3/30/15
Part 1 – This interview was a beautiful revelation about Santosha Ma’s life and work.
Devotee: This question is about Your doing art Your whole life, when You started doing art…
Santosha Ma: It wasn’t My whole life, I didn’t do it in My childhood. It was more the intensive time of the sadhana period. There were different rhythms to it, but it started more there. It started, not as something that the personality, Karen Karolczuk (her birth name) could do, or wanted to do, or have some kind of survival met by it, or some kind of condition met by it. It was always directly the sadhana, and then after the sadhana, My Spiritual Work. It always was linked to that.
One of the signs of that was – there were little signs along the way – but a bigger sign was, during the time I was with Rama, I said to Myself, ‘I know I want to wake up, and that it is for Me to be completely dedicated to that. But what will I do in that life? How will it express itself?’ And that’s when I had that dream – and some dreams like that are more like a ‘telling’, or a calling, something bigger than the personality assessing its options. It was a ‘telling.’
I had this ‘telling’ where I was sitting on an outdoor veranda at a table. I looked up and Vivekananda came over and sat down next to Me. I had heard of Vivekananda by then, so I knew this was really going to be some kind of meeting, he was going to give Me or show Me or tell Me something, I knew, since I had been asking that question. I asked him right off, and said, ‘What am I going to do with the Work? What is My Work?’ He just smiled, and took out one of the 8½” x 11” binders – the kind I have My pictures in now – and he said, ‘Here, look at this.’ I looked at it, and it was all these images that I would do, but there were also images of devotees that would come. It was a mixed thing of My Work with My Circle of devotees – the Work I was doing with that in this place, who I would come to meet and know – and also the collaging, that art Work. I said, ‘Oh! That’s My Spiritual persona, the Artist.’ He just nodded and confirmed it. When I woke up, I said, ‘That’s what it is!’
Then I had impulses – I had an impulse to go to art school to begin that Work. Even when I did begin that Work and I was around ordinary people, I wasn’t approaching it in the vision or the assumption of an ordinary artist. I was doing it from the point of view of that spiritual Work, and from the point of view of being free of the seeking assumption, free of creating that identity and that value in that way of, ‘This is my identity! This is who I am!’
So I had a certain ease and freedom in learning art – that I learned quickly, which surprised the people around Me, and the teacher in particular. He said, ‘You really have something, You can really be an artist.’ I knew it was because of that spiritual understanding and spiritual impulse, and that art was like a threshold personality, or a doorway to how I could live and Work. That was a really happy time.
I also had different ‘tellings’ from Rama, where he revealed to Me a place where all the plans for everything are made, and he left Me in the room with it, with all these blueprints. It was of all My Work. And again, My Work with devotees and My Work with art. It was all there.
Also I had another dream with Rama where we were together, and traveling a lot together in dreams. At one point he gave Me a present, which was a big garbage bag – it was a black one. Inside I looked, and it was all sorts of really strange equipment that hadn’t been invented yet. It was all the digital revolution that was to come, and the computer revolution. I was saying to Myself, ‘What is all this crap?’ I didn’t even know what it was, never mind if it had any value! If he had given Me a mala bead that he wore, I would have loved that, but he gave Me that! ‘OK!’ At that point, we were ready to continue the travels, and I was leaving with him, and I just bent down to pick it up and go, and he said, ‘Oh! No! You hesitated! No! No. You’re taking too long!’ And it wasn’t! It wasn’t even half a second, and he just left. I knew he was just trying to get rid of Me, and I knew what that meant. He was telling Me that My destiny had something to do with all this stuff in the garbage bag, and not personally with him. I knew what it meant right away, it wasn’t hard to figure it out then.
Over the years, having gone through and been at the beginning of the digital revolution – where these cameras came out and they were all fuzzy, and the images were terrible, and the printers were terrible – and yet I worked with it because I found it was a very viable way for Me to Work, because it was very lively. It was not, for Me, just sitting in a room all day, because I used it a lot with going out and combining it with what would eventually become My Work with the natural element, the Earth relationship as My devotee. Also as a way to be in the world, see others, using photography and collage and digital image – I combined everything!
That’s how it started, where My Path became the Artist persona. And to this today, I very much Work with that. It’s a natural part of My life. It’s more like when you do something, and it’s just so close and intimate, with you – it’s just like your old shirt that’s your favorite, and you just put it on and you always find that that’s how you feel natural to yourself, with that. I always look at everything all the time and see it in a visual, artistic way. I can do that with fashion as well, movies, whatever. I see everything in an artistic way – how to combine it and Teach and serve the impulse toward the Sacred in people. The Artist has been the Heart of My persona, of how to live and Work as the 7th Stage Realization.
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Part 2
Santosha Ma: Everything is just simple. It’s very simple. It’s just being in a Stand that you’re very comfortable with, because I’ve been doing it since the early 80’s. But since I was Awake and did the digital, it was the late 80’s. That’s a lot of years now! Yet it seems just as fresh and recent.
Taking on the Artist persona was easier. Before, I’d always be looking at everything through the artist’s eye, and I felt like I was absorbing everything at a great rate, and looking at everything at a great rate! Absorbing it all, and entering into a meditation of it. And now, having done that for so many years, I can just pick out the one little jewel in a big heap of sand! With just a mere glance now. I can go for what is the most attractive, right away.
I never did anything by practice, and learning through practice. I just did it by doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it. And then doing it more. I’ve done everything obsessively, and like that. And so in saving it, and archiving it – there’s an excessive amount of Work – no one can decide to get rid of any of it, either! It’s like, ‘OK! Do you really want to get rid of any of it? Not really!’ For Me, not any of it! All of it is that Communication, whether it’s more developed, more beautiful, more primitive, whatever – it doesn’t matter if it’s a doodle on a paper! It’s That.
It’s another ‘point of view’. It’s the ‘point of view’ of the Sacred living here.
Devotee: The Divine.
Santosha Ma: Yes. Why? The Work of creating My Circle for Me, the benefit they receive of the purifying work of understanding and recognizing the contraction, and understanding it in relationship to the Sacred, is that they get to live a life, and really, they get to take care of this. It’s their job to take care of it. I’m sure they’ll do a good job.
After He passed, I saw what happened – I thought they were doing a good job, creating new ways to communicate, and taking His material and His Art. I’m sure there’s always something that can be better! There’s no reason to say everything is excellent – there’s always to strive for a brighter, better or more concise way of communication of His Work and His Life, and His Transmission. That’s the test of the ego purifying, and also the life of living in that Beauty. To live in such Beauty of that Life, and that Transmission and that Work – instead of you have to concentrate on, all day long, some bratty kid who can’t play the piano or something! (laughing) Something like that! And who never will, but for some reason you have to put up with it.
Any other questions? Did that answer it, you think? Or do you want more on that one?
Devotee: More than I imagined already! It seems like it has to do with, what You just said, expressing more and more, Adi Da. Adi Da is so present in everything that You’re doing, and it just is really beautiful and powerful. I just feel like Your expression of Love for Him, Your Love, Realization and Intimacy with Him is such a Gift. And that You are portraying it in Your Art. You’re actually showing what it is to Realize Him, and what it looks like in another body/mind, that’s Realized. And it’s so beautiful what You are showing. To make a question out of that!
Santosha Ma: Yes! Where’s the question? (laughs) It’s coming around the mountain, I guess!
Devotee: I think it’s Your Collaboration with Him, in Your art. It can come around to that. You have said a couple times that You’ll be doing art, and He’s there Collaborating…
Santosha Ma: With everything I do, mostly! When I went to Vernal Falls, and I did that Nature Work, I was coming back and sitting in the car, and I just felt a clear rhythm of Bliss. I just was sitting so still in that Bliss, and I had just worked physically so hard to get up that mountain! And I was just sitting in that Bliss; and I felt that Work, I really enjoy. I was just sitting in that Bliss without any work of doing that Work – though I enjoy the Work, it is a supreme effort, it’s really challenging and enduring! I was just sitting there feeling, ‘Other people would feel it NOT to do that challenge and endure that, because they could just sit in Bliss.’ I was kind of laughing at Myself, and said, ‘Well, that’s so much how I live and Work! I don’t really push that work away, and that challenge away, to sit in Bliss, ever!’
In this later life, just sitting and feeling that Bliss, is a way of I’m just overwhelmed with His Love and Being With Him in that Love. There are no thoughts, no emotions to it. It’s just if you were to feel really Happy with no content. That’s what it feels like. You’re just kind of laughing to yourself, because it’s just so Innocent. It’s just being With Him with no ‘other’, not as a Voice, not as a Collaborator, not as My Guru or not as My Loved One, not as My Beloved. But just as this little Innocent Giggle. That’s the Perfection of that Relationship as your very Self, as your very Heart. Your heart’s beating, and it’s going (giggles happily), but it’s not based on any conditions, or any ‘other’.
I really enjoy the endurance and the challenge of how I’m doing this Work. But I could just sit in That, but I never cultivated just sitting in that Bliss. I think that’s just a phase toward the end, where I just sit there and Radiate That directly with no impulse to do anything, or endure anything with anyone.
But in My Collaboration, I feel it in different ways. Before, I was really enduring something, working on something. Sometimes with the art, if He likes it and it’s about Him, He gets really Happy, and He’s like, ‘Oh! It’s really wonderful! Thanks.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh! It’s just another picture! I like it, too!’
It’s wonderful to be able to take the art and Reveal Him as My Relationship, and as that Beauty. He used a lot of art and showed the self-contraction, Narcissus, in it. He also showed that element of just Pure Beauty. But He did a lot of work in the self-contraction. My Work isn’t really like that. It’s just communicating, showing and Transmitting That, of Who He Is. To be able to just spontaneously take whatever element of livingness here, and show that Beauty, and It arising in His Image, in Him – it’s really wonderful! At times, He actually comments how much He likes it. When He does that, I’m just like, ‘Oh! Good!’ I’m so happy to make Him feel happy like that; to experience that gaiety in Him at times, is wonderful.
He’s also collaborated with Me when I’ve gone to the end of My rope with someone – how their patterning just keeps interfering with other aspects of My Work – it’s just like I said, there’s so much Help and support! You should give each other help and support to release the contraction, and live in Enlightenment and love here. That I have to come and test all of that again – I get really tired of it and I want to just end it. At times, He will save your asses, and He’ll say, “OK, wait a minute. Do this…’ He usually shows up for that when I’m really at the end of My rope, and I don’t want to do it anymore. He’ll just say, ‘Give this time’, or ‘Do this…’.
And He’s been right every single time, because I’ve seen the change. It might not be a huge change, but it’s a more capable change, where someone has relaxed the contraction, and they’ve become more ordinary about their seeking instead of glorifying it, or wanting Me to be enthusiastic about it, and are seeing more the reality of consequences and asserting a separate one, an independent one – what the consequences of that are, what it is actually. He’s spoken up.
Even before the Collaboration intensified – before He died there were certain times when He asked Me to do something, and I would always try My best to do it. Usually I would always manage it! But one time I remember going to see His Artwork at the Biennale, and I was going through a really, very rough patch of having a lot of very extreme menopausal symptoms that were just so difficult. I was not comfortable at all! Of course, I had experienced menopause at 29 when I had a hysterectomy, so I thought that the age bracket when I hit my 50’s would be more graceful. But it was actually worse! I said, ‘Oh, God!’ I didn’t think I could be comfortable going on a trip in any way! It seemed like the pattern of the body was just collapsing. I just didn’t think I could do it, and He said, ‘No, You can do it! Come on, do it! You’ve got to do it. You’re not that bad. I promise You You’re not that bad. You’ll get through it!’ Sure enough, I did it, and actually had a great time and got through it.
Then as the body goes on, it’s hard to tell some of the aging apart from some of the Work, how I do things in an obsessive way, and endure a lot. Even My granddaughter – and she’s a very go-getter adventuresome person – she said, ‘Oh! You just have unlimited energy, Santosha!’ (laughs) I was feeling, ‘I wish I did!!’ Like I say, I enjoy engaging My Work in My relationship with the Earth as My evolving, conscious devotee; and also the art, and the Collaboration We share in the 7th Stage, and the Revelation of Adi Da through that Work. I enjoy it so much! I don’t really just want to sit in Bliss. Which is an option! (laughs) I know it is! Because I know exactly what to do to bring on that life, but I’m not doing it yet, He doesn’t want Me to do it. He wants Me to feel His Love and be Happy, and it will spontaneously unfold in That Attraction, in that Collaboration
