Jeff Carreira: Hello Sadhviji, I’m very happy to be doing this interview with you. For readers who may not be familiar with your background: You grew up in California, earned a PhD in the United States, and first visited Rishikesh, India, in 1996. You initially stayed for three months, returned the following year, and have been living in Rishikesh ever since.

That’s an amazing and unusual journey—especially considering that, as you’ve shared, your first trip to India was reluctant. And yet something so profound occurred that you returned—and stayed. Can you tell our readers a little about what happened during that initial three-month visit that changed everything?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati: Absolutely. Interestingly, most of the life-changing events happened within the first three days to three weeks. It didn’t even take the full three months for me to know that this was where I was meant to be.

As you mentioned, I was a reluctant spiritual traveler—I didn’t even identify as spiritual at the time. I was an academic, and a successful one. I’d graduated from Stanford and was pursuing a PhD in pediatric neuropsychology. My sense of identity was deeply rooted in academics. I was also a social person, not someone anyone would have pegged as a future monk living in the Himalayas. Alongside all that, I was struggling with the aftermath of early childhood trauma—abuse, abandonment, and a long battle with bulimia that led to years of hospitalization and treatment. Despite all of this, I thrived academically. People who understand the psychology of eating disorders might not be surprised—the perfectionism and high achievement often go hand-in-hand with the addiction.

I mention all of this because it helps explain why I wasn’t on a spiritual path—and didn’t feel anything was missing. My plate felt full. I was managing school, relationships, and healing work. Spirituality simply wasn’t on my radar. I agreed to go to India reluctantly—mostly because I loved Indian food and I’m a strict vegetarian. I was also an avid traveler. My husband at the time was on a spiritual path, and this was his idea, not mine. But I loved to travel and wanted to support our relationship, so I said yes.

We ended up in Rishikesh by chance. We hadn’t done any research in advance. I just flipped open a Lonely Planet guidebook in Delhi, saw the entry on Rishikesh—mountains, river, yoga, easy to get to—and thought it sounded good. Soon after arriving, I walked down to the Ganga River—completely unaware that this was the holy river of India, the embodiment of the Mother Goddess. I just thought of it as a beautiful natural place, and I’ve always loved nature. So, I went to sit by the river. That’s when it happened.

I had an overwhelming experience of the divine—not a Hindu god or a concept of God I had heard of—but a pervasive, undeniable sense of the divine in everything. The trees, the people, the marble steps, the river itself… all of it shimmered with divine presence. It brought me to my knees. I was crying, not from sadness but from the sheer beauty of it. Then I turned that perception inward and realized: I wasn’t separate from this divine presence.

As a young woman burdened with shame, trauma, and self-loathing, this realization shattered all of that. In one instant, I knew I wasn’t broken or bad—I was divine. That moment dissolved all my old identities. The distinctions between self and world vanished. I didn’t know what it meant for my life, but I knew I was meant to be there. I didn’t know what I would do, or for how long—it didn’t matter. My analytical mind had been completely silenced.

For days afterward, I could barely speak. All I could say was, “Oh my God, it’s so beautiful.” And then more extraordinary things unfolded—hearing a voice telling me to stay, being unable to walk out of the ashram grounds, and finally meeting my guru, Pujya Swamiji. By the end of those first weeks, it was clear: this is where I was meant to be.

My guru later sent me back to America to finish the last semester of my PhD. He knew what I hadn’t yet realized—how my sudden transformation would appear to others. He made sure I faced that world again, got straight A’s, and could return without anyone being able to say I’d run away or lost my mind. That was nearly 30 years ago. And living in Rishikesh, at Parmarth Niketan Ashram, under the guidance of my guru, has been the greatest blessing of my life.

Jeff Carreira: Thank you for sharing that. It’s beautiful.

I’d love to spend a moment exploring the experience you had on the banks of the Ganga. I’ve been to Rishikesh a few times myself, and I can picture it—though I don’t know exactly where you were, I can imagine the river, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, with ashrams lining the banks. The whole place carries a kind of sacred energy.

So, I picture you there, sitting by what—for a Westerner visiting India—would appear to be just a river. And then suddenly, you’re overtaken by a sense of the pervasive sacredness of all existence. What I find striking is this: thousands upon thousands of people see that river every year, but something unique opened in you at that moment. You saw the divine—and were catapulted into the recognition of the inherent divinity of all things. Have you reflected on why that happened for you in that way? Why did everything open up in such a profound and life-altering way?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati: I have, yes. And first of all, I truly believe this experience is available to everyone. I’m certainly not the first person to have had a profound spiritual awakening on the banks of the Ganga. Many people have powerful experiences there. But, as someone not raised in Hindu culture, as someone who wasn’t Indian and didn’t know that the river was sacred—who didn’t know she was walking toward the embodiment of a goddess—I think what made the difference was a deep openness, sincerity, and willingness.

Even though I wasn’t religious—not even someone who would’ve said, “I’m spiritual but not religious”—I was deeply committed to truth and openness. I remember, very vividly, a conversation I had with myself on the flight to India. I said, “This makes no sense. You’re traveling halfway around the world to a place you know nothing about, and you don’t even want to go.” The only redeeming factor seemed to be that I could get good vegetarian food—but I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area! I already had great vegetarian food, right around the corner. So, I realized, “Okay, none of the reasons I’ve given myself for this trip actually make sense.”

And in that moment, I made a vow: There must be a reason I’m being called to India that I just don’t yet understand. So, I will keep my heart open. I told myself, if you can’t keep your heart open, go home. Go back to California. I wasn’t enrolled in school that fall, but I could have gotten practicum units or started work on my dissertation. There were plenty of options. But I knew: If you’re going to stay in India, keep your heart wide open. Let whatever this is reveal itself. And I believe that vow—made sincerely, from the heart—played a crucial role in what unfolded.

Jeff Carreira: I think there’s something in what you just shared that all of us can take to heart—that commitment to openness. Because in your case, you weren’t overtly spiritual at the time. And I think that’s true for many people. But your open heart allowed something truly extraordinary to happen. The focus of this issue is the power of spiritual practice, both in its traditional forms and in its newer manifestations. We’re asking: What is the value of spiritual practice in the modern world?

You, I would say, are a thoroughly modern person. You were raised in the West, and now you’re a spiritual teacher of international renown. You teach from within a fairly traditional lineage of Vedanta, and yet you’re clearly making those teachings accessible to Westerners in a meaningful way.

It seems to me that for many of us who find ourselves called to teach, if we look at the initial experience that set our spiritual life in motion—often quite early on—we’ll find something essential in that moment that becomes the foundation of what we’re here to share.

So, having described your own initial awakening, I’d love to ask: Would you say that the experience of recognizing your non-separation from the divine is, at heart, the essence of what you’re sharing through your teaching and practice?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati: That’s such an interesting question. Yes—it is. And yet I want to say: It doesn’t require anyone to move to Rishikesh, or have their awakening on the banks of the Ganga. It doesn’t even require someone to have that same kind of powerful, personal, felt experience in order to access these teachings. Of course, I hope that through practice and deepening and opening, many people will come to that experience. But it’s not a prerequisite.

What I really want people to understand is this: You are not your story. The first 25 years of my life were so wrapped up in false identification—stories about who I thought I was. Whether it was in relation to abuse, abandonment, the eating disorder, or whether it was about my academic success or my relationships—so much of my energy was focused outward. I identified with everything external. And that meant I was constantly under pressure. I had to keep getting straight A’s, because that’s who I was. That was my value. And in my relationships—romantic or platonic—I carried all the wounds and narratives of my past. It made everything so intense. If someone I loved pulled away, or I thought they loved someone else more, it wasn’t just emotionally painful—it shook the core of my identity.

So, the heart of what I’m sharing, across everything I teach—whether through meditation, workshops, satsangs, books, tools, or practices—is this: You are not your story. You are the Divine. You are not defined by what others project onto you, or by what’s happened to you. You are not limited by what you look like or what you can or can’t do. That’s not who you are. And if you can let go of those identifications, you can let go of your suffering.

A helpful way I sometimes frame this is through the title of my memoir: Hollywood to the Himalayas. It’s not just a physical journey—it’s a mindset shift. The “Hollywood” mindset, which isn’t limited to Hollywood, says: You are your body—its size, shape, popularity, success, history. That identification creates suffering. It turns us into graspers and gobblers of the world because we think, “If I’m my body, then I need more: more money, more beauty, more success, more love.” The “Himalayan” mindset says: You have a body, but you are not the body. You are soul, you are spirit, you are consciousness. And that simple shift—from identification with the body to identification with spirit—is the shift that ends suffering.

So yes, I would say that’s a core message in my teaching. Not the only one, but a very central one. And of course, the next question becomes: How? How do we let go of those false identifications? How do we release the “Hollywood” way of thinking and access the deeper truth of who we are?

There are many teachings and practices I offer that support that shift. But at the core, what I want people to know is this: Most of our suffering today isn’t caused by material lack.

In India, when people suffer, it might be because there’s no clean water, no toilets, no medicine or hospital, or no road to reach the hospital. That’s a real lack of infrastructure and resources. But in the West, so much of the suffering I see doesn’t require the construction of a school or hospital—it requires a shift in thinking.

It’s a matter of changing how we interpret the world, how we relate to ourselves and to others. And we often blame others for how we feel internally. But people are just on their karmic journeys. They’re doing the best they can with their own karmic toolboxes. Our role is not to be the karmic police. Our role is to take full responsibility for our karmic journey—to find the freedom, joy, and peace that is our birthright, regardless of what others are doing. That’s what I want to help people realize.

Jeff Carreira: This conversation has taken directions I didn’t anticipate—but much better than I imagined. What I hear you saying now reminds me of a video you once recorded about the purpose of life. In it, you emphatically state—and I think this is what you’re saying here too—that the purpose of life is to find your true self. And I would say that, on the banks of the Ganga, you experienced your true self. You experienced the inseparability of the self and the divine—that divinity which pervades everything. And as happens in those moments, there’s an undeniable clarity: This is who I am. This is who I’ve always been. It’s not that we become divine—we remember that we already are.

And for you, that moment was so powerful that you didn’t return to the life you’d known before. You stayed. Now, almost 30 years later, you’ve lived as a renunciate in an ashram with your guru. I imagine, over that time, you’ve come to recognize all the subtle ways we unconsciously separate ourselves from our true nature. And you've also discovered the kinds of practices that help us return to that wholeness.

So, I’m curious—does that reflect your experience? And what have you seen or discovered that might benefit a seeker today who is longing to feel that same sense of inner wholeness?

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati: Yes, absolutely. The core truth is: We are nothing other than that. We are already whole. The dilemma is that we’ve been deeply conditioned—first by our families of origin, where (often unintentionally) we’re taught that we need to do something or be something in order to be worthy of love or goodness. Most parents are doing the best they can. They're walking their own karmic journey. They're not trying to mess us up. But even seemingly harmless phrases can leave deep impressions.

Take, for example, something as innocent as: “Oh, you cleaned your room—you’re such a good boy.” Ninety percent of parents say something like that. But what’s the underlying message? Clean room equals good. Messy room equals bad. The same logic carries into school, sports, art—whatever we do. We come home with good grades, and we’re showered with love. We bring home bad grades, and at best we’re ignored—or at worst, shamed or punished.

So, what do we learn? That our value is conditional. That love is earned. And we internalize this so deeply that we carry it for decades—into our careers, our relationships, our sense of self-worth. This is why we have generation after generation of overachievers, people-pleasers, workaholics, and individuals struggling with anxiety, low self-esteem, and self-hatred.

One of the first things I’ve seen to be truly healing is simply recognizing that these beliefs are not true. And just because they came from people we loved—our parents, our teachers—doesn’t make them true. If we stop and think: “Would I take life advice about my deepest self from a random 26-year-old?” Probably not. But that’s essentially what most of us did as children. Because our parents, who were often in their twenties or early thirties, became our gods—our absolute authorities. And that makes sense for child development. But as adults, if we want to end our suffering, we need to question those inherited beliefs.

For example, maybe your fifth-grade teacher told you that you were lazy or worthless. But now you can see: he was going through a divorce, struggling with addiction, and possibly projecting his own pain onto you. That doesn’t make his judgment true. This is why I find the intersection of psychology and spirituality to be so powerful. Psychology helps us see and understand the patterns. And spirituality helps us go beyond them—not through repression or bypass, but through genuine inner freedom.

We often hear people say, “I can’t talk to that person—they disturb my peace.” Or, “I was feeling great until you came home.” If our peace is that fragile, then we haven’t yet done the deeper psychological and spiritual work. So first, we need to ask: What are the beliefs I’m carrying that keep me stuck? And then we can bring in spiritual practices. One of my favorites is the Neti Neti practice from Vedanta. “Not this, not this.”

It’s traditionally used in meditation, but it can also be brought into daily life. In meditation, you move layer by layer: “I am not my clothes. I am not the skin beneath them. I am not the blood flowing underneath. I am not my organs…” Eventually, you find yourself saying things like: “I am not dopamine. I am not serotonin. I am not a synaptic electrical impulse.” And when you realize that you are not the chemistry or electricity of your brain, then you are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. Even the feelings we cling to most tightly are just patterns in the brain—physical, material activity in the neocortex. And if I’m not my own brain chemistry, I am certainly not someone else’s projections.

So, when someone says, “You’re lazy. You’re stupid. You’re brilliant. You’re amazing”—you can remain free. If you internalize the praise, you’ll have to internalize the criticism too. Ride the wave up, and it will come down. Neti Neti helps us stay grounded in who we really are. It’s one of many practices I use to bridge seated meditation with daily life—to help us carry spiritual freedom into traffic, into offices, into families. Because that’s the real practice: to live in the world without losing ourselves.

Jeff Carreira: Thank you so much for everything you’ve shared.

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For more information about Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati’s work visit: sadhviji.org or read her new book Come Home to Yourself: Simple Answers to Life’s Essential Questions.