Baba, would you tell us more about your work in India?

Working for the poor and needy in the streets and slums of Calcutta and in the interior villages of the Sundarbans Islands, south of Calcutta, has been the richest experience of my life.

I have been working with Indian village women to empower them to stand on their own feet without the need for charity. And, while working with street children, I have learned that it is not money or riches that give happiness. These children are open books of scripture from the world of spirituality.

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am a child of Mother Nature, the Mother Divine, blessed to have the shelter of a great Himalayan Yogi when young. I have practiced, under him, the simple path of love and surrender for 47 years!

I am just an instrument of the divine. I have no ambition, nothing to attain. I am happy moment to moment, moving through time, serving the Divine in all that is manifest.

Many of us our feeling a lot of anxiety surrounding the environmental climate crisis and the current state of politics in our country. How do we move past this fear and into a space where we can be helpful to the situation?

Anything that happens in individual or collective life at any point of time and space has its own purpose which is ordained by higher intelligence.

If you were to read through the history of mankind and the world you will see that we always passed through great upheavals and suffering and there was no time when everything was perfect.

But be assured of the reality — that night is the darkest before the dawn. All these crises that humanity is creating will come back to demand a price, and then humans will awaken to a higher collective awareness to love Mother Earth and each other. Already millions of good people around the world are working for this awakening to a new dawn of conscious awareness. Yoga, Meditation, holistic healing, vegetarian organic food, planting of billions of trees, are all becoming mainstream which is the most positive sign.

The solution lies in first and foremost to change oneself. Unless we change, nothing changes. When we change — living quiet peaceful lives, even if there are distractions and distress on the periphery — then we become the first vehicle of a lasting change in the environment, and peace becomes a possibility. Let us get into deeper quest of our Inner World and bring change there and the rest follows...

What message or experience do you hope to impart to those who attend your event?

I have a simple message that I live by myself. I take each day at a time and live it to the full, to the brim, living moment to moment in the awareness that the Divine is taking care of everything. My practice is rooted in the wisdom of the sages and masters that all Sense of Doership is false. That I am only a Witness. That I have to always remain in that state. That is my sadhana.

I am sure we all will enjoy the journey that will take us beyond the fears and anxieties of the mind in a state of unconsciousness to trust in the universal higher powers and experience the bliss of oneness.

-Bodhi Shuddhaanandaa

Interviewed by Patricia