A transcript of a conversation between PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle and Sensei Rajeev Sinha on why knowledge alone is not enough — on an overloaded mind, memories, ego, and swimming upstream toward the source on the path to liberation. Greetings and ritual forms of address have been omitted; the talk has been lightly edited for ease of reading.
Watch the full conversation on YouTubeDoes it make sense to watch old spiritual films?
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: Let me ask you a question that occurred to me yesterday. I noticed that the film Awake, which only a few years ago was available only on Netflix, is now available on YouTube. And the question is: does it make any sense for us, as students of Karauli Shankar Mahadev and as yogis, to watch these old films that describe a situation from perhaps a hundred years ago?
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: Before we go into the details, let us examine the reality. Why does a person need sadhana? Why should a person be inspired to follow the difficult path of sadhana?
The life we live is somewhat more complicated than it was a year ago, ten years ago, or centuries ago. Primarily because, with the level of distraction in which a person lives in today's modern world, there is very little space left in the mind. Technology interferes too much with the individual's mind, and the mind is not free at all.
Things that were prescribed a hundred years ago, if you follow them in exactly the same way, you will not be able to follow them. And if you cannot follow them, it becomes nothing more than empty talk, just a set of information that does not allow you to go deeper into practice. And until you go deeper into practice, it simply will not work.
The world has become very complicated, and because of technology, the structure of the human mind has also become very complicated. The approach that is being proposed is basically suitable for people who are completely empty and ready to set out as seekers of truth.
Today, however, a person has to manage a demanding physical life in which they have to manage things, live, compete, succeed, and find time for themselves so that they can actually embark on a spiritual path. How can they do that?
The point is that we need a contemporary solution — sadhana, a path that is very contemporary, that addresses the problems of everyday life in such a way that you are completely free from the grip of the present age and successfully manage yourself and your ordinary physical life, while still being able to find that subtle gap and create the space to embark on your spiritual journey.
Human life is only a cluster of memories
In that case, it is necessary to understand that human life is only a cluster of memories. The more memories you have, the greater the complexity in your character, your personality, and your everyday actions.
So how do you gradually clean it? The important thing is that you have to begin at the point from which you started.
The danger of following something that does not correspond to the present environment or to your current challenges is that it will be theoretical rather than practical.
I recommend that everyone truly live life in the direction they are meant to go, and while solving each of life's problems, find the space to make the practice demonstrable through results.
The best way to find the answer to such questions is this: look at whatever you listen to, whatever you do — does it produce a result? And if it produces a result, is it merely theoretical, or is it demonstrable?
I firmly believe — and Darbar believes, Gurudev believes and proclaims — that if there is no evidence, it means that it is not relevant to you. And if you are on the right path, it will always produce evidence, and the results will be demonstrable.
Ultimately, the path is an exploration of existence. It is a path of direct experience, and that will bring demonstrable results. If that does not happen, it is merely poetic expression. It is as simple as that.
Resisting gravity as a sign of purification
What is purification?
Your body becomes lighter, as though you were resisting gravity. Even if you weigh one hundred kilograms, you will feel as though you weigh only twenty-five kilograms, so light. And eventually you weigh only one hundred grams. That is your inner feeling.
It is not that your physical weight or volume becomes smaller, but you begin to resist gravity. This is resisting illusion, which a person approaches through deeper study of sadhana.
What usually happens is that when the times change and we try to find solutions in old texts, we never find them. We have to begin at the point where you are.
For example, you are in the Sahara, where the daytime temperature is over fifty-five, perhaps sixty degrees Celsius, and you are wearing a jacket that is good enough for minus forty degrees. It will not work. You have to take it off, because your behaviour must always correspond by its nature to the present.
You have to look at how you have become a dumping ground for the memories of others, something that simply did not exist a century ago. You watch television. Television did not exist before. Your sources have expanded, and technology brings with it the danger of turning you into a dumping ground for memories.
Digital distraction and a mind with no space
Right now distraction — I call it digital distraction — is at its peak. You cannot live without it. Your mind literally has no space.
All the complications and all the answers you try to find are sought through that digital solution. The mind is overwhelmed, completely captured by the feedback you receive from different sources of information.
What exactly is sadhana for? To get to yourself. To leave everything behind. For this purpose, a person becomes a sannyasin, one who renounces, and leaves the world.
But now you cannot leave the world. Even if you are in a Himalayan cave, there is a mobile network. Technology really follows you, and you are so accustomed to it that the mind is automatically driven towards it.
The more information you collect and the more you become a dumping ground for memories, it may be good for your physical life, in which you may appear intellectual, but you will be far from wisdom.
Techniques that once worked miracles will now not even allow you to take off. When you close your eyes, thousands of questions arise that did not exist before — because you are already wandering inside your own rubbish heap. Before, it was a clean field.
People think that they think. In reality, you do not think. People do not think. It is already there in the form of memories. You take one step forward and get the identical thing from the cloud.
The first step is always the present
So how do you begin? The very first step is from your present.
If you begin from the past, you will never get anywhere. If you try to go into the future, you will never be able to begin. You can begin only from the present — from the current complexity, current problems, current lifestyle.
First you have to break through the inner wall within yourself. And then gradually expand this process of breaking through to the outer layers.
One day you will see that you have truly reached the right path to liberation. And at every stage, as you continue breaking through the walls, there is evidence — not merely a feeling, but something quantifiable, measurable, and achievable.
Intellectual prison
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: It is simple, as you say, but at the same time very difficult. What I have noticed here in the Western world is that people think they are really interested in yoga, but only on an intellectual level.
They like talking about it and listening to things, and they think they are making progress. But as soon as they realise that it is not only an intellectual level, but that they would actually have to practise, they become afraid of leaving their intellectual comfort and do nothing.
So how do we break through what I call the inner, actually intellectual, prison?
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: That is actually the answer itself. Your question already contains the answer deep within it.
You have to understand how to begin. If a person is intellectually full and tries to bring in more intellectual information, nothing gets inside.
Sadhana is the first step. It begins with this: empty yourself. Empty yourself. Empty yourself.
If you empty yourself, only then will intellectual information also work. Otherwise it will be ineffective and will only increase your inappropriate ego that you know so much, while in reality you know nothing.
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: Exactly as you say, the intellect or ego does not even allow you to begin sadhana, because the intellect thinks it knows and thinks it is already on the path, and it does not allow you to begin.
And there is another thing I hear almost every time: somehow the idea has spread that when you meditate, or when you are enlightened, it happens without effort.
People mistakenly think — and it is a very common misconception — that doing nothing is exactly their path, that it is their karma and everything is perfect. Could you please elaborate on this so that it is clear to everyone, even a layperson?
Sadhana means swimming upstream
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: That is very interesting. Not only in the Western world, but all over the world, including India, people think: just let yourself be carried along. Be like a river and let it flow until it merges with the ocean.
That is one approach that will never liberate you.
Just look at the example of a river. When it flows downstream from the mountains, it hits rocks, is battered against them, changes direction, and simply continues flowing until it merges with the ocean.
And many masters promote this as a unique idea of meditation and spiritual life. But that is not the reality, because the water evaporates. Even if it merges, it evaporates, reaches the clouds, returns as rain, and the cycle never ends.
In reality, sadhana means going to the source, to where the river began, going to its origin. It is difficult swimming upstream, not downstream.
And there you have to prepare very carefully and go further into the details of how it works — and this is how you proceed on your journey upstream.
At every stage there are temptations. You lose, become exhausted, and are pushed back downstream. You set out again, and then once again you need another push to move forward.
In the same way, in sadhana there are many distractions that will always try with enormous force to push you downstream. And you again make the effort, perform kriyas, perform techniques blessed by the guru, the complete master, and then you are able to swim through and complete the journey upstream to your source.
When I say source, I mean your origin — a time long before existence itself began to exist. That is liberation.
Four levels of existence and the need for a complete master
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: Thank you very much, Sensei. It follows from practice and also from what you have said that when you are on the right path, you can see something that shows you how to recognise that you are on the right path. But these things do not necessarily have to be positive — sometimes old karma comes to the surface, sometimes illness. Could you elaborate on that?
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: You cannot determine it yourself in practice. There will always be temptation.
People think they are inspired, but that is not actually reality. Because you think that physical existence itself is physical existence and that existence is all about that. That is not the reality.
Long before physical existence there is astral existence. Before astral there is causal existence. Long before causal there is super-causal, and then finally the state of non-existence.
You will think that you are on the right path, but it may turn out that you are actually being controlled by some memory from astral existence, that it accompanies you and leads you in the wrong direction, and you will never recognise it.
You will never recognise it even through any master — until the master himself proves that he is a complete master and controls not only physical, but astral, causal and super-causal existence.
He has access to it, insight into it, can intervene in it, and can truly control it.
Until that happens, sadhana will never succeed. So what do you need? You need the company of someone much higher — someone who has experienced sadhana for ages, for a long period of time, and allows you to experience every word he speaks about.
It is not only that he allows you to experience it; the experience becomes demonstrable for you. If this happens, you are on the right path. Otherwise, perhaps one in a billion could do it alone — but otherwise it is impossible.
And that is why you would see that whoever we call an incarnation of the highest consciousness also needed a guru, a master. Jesus needed a guru, Krishna needed a guru, Buddha needed a guru, everyone needed a master to guide them, otherwise it becomes a land of wandering.
Rama had a guru — everyone needed a guru, because when you are in a physical body, you are in the grip of illusion. Everything that is visible is illusion.
And to get out of that illusion, you need a master who has gone beyond illusion and can go beyond illusion into the highest consciousness. Simple.
The slavery of thoughts
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: So it is actually the same as with the first group of people we talked about, whose intellect deceives them and who think they do not need to do anything, only flow downstream.
So when you begin practising and receive some signs and think you are on the right path, you can very well be mistaken in the same way, because of maya.
Without a true, complete, realised guru, you have no chance.
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: Absolutely no chance.
There is a very interesting story connected with such a state of mind. You move around in a one-room apartment and think that the apartment itself is the universe. That is not reality.
Such intellectuals live with a tremendous number of complications inside themselves. And it is their choice.
If your karma, your journey, has gone through this cycle many times, a spark will always suddenly appear within you that will lead you onto the right path. Until that happens, it simply does not happen in the way a person may think.
Such people are very good people because they will be born again and again. And at least the world will always have some intellectual people around it, because they will never become liberated.
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: Yes, if they are not tempted to follow some incompletely realised guru, someone who says he is a guru and can lead them completely astray. They can become ill. Many things can happen to them.
And I think that this is a great danger now, especially in the Western world — you have thousands of kinds of yoga, thousands of masters, the internet full of them, YouTube full of them. I think this is actually a very dangerous thing.
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: It is. It is not only in the Czech Republic, it is also in India. And there is only one reason for it: because you become complacently satisfied, and that complacency is mainly because you are born slaves.
You love slavery. The slavery of thoughts.
And that slavery takes you from being a slave to one thing to being a slave to another thing.
Liberation, a better way to proceed, is not through slavery, but as a revolutionary, learning to rebel so that you can continue learning.
Geographical boundaries as a human creation
What do people do? They see it, they feel it: oh, it is good, and they stop there.
And that stopping actually leads to slavery. It is not that they stop primarily because they are satisfied — it is because they carry within themselves a memory of slavery accumulated over time.
They are never liberated.
Look at how we have been educated in the modern world. You are born as a slave. First you are born into a family and carry the family heritage. Then you become a slave to the culture in which you were born. Then you are limited to a city.
And if you outgrow even that, you become very strongly attached to the idea of a geographical boundary that you call a country. And you never get out of it.
Geographical boundaries are a human creation, not a natural process. They are useful for regulating a democratic system so that the system functions properly. But that geographical boundary should not be a limitation.
Yet we are taught this. For ages we have lived through warfare — first it was kingdoms, one king fighting another, village chiefs, clans, kings, countries.
You are never merely a human being. You are never beyond the boundary. You have been taught this all along, and in the process you have forgotten where you came from.
You think you are supreme. And that is slavery — the slavery of the idea that you are liberated and therefore can do anything, even control nature.
That is not reality. Liberation means a deeper sense of coexistence.
But that is a broader and deeper subject. A person must begin emptying themselves from the point at which they stand at that moment.
Empty yourself — even at the cost of rebelling against your own teacher
You must empty yourself. Continue emptying yourself.
Do you think I am a slave to my master? I am not. I always rebel in order to know more deeply, and that makes my guru very happy.
That is how I grew on my spiritual path — always rebelling against my own teacher simply so that I could continue learning.
And finally I reached the point where I found a purna guru, a complete master, who could satisfy me immediately not with words, but through action itself.
And the best action is this: if you have any complications in the body in your present life, tap, they are gone. That is the first indicator, the first sign.
It is very interesting. You read about masters, about yogis. And those masters and yogis are running to hospitals, they have so many complications. Are they liberated?
Liberation is emptying yourself of all illness, all pain, suffering, greed and anger.
If you think you are swimming intellectually, you swim only to the point where you get nowhere. You end up with a complication.
So the best way to judge a person is not to look at what they do, but to look at the way they leave their body.
The last page is the most important page for judging a tradition.
When I speak about our tradition as we know it: Babaji did not merely leave the body — he entered mahasamadhi, came out, entered again, closed it, and liberation means every one of his atoms.
The body disappeared. It did not decay over time. It simply disappeared.
That is liberation. You liberated all the atoms and all the memories associated with those atoms. Everything is liberated at once.
And this is possible in only one way: empty yourself, empty yourself.
If someone attracts you, please verify: are they truly capable of emptying you? Does time stop for you? Do you become timeless in the sense that you go beyond time? Do events cease to be relevant to you?
That is the evidence on your path. You have to be very careful. And if this does not happen, learn to rebel. Do not become a slave.
Know the limitations of your teachers, but keep going
You do not have to be rude.
I know the limitations of my father — that he could teach me only up to a certain point. I know the limitations of my teacher at primary school, my secondary-school teacher, my university professor.
That does not mean that I become rude or insensitive towards them. I thank them for moving me forward.
But that does not stop my journey. It is an endless journey to the source. The journey to the source is precisely the journey to liberation. Nothing else.
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: So I understand it as meaning that you cannot get where you are going with memories, with smriti. We began this conversation with memories and we end with memories. So everything begins and ends with memories.
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: Exactly.
There is nothing in this world except memories. And, of course, memories float in the Atman, which is omnipresent, which does not leave, which is not born.
The deeper you go, the more interesting it becomes as an exploration and a journey of direct experience. You experience it; it is not merely something you have heard about.
And step by step you empty yourself. So it is recommended not to enter that dumping ground. Rather, clean the mess, clean the rubbish heap. And then the boundary that is there will be broken.
The balloon analogy
Look at it this way. You take a balloon and inflate it. Inside the balloon there is air, and outside the balloon there is air — that is pure consciousness, both.
And this is the human body.
The memory of a balloon gives you a balloon. Now it is up to you — what do you want to be? A balloon, or a tyre of a passenger car, a truck, or a huge industrial dump truck?
That is what memories are — the thickness, the layer of memories. The more you collect, the more imprisoned you become.
And you have to tear it apart — not so that it bursts and some part remains. Tearing means that everything disappears, the whole grouping of atoms disappears.
That is a much deeper study, which can only be experienced through sadhana. And these things cannot be understood through intellectual speculation. They have to be practised. It is as simple as that.
Perception develops through practice, not intellect
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: Thank you very much, Sensei. There is one more thing we could share, and that is perception. How does it change during your sadhana, during your practice? I think, I feel that as you lose memories, your perception changes and expands. Could you elaborate on that?
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: This is actually a much deeper subject and should best be practised through sadhana. It cannot be grasped intellectually.
Intellectual information is only a signpost — like when you leave Prague and have to drive to Paris, you have a sign saying: Paris, two thousand kilometres. It only tells you that this is the route of your journey. It is not your destination.
You have to step forward, move forward, continually move forward. Only then will it happen.
It is an exploration of existence rather than talking about existence. It has to be experienced through sadhana: here is the teaching, you receive the teaching, and immediately after that you put the teaching into principle, into practice.
And that is how your perception develops. Perception is the starting point. Without perception, sadhana cannot even begin.
You think you are doing sadhana, dancing around, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna — you are nowhere. The only difference is that you are wearing different clothes.
Everything is the same. You are just dancing around. Whether you sing a carol, or dance and sing in a church or temple, it leads nowhere.
You have to move forward. And moving forward is not intellectual; it is through practice. You understand teaching A. Then you return to practising that teaching.
It becomes a principle. You continue practising it. It becomes your experience, and that experience becomes your perception.
Until you attain that perception through your own journey, it is not yours and it can disappear at any time.
And you will find yourself sitting back at the beginning, where you started. And many times you will find yourself even further back, in the worst state.
I have seen many masters fall from their present position into a state worse than hell.
That is the hard reality.
Even a master can fall — awake twenty-four hours a day
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: I think this is another thing people do not know — that even a master can fall down, completely down. So we have to remain alert, alert, alert, and constantly observe ourselves.
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: Yes.
Twenty-four hours a day you have to remain alert. Never rest.
You are swimming upstream. Your swimming has to be continuous. Many times you cannot overcome the current, but at least you remain where you are.
And many times you will see that you are being pulled backwards, and then you push yourself forward again. That is called practice.
Through practice you continue moving forward. And here comes the blessing of the Mother, nature, and the complete master, who simply lifts you up and places you one hundred metres higher on the path upstream.
Without the blessing of the master and the Mother, sadhana can never even begin.
Purity as the first step of sadhana
In the Western world, and even in India, all over the world, people are filled with sexual thoughts.
And that is why their consciousness continues to live in the sexual organ. They are unable to move upward.
Making money, enjoying life, having sex, having multiple partners — and you think you are going to do sadhana? Impossible.
The first step is to clean this up. Whatever is in the past is gone. Make a firm decision — remain with your life partner, and if that is not possible, then with no one. And from there, both of you move forward.
When you look at others as sexual objects, forget about moving forward; you are going miles and miles downward.
And finally kundalini, the Mother herself, withdraws from it. She will not exist within you.
So you may think you are doing a great job, but the reality is that you are deeply in the negative.
The world has been completely led astray by many masters who themselves are not free from sexual perception and thoughts.
Juggling with words
And such people teach and lead many people astray. That is dangerous. They themselves go to hell and lead millions of people and followers to hell.
I mean, I invite all such people. Welcome. Everyone is welcome to debate and discuss, but on the basis of evidence.
In a live broadcast you will see that it does not work. It is only a juggling of words that they have really mastered. And people want something easier that entertains them.
In a sense, that is better — it is much better than dancing around and indulging in deep improprieties. At least you are moving forward because, at least for the moment, you are away from nonsense.
But if you think you will become liberated this way, you will meditate and go further — it is not possible.
You cannot even think beyond the boundary. Can you hold on to a new idea if someone presents it to you so that you can truly examine it?
You simply reject it immediately without knowing it. And that is the block that has been created within you so permanently by the same cycle in which you allow yourself to be caught in such luxurious, comfortable juggling with words.
Get out of it. That is the only way.
PhDr. Jiří Kočandrle: Thank you very much. I hope we will see each other again soon and that we might discuss a subject such as consciousness.
Sensei Rajeev Sinha: Certainly, we will.