, Oh yes, yes, yes. I because you had no idea. I had no idea as a kid. And my mom said, when you are 18 and you can make your own decisions. You can do whatever you want, but as long as it is under my control, you're not going to work in this field. And of course, by the time I was 18, the idea of why anyone would want to do commercials was so foreign to me, but I was deeply, grateful to her for that. But yes, I literally grew up in Hollywood. Oh, wow. In the midst of what we're taught in this country and this culture, you need to be happy. You know, we're given this happiness equation that says, Oh, you want to be happy. You should have a nice house. You should have a nice car, material, all material stuff, all material stuff, the right education. You should look the right way. You should look the right way in the right clothes, of course. And you know, the right parties, vacation at the right resorts, etc, etc. And I had all of that. And I always say that we were what I now call happy by default, as in, we had the things we were told you need to be happy, and therefore, well, of course, we must be happy. And yet, yep, we weren't, or I certainly was not, deeply happy. There was something really missing, but I wasn't spiritual. I didn't know anyone who was spiritual. I was not exposed to anything that was spiritual. So the idea that there really was something else was also never something that occurred to me. Yeah. Yeah, and so

Alex Ferrari 5:01
Were you raised religious or not?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 5:02
I was not raised religious.

Alex Ferrari 5:04
Okay, so you had no real spiritual, spiritual background.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 5:09
You know, we went to temple because it mattered to my grandparents.

Alex Ferrari 5:14
I have a friend of mine who says I still go to church because my parents are alive.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 5:17
So it was always about. It was the family, and it was like, Grandma's gonna come and we're all gonna go to family services together. Tradition almost exactly. It was most definitely not about God, not about spirit, not about anything other than making your grandparents happy. Sure. So I didn't have any of that exposure. I go to India at 25 with a backpack. I

Alex Ferrari 5:50
Before you continue, you also, but you also went to college. I did and you graduated, Stanford.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 5:50
Yes, yes, yes.

Alex Ferrari 5:59
I just want to make sure that people understand, yeah, you're not a hippie. Just was walking around and all of a sudden, hey, I'm just gonna grab a backpack and go. Backpack and go to India. No, no, you were an accomplished Yes, you had a degree from a very reputable one of an Ivy League school, and then you decided to like

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 6:11
And I was then doing my PhD. So I had graduated from Stanford undergrad. I then was in the midst of getting a PhD in pediatric neuropsychology.

Alex Ferrari 6:21
As one does, as one does. I have three of those go ahead,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 6:29
I was really doing very well on the path of what we are told to do,

Alex Ferrari 6:36
Correct checking all the boxes

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 6:37
Exactly, exactly, and yet, on a deep inner level, something really profound was missing, happiness, peace, deep meaning. And I think about it, that which was missing. I think about it in two streams, one being the kind of general, hey, guess what? Those things don't actually bring happiness, and it's something that everyone who tries to get happiness through money and degrees and popularity never works. So there's kind of this general angst, low grade to high grade misery. Of I've been running after all these things. I've gotten a, after a, after a, I got into Stanford, I graduated, I did this, I did that, and I'm still not happy. But then there was also a personal stream, which was the way that I had really suffered and struggled, and the challenges that in the midst of the blessings, in the midst of the prosperity, in the midst of the privilege and opportunity that I had also been through, which included severe childhood sexual abuse, abandonment, severe bulimia in my adolescence, so I had been Through also my own personal, super traumatic years and youth. By the time I was 25 I had gotten to a place where I felt like I was really, actually over the hump,

Alex Ferrari 8:13
The trauma of all the trauma of the trauma

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 8:15
Of the trauma of the eating disorder, of the Depression, of all of that. And you did a lot of inner work, I'm assuming, a lot of inner work. I was also in and out of hospitals. I mean, it was a big thing. Yeah, I was in and out of hospitals, tubes, IVs, the whole she's gonna die, let's save her situation. And by 25 I felt like I'm I'm really over that hump. I've done the work, I've healed. And I had been told, you know, this is always going to be a struggle for you. I remember in one hospital, somebody saying, this will always be like a devil on your shoulder, that if you let down your guard, this is going to be your stress response of choice. And so by 25 I got to this place of feeling like I'm managing things. And yes, of course, it was still a struggle, but hey, they had said it was always going to be a struggle. And I was managing my emotions. I was managing the pain. I was managing relationships. I was actually married. Had gotten married the summer I graduated undergrad again. Whole other story. Yeah, box checked, yes. Did it fairy tale? You know, says white wedding? Yeah, of course. And I was in this PhD program, I was getting straight A's. I was taking 21 units a quarter. Because, hey, why take 15? If you could take 21 and, well, I mean, I had graduated Stanford in three years instead of four. Same thing. I mean, why not sure and go to India with a backpack. I was an avid traveler. I loved traveling. I had traveled throughout Europe. Up. I had traveled throughout the US, England, South America, and my husband wanted to go to India. Okay, I didn't know anything about India, except I loved Indian food, and I was a strict vegetarian. And I knew that wherever I traveled in the world, the only place that I could be really sure to get pure vegetarian food other than a loaf of bread, was Indian restaurants.

Alex Ferrari 10:25
Yes, of course, the starter. Ian's Exactly. The starter. Ian's as a yes, I'm just, I eat Oreos and potato and pasta and bread. I'm like, You're a start to tear yes, there's no veggies in there.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 10:39
Exactly, exactly. So I agreed to go to India to make him happy, and because I thought, well, at least I'll be able to eat and that won't be a stress on the airplane to India, somewhere over Southeast Asia, I had this moment in which I said, Okay, this makes no sense. I'm flying to a country I know nothing about. I have no internal urge to go. The real best thing I could say is that I can get good vegetarian food. But I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, on my corner. On every corner, I didn't have to fly across the world for Indian vegetarian food. And even though I was neither religious nor spiritual, I always believed in what I call the capital P planner, and I believed in it from actually a scientific perspective, having spent time in chemistry labs, biology labs, physics labs, I thought we go into these labs. We've got Bunsen burners, we've got crucibles, we've got lists of what we're supposed to put in the crucible and our beakers, and even doing everything right, nine times out of 10, nothing happens. One time out of 10, you get some bad smell or some smoke or something, and the idea that even knowing everything we know about creation, right? The molecular structure, all of the elements, how they bind together, we know everything, and yet we can't create a leaf or a mosquito, let alone a person, right? We can't create life in a petri dish. And so to me, the idea that this had all happened randomly, oh yes, that it was just random things bouncing off other random things in a random way. Sure, I didn't buy it as a scientist, so I believed that there was a capital P plan. And therefore, by definition, it seemed to me, there must be a capital P planner. So I'm on this airplane, and I say to myself, this makes no sense. And I realize, all right, I'm not a wanderer. I'm not someone who does things that don't make sense. I'm in the midst of this PhD program that I'm loving. Why would I travel across the world to get exactly the same food I can get on my corner unless there were a higher purpose and reason, and I just can't see it. So I took this vow on the plane that I would keep my heart open. Oh, so beautiful. And it was the very best decision that I've ever made, because it is that decision to which I really owe the rest of my life, because that which happened to me when I got to India and when I got to Rishikesh, and when I got to the banks of the Ganges River, if I had not made a prior commitment to keep my heart open, there is no way I would have believed it. There's no way I would have accepted it as true. The scientist in me would have run as fast as she could from things that seemed to make no sense, but because I had taken that vow, it required me to stop and listen and allow and so we land in Delhi, and I remember opening this big Lonely Planet guidebook over a place that I was very happy I had finally found actual coffee, not just the Justin you're not shy, and not the instant nest cafe, but actually filter coffee, and Starbucks wasn't around that not yet, not yet. But I did finally find a place that was actually. Actually brewing coffee. And I remember being so happy about that, and sitting over a cup of coffee and looking at this guidebook, Lonely Planet guidebook, and saying, Rishikesh, it was near to Delhi, only a few hours away. I was a nature person. I've always been a nature person. So mountains, river. You know, honestly, I didn't even know, like, the power of the Himalayas. I didn't know the power of the Ganges. I just knew mountains and river. But that was enough, thankfully. And we were already yoga students, and this is the yoga capital of the world. So it seemed to have everything. We come to Rishikesh, drop our bags in the hotel, and I said, I'm going to go put my feet in the river. And it was just that we were hot, tired. Had carried our bags across the river. The driver had not mentioned there was a boat or a coolie or anything like that. And I go down to the banks of this river called Ganga in India and Hindi. And Ganga is the mother goddess.

Alex Ferrari 16:14
That's the Ganges, right, yeah, okay.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 16:16
And the the Hindi word, the Sanskrit word, is Ganga, so they refer to her as mother Ganga. But I didn't know this. I just knew River. I'm hot, I'm going to put my feet in the river, and I'm standing there looking out over this sacred river, and suddenly I had this extraordinary experience of being in the presence of the Divine. And it was, it was an experience in which every way of knowing that I had, through my senses, through my mind, through my perception, all of it was suddenly immersed in this infinite oceanic presence of divinity, and it didn't matter what I looked at. So it began as I looked out over the river, but then as I turned my head and looked it didn't matter. Every single thing I looked at, what I was seeing was the divine, interesting. And

Alex Ferrari 17:29
How do you deal with that psychologically?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 17:32
Luckily, luckily, my entire thinking mind was just gone. I mean, just gone. There was no intellectual mind. There was no thinking mind. There was no mental, psychological story narrative,

Alex Ferrari 17:48
Almost like a deep meditation.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 17:50
Yeah, if you can imagine meditation as a tsunami,

Alex Ferrari 17:57
Yes, exactly, exactly. It's like the ultimate version of it, yes,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 18:02
And one that happened to you, rather than something that you had tried to make happen. When you sit down and close your eyes to meditate. It's an intention. There's an intention. I want to have this experience. I just wanted to get my shoes and socks off and put my feet in the river

Alex Ferrari 18:22
So it was a very, it's kind of like, it seems like it's like a car accident, essentially, like you're, I'm just driving along, and I just get sideswiped, and you got spiritually sideswiped.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 18:33
Well, I talk about getting hit over the head with a baseball bat. And, you know, people, people talk about the touch of God. And it's very possible that God had tried to touch me more gently prior to that, but the scientist in me had just not noticed or not acknowledged, and hence the need for a baseball bat. But then, when I turned the vision inward. Suddenly I realized I'm not separate from this. Yes, it is all the divine and yes, so am I, and that entire self experience when you ask, you know, how was it emotionally? It wasn't a thought process. It was just a felt, sense experience and knowing. But where I had spent 25 years identifying as someone who was not good enough, despite how much I achieved, someone who was not pure enough, not worthy enough, you know, all of the psychological issues that arise out of trauma and arise out of abuse and that I had just taken as truth, even in the midst of all of the work. I had done, there was still this core sense within of needing to achieve, prove attain in order to be worthy of occupying my place on planet Earth. There was always this internal sense of being, not quite right, not good enough, not I think we got all the relate, yeah, and and suddenly, suddenly, in that moment, it was just gone. It was, Oh, my God, I am inseparable from this presence of the Divine, and it in fuses the river and the tree and the bathing family and even the lamp post and even the marble steps and me, I am also pervaded by that exact same divinity, and it knocked me to the ground in tears. And that was it really, I mean, the rest was logistics and pragmatics, right? That was, that was the moment in which I knew this is where I meant to be.

Alex Ferrari 21:12
That's so profound I've The wonderful thing about the work I do is I get to speak to so many different walks of life in this space and as a as a researcher. Essentially, I've become a researcher by just having these conversations and reading books and so on, the commonalities that I see across faiths, of cross spiritual paths. It's fascinating when you said I got hit by a baseball bat. My term is a sledgehammer. And the thing that I've heard from near death experiencers, from spiritual leaders, from mystics, from intuitives and so on, is that when God or the universe will whisper it first, then tap you. It's a little nudge, maybe a little shove, and when you're so just like they aren't getting it, yes, that's when the sledgehammer comes across your head and you got that. What I find fascinating about your story is that it was so profound for you at that moment that it changed your life. You had a life changing moment. So I have to ask the question, What happened to the people around you when you said, Hey, I assume you're not married anymore. So exactly, so you, I'm getting a divorce. I'm moving to India. This is my path. I gotta believe that the family probably had a little bit.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 22:41
Yeah, so, so just just before that, I after having that experience, which I can't I knew, I knew that's where I was meant to be, in terms of here on the banks of this sacred river here, having these experiences, but on a logistic level, where I actually was supposed to be, other than sleeping on the banks of the river, what I was supposed to be doing, what it all meant, other than this ecstatic experience of awakening, I had no idea. Now that didn't trouble me at that time, because my mind was just soup. But I was aware that there were some questions, and again, they were not troublesome, but I was aware of the presence of them, of Okay, so, yes, here, obviously, but where and doing what, and in my belief in this, capital P plan and capital P planner, what was the use of the universe spending so much money on My education that was a real it arose. And I really remember thinking, this makes no sense. I could have come here as a 17 year old high school dropout. Why would a universe that makes sense interesting not give the education I've been given to somebody who's going to make use of it if all I am meant to do is sit here on this river and cry ecstatic tears for the rest of my life, which sounded really fine and beautiful and

Alex Ferrari 24:31
Had a bigger idea the universe had a bigger plans for you, my dear.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 24:35
So I've now seen that in retrospect, but at the time, the only piece was why the education and I was walking back to the hotel we were staying in one day, and I had discovered this beautiful ashram called parmarthnikathon as just a pathway that was so much cleaner and so much. More beautiful to get from the banks of the river to the street that ran behind the ashrams where the hotel was. And I'm walking through the ashram one day and I hear a voice, and the voice says, You must stay here.

Alex Ferrari 25:19
Now. Is this a human voice. Is a voice in your head?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 25:21
Human, human voice. It was a male voice. It obviously was in my head, and yet it did not sound like it was in my head at all. It was no sense whatsoever of it was not a thinking voice. It was in your inner voice. I'm having a thought, right? Yeah, I heard a voice. I literally turned around to see who had spoken. There was no one, like a good scientist, I then realized, well, if there's no one, it means I didn't hear a voice. Because obviously, if no one spoke, I couldn't have heard something,

Alex Ferrari 25:55
Or I'm going crazy. There's that.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 25:58
There is that that arose after I heard it the second time about 30 seconds later, so I ignored it the first time. Kept walking. That's the Whisper. Exactly. Hear it the second time, and I'm just about to ignore it the second time because of exactly what you say, which is the only people in my sphere of reference. Who heard voices were people we treated in the clinic, and given that I didn't yet have my doctorate, people, I had to therefore refer to higher experts, like if you walked in and started talking about hearing voices, my duty was to refer you to someone who was much more of an expert than I as still the PhD student was so hearing voices meant you were hallucinating. You were there for suffering from some psychotic illness, schizophrenic, exactly. And the only other option was you were Joan of Arc. Well, there's that pretty sure that I wasn't Joan of Arc.

Alex Ferrari 27:06
Well, I'm glad they think you were Joan of Arc. I mean,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 27:10
Those were the only reference for my entire sphere of reverence of anybody who hears voices. And so I was of Ark is great, just about to ignore it the second time. And I remembered my vow stay open. And I thought, Oh, God, all right, because the other piece of the vow was that if I wasn't going to keep my heart open, I had to go back to California, because on the plane, I had decided it makes no sense to wander through a country that you're not even interested in. If you can't keep your heart open, go back. Okay, you so you're not registered for this quarter, but you can still start research for your dissertation. I could get practicum units. I mean, there were 100 things I could do to push the degree further along. And so I had decided if I wasn't going to keep my heart open, I had to get back to Palo Alto and to finish that quarter that I had taken off. And so I hear the voice the second time I'm about to ignore it. I remember the vow. I really did not want to go all the way back to Delhi and deal with changing flights and going back early, and I wanted to stay. I had had this extraordinary experience. I knew I was meant to be there, but you have a husband so well, yeah, I'll come to him in a second. So I look up and I see a sign that says office. And I walk in and say, I want to stay. I'm here. Yeah, I'm here. Here I am. And it's a long story, but the gist of it was that I needed to meet the president of the ashram in order to get permission to stay. This is no longer true, but 30 years ago, I mean, our ashram is one of the oldest traditional lineages, and you could not as a what appeared to be single, because I was wandering alone, white female just walk in and say, I want a room. And so I needed to meet the president, and he was out of town. And so I waited, and of course, in my mind he was going to be some guy in a suit and tie with a briefcase who was going to assess the merits of my file so American. I had no I had no idea that he was this extraordinary spiritual master and that I was about to come into the presence of this extraordinary spiritual being. Yeah, but when I finally did, when he finally came back, about a week later, I met him, and I started to learn about all of the work he was doing, the charitable work, the humanitarian work, suddenly it was like he was the glue that held all of the other pieces of the experience together, because suddenly it made sense. Oh, it's here. It's learning and serving under him that I meant to be and Oh, as the work went on, of course, this is why I needed an education. Now, the family, as you asked, yes. So originally, when I had the experience, it was not a matter of, oh, I need a divorce. I actually thought that my husband was going to be thrilled. He had come. He had wanted a guru, he had wanted to find a spiritual place to be, and I actually thought that he was going to just be so happy, A, that I had had the experience and then B, that I had found this place for him to come. But people's karmic journeys are different, and we are on this planet for our own, our own Dharma, and really our our Dharma together, no longer needed to be there. And so the universe. So the universe sends all kinds of relationship challenges and dynamics in order to shift you into and out of situations that either are or are no longer in alignment with what your dharma is. And it just it wasn't our Dharma to stay together. It wasn't his Dharma to stay there. So, yeah, we did split up. So you just stayed, I stayed, I stayed, and we did split up. But just to let you know, he's happily married, he has two beautiful children. He's very successful, so it all worked out for a really, really beautiful and I did, I did go back. I went back. We had come in September. It was 1996 had come in September of 96 I took the September through December, quarter of my PhD program, off to travel. Went back in December, Swamiji, my spiritual teacher, actually made me go back. I didn't want to go. I felt like I was being essentially kicked out of the Garden of Eden. I mean, literally, that I was in this paradise world. I had spent now three months having these ecstatic spiritual experiences. I was so clear about Dharma around serving and the kids and the women and the schools and the medical care programs and the environmental programs, but what he could see that in my 25 year old sweetness i could not was the long term impact of me simply calling home and saying, guess what, I'm not coming back. And he said to me, he said, Look, if you're really going to choose this life over that life, people are going to try to discredit you. They're going to try to say you had a nervous breakdown. You went crazy, you couldn't handle it, you joined a cult. You were brainwashed. Little did he know that actually my parents had been on the verge of getting on a plane with all of the cult deprogrammers to literally come and extricate me from this place because, well, I mean, imagine, imagine you've got a daughter who's a scientist, and we had a rule that we were going to talk once a week Sunday evenings. There were no cell phones at that time. Sunday evenings, I would call first Sunday evening, we're in Delhi, I found a place with real coffee. We went to the Red Fort today. It was beautiful. And it was so funny, because I was taking pictures, and people were taking pictures of me taking pictures. Who's this lady? Indian adventure. And then the next week, I get on the phone, and probably really incoherently, I was gushing about God and this Ganga River and the divine pervading everything. And. I had met this guru, this spiritual master,

Alex Ferrari 35:04
As you're telling me, as a father,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 35:05
right, right? And so, I mean, she just panicked, of course, and I will never forget the only thing she said, I mean, she was so good at kind of containing her anxiety, which was unusual for her, but she did contain it at that point. All she said was, whatever you do, don't give them any money.

Alex Ferrari 35:30
I mean, it was worried about

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 35:32
It was so typical and so funny. Little did she know that I had actually been trying to give them money, at least for my stay. I mean, I was living, I was eating. You go to a hotel, at least you have to give something to stay and eat. They wouldn't take a penny from me. Wouldn't take a penny. And you told her this, I'm trying to remember if I even remembered to mention at the time, I do not remember. I know that nothing I said assuaged her anxiety at all. I was just gushing spiritual ecstasy. She then, she then, fortunately, had a friend who was the manager of a big hotel in Pune, and she calls him, and she says, okay, my daughter has been kidnapped and brainwashed by this, this, you know, cult ashram. I don't know, some Swami, and I'm gonna come over. I'm gonna bring the deprograz. I need you to get the police, and we'll meet. And, you know, because I don't Mission Impossible stuff, she was a woman on a mission. Yeah, she's your mom, of course, of course, I'm an only child. But she Oh, no, so he says he's, of course, panicked, because it's his friend's daughter. And Indians have a lot of dignity about their country and their culture. And so a, he was very concerned about her daughter, but B, the sense of my country has done this, and it was also about maintaining the dignity of his country. And so he said to my mom, he said, Give me a few hours, let me find out where exactly she is, because the police are not going to just follow me to Rishikesh. Because I say, some ashram, some Swami. Let me figure it out. He says, What ashram? My mom says, parmarthnikatan. I don't know the name of the SWAMI, but he's the head. Okay, so a few hours later, he calls my mom back, and he says, if that Swami permits your daughter to stay in his ashram, it will be not only a blessing for her, but for your entire family for lifetimes to come. Wow. And now this was a story that I only heard about 15 years later, at my dad's 65th birthday in LA, Swami Ji happened to be in LA at the time he came to give blessings, and as my mom was introducing Swamiji, you're 15. You're 15 years in already. 15 years in already. Okay, as she's getting up to introduce him, she tells this story, wow, of initially, how concerned she had been, how skeptical she had been, and how her friend, even never having met him, knew immediately about him and what an amazing being he was and what a huge blessing it was going to be. So in the beginning, she was panicked, but even after her friend said that she no longer was worried about my safety, but what Swamiji realized was I needed to go back and show them right? He said, You're gonna be a model of someone who has chosen this life over that life. And he said, otherwise, they're just gonna write you off. They're gonna say she was brainwashed, she was kidnapped, she had a nervous breakdown. And he said, people don't want to acknowledge the real value of spirituality. And if you're going to live this life, you need to live it as a model of someone who had that and left it for this but to leave something you're failing at, or give up something you don't have, is not really renunciation. And so he said you have to go back, and you have to at least complete the semester, and you have to get your straight A's. He said your parents have already paid for the next semester. Master, you cannot just call and say, I'm out. I'm out. He said, at least you have to go back and finish that one and show them. And so I did, and it was abs, well, it was very, very difficult, and yet it solidified in me so much that this was exactly where I was meant to be. I'll never forget sitting in a statistics class, because, you know, you're studying psychology, so much of it is all about statistics. And undergrad is huge. Lecture halls graduate school are small classrooms, and I was sitting front row. I was always a front row student sitting in the front and we're studying about marbles, and the teacher's talking about, if you have a jar of black and red marbles, and there's this many black marbles and this many red marbles, and I pull out 10 marbles, and you know, the first two are black, what's the probability that the next two will be black and riveting.

Alex Ferrari 41:09
Riveting. Where do I sign off?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 41:12
I open up my assignment book to make a note about something, and I had put this picture of Krishna that someone had given me when we were in Vrindavan, and it was this close up, beautiful image of Krishna, and I had taped it into the back of my assignment book, and I open it to write something down, and I have thirst, and I have this view of Krishna, and I just start to cry, and she's talking marbles, and I've got tears of ecstatic bliss streaming down my face onto my assignment book, and I just, I cannot control them. I am in ecstasy.

Alex Ferrari 41:56
And she's like, I'm good, if I could do this, I'm an amazing teacher. This is marbles, and she's Look at her.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 42:04
They all knew. They knew something really deep had happened. So on the one hand, it was torture, because I was not where I met was meant to be, but on the other hand, it was so clear that what I was feeling was not situation dependent, and that even sitting in a statistics class, I could open up my assignment book, have this image of Krishna of the Divine re remember that connection, and it was just right back there in a moment.

Alex Ferrari 42:37
That's amazing. That's such a fascinating story. I see that you're getting emotional a little bit. I see some tears, little tears coming down, because as you were telling the story about your mom and her story, it's pretty it's I can, I can sense how important this was for you, and it was, I mean, you definitely, you ran away with the circus. You ran away with

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 43:02
Like, I ran away from the circus actually.

Alex Ferrari 43:04
Well played. I like that. I like that. You ran away from the circus. But from their perspective, you ran away with the circus. It's all about perspective on that stuff. So with your journeys of spirituality, you've mentioned a little bit about your trauma, a little bit about its suffering you did when you were younger. And so many people in this world, you know, we're told in the West that you need to avoid pain. Yes, avoid pain at all costs. It's only about pleasure. You know, in you know, anything negative that happens to you is bad, and all of this kind of stuff, as you and I have walked the earth, I think we're of similar vintage. You look back at your life and go, Oh, thank God that happened. Yes, thank God that horrible thing happened to me, or that really difficult thing happened to me. It's not fun when it's happening, but looking back, you're like, that made me, that made who I am. So for people who are listening, who are going through a difficult time, or have not done the shadow work or the deep work in them to kind of process the trauma, think none of us get out of this, this experience without something, yes, of course, that's why we're here. Yes, generally, generally speaking, that's why we're here. There's the occasional guru that comes up and comes out fully formed, but that this rarely, rarely happens. So we're all here to kind of go through stuff and challenges and so on. What advice would you have for somebody who is, you know, explaining to them what the purpose of trauma is, what the purpose of suffering is in your own awakening and transformation.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 44:41
Beautiful, beautiful question. And yeah, while I would never say to the universe, oh, that was great, I'd like some more, or let's do that again. Off to please. And I would certainly never wish it upon someone. Of course, I. I am so grateful that it happened, because it gave me the depth of understanding. It's like that beautiful teaching about the crack in the vase. Is the crack through which the light shines through Rumi very likely that it is that crack through which the light shines through. And my my pain and trauma while awful, while I was going through it, and as I mentioned, I literally was almost at death's door from an eating disorder, what it did was it cracked me open so deeply that, by God's grace, with the help that I got, I was able to keep the physical body alive and strong long enough to have the emotional and psychological healing that then enabled me to have the spiritual experience of being free and, oh, that's a really important point. I think we got onto another fun subject, but I wanted to just mention that is, as I said, they had told me, you know, this is always going to be your go to stress response. This is going to be that devil on your shoulder you always struggle with this. Nobody had ever said to me, Hey, by the way, you actually can be free. And what the spiritual experiences have given me is the experience and the awareness that not just me, but anyone actually can be free, that the highest goal in life is not about managing your life or managing your emotions or managing your trauma or your PTSD, but it's actually being free. It's subtle because you don't want to spiritually bypass it's not about going over it or around it,

Alex Ferrari 47:03
Which is what we got taught here

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 47:04
Exactly. You've got to go through it. But there is a through that isn't just okay now I can manage. It's actually a through in which you are free. And that's what I have actually experienced, is a complete and total freedom from it, the pain, the anguish that had been so much a huge part of who I was, how I identified, what I thought about, how I related to the world. They're gone. They're gone. The impulse that threw me into the eating disorder that threw me into the addiction, it's gone. I mean it literally, and it's been gone for decades, and I really am glad that I remembered about coming back to mention this, because so many of us, when we struggle, we buy into this idea that the best case scenario is that you learn to manage it, and managing it, of course, is better than not managing it. But it's not the final goal. The final goal is actually to let it go and to be free of it. So back to your question, in terms of talking to people who are suffering, is recognize that you are given exactly what you need in order to take your next steps closer to the divine.

Alex Ferrari 48:41
But with that said, it's great for us to be saying this from this point of view, from where we are right now, but to someone who's going through it currently and is angry, like, how dare you say that I chose this or the universe brought this upon my on me to learn. How do you How can someone, if they're watching this, this is obviously a reason why they're watching it, so you have to look at that, but on a practical standpoint, because what I love about you is that you are pretty grounded, and you come from a very western point of view. So you can, you can dance between the two very beautifully. So you can speak to the west, but you could also speak to the east in that sense, you know, as it's and as you were saying that, I'm thinking to myself, Well, how about if I'm just angry at what's happening right now? How dare you say that the universe gave me this or that? What would you say to that?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 49:33
Okay, well, let's go back to the first person who's suffering, and then we'll come to your anger at the world, right? Actually, they're actually different things and have different ways of understanding and therefore different responses, the anger that arises when we have been wronged by someone, in my case, abused and abandoned, but in other cases, betrayed, cheated, lied, also abused. So abandoned, whatever it may be, the anger that arises from that is an anger in which we hold on to the grudge, we hold on to the pain. And what it does is it defines us in my identification, as the one who was abused, the one who was abandoned, the one who was the victim of or the survivor of, whatever your semantics are, it doesn't matter. But nonetheless, either way, that is my identity, and as it is an identity that is predicated upon the pain and the anger very true. And what it does is it binds me, and it chains me to the painful experience and to the one or the ones who perpetrated it. And so in order to maintain that identity, I have to hold on to pain. Right? The entire experience is a karmic chain, and this is why, what I say to people all the time is you must forgive and let go, not because what they did is okay, but because you deserve to be free. So if anyone who is watching this is angry in the midst of their pain, what I would say is stop thinking about whether you are right to be angry, whether 100 people would agree that you are objectively right to be angry. It's an utter irrelevance that anger is killing you. It is toxic in your body, in your mind, in your heart, and all the anger is doing is binding you to someone else's ego, ignorance, violence, fear, confusion, when someone harmed you, they did so because at that intersection of time and space, at that moment they didn't have in their toolbox, the love, The patience, the caring, the understanding that you needed, and so they addressed the moment with what they did have, which was anger, impatience, fear, greed, lust, disloyalty, violence, whatever it is. But why in the world would you bind yourself forever to someone else's ego, ignorance, violence, fear, but if I hold on, that's exactly what I'm doing. And so the letting go is not saying you're not justified in your anger. It's not saying what happened is okay. What it's saying is, regardless of what someone else did, you deserve to be free? Freedom is your birthright. It is the highest spiritual state, and no one is disqualified. Nothing anyone does to you, nothing you've done, disqualifies you from that. But if I hold on to the story of me as the victim of or the survivor of either way, if that's my identity, I'm not free. And so two people holding anger, I would ask a really simple question, is it worth it? Like, are you glad at the end of the day that you're still angry. Is it serving you? Of course, not. The fact that it's justified is a total irrelevance, and that's the mistake that we make, is we believe that because it's justified, right, therefore I should hold on to it.

Alex Ferrari 53:57
But when you have that kind of anger that someone wronged you, and it might be an innocent, by the way, an innocent thing that they didn't mean to hurt you. I mean, what we're talking about is trauma that's inflicted, but let's say that there's something that is done that really, they really, truly had good intentions, but they either didn't have the skill set or the ability or the tool set to be able to accomplish what they were supposed to,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 54:23
Just the mindfulness, the presence,

Alex Ferrari 54:25
Exactly, whatever is, you know, just ignorance, whatever it could be, that's actually tougher to let go of, because if someone punches you in the face, it's a lot easier to hurt. Like, son of a, you know, he hit me in the face, or he did some trauma. He stole from me like it's that's an easier as a storyteller, an easier villain, but when the villain in your story didn't really mean to hurt you, but yet the hurt still happened. How do you how do you let go of that? Because it's I feel that when you have two people who hurt each other, and that's a lot easier. I feel to let go of from where I'm standing at this point in my life, but the innocent, the I didn't mean to sorry, but yet, I punched you in the face, but I really didn't mean to it was an I tripped and boom, like kind of thing. If I could use that analogy, how do you let go of that?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 55:16
So again, it's a story. Yeah, it's always a story. And what it is is it's an excuse. I am upset in the moment, angry in the moment, unable, unwilling to step up to the plate of my life because you did this to me, knowingly, unknowingly, meaning to not meaning to either way. This thing that happened is the reason. It's the crutch. It's the reason that I am the way that I am. And one of the things that I ask people a lot is is your highest goal in life simply to have a good excuse for why you are not stepping up to the plate of your life like on your deathbed, as you're dying, not having been this beautiful channel, instrument, vehicle, vessel for the divine flow On Earth, being open in love, in service, in Are you gonna make yourself feel better just by saying, Oh, well, at least I had a good excuse, because this person did this to me, the highest goal of our life is not to have a good excuse for why we're not living it.

Alex Ferrari 56:39
You get you get up to the quote, unquote, pearly gates

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 56:41
Well, hey, I had a good excuse. Here's my excuse. You don't want to spend your life with just an excuse, so you've got to be prepared to let go of the story, no matter how good the story is, no matter how compelling the story is. And this, for me, was a really powerful personal story. When I had my first real conversation with Swamiji, I asked him about fear, and he said, You fear because you don't trust. And I gave him my story, here's why I don't trust. And it was a good story, solid, right? Solid story. That's good, I get the, you know, directors approval.

Alex Ferrari 57:29
It's a solid, good, just a narrative, yes,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 57:32
And, and it was a story that my whole life had gotten people to basically say, Oh, you poor thing, you know, you know, pat my head and right, lest anyone should ever even dream of asking me to step up to a different level, because, hey, I've got this story. It's a great excuse. Here's why I don't trust here's why I am this way. Here's why I'm stuck. It's a good story. And he looked at me and he said, Are you going to take that to the grave? I was 25 I said, No, of course not. He said, Well, so are you going to let it go on your deathbed? I said, No. I mean, he said, How about a week before you die? Maybe a month before you die? And I said, No, no, you know. I mean, I'm in process. I'm working on it. And he looked at me, and he said, You're waiting for someone else to come in and to tell you you can be done. He said, no one will. It's entirely up to you. You can carry this pain, this anger, to the grave. You can let it go on your deathbed. You can let it go a week or a month before you die, or you can let it go tonight. And I was like, tonight, and he said, Yes, tonight, I want you to go stand in the Ganga after this beautiful Arathi the lighting ceremony that we have. And I want you to offer to her all of your pain, all of your anger, I want you to forgive him. And I thought, there is no way this is gonna work. I mean, I was a psychology PhD student like you don't give trauma to a river. And yet, by God's grace, I was able to generate the sincerity. I was incredulous. I knew it wouldn't work, but at least out of respect for him, to stop mocking it and be sincere. And that was all I committed to. Was just I will be sincere. And respectful. I knew it wouldn't work, but I will be sincere and respectful. And I walked into that river and I prayed and I cried and I prayed and I cried, and I was able to give it so and again, that was 29 years ago, and of course, I did something that sounds completely insane, but I have a feeling that you will understand, which is, I spent the next several months looking for it.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:32
Well, when you take something like that off of you, you've been carrying that weight, yeah, for so long that you're only, you're you're only used to picking up 50 pounds, absolutely. And when 50 pounds is off of you, you're like, I feel lighter, but this is not where I'm. This is not my norm.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:00:48
And I was convinced that I hadn't really given it. I mean, I was convinced there is no way that happened, the way this worked. No way this happened like, it must just be repressed, suppressed. It's somewhere it's gonna it's gonna come up. Yeah, exactly. And I did everything I could to trigger myself. I mean, I literally tried to make myself get triggered. Because I was like, there is no way this has just happened, and while the memories were all there, sure the emotional charge was gone. It was just gone. Interesting, yeah, so you can let go. You can be free, and the choice is really up to you of how is this anger serving me? How is this pain serving me? How is having this good excuse serving me? Because the only way to be free is to be prepared to be free. I want to go back for just a moment to something that you had asked earlier about you said, Well, I'm angry about that which is happening in our world today. And I said, Well, that's different, but I want to come back to it.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:57
Get out of my head. Literally, the next question was going to go down this road with you again. All right. Great. Go ahead.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:02:18
It is important to be angry about what is happening in our world today, sure, as human beings, yes, at the core, deepest, highest, truest level, we are soul, according to the teachings of Vedanta, we are Brahman. We are inseparable from the supreme reality, the energy of the universe, creation, existence itself. And here we are in this body, in this incarnation, this human incarnation, with our own karmic journey and karmic package and our individual Dharma, our purpose for life, and that is not inconsequential. And to me, the path is yes, and it's both. It's remembering that ultimately, the highest truth is there is nothing but the divine and that homeless guy on the corner looks cold. I need to give him a blanket and a sandwich. And when I get overwhelmed with the number of homeless and the amount of poverty, to be able to anchor back in the perfection of the universe and the presence of the divine and the awareness that it is all divine. And then when I'm anchored and grounded, to stand up and start figuring out how I'm going to feed and house these people who are homeless and hungry. And it's it's the Yes, and it's both. And so the anger at the world today is essential. I mean, if you weren't angry at the world, I'd be worried, because it means that you are cut off from compassion. It means that you are cut off from the trees, from the rivers, from the children, from the women, from the indigenous sisters and brothers that you've somehow cut yourself off from that pain. So anger is the most natural and productive important reaction and response when that which is us. Is being harmed. Children dying of starvation are us. Of course, trees being felled to graze cows to make hamburgers, are us. The indigenous people whose land is being burned down and stolen is. To graze the same cows, to make the same hamburgers are us. To not be angry is to cut yourself off from the connection to the universe, and yet, in order to be efficient and effective at bringing change. Because ultimately, that's the point. Anger is a catalyst to remind us, ah, something is not right.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:25
What I find fascinating about what you're saying is that, in traditional ways, in traditional spiritual thought, is that a guru who sits in the ashram, yes, is never angry is evolved to a point that that nothing bothers him. He could eat psychedelics. It doesn't even it touches him, and all this, all this stuff. But what I'm what I find so beautiful about what you're saying is that you're saying anger is good, which is a human experience, very primal human experience, and that it is needed to be able to be compassionate without anger. You it's hard to be compassionate. I don't know if that's a fair statement or not, but it kind of goes, you know, hand in hand. I've never heard of a spiritual teacher, at least, that I've spoken to, who's like, anger is good.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:06:25
It's absolutely good as a catalyst,

Alex Ferrari 1:06:28
But not to maintain it like you were we were talking about earlier,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:06:30
Exactly. Well, then also, there's a difference between conscious anger and unconscious anger, and this is really important. The unconscious anger is the type that hijacks your mind, your heart, your actions and your life you absolutely want to be free of that 100% unequivocally, it serves zero purpose other than giving you high blood pressure and cancer and divorces and all sorts of things. The anger that is conscious, the anger that says, This is wrong. We produce enough grain to feed 10 billion people. There's only 8 billion people on the planet. The fact that 10s of 1000s of children die of starvation every day is wrong. Absolutely. The fact that women are still dying in childbirth is wrong. The fact that trees are being cut down, that rivers are being polluted, that children and people all over the world are being exploited. There is so much that is wrong, that conscious anger is a catalyst to action. It is a catalyst to that which gets us out of bed in the morning and propels us to act. We're not overcome by it. It doesn't prevent us from sleeping or eating or meditating or playing with the dog or playing with our kids or enjoying the beauty of a sunset. It hasn't co opted my life, but it is giving me the energy to do the work that I need to do, and that's the critical distinction. I remember in the beginning when I had first come to India, and Swamiji took me to this huge slum area to see these 10 schools, because the trust that had been running the schools no longer had any money, and they had approached him because he's very well known as a spiritual master, but also as a huge humanitarian, environmentalist, all of that. So they'd come to him to say, would you adopt these 10 schools? So he took me to go see them, and it was the most abject poverty I had ever seen, not only in real life, but in movies even, I mean, it absolutely was on par, or even worse, with the worst slums that you saw in movies, sure, and we spend the day going from school to school, kids to kids, and we come back In the evening, and I'm sobbing. I mean, just uncontrollable sobbing. The whole car ride home. We get back, it's dinner time. I say, I can eat dinner. Oh, my god, how am I gonna eat dinner? Those poor kids? And he looks at me and he says, Are your tears helping them? Very matter of factly, just matter of factly. Are they helping them? No, but oh my god, those poor kids. And he says, all your tears are doing is making you feel like you are a really compassionate person, he said. He said they're not actually helping the kids. He said, If you really want to. Help the kids have your dinner, go to sleep, and wake up at five o'clock tomorrow morning and figure out how you're going to raise enough money to sponsor 10 new schools. And that's the difference. I mean, for me, that's the perfect example. In the beginning, I was taken over by the emotion rendered hopeless, useless, just, you know, a puddle of tears in my case, but it could have been anger, just as well, serves no one. In the second case, the pain was a catalyst to get me up at five o'clock in the morning, to get me to do the work, to get me to raise the money so that we could sponsor the schools. And that's the type of anger that we need, because things need to change, and we need to be catalyzed to change them, but we need to be connected, deeply, spiritually, whatever that means for you. We need to be courageous, we need to be creative, and we need to be compassionate.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:15
What um? What I find fascinating is that in our own lives, we need to get taken to that was to the edge before we change. So it's like, if, if we're here and here and this is the It's okay. We're not it's not too painful, but it's not too pleasurable. We're in the middle. That's the worst place to be, because you don't change. You're like, I'm just, I don't like my job, but I don't hate it. It's not really making me happy, but it's, you know, that kind of thing. Only when we get down to the place that it's unbearable is when we change because we're forced to that's the catalyst that you were talking about. So with that said, humanity currently where we are right now, and since you've been went on your spiritual path in the mid 90s, things have changed throughout the world. Shows like this exist where they didn't before, yeah, and they're becoming much more mainstream, if our numbers are any indication of how many people watch like, oh, people are interested in this where before you would have been, and you're on a book tour right now, you would have gone to a new age bookstore somewhere, sat in the back, signed a couple of books, like four or five people, the smell of chipool, incense, I forgot. Oh yeah, patchouli, patchouli. Thank you. The Census, patchouli would be in the air the old way of looking at things, and that would be the end of it, because you would only have a handful of people. Handful of people now, they'll probably be a line out the door. And you you have events, and you have so it's, it's change. You can see humanity changing. The world is awakening, yes, not as fast as I would like, I'm sure not as fast as you would like, either, but they are awakening. But we're going through a very difficult time. I was speaking to someone the other day who's like, let's put this in perspective, guys, we are living in the best time of humanity. Ever. Yes, ever, yes. We live better than kings and queens, yes, period.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:13:13
Absolutely. And more of it, more of us do. Actually, the number of people who live under $1 a day, or $2 a day, although still far too many, is actually significantly decreasing and decreasing and decreasing,

Alex Ferrari 1:13:30
Correct! Yeah, very much. So India is a perfect example of that, of how that's happened. So as you know, I said the other day to that same person I was talking to I was like, you know, Einstein didn't have hot showers. He that wasn't a thing yet. When Einstein was walking through that's not that long ago. So we are in in many ways, the best time to be a human ever, on a three dimensional place. Spiritually, not so sure. I'm sure we were a little bit more spiritual at different times in humanity's history. But we are awakening humanity's awakening, and we can see it with the deconstruction of so many industries, so many institutions around the world, from Hollywood to religion to healthcare to media, all of it. It's painful, and it's becoming more painful. And I say basically 2020, on been kind of a rocky road these last five years. What is your point of view on humanity's awakening? How do we deal with this chaos that is going on, there's wars going on, is it? But when people say that, I go, there's always been wars going on. Actually, we're probably in a better time now. We are than we're

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:14:51
According to according to most of the United Nations World Bank statistics. I. Almost all, not all by any means, but almost all of the metrics that you look at, violence, poverty, access to water, sanitation, hygiene, all of these things we are doing so much better than we've ever done. Yeah, yeah, the dilemma is, the reason I think that it feels still so bad to people, is that spiritual aspect is we feel so separate. We are living at a time where we have so much, but we feel so disconnected,

Alex Ferrari 1:15:46
Even though we're more connected than we've ever had the ability to do

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:15:49
Absolutely but we feel so disconnected. I had somebody in satsang ask me once he said, You know, I have 2 million followers on Instagram. And every day when I go home, I think about taking my own life, Oh, yeah. And, and the the idea that somehow those two things should theoretically have something to do with each other, that the 2 million followers should somehow be the solve the bomb, the community that I was looking for. It's not, you know, we have all of these online friends, and yet, when you just need somebody to go and have a cup of tea or coffee with or give a hug to, it's not there. So I think the suffering that people are experiencing these days, that we're projecting out, I mean, it's so much easier to say I'm suffering because, oh my god, there's this war, then I'm suffering because I've disconnected myself from myself, from the planet, from all of the other species with whom I share the planet. But that's the root cause of the suffering, I think, is that myth of disconnection, and the fact that most of us have bought into it, we feel separate. We feel separate from ourself, self love has become about hot baths with, you know, rose petals and lavender oil, which I'm sure feels really nice, but it doesn't actually get you in touch. I mean, unless you're doing some kind of deep meditative practice as you are in the water, it doesn't actually get you in touch with the deepest, highest, fullest aspect of yourself, which you should be loving and which brings love into your life. So the bath is great for the body, for the mind, even, you know, the nervous system, but the half life is really short. Oh, you get out of the bath, you check your email, and it's like, I'm back in Yeah, peace gone. Your hair might still be wet, but the peace is gone. And this is where the spiritual practices are so important, because if you look at all of the ways that we're suffering today, from on a personal level, depression, anxiety, addiction to what's happening in communities, to what's happening internationally, to the wars, to climate change, to environmental destruction. It all is predicated on this myth of separation and this increasing disconnection when I feel separate from myself, the divine, the universe, naturally, I suffer. Of course, it's depressing. Of course it's anxiety producing. Of course I'm going to look to alcohol or drugs or sex or shopping or whatever it may be in order to give me a sense of fullness, a false sense of fullness, temporary. It's temporary at best. It's not even giving you what you think it is in the moment. It just kind of temporarily changes the brain chemistry so you think it's giving you what you want. And then when you look in our communities and the internationally, and you look at Mother Earth, because we feel separate from each other on the basis of race or religion or color or sexual orientation, it's okay to harm them us, thick walls between us. Same thing with Mother Earth. Mother Earth becomes a natural resource for us to us to use and control, absolutely dominate, absolutely, absolutely you look at our vocabulary, dominion over the earth, natural resources,

Alex Ferrari 1:19:56
Intimate dominion. It was what we took all the No, um. What was that the term that we used when we were taking all the land here in the United States from the Indians? Oh, imminent domain. Imminent domain things. Yeah, yes. Ridiculous.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:20:08
Dominion comes straight out of the Bible. Well, of course, God has given us, theoretically, dominion over the animals

Alex Ferrari 1:20:14
and the earth. That's why it's okay to have a hamburger

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:20:18
Interest. Interestingly, we've also been given dominion over our children. It doesn't mean eat them. There were times when men were given dominion over their wives. It did not mean eat them or destroy them. It meant, you know, you're in charge of protecting and caring, and you know, we could have another conversation around that. But the point is, it was never meant to be given to us to harm or to eat or to kill,

Alex Ferrari 1:20:46
But we take that as a given

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:20:48
Exactly. But that separation, that feeling of separation from the earth, is what enables us to harm her.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:56
This is what I this what I want to kind of get into this part of our conversation, because I love what you're saying, and I think one thing that we are and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, we're all about the stories we tell ourselves as humanity, as a human being, we justify things all the time because of the stories that we tell ourselves when we're born into a certain family, certain country, certain culture, the stories that we're told is what we are those first seven years, very important in the programming. Yes, absolutely, you know. And you weren't raised particularly religious, but you still had ceremony, you still went to temple and all that kind of stuff. I'm a recovering Catholic, so, you know, a cafeteria Catholic, as I like to call. I just pick and choose what I like and then move along. But that programming, those stories that we tell ourselves without story, and as a filmmaker, as a storyteller myself, without stories, we can't survive in this reality. This is so insane. You're thrown in cold yelling, someone slaps you in the butt, screaming. It's a very tough school that we're in. So we create stories. We attach ourselves to stories in our own mind to make sense of all of this, you know, and what makes it and then, then the next level is like, Well, my story has to be right? Your story that you're telling me about all this stuff with the guru and India and the river, I can't have you. Your story can't be real. Because if it's real, this is the point of view. If it's real, then my story is invalid, and if my story is invalid, then my entire world comes crashing down, so I must kill you now, yes, yes, that's humanity, right? Essentially, it's getting better, but there's still so much of it. Can you talk a little bit about the story? Because your story was completely upholded the second you walked into the Ganges, you had a tidal wave that changed your story. But you it sounds at least that your story, as far as religious or spiritual, wasn't that in cement. As much as someone who, like I was super religious, I read the Bible every day, kind of person where it still was a shock to your system, but you were able to kind of go and you also, you had a, basically a divine experience, a very divine, very different. So it's not like someone just whispered, Hey, man, you should probably go to that ashram. And, by the way, by the way, you should go to, no, no, you had, like, touch the divine within yourself. You had a basically a big spiritual awakening, a kundalini awakening, even if you will, in in the way you did it, so that helped you to get through the stories. But people listening to these stories that we're talking about here, they might come from a Mormon background or a Muslim background, or whatever background, and they just have a like, I can't your story can't be real if mines is everything we're talking about is the foundation of stories within our lives, and how to let go of those stories. Can you? Can you kind of dive into this a little bit,

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:24:12
Sure, beautiful. First of all, in every religion that I know about, and I'm certainly not a scholar of comparative religions, but I have spent a lot of time with different leaders of different religions, and every religion that I'm aware of, one part that they all share is that God is infinite. There's no religion I know that says, Oh, God only lives over here in this box, of course, right? A core, fundamental, kind of non negotiable aspect of the Divine, of all religion, yeah, of all the religions is that that Divine is infinite. Well, what we know about infinity is. Yeah, it's infinite, infinite possibilities, infinite manifestations. You cannot put infinity in a box. And so what I would say to people is your story is absolutely true for you, and my story is absolutely true for me. Think about, I mean, Alex, you have two kids and a beautiful wife, and they all love you, but they all the time. They but they all have different personalities. And so if I said to each of them, tell me about him, I say to your kids, tell me about Dad, tell me about him, they're all gonna describe you in vastly different ways. From their perspective, they have a different relationship with you. And also, if I took your kids when they were very little, oh, right, right? You ask a two year old, tell me about Dad. You ask a five year old, tell me about Dad. You ask a 15 year old, tell me about Dad. You ask a 50 year old, tell me about Dad. You're gonna get vastly different stories about the exact same dad being told from the exact same person. So here we only actually have two finite human beings telling us about each other. Nothing infinite about that particular relationship, except that the way that I think about you, see you, interact with you, understand you, seems to really have kind of an infinite number of possibilities. Then you start getting into other siblings, other members of the family. Everybody's got their own different relationships, sometimes even different names. The kids are gonna say dad, maybe your wife says honey, somebody's gonna say Alex, somebody else is gonna say Mr. Ferrari. Different relationships, different roles, one guy. Now you think, if one guy can manage to have so many different relationships, stories, roles, with a handful of people in your human life, why would the divine not be able to include this almost infinite number of possible relationships experiences with the divine. We're all having different experiences of the Divine, like your family members are having different experiences of you. It doesn't bother you. You're not gonna say to your wife, you know, you should listen to the kids about who I am, like they get me so much better than you do. You're not gonna say to the kids, you know, kill your mom because you understand me better than she does. You've got different relationships, beautiful, and you play different roles. And that's, that's the way we need to understand it. My story does not need to usurp your story. They can coexist, because the Divine is infinite.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:10
That's such a beautiful way of putting that. I've never thought of it that way, but that's such a wonderful analogy, because we do have such different relationships with a people. And it's not only at this moment. 10 years from now, will be different. Five years from now be the 50 years now, it'd be completely different. It's and why wouldn't all of us have that? I always, I always say that all the roads are leading to the same place, and we're all connected it. But it was very, very beautiful. Thank you so much for that, with everything that's happening in the world and this awakening that we're all going to and do you believe also that there is a mass Great Awakening. This is a time period where humanity, Yukteswar spoke about it in the holy science and the Yuga cycles and all this kind of thing, that this is the moment. Yes, it's a very exciting moment for humanity. I think this decade is a pretty pivotal

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:29:06
But we do have a choice. I mean, we can awaken Well, or we can fall off the bed and crack our metaphoric skulls open, because we really are also on a precipice of what we are doing to the planet we call home. So our awakening is absolutely happening, but if we don't live consciously, and if we don't continue to re remember the truth, we could end up in a situation where we just we don't have this earth, and that's it's a very real possibility. And of course, you know, the Earth, as we always say, is going to do fine without us, but if we're. Talking about humans, this current species, as we are, our awakening. Well, we really require a very specific ratio of hydrogen to oxygen, to carbon to nitrogen. We require a very specific temperature range. So, yes, we are awakening Absolutely. What concerns me sometimes is that the awakening does not necessarily always translate as it should, instinctively and automatically into different choices of action. And it's really critical to realize your awakening is not in a vacuum. Your awakening is part of a perfection of this universe, and therefore, when you stand up off your cushion and off your mat, you need to bring that awakening through in your actions.

Alex Ferrari 1:31:06
There's before, before we continue. I love your energy. It's so beautiful. It is being in the room. It's better than being in zoom so that in being in the room, you can really sense the energy of I can at least of people and what you're saying, I've been basically surrounded by women my entire life. Have very little testosterone in my life, as I always joke, even my cats don't have so I have estrogen everywhere around me, but raised by a single mother and all these kind of things. But what I've as a male in that world, I've seen the sacred feminine. I have daughters, all of that. So I see the sacred feminine. What part do you see the sacred feminine doing or helping with, or, you know, affecting this great awakening that humanity is going to because it seems, please, correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like the feminine energy is starting to grow more Yes, because if you're looking at the Roman times and the Egyptian times, the Roman times, the Middle Ages, it's very dude heavy, if I may be technical, dude heavy. A lot of testosterone, a lot of masculine energy, where, and that masculine energy took us where it needed to take us to a certain point. But I think within the last 50 years or so, I've noticed from the 60s, I would imagine, the feminine energy is starting to grow more and mother the mothering energy. What's your feel on that?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:32:46
Absolutely, and it's interesting, because I don't think it's a coincidence that it started around the 60s, when people started taking psychedelics and having a worldview that was so vastly different from what they saw on TV, what they had learned in school, what they saw on billboards and magazines and around them. It feels to me like this awakening is happening in the womb of the mother, and that we are being truly rebirthed into that but it's also important to realize that that feminine energy is not something That is only in people who are in female bodies. Ultimately, an ideal situation is that all of us, whatever bodies we are in, are able to channel and access both the masculine principle and the feminine principle, the masculine energy and the feminine energy, because we need them both, and that that ideal being being the sort of merging of both energies. And I think what's happened over so much of history is we've suppressed the feminine energy in women as well. And so you ended up, you know, around the equal rights movement, where women were essentially trying to prove that they could be men in the workplace, that just because I'm in a female body doesn't mean I can't do this thing, not just as well as a man, but just like a man. And we went through this really long period of essentially equal means same. And I think we're now thankfully emerging into an awareness that equal does not mean same, and that the variety is not only beautiful, but critical and essential. And. And the energy of nourishing and nurturing is such an important energy, and that's an energy that we tend to associate with the feminine energy. It's also an energy of connection the masculine energy tends to be much more the alpha male situation of like, Hey, you tried to come into my territory. I will kill you. You know, do not try to mate with my seal. You know? I mean, I remember we used to watch the the are they sea lions? Were they seals? Out of surprise, sea lions, I know you saw the sea lions on the on the beach during, during mating season. Oh, oh, yeah. Just, just over the mountain from Palo Alto, there was this beautiful beach. And you'd go and you could see the elephant seals, yes, yeah, they're huge. They're big, huge, huge, huge, huge. And you'd go during mating season, and you could pick out immediately who the alpha male was because it was like, You stay away from my woman and and you stay out of my territory. And that has been an energy of separation, of isolation, of exclusion, whereas the feminine energy tends to be much more an energy of connection and inclusion, and I think that that's another reason why this energy is so critical right now, aside from just bringing back the general balance that we've lost. But if we are going to make it literally as humans on this earth as we have it now, we need to do so collectively. We cannot do it. Me versus you, the alpha male is not going to save the planet. No, we need to do it collectively and cohesively. And that is another reason. I think it's critical for both men and women to really get in touch with that feminine principle, so that we can work together, and so that we understand not just the being who's got my DNA counts as my child, that it's not just About propagation of the species and my genes, but that actually, the child over there in that other country on that continent who is starving is also mine.

Alex Ferrari 1:37:29
Beautifully said. Beautifully said, I'm gonna ask you a few questions I ask all my guests, and kind of like a rapid fire, Okay, a question, what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:37:42
A life in which you continually clear away blockages within you, mental blockages, energetic blockages, to the divine flow so that you are at every moment and every minute a clear, unstuck, unclogged channel for the flow of the Divine to flow through and express itself, however it's meant to express itself through you.

Alex Ferrari 1:38:16
It almost seemed like you were channeling there for a second as you were going through and it was just like this flow of energy that was coming through. It was beautiful.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:38:23
That's how it actually works for me. Exactly that is I give that answer out of personal experience.

Alex Ferrari 1:38:29
Fair enough. Fair enough. If you had a chance to go back in time and speak to little Sadhvi, what advice would you give her?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:38:37
What age?

Alex Ferrari 1:38:39
5,4,6

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:38:42
I would tell her, sweetheart, you are not you are not all of the things that you're doing. You're not what you're achieving. You are not what you look like. You are not a good girl or a bad girl based on your room being clean or not clean, your toys being put away or not put away, you are not the object that others may see you to be to fulfill Their neurotic dramas, stories, needs. You are divine, you are full, you are whole, you are complete, you are exactly perfect. And the universe is going to bring you, not immediately, but bring you into a space in which not only do you experience that, but you are surrounded by people who see that in you, and you will be able to then share that with so so many,

Alex Ferrari 1:39:49
Beautifully said. Now, what advice would she give you? Little you give you now?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:39:58
Hmm. Play more. Play more. Don't be so busy all the time. Play more.

Alex Ferrari 1:40:08
Agreed. How do you define God or The Divine?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:40:14
The Divine is truly everything. It is the pulse. The pulsating energy, the flow through which every flower bud opens its petals to the sun, through which the sun shines its rays on the flower bed, through which the seed breaks and becomes a sprout and then a tree, and then gives apples, through which we understand that we are connected to all as all it Is that energy that flows through us as us, there's nothing that isn't divine.

Alex Ferrari 1:41:06
Beautifully said, What is love?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:41:09
Love? Ah, love is the energy through which the divine expresses itself on planet Earth, it's the energy through which that divine expresses itself. So love is quite literally the flower petals opening themselves to the sun and the sun shining upon them, and the apple tree giving producing juicy apples. It is that which re reminds us that we are not separate, that we are one, and that fills us with truth, with knowing and with the absolute, powerful, infinitely, powerful essence of who we are.

Alex Ferrari 1:42:02
If you could ask the Divine One question, what would it be?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:42:06
How can we collectively better tune our human instruments to hear your wisdom so that we can do a better job of protecting this sacred creation and easing the suffering of of the creation the divine has given us this beautiful creation, and we're we're trashing it because we don't, we don't understand the artist so beautiful. Yeah, I would love, I would love if we all could just fine tune to hear better, to understand better. How do we how do we do this work we're meant to do?

Alex Ferrari 1:42:57
How do you define liberation in this lifetime?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:43:01
A freedom from all of the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, what the universe is, what our role in the universe is, freedom from All of the internalized projections of stories about what we should want, what we should do, what we need, freedom from all of the unconscious patterns and habits of the way that we think and live that keep us farther and farther from love and from truth and from the Divine.

Alex Ferrari 1:43:44
And finally, what is the ultimate purpose of this life?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:43:46
The ultimate purpose is to truly wake up into the experiential knowing and awareness that who you are is divine, that you are not lacking in any way, that you are not broken in any way, that you are like what I would tell my five year old self, that you are whole and full and complete and divine, and to know that not just intellectually but experientially, so that you then become this fully supple and fully surrendered instrument in the hands of the Divine for whatever your role, your purpose, your dharma here in This incarnation on this planet is meant to be

Alex Ferrari 1:44:42
Beautiful answers, beautiful, beautiful answers. Where can people find out more about you? Get a copy of your book Coming home to yourself and all the amazing work that you're doing in the world?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:44:52
Sure, so they can get a copy of come home to yourself and my. Memoir, Hollywood to the Himalayas. Hollywood to the Himalayas, as we say here, online, on Amazon or wherever, wherever they get books, they can find out more about me. Have access to lots and lots of videos, teachings, etc, on my website, which is sadhviji.org, I'll spell it, it's S, A, D, H, V I, which is my name, and then J I, because in India, j i is a term of respect. So sadhviji.org, and on YouTube at sadhviji, on Instagram, at sadhviji, for either the short videos on Instagram or the longer, deeper ones on YouTube. And we do stream the satsang, the spiritual question and answer session and meditation session that I lead every night. We do stream that live on YouTube and Instagram, both when I'm there in Rishikesh. So yeah, I would love to connect. And if people do have questions, by the way, for me to take in the satsang, all they have to do is put them in comments on social media or by direct message or send by email or put on the website anywhere. Lastly, actually, two more quick things. One is I also now have a podcast. It's very new. Everyone has it's very new. It's very new. But yeah? Well, our goal is just give inspiration in whatever way people want to get it. So you want it packaged as a 62nd sound bite on Instagram, we'll do that. You want a longer, deeper teaching on YouTube, we'll do that. You want it in a book. There it is. You want it on a podcast? Sure, so I now have a podcast. It's called Ask Sadhviji, Oh, beautiful. And it's the same. It's the questions and answers and Oh, on my website, on sadhviji.org There is a free, downloadable, beautiful guide to actually coming back to what really matters in your life. And it's a simple step by step guide that's again, free for anybody. So if people come to the website, they can also access that free guide,

Alex Ferrari 1:47:35
Beautifully said. And do you have any parting messages for the audience?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:47:39
No one is meant to sit this one out. The question today is not, how do I find peace in the midst of all of that which is happening so that I can just be done? We have to find peace that has become essentially our social responsibility, our public responsibility, but not just so that we are living in a peace bubble in the midst of chaos, but so that we can actually be the instruments, the agents, the vehicles, the vessels of bringing peace in the world. And so do your spiritual practice, whatever that means for you, meditation, yoga, prayer, hugging trees, whatever it is. And then take that beautiful, divine connection that you feel and use it to move through the world and serve and touch, because that's what every one of us is here for.

Alex Ferrari 1:48:46
Sadhviji thank you so much for being here. It has been such a pleasure and honor speaking to you. I do truly believe that this conversation is going to continue to resonate for people watching this for years to come, and I hope it finds the ears that it needs to or the eyes that it needs to find when the time is right. So I appreciate you and everything you're doing to help awaken this planet. So thank you.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati 1:49:12
Thank you so so so much. It was so beautiful to be with you today.