256. Anamika Borst

One spring afternoon in 2009, the last piece of the puzzle found its place, effortlessly. The simplicity of the information stared at me as I made my way back to the train station. While walking away from meeting Leo Hartong in Holland, his simple words “Yes, this is It,” had once and for all confirmed that I already knew the answers to the questions: “ Is it the Beingness of what we are?", "Is this what the search is all about?”, “Is this really It?”, “Is it really this simple?” It started as the trees lining the streets and the people walking and shopping. Nothing had changed and yet everything was different, direct, immediate. Not that I did not know this intimacy. I had been having Oneness experiences in which the little child, the adolescent, the adult disappeared, and the thing that remained was the field of awareness with sounds, sights, and smells in vibrant clarity. Only, it had taken a journey of 25 years to come to grasp that This is what it is all about. While I boarded the train, I wondered: “How come this obviousness had not been recognized before?”, “How can I have been so dense that I had failed again and again to notice it while it already stared at me right in the face all this time?” (Continued on Anamika's bio page.) Anamika's website: anamikaborst.com Book: Life at Zero distance: The freedom of being nothing and none The story of Anamika's owl. Interview recorded at the Science and Nonduality Conference, 10/23/2014 Wind noise may make parts of this interview difficult to hear. Here's a transcript that will help you follow it. Dutch transcript of this interview YouTube Video Chapters: 00:00:00 - Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump! 00:01:32 - Dutch people and speaking English 00:02:46 - Travel through Nepal and India 00:04:14 - The core of Sri Aurobindo's teachings 00:05:47 - Wrong ideas about enlightenment and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo 00:07:28 - Brahma Realization and the Interpretation of Teachings 00:08:57 - Understanding the system 00:10:27 - Loss of personality and self-exploration 00:11:43 - Discovering an unknown result 00:13:19 - Misuse of non-dual teaching 00:15:03 - Meeting with Leo Hartong in the Netherlands 00:16:10 - Deconditioning and experiential reality 00:17:43 - The spiritual quest 00:18:58 - No choice, everything is encounter and impulse in the direction 00:20:34 - Preference for Chocolate or Vanilla 00:22:27 - The Longing for Truth 00:23:41 - Releasing energetic tension 00:25:03 - Acceptance of what is 00:26:20 - The natural tendency towards health 00:27:40 - Unity that decides 00:29:06 - The Oneness of Things 00:30:45 - Ideas about something 00:31:43 - A caution about the tendency to say 00:33:36 - Meeting with Leo Hartong 00:34:45 - The process of personal growth and change 00:36:22 - The origins of the book 00:37:35 - The Old Age Home in Pondicherry 00:38:57 - Service as a spiritual practice 00:40:29 - Openness and inclusivity in life 00:42:15 - Interrogating concepts and beliefs 00:43:35 - A conversation with Anamika