Waking up and Waking Down

I'd like to tell you just a bit about who I am and why I teach and transmit this particular form of spirituality. I'd like to invite you to take a look at something that's had a profound effect on my life and could on yours - even if you've sworn that you would never check out another spiritual teaching in your life.

If you are someone who is already involved in your own form of spiritual life: You will find that the transmission and perspective of this work quickens and intensifies all of the other forms of Dharma and self-exploration that you're engaged in, whether emotional work, therapy, meditation, self-inquiry, devotion, ritual, prayer and invocation or whatever. I encourage everyone to make use of this teaching and transmission in whatever way works for them.

When I first came into contact with Saniel Bonder, I was already a veteran of spiritual life, and I was quite sure that there was no point in seeking any further.

I had been involved with Eastern spiritual traditions for twenty years including study and practice in the oldest forms of Tibetan Buddhism and the non-dual teachings of Advaita Vedanta.

Papaji

After hearing the teachings of HWL Poonja (also known as Papaji) in 1992, I spent five years traveling back and forth to India to be with him. The kindness and personal attention that he extended to me was beyond intimate. This amazing being effortlessly blessed me in a way that is still with me. I carry him in my heart even now. One could say that for me he IS my heart. Through his grace I had realized my nature as unchanging awareness and discovered the source of peace within. I had come to know myself not as a body or a personality but as pure Consciousness. My living relationship with him gave my life profound meaning. Out of great love and respect, I happily visited him as often as possible, drinking in his powerful presence while receiving his darshan. Papaji gave freely of himself and he delivered the goods as promised, and for this I will always be thankful.

And yet after his passing it began to dawn on me that without his physical presence, the written teachings and techniques left me feeling empty of meaning. It wasn't that they were not effective - they certainly put me in the formless reality. But I began to wonder about the rest of me. What about living my daily life? Was there a purpose to my existence in form?

During the time I spent abroad it became obvious that the native people of India were very different from those of us raised in the West. Despite their great hospitality and my love for India, no amount of time spent there would make me one of them. As a foreigner I was only able to receive the teachings outside of their context, because a specific Eastern psyche and culture was the environment that gave birth to them and those were not mine.

Incorporating Eastern culture into my world was helpful, but I didn't have a sense of how to live my truth. What I received from Papaji was my Self as Consciousness Itself. Other than that, I was more or less on my own. It was clear to me that while ancient Dharma could put me in touch with my Buddha-nature, it didn't necessarily help me (a 21st century Westerner), to get a grasp of how to live an authentic life in modern America. It wasn't designed to do that.

Saniel

So how to live an awakened life? After realizing my nature as freedom from definitions and limits I was not about to follow rules or ideals that came from the conditioned minds of other people. I wanted to be plugged into my own unique individual life's guidance.

When I first began to check into the teachings of "Waking Down in Mutuality" I was intrigued, but to be perfectly honest, upon my first meeting with Saniel Bonder I was not impressed. I had read his book, and while I did not disagree with much of what he taught, it did not seem to be anything that I had not heard before. I found one aspect of what he was saying particularly annoying: Saniel seemed to be implying that most if not all forms of teaching in the more ancient schools led to a realization that was not altogether "embodied". In fact his claim to having a unique teaching seemed rather grandiose to me.

So upon attending one of his sittings in 1998 (there were about six people present) I mentioned to him that I felt that there were many Indian spiritual schools (like the schools of Tantra) that taught embodied awakening exactly as he did and that it was simply that there were cultural factors and language that made for the appearance of difference. He answered me, explaining that while it was true that culture played a part, it didn't account for all the differences in the embodied realization that he and his friends were living. I was not satisfied with his reply.

It's pretty likely that would have been our last meeting, except for one thing: after the sitting he invited me to lunch with his students. He asked me to sit next to him and we had a very friendly, rather down to earth meal together in which he was totally available to me, not simply as a "teacher" but as a fellow traveler and human being. In the conversations we had, it was plain that he was actually interested in my life and background, and listened to my story attentively. I found him to be sincere and very interesting.

My first Waking Down Weekend (1998)

Within months I found myself (in spite of my doubts), attending one of the "Waking Down Weekend" intensives. Two things happened there that opened me up to the possibilities in this teaching that I hadn't glimpsed before.

This was not like any weekend I'd done. From my previous spiritual background, I was used to satsangs, retreats and intensives where there was one teacher and usually anywhere from 30 to 80 participants, in fact in some gatherings there could even be as many as 500 in attendance. At the Waking Down Weekend there were six or seven participants and four teachers including Saniel. The teachers with him were not his assistants, but full teachers in their own right. Saniel taught the beginning session on Friday and the last session on Sunday and the other teachers taught the rest of the time.

So, at the Saturday morning session there were three teachers in the room: Ted Strauss & Hillary Davis (a married couple) and a third woman teacher. They invited any questions or comments. It was difficult, but I felt that I had to be totally candid so I said something like "I'm here as open minded as possible, but I have to be honest with you that there are some things that I don't agree with here. In particular, Saniel seems to imply that this form of realization has not happened until now and that this is something unique in the sacred traditions. I feel that this form of awakening (as I read it in Saniel's books), has most likely already happened plenty of times in other schools in India and Asia and perhaps in other places we don't know of."

I waited for the reply. I was thanked for being so honest and taking the risk to speak my truth. I was then told that I was doing everyone present a service by speaking into the room feelings that others may have, but didn't feel safe enough to say themselves. Then Ted said, "I understand your point and I can see why you'd feel that way, but I agree with Saniel and I don't think that this particular form of realization has appeared anywhere else that I know of." This was pretty much what I expected to hear, though I was impressed that he was so gracious. What his wife Hillary said next however was quite a surprise; "Actually, I agree with you Krishna, I don't agree with Ted and Saniel on this one" she didn't seem to be joking... I was amazed. Then what the third teacher said put a smile on my lips: "Saniel teaches that?"

So here I was with three different teachers with their own very different comments on what I said. The strangest thing was that there was no interest in "getting it straight" or having the right answer and it all felt just fine, no one had a problem with any of it. There was room for disagreement. "Wow " I thought, "this IS different".

The second thing that caught my attention was seeing Hillary Davis work with one of the participants. Hillary, like me, has a background in Advaita Vedanta with Papaji. One of the central understandings of many in that school is that attachment to a person's personal story (how they see themselves, how they think of themselves and their past) is an obstacle to clear seeing and should not be taken too seriously. What I saw as Hillary listened to one person's story of suffering was subtle and difficult to convey: I could clearly see and feel that Hillary was seeing this person as consciousness itself, free of all limiting definitions of mind AND AT THE SAME TIME Hillary was taking the person's story 100% seriously and seemed to be believing everything this person conveyed about their life experience. It was obvious that the person was being deeply seen as a person complete with limitations but not held to them, because they were also seen as being free of them.

The actual seeing of this is really inexplicable, but when I saw it I immediately was reminded of a story about The Buddha that I had heard. Someone asked him what the most important part of his Dharma was. "Was it Emptiness? Was it no-self? Was it impermanence?" "No" he answered, "It is compassion. And anywhere that you find a teaching on compassion, go there". As I watched Hillary and the other exchanges on that weekend I thought, "This is compassion, I need to learn this".

Embodied Awakening of The Heart, a 2nd Birth

I knew that the only way for me to test the claims of this work was in my own body, so I began working with Ted privately.

After about two years using the Dharma and transmission of Waking Down in Mutuality, there was a shift in my own experience of my body-mind such that there has been a fundamental difference in my own sense of what I am since April of 2000. I am, all at once: consciousness, my body and all of its relationships (including everything and everyone that I perceive). "The one taste of emptiness and form" is obvious in a way that it never was. Saniel calls this kind of awakening "the second birth"; I experience it as a deepening of my realization of consciousness that I did not anticipate as possible. It is such an embrace of limits that the All of me is awakened: body, soul and (believe it or not) ego-personality. Previously, I had awakened in the midst of the dream, now I am also awake as the dream itself. This is not merely a belief or idea, but a bodily registered recognition. What is realized and lived is not the absence of duality, but the unity of duality and non-duality as Onlyness. As I began to reassess Saniel's claims for this Dharma, there developed a new appreciation of just how profound a teacher he is.

What I find particularly unique in this work is its understanding of both the evolution of humanity and the evolution of awakening. While there is a great deal of overlap between this and other forms of Dharma (and in this sense it is in continuity with the ancient dharma), this is different in the sense that 21st century individual human persons like us simply did not exist when those dharmas were developed. Even in the ancient Tantric schools which embrace all of life (including in some cases the personality itself) there are no teachings that take into account the 21st century individual. The ancient teachings can only address what hasn't changed in the last thousand years. The way in which this work is different is the way in which we in the modern West are different. We are individuals: not tribal members, not caste members with a predetermined code of conduct and livelihood. In the culture and time that the ancient teachings were developed in, everything about being a human was predetermined by society and tradition. Everything from what you did for a living to whom you married, even rules for how to live as a "holy man" were laid out. Figuring out what to do with our lives is a new dilemma. Up until a few hundred years ago, this business of deciding how to live our own lives simply did not exist. Today consciousness is awakening in the West in bodies and personalities that want to discover for themselves who they are.

So I found myself checking into the perspectives of Saniel Bonder not because they promised answers (they did not) but because they invited me to get in touch with my own honest questions. Saniel teaches that by simultaneously acknowledging our finite and our infinite existence, our internal guidance system comes alive as never before. To awaken as consciousness is an incredible blessing in itself, but I've found that the full validation of our impersonal and personal natures catalyzes a transformation process that is at once natural and supernatural.

Interestingly, he claims that this transformation of the body in Consciousness is possible because of a little known discovery first made by the Indian sage Ramana Maharshi: the realization of the root-source of both Consciousness and life at the literal, physical source of the heartbeat in the right side of the human heart. Whatever the reason, this stuff works.

This is a profound awakening to the non-separateness of Consciousness and matter by deeply embracing BOTH our human and transcendent natures, not only on our own but also in deepening love and trust with others. To my great joy, I've found that this orientation provides the secrets that make it possible to permanently ground luminous awareness deeply into ordinary life and relationships in a manner that traditional paths alone just did not do for me.

If you want it, this can be an opportunity to explore and awaken all of who you are, at your own pace in a relaxed and safe environment. You can learn to stop using one part of yourself to avoid the other. I can assist you into your own incarnating process, so that your entire life becomes an event of recognizing that you are both always already complete and always becoming more of who you truly are. What a mysterious paradox!

You can email me at: goodlucknow@comcast.net

Sincerely,

Krishna

2004 Krishna Gauci

"Krishna Gauci is a talented Teacher of the Waking Down in Mutuality process. I am especially pleased to have someone present our work who had previously entered into a profound realization of the Self through the Advaita tradition.

Krishna has come into a clear and vibrant awakening, transmission, and teaching capacity in our deep-feeling embodiment and mutual exploration of that same Self. I heartily recommend his services, including the Waking Down teachings and events and his own personal offerings."
  Saniel Bonder, Founder of the Waking Down in Mutuality work.