I first met Dadaji in Pune in the fall of 1993, shortly after my return from Germany where, for a few weeks, I had tried in vain to become a “normal” citizen again. I had been feeling stuck and disillusioned with my spirituality for some time. My search had neither direction nor drive. I felt I needed a teacher who could understand my predicament, provide a fresh impulse for continuing the journey, and offer support, encouragement, and guidance.
In these circumstances, I met an old friend of mine in the Osho commune who had been a disciple of Osho for many years. With a joyous twinkle in her eyes, she invited me to meet a new teacher at her home on the premises of the ashram. I gladly accepted the invitation – surprised and excited that such a meeting could actually take place within the commune, which did not welcome other teachers to hold meetings on the grounds.
Before she introduced me to Dadaji, she told me that, in contrast to Osho’s emphasis on living together with the teacher in his commune as a device for generating growth and higher consciousness, Dadaji taught, “The best practice is to be alone.” Such a teaching seemed quite in line with my natural inclination toward sitting practices; the sadhana of Buddhist vipassana and Zazen meditation had proved very beneficial for me. Although they hadn’t led to final enlightenment, they definitely were quieting the chatter of my mind and making me deeply aware of the impermanence of everything that arises and exists – including my thoughts, my feelings, my body, and the world around me.
I followed my friend into Dadaji’s room, and instantly my whole being was permeated with such an exquisite and peaceful vibration that my mind went into a complete standstill. Heavenly silence soaked with stark presence melted away any sense of unfamiliarity and separation. Though I continued walking my feet seemed not to touch the marble floor; I felt as if I were levitating.
And then I saw him! He was sitting cross-legged and motionless on a bed with a white cover. He had a long white beard and his thin, shoulder-length hair was white as well. From underneath the white shawl that covered his torso, his folded hands greeted me in namaste while is eyes emanated radiant love. His being brimmed with presence.
As I moved slowly toward the bed, my heart began to fill with love and devotion, and I witnessed my body kneeling down in front of him as if moved by a divine power. My own namaste met his silence while our eyes gazed into and through each other into the beyond.
Then, light as a feather, my head – face down – began to sink onto the bed until it could find rest. At the same time, my hands stretched – unintended – finding, touching and holding on to Dadaji’s feet. From his feet, heat and energy flowed into my hands, arms and body. Soon I felt his warm and benevolent hands touching my head and resting there. A deep sense of timelessness, peace, and presence filled the space. No one moved, and not a word was spoken.
After what seemed like an eternity, our “divine embrace” loosened. I, still kneeling, straightened up slowly and bowed in namaste again. With the sweetest and most loving smile, Dadaji beckoned me with a gesture to sit down on one of the cushions on the floor near his bed. I sat, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, and rested my hands gently in my lap. By now only the two of us were in the room.
After an hour or so, I heard my friend quietly announce that Dadaji’s dinner was ready. I opened my eyes and saw Dadaji smiling at me. “Come tomorrow!” he said – the only words spoken in this first encounter.
Prior to his return to Thane, near Mumbai, I went to Dadaji’s house to visit him several times. Sometimes I was alone with him; at other times, a few other seekers were present.
The following account of our second meeting is reconstructed from memory. I began our conversation by relating the main stages of my spiritual odyssey up to that point and expressing my disenchantment with my life as a seeker.
Madhukar: I find myself in a state of disillusionment. I wish I could let go of this whole madness of searching for enlightenment. If only I could drop the search! I don’t want to be a seeker anymore. I want to just be normal. I want to live ordinarily and in peace.
Dadaji: I understand. You have come to a point when it is best for you to be on your own, to be alone. There is no need for you to visit any guru anymore. You don’t need to listen to them any longer. It is time for you to start to go within.
Madhukar: Are you suggesting practice and formal meditation?
Dadaji: You need to be alone! In aloneness, you begin to watch every incoming thought. You will come to understand that the past is nothing but the “I.” With the preservation of the “I,” the past continues. When you discover the deceptions of the “I” — which is the mind – your journey toward the spirit begins.
In this innerness, in this inner attentiveness, you will watch every thought, idea, and desire that comes into the mind. If you continue to stay in that inner space of observation, the activity of the mind will quiet down. Through constant, unmotivated looking within, you can step out of the field of thought.
Madhukar: Can I do what you suggest in the company of my lady friend? Can sitting and meditating in her company also be beneficial? Or are you saying that physical seclusion is the only way to support meditation?
Dadaji: You have to decide once and for all to make all your energy available for the meeting with what I call the spirit. Once you have decided, you need to concentrate all your energies towards this watchfulness. Then proceed slowly and quietly and discover what meditation is. Attention without thought is meditation. Slowly through watchful attention, you step out of the field of mind. You will be able to act without the prompting of thought and desire. And that freedom from desire is being in the present. That freedom is in the now.
You should work with all your understanding, senses, and energy and less with the thought and desire for activity. Do not choose to be motivated by desire! Choose not to discriminate between good and bad. It is the mind that gives labels. The best practice is being alone.
Madhukar: As I said earlier, I just want to be finished with the spirituality trip. But somehow I am not able to walk out of it. The search seems to continue in spite of my desire to drop it.
Dadaji: There are two things. One: you have come to the point at which it is made clear to you that you have to leave all gurus behind. You have to understand that nothing can be gained from outside or from other people. You alone have the means within yourself to discover and experience that quality we call the spirit.
Two: The search will keep hold of you until you have experienced the Divinity. How can we experience the quality that is the spirit, the soul, the Divinity? We never ask this question quietly in the depth of our being . We always hope to find the spirit outside, via someone else or something else. Gather all your energies! Go directly to the core, to that center in which the whole secret and mystery of life lies. To be with the inner spirit, you have to be really alone and anonymous.
Madhukar: But being alone and meditating doesn’t stop the mind either. That is my experience so far.
Dadaji: Only through watchfulness will you be able to see and know the mind completely. The whole secret of spiritual life is to understand the inadequacy of the mind and its thoughts, and to be free of them. This imaginative and desirous mind can be eliminated only through watchfulness and understanding. Thought activity and the thought process are blocking the incoming spirit. Not seeing this clearly as a fact is the main hindrance to realization of the spirit.
The more you stay in that inner attentiveness, the more you will become free from all the reactions of the known, the past – which is the mind. Then one faces the unknown, and the energy becomes pure and sensitive. This energy is then free from all ideas and desires, which are born out of the past.
Madhukar: How can I get out of my own way?
Dadaji: On the one hand, the “I” is the mind that seeks the spirit. On the other hand, the “I” is the cumulative effect of the whole past. The elimination of the past is freedom from the mind, which is the seeker. And as the seeker himself is dissolved, all seeking comes to an end. At that point, living becomes the experiencing of the total moment, and times merges into the timeless. To discover this eternal moment and live in it anonymously is the beginning and the end of all human searches.
Madhukar: Right now I can feel this timeless and eternal moment here with you. I wish this feeling would remain for all time, everywhere, and for everybody [a long beautiful moment of silence and peace ensued].
Dadaji: We are living in a very crucial period of human history. Nature expects beings to change a great deal. This dimensional change, which is the discovery of the beyond, is the challenge of our time.
I gave Dadaji’s teachings a lot of reflection. I knew from my own experience how important single-pointed focus on practice is. His tenet, “To be in the present is freedom from desire” was quite often my own experience, but when this state occurred, it was short-lived. According to Dadaji, this situation would change for the better if only I would leave my partner and be alone. But I had strong reservations about this suggestion. True, the time spent with my partner I could instead be spending it in meditation. However, I felt I did meditate enough and, as far as I could see, my relationship was not blocking my spiritual growth. My partner and I meditated together regularly and thus were supporting each other. Furthermore, during my practices I was alone anyway – with or without a partner. I was convinced that enlightenment did not require complete solitude.
Secondly, I really enjoyed investigating my true nature in the presence of teachers as well as by myself. In short, I was not willing to let go of the opportunity to deepen my understanding through communion with the teachers that I was meeting. I wanted to keep my ongoing inquiry as open as possible.
Therefore, it didn’t surprise me that it was almost three years before I met Dadaji again.
In April 1996, I took Sunderam, Sri Annamalai Swami’s personal assistant and interpreter, to meet Dadaji in Thane. Another friend of mine, Mr. Gurudayal, accompanied us. The following conversation was video-recorded at Dadaji’s residence.
Madhukar: I heard that you met Ramana Maharshi while he was alive, could you say something about your meeting with him?
Dadaji: Yes, I have been to Arunachala. I visited Bhagavan when he was still in his body. I stayed with him for three days at a time when I was wandering all over India. I asked him a few questions. I also took food with him. I don’t remember exactly the year of my visit.
Madhukar: So in the early years of your search, you were also visiting various teachers, just as I do today. Is that correct?
Dadaji: There is always a time in one’s life when one has to wander and see and understand the wise people. In my time of wandering, I went to Bhagavan. I came to realize, however, that we cannot really learn much from others. What we look for is not to be found outside of ourselves but within ourselves. But as long as the mind is wandering and curious about outside things, you will never get satisfied. And even when that thirst for realization is there, you have to wait for it to become strong. Only when it is strong can you enter into yourself.
Madhukar: I feel I have that thirst for realization you are talking about, but . . .
Dadaji: All that you want is inside you. But we never generate enough power within ourselves. We go out all the time; our energy goes out. But you must realize that nobody can give you anything on a platter. Let me repeat: You will get nothing from outside. This is the real secret of life.
There are people who have realized their reality, found their own Self. But they have discovered it within themselves, by their own effort. They didn’t get if from outside. Such people are rare. They are beautiful.
Madhukar: People like Ramana Maharshi . . .
Dadaji: When Ramana lived at Arunachala, he stayed most of the time in the mandir [hall]. He didn’t go much here and there. He didn’t go to get something from others. This is what is called tapasya [intense practice] – the inward search, the inward questioning. That inwardness is very rare in life.
As long as you don’t see the futility of that kind of search, your search will not come to an end. But let me tell you, realization will take time.
Madhukar: What is the real hindrance to realization?
Dadaji: At all times, the mind is eager to look outward. It is always trying, searching, moving. All this activity of the mind is the real hindrance to realization. As long as the mind is active in looking outside itself and is focused outward, there is no chance for realization.
You must realize that all that is important in spirituality is within you. But you never come to that “inner.” You never come to that inner with your total energy of life, with your totality. You are halfway here, halfway there; halfway in, halfway out. When all that outer focus comes to the inner, we realize that the key to realization lies hidden within ourselves. And that innerness is all we really want from life.
Gurudayal: Is it destined that some people become seekers? And is it destined whether we will become enlightened or not? In my opinion, it must be destined because not everybody can achieve the inwardness you talk about. Perhaps a few souls like you were destined to realize the Self.
Dadaji: What is destiny?
Gurudayal: All our efforts are futile – that’s destiny.
Dadaji: Who says effort is futile? First you adopt the idea of destiny and then you expect everything from it – too much, too soon. What is destiny? What created destiny? Who created destiny? Who has created your destiny? The concept that realization happens through destiny is just a convenient idea.
You must create the situation in which realization can happen. Somehow you are here at this place in this life to make a beginning for realization to happen – somewhere, sometime. Some people have done this; they have come to that realized state by practicing.
Gurudayal: But some teachers say that realization happened in their case because it was destined.
Dadaji: Such a teaching makes their students think that realization can be obtained without doing anything for it. But let me tell you again: There is no such thing as destiny! Realization happened to some individuals because they have worked hard for that goal for some time, somewhere. It happened for them because of their own effort.
Gurudayal: There is something in a person that makes them an artist or a musician. What is that “something”?
Dadaji: In order to become an artist or a musician, one has to work. Practice – not destiny – makes people masters in their field. They had to do all kinds of practices for a long time for that to happen. If someone attains mastership in a short time, it means that he or she has had some experience with it in an earlier life or lives. They were not simply born into this present life without any responsibility to work to develop the talents that were seeded in another life.
Madhukar: But wasn’t their birth also predestined?
Dadaji: Birth doesn’t alone create your destiny. Unless you really work for it, your destiny will not be created. You have to work for the fulfillment of your destiny.
Gurudayal: Fulfillment because of destiny or because of personal free will and effort? This is the only point that is not clear to me.
Dadaji: Where are we? What do we really want? Let us ask, “Are we really working for realization? Are we really hungry for spiritual fulfillment?” No! Many of us have only a lukewarm interest in that: many of us have only a superficial curiosity, and the mind takes over and plays with it. But those who are really hungry, passionately hungry for realization, will approach that hunger in a different way than those who are only interested, curious, and excited about enlightenment. The latter want realization without having to work for it. On the other hand, the ones who “arrive” worked very differently – they worked hard for their realization to occur. They are of a different breed. So, don’t wait for destiny to make realization happen to you! You have to create the situation in which this transformation can take place.
Sunderam: Yesterday and this morning, I went to see Ramesh Balsekar. He is a guru who is teaching Advaita Vedanta in Bombay. He was mostly talking about destiny. I told him that I took care of my guru, Annamalai Swami, for twenty years, but enlightenment I still do not have, it hasn’t happened to me yet. Balsekar replied, “Unless . . . ”
Dadaji: . . . it is destined . . . No! No!
Sunderam: “. . . it is will not happen.” He said to me, “Just live your normal life. If enlightenment is predestined for you, it will happen. You do not need to worry about it.”
Dadaji: Some people talk that way.
Sunderam: If the guru only stresses destiny, the seekers will not make an effort and they become lazy. I think people will not be helped by this approach.
Dadaji: Listening to such talk, people will become fatalists. They will only wish for the fate that enlightenment is going to happen to them. They will not work for it. Destiny is just a word, a concept There is no such thing as a destiny that falls on us from somewhere.
Sunderam: Balsekar kept repeating, “Unless it is God’s will, enlightenment will not happen. No practice and effort will help it to occur.”
Dadaji: Who will give enlightenment? Does this mean that unless it is given, it will not happen? Are there some preferences by means of divine will? Is there a God with His preferences? Does He give enlightenment to some people and not to others? If so, God must be a partial person then – no? Do you think that God is such a partial person?
Madhukar: You indicate very clearly that the occurrence of enlightenment mainly depends on the seeker’s practice.
Dadaji: Absolutely. If you work with your whole intensity and with your whole life energy for something to happen, it has to happen, and it will happen. In that case, nobody is going to be refused by anybody. Nobody can halt such an effort. But you must be ready to pay the full price for what you want.
It is like scaling Mt. Everest. To reach the top, you really have to work hard for it. Those people who reach the summit have to pay a price. They don’t reach it by sitting at home. They don’t reach it because it is destined that somebody else will take them there. No way! If you wait for that, you might just keep sitting where you are without ever reaching even the bottom of Mt. Everest.
Gurudayal: Don’t you think the body-mind organism called Sunderam was destined to visit you? Sunderam wasn’t aware of your existence until yesterday.
Dadaji: No, he wasn’t. But his appearance in front of me is not caused by destiny. His visit to me was not predestined. Why do you call it destined?
Gurudayal: Well, destiny many be just a word . . .
Dadaji: [To Sunderam] How did you come here? How did you hear about me? Don’t think so much of destiny! The fact is that you have come. And that happened because you were moving with Mr. Gurudayal from his house to my house. It happened because you were interested in meeting me.
[To Gurudayal] And you had the interest to bring Sunderam to me. That’s how our meeting happened.
[To Sunderam] Don’t you have an interest in visiting wise men?
Sunderam: Yes, I am interested to see enlightened beings.
Dadaji: That’s what it is! Unless you have that interest, you will not come to visit me.
Gurudayal: Swamiji, I agree that the eagerness and desire to meet you arises only if such an interest exits in him, but I believe that that interest is not his choice. Didn’t the interest just come to him one fine day? Isn’t that what destiny is?
Dadaji: Why does he have this interest? If he had been interested in music, he would have become a musician. [To Sunderam] And if you were interested in music, you would have visited musicians in Bombay, wouldn’t you? You would not be visiting wise men.
Gurudayal: But is it really in our power to choose which interest we have or are going to have? My real question is, “Is it up to us and is it in our power to have the interest in spirituality?”
Dadaji: What gives power to your quest, sir? Isn’t it your interest? What will satisfy your interest, your longing? Your hunger for spirituality. You give all these mysterious names to this simple fact of life. We make so much fuss about it. If you have a real interest and a real desire to meet a wise man, you will. If you have no interest and you refuse to visit a person, nobody will take you to him or her against your own wish. And there will be no meeting. It has nothing to do with destiny.
Sunderam: I remember, Osho said in a discourse . . .
Dadaji: Ah! Oh, God! Don’t tell me what he has said! Don’t listen to all these people! So many people say so many things! And you go to all of them. This is how you are deceived – because Osho said this, because that man said that, because that saint said this and that . . .
Sunderam: The scary fact is . . .
Dadaji: What about you? Find out about your “inner”! Of what use is it to listen to all these people and what they say? Enough of all these things now! You are caught up in the opinions of all these people. Osho is quoted. Ramana Maharshi has said . . . Krishnamurti proclaimed . . . These people may have realized something in their own way, yes. Now your challenge is to discover that realization in your own personal way. That’s important. But you never come to that.
Sunderam: I simply want to learn from these teachers That’s why I visit them.
Dadaji: You are always carried away by the images and ideas of other people. And you are hooked to their opinions. That is the problem. As long as you live with the opinions of others, you will never have the realization of your own inner understanding. But you have to work for that. You have to wait for that. Then realization can happen within yourself. And it will be your experience. Then you will not quote what other people have said.
These people carried out their mission. On the other hand, you keep yourself busy playing with their opinions and their findings. By doing so, you become only a second-hand individual. You don’t need to do that. Be what you are. If you have the interest to know what you really are, pursue that interest. Do something! Find! Go and pay the price for it! But you don’t!
Madhukar: Are you urging us to go beyond word, beyond the mind and concepts?
Dadaji: Mind is so clever. It is just making words after words. By doing so, it is fragmenting and dividing itself. It keeps asking: “Why this? Why that? Doesn’t this guru say so and so? Doesn’t that wise man say that?”
You don’t see this factor. You don’t see how you are caught up in the opinions of other people. To have an opinion about something does not mean you have an understanding about it. You can collect the opinions of all the wise men in the world, and you will remain ignorant.
Madhukar: More important that any intellectual understanding is experience – and more so the lasting experience of peace.
Dadaji: Yes, experiencing is something different. Only that inner experiencing is the real understanding. Opinions are merely concepts in the mind. Realization is not an idea.
You are already fragmented human beings. And by playing with other people’s ideas and philosophies, you get yourself even more divided.
Madhukar: But there are different stages on the spiritual journey and . . .
Dadaji: Yes, yes, I understand. At the beginning of the search, there is a little curiosity and an interest in finding out what spirituality is all about. Finding out what, and where – in books? From other people? Finally, the searching has to lead to yourself. There is a place, a seat, within yourself where you can find and realize what you were looking for. Your own realization will be your own wisdom about life. Then you will not be bothered by the opinions of other people. But you don’t want to do what is necessary for that to occur; you don’t want to pay the price, nor do you have the necessary patience.
Gurudayal: Guruji, what actually is realization?
Dadaji: Realization means to realize the truth. It means to actually experience the truth within ourselves.
Gurudayal: And what is the truth?
Dadaji: What do you want? An explanation of the word? Truth is what is real.
Gurudayal: What are we? What is real in us? What is the truth in us?
Dadaji: We are whatever is real. What is it that is real? The answer is: experiencing the real – the realization of That, of the “inner.”
To have concepts and ideas about this is not enough. Concepts and ideas are part of the thought process. It is the mind that has concepts and ideas. But it is life itself that realizes, knows, and understands the truth.
That is all.
It was already my experience that the activity of the mind did quiet down when I stayed in the inner space of observation and witnessing. Only through witnessing or self-inquiry was I able to see and know the mind more clearly and understand its inadequacy. But to be free of the thoughts it kept generating necessitated more practice on my part. Therefore, I felt deeply met and supported by Dadaji’s insistence on rigorous practice.
“Freedom from desire is to be in the present,” Dadaji taught, and I knew that that freedom was only available in the now. How could I aways be in the present moment? I couldn’t! But in my meditation sadhana and in my self-inquiry practice, presence remained each time the thought process came to a stop through awareness. More freedom from the mind meant more presence. I felt grateful for Dadaji’s simple equation, which is congruent with my own experience.
This time, Dadaji’s persistent suggestion to leave all teachers behind and be on my own struck a chord in me. Even before meeting Dadaji, I knew that the day was not far off when I would be alone on my odyssey. But did Dadaji want me to remain without any other teacher except him? Is that why he invited me to stay as long as I wanted and to live and meditate in the gazebo next to his house? Did he want to instruct and guide me in my practices? If so, what about aloneness? Yes, I wanted to – and did – practice, but I didn’t want to do so exclusively with him as my teacher.
On my last visit to him, I didn’t have the chance to ask Dadaji these questions. In any case, I was not inclined to take up his offer.
Dadaji had kindly offered me what he owned: his house and his wisdom. And from his compassionate heart, he suggested devices to me that he knew and taught from his personal experience: aloneness and practice. They were part of Dadaji’s own path that helped him reach the state he was in. Like Ramana Maharshi, he has remained a bachelor all his life.
At this point, I didn’t care much anymore about the issue of predestination versus free will. If everything was predestined, I thought, then my practicing was predestined too. Within that system of belief, if I thought that doing spiritual practice was a function of free will and an act of person doership, having that belief and doing those practices – which Ramesh Balsekar felt were unnecessary for enlightenment – was itself destined. By the same token, I could even get enlightened against my own will, if it were so destined. So why bother about predestination at all?
I was deeply touched by Dadaji’s personal example and attainment. His pointing out again and again the importance of practice strengthened the roots of meditation even more deeply in me. I am profoundly grateful to him for that.
Spurred on my Dadaji’s loving presence, deep peace, gentleness, and fatherly goodwill, I was now happy to continue my odyssey.
-Berthold Madhukar Thompson
From The Odyssey of Enlightenment: Rare Interviews with Enlightened Teachers of Our Time, chapter 8
See the post from chapter 5: Practice Until Stillness Becomes Permanent.
Amido and I spent some time with Dadaji, which you can read about on A Visitor From Beyond the Mind.