Lisa [00:00:00]:

Hello, beautiful listeners. And welcome back to the Goddess School podcast. Today, I am just thrilled to have a very special guest, Arundhati Subramaniam, and she is the author of several books. And one of the ones that we're going to be talking about today is Women Who Wear Only Themselves. So thank you so much for joining me today, Arundhati.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:00:25]:

Thank you, Lisa. Very glad to be here.

Lisa [00:00:28]:

Yeah. So I have been going through your book. I'm almost finished reading it, and I have to tell you, it has just been like such a breath of fresh air reading about your story and the four women whose story you tell as well. Just so much full of inspiration. And before we dive in, though, I would love to hear, because you just have such an interesting story and background. If you could just tell us a little bit about your story and what brought you to writing the book.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:00:59]:

It's a wonderful question. And I'm going to think of the the most abbreviated response to that that I can give you, which is, you know, I'd always believed, Lisa, that I was essentially a poet. And I think I am. I mean, poetry is what excites me. I spent a long time writing on the performing arts and literature. So poetry, dance, theater, I grew up in Bombay, and it seemed like an exciting life in an exciting city, an edgy life in an edgy city. And I thought my answers were going to come largely from the arts and from poetry in particular. But I think there were certain questions, questions that are not new, questions that we've all had, questions about living and dying, and loss, and pain, and suffering, and all of that that we all have, and we've all had forever.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:01:52]:

I certainly did, even as a child. And I realized that while the arts were a fine place to ask those questions, and I'm glad I devoted my life to the arts, I also realized that I needed guidance as those questions started deepening. So around 97, I had an experience that I couldn't quite understand or name. And for want of a better word, I call it a near death experience. But it felt to me like all the reference points that had been important and familiar to me, the people I loved, the cats that I loved, my work, my friends, all of them began to seem shadowy. Even the very minor things that I considered to be my achievements just turned shadowy. And around that time, it lasted about a week. But as I started emerging from that dark place, which for me was mysterious and, still remains mysterious.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:02:53]:

I don't know why it happened. And when it passed, I was very relieved. But as I started emerging, I also realized that I could no longer simply consider myself a writer and poet, that I was far more fundamentally a seeker. And I think that fueled another kind of journey in my life. They seemed like parallel tracks. I was a closet seeker and I was a I was a daytime writer. You know, that was my public profile as a critic and poet and all of that in my country. But I realized I couldn't any longer.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:03:32]:

As the quest began gaining momentum, I realized I couldn't live in these compartments any longer. And so in 02/2004, I met my spiritual guide, and my own quest began taking on a certain direction. And with that, with the deepening of my spiritual journey, my writing began to change. So it affected my poetry, which is now much more, I think, perforated with silence than ever before, and it also affected my prose. So what I started writing about changed, how I started writing about it also changed. And before I I hand this back to you, I just want to say that I had already written, Lisa, about, in my prose work, I had written about certain spiritual subjects. So I had written a book on the Buddha for Penguin India, for example. And I wrote a biography of Sadhguru, the contemporary mystic and teacher.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:04:39]:

And I loved doing the work that I did. But a question that remained for me, even as I was doing that, and which gathered, I think, fuel later, was, what about the women? Where are the women? So while I've been very inspired by the lives of male mystics, and I'm deeply grateful to what I've learned from them, I also started growing increasingly curious about women on the path. And I feel many of them have remained either shadowy and undocumented, or they have been turned into plaster saints, you know, beautiful calendar art. But in both cases, we don't have a sense of the viscerality and the realness of the women behind them. You know, who were these women? So much of my work now has been about reclaiming these women for myself, women from the Indian Subcontinent down the ages, but also contemporary women, and listening to them afresh in all their power, all their sensuality, all their danger, hearing them as full flesh and blood women with their own bodies and their own bewilderments, trying to listen to them anew.

Lisa [00:06:01]:

Yeah. Oh, that's so beautiful. And, first, I do wanna say just your book, the the way it's written, the poetry interspersed throughout is just so beautiful. So I think the content is just terribly inspiring, but just the language, the prose, the poetry just really just makes it a spiritual experience. So thank you for that. One of the things that you say early on in the book, and you just said it as well, too, that I thought was really interesting is that you talk about women who don't need to document their existence. And I really love that because I believe we live in such a culture where everything needs to be documented. Look at, I'm going to church, look at, I'm going to meditate.

Lisa [00:06:43]:

I'm going to pray. And we have these like little mean soundbites of spirituality. And yet you show that you can be a spiritual person, a spiritual leader, and it doesn't have to be documented. And thank you for bringing those voices to us because I just think that's so important. Can you tell me a little bit too, just just how you feel about that sense of, like, the spirituality, how it is in our modern culture, where everything is documented and just the importance and the wisdom of being able to have these conversations with these with these women?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:07:22]:

Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up because I think it's a subject of some unease for many of us, Lisa, you know, and I think the unease that people have often provokes even more, even greater levels of self projection and self advertisement. And sometimes that is so counterproductive. You know, I've realized this personally in my own journey as a poet. It's not just what we are saying that is important, it is how we are saying it that is important. And very often, if we simply up the decibel level in order to be heard, we distort the integrity of our own communication. So I found that as a poet, for instance, very often there are times you may want to raise your voice over a New York siren as I'm doing now. And there are times the mic is of great value, but there are also times when you know the importance of the murmur.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:08:20]:

You know the importance of the whisper. And it is important to be able periodically to say, I choose the murmur over the megaphone, and that's my choice. So for me, this understanding has deepened with my own practice of poetry. But I realized that in the clamor of the world that we live in today, where the levels of self congratulation and self projection are just so high, I think part of my reason for writing this book even was because I wanted to talk about those women who prioritize that murmur over the megaphone and who realized that sometimes by dropping your voice, you can be heard much more profoundly than by raising it. And, there are women, there are a few women who are spiritual leaders in India, and I'm delighted that they are there. But it was a very conscious decision in this book to speak of not the superstars, but to speak of those who walk quiet journeys, who find their own daily ways of improvising their lives even as they speak, and who are asking themselves very, very important questions about, you know, existential questions and living them, living those out, not simply projecting them. So it it I'm so glad you brought this up because it was very fundamental to me. I remember being an interlocutor for a book at a literary festival in India, which was about Hinduism.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:09:59]:

And it was by Shashi Tharoor, who's a friend and a wonderful writer. And his book was Why I am a Hindu, a fine book. I was asking him questions about it, and it was an interesting discussion at the Jaipur Lit Fest. But one thing that struck me as I read it was, are all the important figures in the history of faith male? And if they are, is it simply because they made damn sure they were documented? You know? So, yes, because they were sectarian founders or because they wrote metaphysical treatises that later became, you know, were considered terribly important by the spiritual academy, the religious academy. These people are documented. But down history, down spiritual history, there have been women who have walked the path in dazzling ways and have remained largely unarchived. So a lot of my work in the past decade is really about trying to reclaim those voices for myself and for a wider listenership because I believe that exists. These are not just for other women.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:11:14]:

I think men and women alike, collectively, we yearn. We thirst for a less lopsided, spiritual history. We all want a more inclusive, less exclusionary spiritual culture that we can say we are proud heirs.

Lisa [00:11:33]:

Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. There's actually so many things that you just said that I want to dive into. One thing though, since we were talking about the men and women, I would love to get your thoughts. Is there a different spiritual path for men versus women? Like I often think that like the masculine way is really kind of, you know, is very aesthetic, and I'm going to sit down and meditate. And that the more feminine way is a little bit more embodied, and I'm gonna give birth and tend to the dying. That's just my way of looking at it. I would love to get your thought.

Lisa [00:12:08]:

Is there a different path for men and women?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:12:12]:

Yeah. What a good question. I think for a long time, I believed that, you know, surely on the spiritual path, gender doesn't play a a role. And I realized how wrong I was because it does. Maybe the destination is the same, but certainly the journey isn't. So, I think you're absolutely right. It's not just what we do, it's how we do it. I think that is different.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:12:34]:

We're going back to that theme several times in this conversation. That's interesting. I realized when putting together this book, but also the other book, my other recent book, Wild Women on Women Mystics, there are several differences. One is the body, as you point out, where the body is not seen as an impediment, but as an instrument of the sacred. So there's no sidestepping of the body. And to me, that creates a different texture. It brings in a different texture to the spirituality. So one of the women in this book that you talked of, you know, women who wear only themselves, one of them talks about just what it takes to go and weed her garden.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:13:12]:

The other talks of the daily spirituality of washing her clothes. She's a monk. So it's washing her clothes traditionally in in mud, in mud water, muddy water. That's how the monks still wash their clothes. So there is the tactility of that. There is that quality where the body is not seen as an obstacle, but as the very basis of the journey. I think this is important. And also I think what these women bring in is the sense that the sacred is not just up there.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:13:47]:

The sacred is here in the pots and the pans and the dailyness and the muddiness of our lives. In fact, I quote when I mentioned Laka, the third woman in the book, I quote this Estonian poet who says, oh, it's a beautiful poem. Let me see if I can remember it. The washing never gets done. The furnace never gets heated. Books never get read. Life is never completed. And the point is not really the completion of the washing of the books or any of that.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:14:18]:

It's just how we attend to those activities. And it's that quality that these women bring in to whatever they do. So, yes, I do believe that seeing the sacred in the everyday is something that the women remind us of. And the other thing I'd say is the fact that they also remind us that, you know, we're often given a template of doing. We must do. We must it must be a kind of grit toothed penance in the way we approach our spiritual life. And, of course, there must be rigor. But somewhere between doing and utter passivity, they remind us that there is a third way, and that third way is a path of radical receptivity.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:15:06]:

It is between dynamism and apathy, there is a third way. And that is a path of energetic, alchemical presence. And each of these women in their own way and through their own very diverse spiritual practice points to that.

Lisa [00:15:23]:

Oh, I love the idea of radical receptivity. That is definitely something in my community that we work with. The word sometimes discipline or rigor doesn't always sit well with women. Although I do think having some discipline is, is important. And sometimes though, and it's like, oh, I just wanna be in the feminine, which I hear a lot of women say that can almost be too lax. You know, that's that's not gonna get you to where you want to go either. So can you talk a little bit more about, like, radical receptivity? What what that means to you?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:15:56]:

Yeah. I think my own early understanding of it came from my own art, you know, where I there's a great deal of conversation around the arts that only talks about inspiration. Oh, you know, you have to wait for that magic moment to draw to dawn upon you. And then if you're one of the chosen ones, you will become a poet with a capital p. And, of course, it doesn't work that way. At the same time, there is magic. There is magic, but it's not just about sitting back and waiting for to become the chosen one. On the other hand, there is a great deal of conversation from the other side, and I've also I'm actually a champion of that to a great extent, depending on who I'm talking to, which is the importance of craft.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:16:37]:

You learn your craft. There is a rigor in that. There is a a discipline and a strenuousness that is important too. And suddenly, you begin to realize as you align, as you get more and more aligned with your work, that the laboratory and the place the magical tree of inspiration under which you sit and wait for Buddhahood, that the two are not separate. Mhmm. You know? There is a time when craft and creativity align. And that's the magic moment of radical receptivity, where we don't compartmentalize the two. It's not inspiration here and perspiration there.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:17:17]:

The two come together seamlessly. It's that inevitability that is to my mind the magic moment, the true magic.

Lisa [00:17:27]:

Yeah. That's beautiful. You mentioned this and it's also in in your book as well too, like almost performative gestures that we might have for spirituality. And you talk about like, you know, like whether it's social media or identity politics. And I do feel like we see that a lot, this kind of performative nature where it's not about performing, it's about embodying. And wouldn't that be beautiful if we, everyone can start to remember, not everybody needs to know all about your spiritual practices, nor do you need to like put on a show about it. Can you maybe talk a little bit about, you know, your thoughts on kind of that sense of performative versus embodiment?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:18:11]:

I think it can only happen, Lisa, when you do when you really have nothing to prove. You're not trying to underscore. You're not trying to project the identity that you want. You know? You're not trying to say, I am this, I am a poet with a capital p, or I am an enlightened being with a capital e. You know, there's a lovely seventeenth century mystic poet of Kashmir, Rupa Bhavani, who says, what will the enlightened being, a woman, look like? Will she wear ocher? Will she have her head on shirt? You know, those were the performative aspects of her time. Not everyone who does it is performing, but that the choice of monkhood in her time was seen as the way in which you become spiritual. That was her time. And she says, the enlightened one decks herself good clothes she wears, ever conscious herself is perfect.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:19:06]:

On the path of Shiva, she becomes Shiva himself. So this is no longer about simply venerating a God up there. It's not a hierarchical relationship with the divine, nor is it simply about performing for a world here. It's just saying the the shift is going to happen inside you. And I think in many ways, even these contemporary women that I choose to talk about, they are very diverse. One on the path of yoga, one on the path of tantra, one on the path of theo devotion, one is a householder, one is a monk, one is contemplative, one is ecstatic. They're very different. But what they share is the fact that they are not looking externally for their self definition.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:19:56]:

And therefore, they're not interested in the performative aspects of spirituality. They're looking their reference points are squarely within them. And yes, of course, they therefore become guides to a few people around them, that happens. But that's not they're not seeking to market themselves as, you know, superstar gurus or as superstar spiritual icons in any way. They are seeking to look within for their answers, and they're not outsourcing their identity to anyone else.

Lisa [00:20:30]:

Yeah. That is so inspiring as well too. And I know you and I just talked a little bit before we came on for the podcast. And, you know, I was mentioning my community's been hearing me a lot challenge the self help narrative, where we have somebody else telling us what we need to do, how we should fail, how we should engage in conversation. And what I really love about your book and these stories of these four women that you share is that it's not dogmatic. It's not telling you what you need to do, but it could be inspiring when you see these women have their center within, and they're not looking for external validation. So I love that these stories can inspire without saying you must do this.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:21:15]:

Yeah. I think that was also important to me. You know, that's the reason I chose women who were so very different from each other, because I didn't want to at any point suggest that this is the path that you must follow. You know, I have no clue about these women's spiritual attainments. I just know that they are astonishing women whose very diverse journeys make deep sense to them. And they compelled me to listen. So I wanted to share that sense of being gobsmacked and riveted by these narratives.

Lisa [00:21:47]:

I was gobsmacked on the first story. Let me see if I'm saying her name correctly.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:21:53]:

It's a long name. Let me help you.

Lisa [00:21:55]:

Okay. Thank you. Anapurni Amma. Yes. And you meet her and she's just naked. And, you know, you almost seem like you were a little resistant to meet her at first when you saw the photos. You were like, no, if we need to go here. Can you tell me just a little bit about what that experience was like for you and maybe a little bit more about about her as well too?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:22:16]:

Oh, she took my breath away, Aliza. You know, I thought, in any case, the few videos that I saw of her suggested this woman who was channeling, and she seemed kind of the slightly deranged to my mind when I saw those videos. Because it wasn't a very let's put it this way. It wasn't a dignified channeling. It seemed to be a woman who was a little crazy is what I thought when I watched them. But, you know, as I say in the book, there was someone with me who was keen, and we said, alright. We're not so far away. Let's check it out.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:22:45]:

So we dropped in at her hermitage. It was the afternoon, and I remember driving up there hoping I wouldn't see her because I really didn't. I wasn't drawn in any way. And, there was this young renunciate in Brahmachary at the gate who came and mess met us and said, what do you want? And we said, we'd like to meet her if she's around, but it's okay if she isn't. And he said, I'll get back to you. And he came back and said, she will meet you. And later, we were told that she consulted her guru who's been long dead, but whom she's in regular touch with, she says. And she says, I consulted him, and he says, call them in.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:23:24]:

They're okay. They're safe. You'll be safe. So we went in, and I expected the kind of woman I had seen on the video, which was a woman in wrapped in some kind of ocher, robe and, you know, channeling something. A bit instead, I saw this woman in complete possession of herself, but who sat before us resplendently naked. And I hadn't expected it, and I didn't know how to process it. But I will also say that she wore her body, as I say in the book, she wore her body like a lion. You know, utterly without shame, utterly without apology, and there was a vulnerability and a courage in the way she wore her body.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:24:12]:

So just being in that in the presence of that was for me, it shifted something. I will also say, of course, Lisa as an Indian, I'm not completely unaware that these traditions have existed. So if I go back in history, there have been many naked wandering male mendicants, for instance. There still are. In recorded history, called spiritual history in India, we have a twelfth century woman mystic, a Kamaha Devi in South India, who walked naked, we are told. I don't even know what it took to make that kind of decision in her time, but she did it. We have a fourteenth century Kashmiri woman mystic, Lal Deed, who also is supposed to have walked naked. So there have been precedents for this kind of ecstatic state of being where every cultural and social restraint seems needless.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:25:05]:

And at that time, even clothing is sometimes dropped. But to find a living example of this today, doing it in the way that she did it, You know? Wearing her bodies like a lion, but also wearing it at times like an afterthought casually. So which is why the book is called women who wear only themselves. There's one woman who wears ocher like a monk. She makes that choice very consciously in the modern day world, and she says it's not a medieval choice. It's a modern day modern day choice, and I will exercise it. There's a woman who wears ocher. There's a woman who was brought up to believe that she should wear white and follow a very conventional spiritual path, but she chooses to drop that and wear blue jeans sometimes.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:25:51]:

So there's a woman who wears blue jeans, there's a woman who wears ocher, and there's a woman who wears nothing at all. That's why these are women who wear their spiritual orientations in the way they choose. To me, that was, exciting.

Lisa [00:26:06]:

How has this affected, like, your and this is a a big question, but, like, your spiritual path meeting with these very diverse women who approach spirituality very differently. And I'm sure they probably all kind of maybe influenced it or inspired it in some ways, but can you maybe even just share a little bit, like or what is your path look like today?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:26:31]:

It's a wonderful question, and I wonder if I could even answer it and do justice to it. You know, the the practices that I do, it's on the path of Kriya yoga. It's what I learned from my guru, Sadhguru, and it's a very important part of my daily life, the Kriya yoga practice and the meditation. That continues. And that is really, in many ways, the has been the axis of my life since 02/2004. But how I do this as I go back to it, you know, that that keeps changing. And I realized that one of the shifts that has happened is I'm a little less inclined to I look to all I mean, these are wonderfully inspirational stories for me too, but I think I'm less of a seeker looking outside myself. I'm grateful for exciting conversations when they come my way, and I'm always drawn to those who are making somewhat difficult life choices, and I'm very curious about what keeps them going and what fuels their journeys.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:27:33]:

But I know that the center of things is much more now within myself than it used to be. So I'm a little less maybe a little less distracted than I used to be, a little less easily seduced of spiritual advertising of any kind. And part of writing about these women was because I knew when I had these conversations with them that there was no attempt being made to to strike a bargain or a deal. You write about me, I'll I'll give you a blessing. None of that. You know, there was just an ease, a naturalness. So I think that ease and naturalness is what I aspire to and which at some moments and on some days, I think I I'm in alignment with, and I'm grateful for those days.

Lisa [00:28:26]:

Yeah. That's so inspiring even just to hear you say that because it inspires women to look within as well for their own center in what feels true to them. How would you balance that looking inside within oneself for your own wisdom and working with a teacher or a guru? Mhmm.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:28:47]:

How do you

Lisa [00:28:48]:

see those two working together?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:28:51]:

For one, when I first had to look for a I mean, when I was first even open to the idea of a guru, it meant a real shift within because I grew up you know, I was a modern Indian, urban Indian. The idea of the guru itself seemed somewhat, antiquated. But when I realized I needed spiritual guidance after the 97 experience that I spoke to you of, it required a certain melting down of my own self perception of, you know, as myself as a strong woman who doesn't look externally for for help. So I had to melt that down. There was a certain indignity in having to say, I need help. You know, I I need it. And the help may not come, I realized, in the seven years that followed. The help may not always come in the form that we wanted to.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:29:40]:

You may have to just be grateful for the crumbs that come from any source, and you have to be alert to those because you can get that guidance anywhere and where you least expect it. There was something a bit undignified in my own perception about that. But after having found my guru and there was a tremendous sense of elation and gratitude and, all of that. You know, I I don't want to downplay that because it was enormous. It was enormous. I know why all the, spiritual traditions of the world speak of being lost and then found. There's actually a sense that, oh my god, the universe has ears. That somewhere, all the silent screaming that's going on, this floundering, can actually be addressed.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:30:27]:

There's someone who knows what's going on and who knows how this path can be traversed. So this was huge, the sense of gratitude, and that has not gone away. But what I have also realized is that the guru externally is and this is, of course, something I could have told you earlier because I'd read enough about it, that the external guru is always pointing you to the internal guru and so on. But I realized that you have to live it. You have to live it. You need to know how much of the external to take, how to implement it, and make it part of you. So that journey is about beginning to realize that the gratitude for the external guru is only because you've met someone who is much more committed to your freedom than you are yourself, then you know how to be yourself. To that extent, the gratitude is enormous.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:31:19]:

But then comes the journey of looking within, and I think you'd realize then that the index of a true teacher is always just this. Does she or he point you to that inner journey or make you more dependent? And that's an answer that you have to give yourself. For me, only when I was very clear that this was making me more myself, not making me someone else, that the journey really began to seem real, valid, authentic.

Lisa [00:31:53]:

What a profound inquiry that I think is just so useful for so many women in different modalities. And, you know, as far as I feel like we live in a culture of so much personal development, spiritual development, growth, like, is this bringing me closer to who I am? I think it's just such an important inquiry for women to be asking themselves.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:32:14]:

Yeah. Yeah. I don't and I think we all know and maybe any you know, one is more sympathetic to it nowaday now at this point in our lives, but we all know there is a period you go through, and this is not so different in the arts. So I often look at the spiritual journey as, analogous to the creative. There is a journey you go through when you admire someone. And, you want this is your mentor, and you start unconsciously imitating this person. You know? And, there is a lot of for the outsider, looking in on this, it just seems like mimicry and little else. But it can often be an important stage in your apprenticeship.

Lisa [00:32:53]:

Mhmm.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:32:53]:

But you need to outgrow that too, you know, and you're not you're not just an unconscious seeker. You're not this hyper self conscious seeker. You just become more of a conscious traveler. And at that point, you're not just mind not just imitating your mentor. You are now internalizing what you have learned.

Lisa [00:33:14]:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Such an important point to remember that there is, and I've seen that too. There is a little mimicry and not in a not necessarily in a bad way or I'm trying to copy, but it's almost just kind of the way that wisdom transmutes initially. And you're, you're trying it on and, you know, it's starting to assimilate. Yeah. There was one, thing where that first woman talks about the guru or like, how do you know it's your guru? And I think she says something like you treat everyone as if they're your guru.

Lisa [00:33:45]:

And I really love that. Cause I do believe we have something to learn from everyone. Did I did I say that correctly in there? I think I highlighted it in the book.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:33:55]:

You did. You did. And that was such a beautiful moment, you know? And she says that's how you recognize him. And I think that's that's one great definition, isn't it? You know, I remember someone asking me many years ago when I was in London, I was giving a talk and someone came up to me after that and said, but why do you need an external guru? Why can't you just learn from life? And I remember thinking, you're absolutely right. We need to learn from life, but often it is the external guru that catalyzes the journey that enables one to see that one can learn from life in order to be receptive to life without being scarred by it. You know, we can all be just mangled by the life experience. It can be brutal. Right? So in order to learn how to learn, you know, in order to just learn that process, how do we imbibe? What do we choose to internalize? And what do we just allow to drop away? You know, this journey for this journey, I think I'm deeply grateful to external guidance.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:34:59]:

But it's really about seeing eventually that there are no hierarchies at all. So, yes, you're grateful to your guide, but your guide is actually helping you remove this fragmented gaze, this hierarchical gaze that sees one as superior and the other is inferior. So you're gradually beginning your gaze is beginning to widen in order to be able to see everything, all of life and creation itself as part of one grand happening where you can learn every moment can be a a source of learning if you allow it to be. It is about awakening from that habituated, fragmented way of leading our lives. Mhmm. And when we do, of course, everyone can be a guide.

Lisa [00:35:47]:

Yeah. I do think everyone can be a a guide. I often tell my children that I have two teenagers, a 16 and 18 year old, and, you know, sometimes they don't wanna talk to different people or it's like, you have something something to learn from everyone. Like, let's, let's go into this open minded and see, see what you can learn, see what they have to teach you. So many of the women who are in my community, many of them I consider Western seekers, and I know that they are going to love your book, but but I'm also curious, like, how would you suggest women from the West work with with Eastern wisdom, with, with, with wisdom from India in a respectful way? Of course. But I think many women from the West are almost nervous because they don't wanna be, you know, talked about. Like, they don't wanna feel that they're culturally appropriating. So I would love to get your thought on that.

Lisa [00:36:35]:

Like, is this accessible to everyone, or how how would you see western women using this information?

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:36:42]:

I think any journey that is an inner journey has to be for everyone. There's nothing cult culturally specific about it. The essential aspect I mean, the the essential aspect is always there. That's where the real work happens. The outer aspects, you know, do I need to bow in front of a guru? Do I need to, can I use the word, om without it being an act of cultural appropriation? I think these are really the external questions. And I think if we generally approach all of life with an with a basic respect, we'll be fine. I don't think we need to do any more reverential than that. Any central respect is all that we really need for this journey.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:37:21]:

And I certainly don't think there is I mean, yes, these women are culturally specific and they belong to a particular time and space and, you know, moment in time. And certainly, they're all from Southern India. 1 of them lives here. So she's actually talking of tantra, but she lives here in The US. And for her tantra is a living experience and journey. So I think there are when it comes to what do we all share, we share a body, we share a mind, we all know what it is like to have a body and a mind. Eventually, any spiritual path, any wisdom tradition worth its salt is only pointing to that. What fuels this body and mind? How do we access it? And so I really don't think we need this is really not the time today, I think, to be too caught up with the niceties, the cultural, you know, niceties of things.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:38:13]:

It's really does it work? If it works, you know, try it. Try it. And if it doesn't work, drop it. But give it enough time. Give it enough time to marinate. Don't be in a hurry to judge. If something doesn't work for you, respectfully drop it and move on. There is a way to move on without denigrating what hasn't worked for you because it might well have worked for someone else.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:38:37]:

So I think if we do that, approach whatever we have, you know, we feel the need to embrace something new without repudiating the past, that's a useful way for all of us, east and west, for all of us to move on.

Lisa [00:38:53]:

Yes. Oh, I think I think so too. I think that's beautiful. I think it it's interesting, and I'm very cautious. You know, we were talking about I wrote a book, and I wrote a book about goddesses across culture and tradition. So, some of the Hindu goddesses like Kali and Lakshmi. And it's interesting. I've had many Indian women approach me and saying, oh, that's really beautiful that, you know, I love seeing you talk about Lakshmi and Kali, and that's really interesting.

Lisa [00:39:18]:

I've had white women saying, you can't do that. That's cultural appropriation. So I always thought it was very interesting that, you know, from the they were like, oh, this is really beautiful that you're sharing this this wisdom. And

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:39:30]:

Of course. Yeah. Absolutely, Lisa. And I think these are I mean, these goddesses belong to anyone who stakes their claim on them. You know, they are there. They're important living archetypal, alchemical energies that are there for anyone who stakes their claim. I believe they do not belong. I mean, it'd be terrible if everyone needed sort of a, you know, passport and ID and documentation to, you know, even if our divinity started needing that, it would be very unfortunate.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:39:59]:

I think it's important to be respectful. Yes. You certainly it's good to know where they're coming from, but that's about it.

Lisa [00:40:04]:

Yeah.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:40:04]:

It's a portal. A goddess, you know, to speak of the goddesses that you are, the goddesses are a wonderful portal. So you acknowledge the the specificity of that portal, but you also have to acknowledge the world that, you know, that she leads you into.

Lisa [00:40:19]:

Yeah.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:40:20]:

The enormity of that, the magnitude of that, the inclusivity of that.

Lisa [00:40:26]:

It is. One of the things that I started to recognize when I was, you know, researching different goddesses is that we can see like across tradition, geography, culture, there's similar goddesses. And I really believe that points to, because even though we are separated by geography, religion, culture, we share a common humanity, and we are still going to find them in one form or another, but they still have these energetics that we are that we are looking for that are within us already.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:40:59]:

Of which we recognize. So in fact, one of the most beautiful Kali poems that I know of was written by an American poet, May Sarton. And I include her in the book that I, you know, that I did recently called Wild Women because to my mind, she has one of the most profound poetic insights into Kali that I have read ever. So, I think it's about recognizing. That was certainly my experience of the goddess. When I first went to a goddess, temple that had just been consecrated in 02/2010, and I sat there, I went with a certain curiosity and respect, but little else. The goddess appealed to my feminist sensibilities, but that's about it. But when I sat there and allowed myself to simply be, to simply hang out, I experienced the goddess in a certain way where I realized that no one needed to introduce me to her.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:41:56]:

I had always known her. This was just a reintroduction. I think there's that moment that many of us have experienced, and I think that's what you're alluding to as well.

Lisa [00:42:06]:

Yes. It is. It's almost a remembering, and that is really almost how it started with me as well too, because I was always spiritual and I would read a lot of, you know, I would read a lot of texts, but I didn't know that much about goddesses, but all of the sudden there was this urge to kind of learn more. And I really started to feel that I felt the presence. And it was interesting that there's this sense of remembering or wanting to reconnect and

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:42:31]:

That's right. As if something that had too long been relegated to the margins of my consciousness had suddenly been retrieved and it came up with the sort of shock of remembrance. That was how it felt.

Lisa [00:42:46]:

Yeah. Yeah. That's something that, we talk about in the community too, is like anytime we're, you know, we're starting to learn something new, there's always this sense of learning, but often when it points to this like innate truth, it does feel more like, oh, of course. And now I remember, which I think is very much kind of within your book as well, too, is that there's just a sense of remembrance of, of our own divinity, of our own wisdom.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:43:12]:

I'm so glad you say that because I do want it to be about, yes, these particular women from India, but I do not at any point want to suggest that these insights are not available to to others. You know? I think each of these women represents a possibility, and that reminds us that there must be so many more unexplored, undocumented.

Lisa [00:43:37]:

Yes. Well, I'm very much looking forward to reading this book within my community and diving into the stories of these four women. And thank you so much for writing it. And again, highlighting that there's all of these beautiful, inspiring women that are seekers and they don't need to be on Instagram. They don't need to have the the best sellers and there's still so much we can learn from them. And I think that's just really empowering for all to recognize that, that there's no one way of doing this.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:44:10]:

Absolutely not just one way. And, it was also for me personally, about reminding myself that we speak of traditions. India has had a great unbroken tradition, for instance, of goddess, veneration. It's also had you know, we talk of the spiritual past of India. But for me, this was also about saying this is the spiritual present, and it is a living present. It is not about some ossified, mummified religion that we want to market and, you know, we want to we want to put it to a museum or to, you know, thump our chests about in order to feel better about ourselves. It's about saying that there are living spiritual traditions right now that we can draw on, be inspired by, and that they are a pointer to so many more hidden traditions that are available, wisdom traditions that are available to us. But, you know, and that they are valid, they are alive, and they are potent.

Lisa [00:45:11]:

And I believe we need them more than ever now as well too.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:45:15]:

We do. Yeah. We do. And I think that's the reason why the goddess that you who fascinates you so much is, reemerging. She was always there, but she's reemerging into collective consciousness in a way, like never before.

Lisa [00:45:30]:

Mhmm. Thank you so much for your time today. It has just been lovely talking to you, getting to know you and your wisdom. It's beautiful. So thank you so much.

Arundhati Subramaniam [00:45:41]:

Thank you, Lisa. I particularly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.