Interview with Subhaga

Fax: I want to offer my congratulations on your transition to becoming a Full Teacher and putting together these panel discussions on spiritual transmission. In a car, the transmission is responsible for shifting the gears. How does spiritual transmission shift the gears in aspirants?

Subhaga: What a great metaphor!  I think people are humming along in neutral, to go along with the metaphor, but the transmission is there in all of us. Everybody has it. Everybody's transmitting their own life force, their own Being force. So when the transmission gets engaged with a teacher, let's say, then that's where those shifts come. People get moved. They get moved into first gear, and they get a little traction, and then as they deepen, they begin to accelerate, they continue to shift, and shift, and shift. You're on the highway, and there're no anticipated stops or obstacles, and you're just kind of cruising along. I think the transmission really does shift people into a place where they have a greater mobility in themselves. They can move more fluidly through the parts of themselves that need to be explored or investigated.

In communication theory, we talk about "noise" that occurs in every communication setting. For some people, there's a lot of internal noise. It might be mental; it might be physical, so that their focus is in the wrong place to cultivate an awareness of transmission. In groups, there is more volume, so to speak, and it's easier for it to penetrate. There are many tuning forks vibrating. Students need to continue to put themselves in the way of it because the transmission is always there, and when they're ready for it, then they'll feel it and shift into another gear.

Fax: You're an educator. Are there any similarities in being a Trillium teacher to what you're teaching in college?

Subhaga: I've been teaching Interpersonal Communication, which I really love, and so much of what we teach in our work keeps popping up in Interpersonal Theory. One big idea is "other orientation." In order for us to be able to really communicate interpersonally, we have to cultivate an other orientation-it's really like mutuality-listening fully, being present, perceiving, understanding our own projections. So when we're listening to people's shares, there's a process in which we have to be able to cultivate that orientation of mutuality to really hear that person. And it can take us a while to get there, but when we do, that's when the transmission can vibrate more fully.

Subhaga: For me, this is one of the areas where our work has really been ground breaking. Sometimes practitioners come to us with a consciousness awakening already in place, but that's not Whole-Being Realization. That is something that requires us to awaken as our "true and total nature," integrating all the parts of ourselves, including the shadow. Other traditions don't necessarily focus on the lived experience. Their focus on transcendence can result in powerful transmission without a grounding in mutuality, which requires ethical behavior.