Jeff Carreira: I’m very happy to be speaking with you. I’ve spent some time listening to your teachings online and reading your book Sovereign Self, and I’ve been deeply moved by the way you bring the tradition of Vedanta to the West — honoring its ancient lineage with great accuracy and integrity, while also making it accessible and relevant to the Western mindset.

I find Sovereign Self to be a powerful and illuminating exploration of Vedantic wisdom. You feel like an important voice for us to include, especially as we focus this issue on spiritual practice in the contemporary world.

The world we live in today is vastly different from the world in which the Vedas were revealed, and yet I believe the wisdom they offer is needed now more than ever.

Acharya Shunya: I appreciate you recognizing my work. It means a great deal because it takes a discerning eye to truly see what I’m doing and to grasp the value of what I’m trying to offer.

As you know, Vedanta is a word that gets tossed around a lot these days. I’m making a sincere effort to share what it actually is, in a way that remains true to its essence while still being accessible to contemporary seekers.

Jeff Carreira: My initial exposure to Vedanta was through a Neo-Advaita-influenced approach to Advaita Vedanta. We didn’t study the Vedas in depth, but I had powerful experiences of inner freedom that changed my life and opened the doorway to a deeper search. That journey continues, and I’m increasingly drawn to the fullness of the tradition, from its philosophical depth to its lived, embodied wisdom.

Acharya Shunya: That background probably prepared you to be steeped deeper. I feel like Neo-Vedanta is a step, but we don't need to stop there. We can go deeper.

Jeff Carreira: I’d love to ask you about someone that you often reference with deep reverence, your grandfather, whom you've described as your spiritual teacher. I understand that you are part of a 2,000-year-old lineage. In recent generations, your grandfather and now you have served as lineage holders.

I believe the significance of being part of a lineage is important for people to understand, especially contemporary seekers. I’d love to invite you to speak about the lineage you come from, passing from your grandfather, to your father, and now to you. What does it mean to you to be part of such a tradition? What does it mean to be the current head of the lineage, and how does that shape your teaching in ways that might be missing without that living, generational continuity?

Acharya Shunya: Thank you for beginning with the lineage. That’s so important, because we lineage-trained teachers don’t aspire to be anything other than transmitters, vehicles, or embodiments of the tradition itself. We are not trying to be unique. We are trying to be in service to the Sanātana Dharma, the eternal truth of Vedanta, that is being conveyed through the lineage.

We trace our beginnings either to Shiva or Vishnu as the ultimate teacher. In our case, we begin with Nārāyaṇa (Vishnu), the primordial Ishwara. Not a person, but a divine principle that dwells in all beings, in every particle of the universe. And so, we always begin with the invocation: “Nārāyaṇa samārambhām” — It all began with Nārāyaṇa, the Lord.

Then we honor the sages whose commentaries we study: Vyāsa, Shankaracharya, and their direct lineages. After that comes: “Asmad āchārya paryantām”, and up to my own teacher. This includes my great-great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather, my father, and myself. These are the teachers whose cautions, words, and realizations continue to guide me.

My father did not take the robes, so the formal lineage passed from my grandfather directly to me. My father became a different kind of teacher — a spiritual guide and cultural ambassador on the world stage. He received nearly every award and honor possible in our land. He was a well-known media figure, and through him, I imbibed a very unique kind of teaching: what it means to carry the truth, while standing both inside and outside of its formal structures. He taught me how to walk in the world with the dignity and discernment of a spiritual messenger, even if he didn’t formally wear the mantle of renunciation.

So yes, I received the robes, and with that became the first female spiritual leader in my family’s lineage. Our spiritual base remains in Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, the birthplace of Lord Rama. My uncle, now in his nineties, continues to supervise our sacred space there while I travel back and forth from the West.

When you ask what it’s like to be the head of a lineage, the answer is that it’s an experience of profound responsibility. You may not have heard about me until the last decade because I spent many years in deep personal inquiry. I needed to understand how to carry this responsibility while also being a householder-sage — a mother, a wife, and a woman in the Western world. I had to figure out how to hold the accuracy and purity of my teachings while living in the West, and speaking to international students from every religion and culture. It took time. But I’m here now, and that preparation made all the difference.

Jeff Carreira: You’ve written a powerful book called Sovereign Self, and from what I understand, the essence of Vedanta, and of your teaching, is the recognition that we are, in truth, inherently free and unlimited beings. Of course, that’s not the self most of us know. We typically identify with a conditioned self: a self that feels small, bound by fear, emotion, limitation, and circumstance. But as I understand it, the goal of the Vedantic teachings is to discover and abide in the true Self, the Ātman, that is already liberated, sovereign, and complete, and then to live in the world as an expression of that realization. I’d love for you to speak about this inherently free, sovereign-Self that you describe so beautifully in your book, and how we can begin to recognize and live from that truth in our lives.

Acharya Shunya: Our everyday experience is quite bound — constrained by time, space, circumstances, and what we often call destiny. There are fixed patterns in our lives, and no matter how much we duck, turn right or left, or go north or south, we can’t seem to evade them. Similar toxic situations or deep difficulties return again and again. Even when we think we have it all together, we still feel unfinished, incomplete, and insufficient. The sense of “not enough” takes over.

There is also the fear of change, decay, disease, and deprivation. So many afflictions that arise in saṁsāra, the phenomenal world. Despite all of this, there is a part of us that is eternally boundless. In Sanskrit, this is called the Ātman. The definition of Ātman is: “Āpanoti sarvam iti ātma” – that which is eternally boundless, in and of itself.

We, as human beings, are unique. Not only are we aware, like a caterpillar is aware of its surroundings. We are also self-aware. We are God-aware, universe-aware. We are capable of becoming aware of the Whole. Through meditation, contemplation, and the purification of the inner mirror, we can turn the lens of our awareness inward and discover this boundless aspect of ourselves.

And we do. Every time we close our eyes for a moment in meditation, every time we surrender to what is, something opens. When we’re controlling, we feel bound. But the moment we let it all flow, we become boundless again. Every tradition, every person, in every era, has touched this boundless essence, even if only for a moment. If we didn’t have access to it then humanity would have self-annihilated long ago. It’s this contact with the boundless that has kept us going.

We even touch it in deep sleep. When the mind and senses are quiet, we experience reflected bliss. We wake up and say, “Ahh, I had a good sleep,” even though there were no dreams. That goodness comes from being close to the boundless. We just touched it, from the outside perhaps, but we felt it.

Of course, the meditators among us, the yogis, sages, and seers across traditions, have entered it more consciously. They’ve known it. They’ve called it by different names. But as the saying goes, a rose by any other name is still a rose. You can call the Self anything you like, but its nature remains: boundless, freeing, liberating. It is what releases us from the chains of the mind and circumstance.

According to the Vedic tradition, it is not only our right, but our dharma to discover this. It’s not enough to simply “be a good person.” True dharma includes the discovery of the Self — that which remains regardless of whether you are good, bad, radiant, or struggling. That eternal, bountiful Self.

That’s why I titled my book Sovereign Self. I brought those two words together because true sovereignty arises only when we know the Self. Everything else compromises us. We become emotionally dependent. We get caught in vāsanās: those unconscious drives carried across lifetimes that push us to be or become something in the world, to have a certain kind of body or intellect. We become curators of a reality that isn’t real. And so Sovereign Self was my invitation for us to discover that inner majesty.

Jeff Carreira: I’d like to share an experience I had on retreat some years ago. For several days, I remained awake through all stages of consciousness, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. It was as if a part of me remained untouched, unchanging, aware throughout. I later came to associate this state with what is referred to in the Hindu tradition as Turiya, the fourth, transcendental state. I know now that there is a part of me that is always awake, that has always been awake and always will be. It was awake before this body was born, and it will remain awake long after this body dies. In that recognition, any fear of death disappeared.

When I speak with you now, and when I listen to your teachings, I feel that part of me beginning to vibrate. It rises to the surface. I understand this as an energetic transmission — something that goes beyond words and points directly to the Self. I’d love to hear you speak about the dual role of understanding and energetic recognition. How intellectual clarity and subtle transmission often arise together, and how both play a part in spiritual awakening.

Acharya Shunya: Yes, Jeff. It does take one to recognize another. When we are both looking at reality from a similar vantage point, it shifts the paradigm — not just for us, but for those around us. There’s a beautiful saying from the Upanishads: “Yathā dṛṣṭi tathā dṛśyam”. As is the seer, so is the seen. Our experience of reality is shaped by the quality of our seeing.

There are levels to this dṛṣṭi, this seeing. The first is the distracted awareness of our everyday lives, like the scattered attention of a fish darting in all directions. But then there is ekāgrā dṛṣṭi, a steady, one-pointed gaze. You know this from your own teaching. When students come to us in distress, often it’s not our words that bring calm, it’s our steady presence. As we hold them in that gaze, they begin to steady themselves. Not because we’re doing something to them, but because of how we are being. As is our seeing, so becomes what is seen.

And then there is a higher dṛṣṭi, what we might call darpaṇa dṛṣṭi, the mirror gaze. When our awareness reflects the Turiya state—the fourth state, the always-awake Self, it creates an energetic resonance. It’s not something we do consciously; it simply happens.

You mentioned your own experience of Turiya, and I agree. Once it has been touched, it can’t be untouched. It may not be our 24/7 lived state right away, but the recognition is irreversible. Something fundamental has shifted.

I, too, experience Turiya frequently. And I’ve noticed that when I’m established in that awareness, something happens around me. Sensitive or receptive people respond in different ways. Some, like you, recognize that silent, ever-awake one. Others simply say, “I feel so relaxed with you,” or “my mind becomes quiet in your presence.”

But what’s really happening is that our awareness begins to shape the space around us. That’s the true energetic transmission. Not dramatic. Not performative. But simply the truth of our being, rippling outward.

Jeff Carreira: You’ve chosen to live in the West, at least for a significant portion of your time. And it seems you’ve made a conscious decision to teach primarily Western students, or at least a global population that includes many people from outside of India. What inspired you to make that choice? And how do you see traditional Vedantic teachings being received and embraced by people from Western cultures? Are there particular challenges, or unexpected resonances that you’ve encountered while sharing these ancient teachings in such a different cultural context?

Acharya Shunya: What brought me to the West must have been guided by some higher mechanism of the universe, a divine orchestration that has a plan for each of us. When I was very young, my baba, my guru, said something that stayed with me. He was a man of few words, but after my upanayanam, a fire initiation at the age of nine that marked my entry into Vedic study, he quietly remarked, “When she grows up, she will go to videsh, to another land, and she will establish the Veda there.”

I was so young. I didn’t really understand what that meant. My cousins teased me that I’d be put on a boat and sent to Sri Lanka, because that was the only “foreign country” we knew of at the time! But as life unfolded, circumstances aligned, and I eventually found myself here in the West. Once I arrived, I began meeting deeply sincere seekers, mumukshus, who were no different in their longing for truth than those I had known in India. They wanted moksha: liberation. That was their driving impulse, and I felt called to respond.

Now, I have students across 21 countries. Many began as Christians, Muslims, or Sufis, coming from different cultural and spiritual traditions, but they are all journeying toward the Self that lies beyond religion, gender, language, or geography.

I’ve come to feel at home here. And more importantly, I feel I’m not fighting my destiny. I don’t know if I’ll eventually return to India full-time, especially if my uncle, who still oversees our traditional center in Ayodhya, becomes unable to continue. But the way things are now, with so much happening online and the global sangha continuing to grow, I believe I’m meant to remain an international teacher, sharing this ancient wisdom in a way that resonates across cultures and generations.

Jeff Carreira: Since this issue of our magazine is specifically devoted to the theme of spiritual practice in the contemporary world, I’d love to ask more directly: What are the primary spiritual practices that you teach? And what are the effects or transformations that you most commonly see in those who engage sincerely with these practices?

Acharya Shunya: We teach many, many practices. But if I’m speaking specifically about Advaita Vedanta, then the core practice begins with viveka and vairāgya: discernment and dispassion.

This means cultivating the ability to see clearly what is real and what is not. What is Maya, the illusion, and to continuously discern between the nitya and anitya, the eternal and the non-eternal, the Self and the non-Self. This ongoing inquiry is fundamental to Advaitic practice.

The word rāga means coloring, so vairāgya is about “discoloring” ourselves. Disentangling from the roles, stories, and cultural identities that we are wrapped in, so that we can return to the unconditioned Self, to our divine essence.

There’s a slight difference in the way I teach Advaita, however. In my tradition, we begin with God. This is a theistic form of Vedic Advaita. We start by acknowledging the divine as something greater than ourselves, as an external presence. Then we recognize the divine in everything, what we call qualified non-duality. Finally, we come to know the divine Self within. At that point, the outer God dissolves, and only the Ātma, the inner divinity, remains.

So our path includes bhakti yoga. We allow for devotion, for longing, for weeping even, in the presence of the eternal. Our concept of God is inclusive, not exclusive. It can be with form or without form, with qualities or without qualities. We provide a full spectrum of possibilities, because without surrender to something greater the ego can all too easily hijack the realization of Self and falsely declare itself enlightened.

In karma yoga, we serve that divine presence through action. That becomes a spiritual practice in itself. In upāsana yoga, we engage with practices such as chanting the Gāyatrī mantra, meditation, vāk tapa (the conscious refinement of speech), and other contemplative rituals. Finally, in jñāna yoga, the path of knowledge, we focus on viveka, vairāgya, and the full set of four foundational disciplines known as Sādhana Chatuṣṭaya, which I describe in Sovereign Self, broken down into nine sub-steps. That is our deep inner work.

Not all students follow the entire path. Many blossom in bhakti yoga and stay there. Some move forward into karma yoga. Others may circle back to Bhakti because it’s the most natural, heartfelt way to connect with something higher than the personal self. And a rare few will journey with me all the way into jñāna yoga and pure Advaita. But once we’re established in jñāna yoga, then all other practices begin to fall away, and the only thing that remains is the deepening of the Self within.

Jeff Carreira: My understanding is that the teaching of Advaita Vedanta centers on the discrimination between the real and the unreal, as you described. In the case of Ramana Maharshi, he used the inquiry “Who am I?”, a question meant to be asked repeatedly to reveal the unlimited self beyond all conditioned identities. But as I understand it, that kind of direct self-inquiry traditionally comes after a foundation has been established through other forms of practice, particularly bhakti yoga.

I encountered the nondual teachings of Advaita Vedanta early in my spiritual life, so I began with that. Only later did I turn more consciously toward bhakti yoga. And in hindsight, I can see that Bhakti was always part of my path, whether or not I named it as such. It almost has to be. At some point, we have to fall in love with the Divine in order to walk this path deeply. Lately, I’ve been drawn to explore bhakti yoga more deliberately, and I’ve started listening to your series of teachings on Bhakti. I’ve never engaged in any formal devotional practice or ritual before, but I feel that cultivating love and devotion for the Divine is an essential part of this journey, and particularly valuable in the contemporary world.

Acharya Shunya: Even Lord Krishna teaches jñāna yoga first. In chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita he begins with Advaita, and only then does he move on to karma yoga in Chapter Three, and later to bhakti yoga in Chapter Eighteen, though aspects of Bhakti are woven throughout. I feel that teachers like Ramana Maharshi, and even my own grandfather, taught primarily Advaita. And perhaps, toward the end of my life, I too may focus only on Advaita, because by then we’ll already be there.

But as teachers running a wisdom school, we have to recognize that souls come to us carrying all kinds of inner confusion and clouded awareness. bhakti yoga and karma yoga play a huge role. For their purification, for their inner beautification, for their restfulness. And to redirect their energy from self-absorbed tendencies toward universal and divine tendencies on that journey to the Self. And it’s also true that some students, like you, perhaps, have already done a lot of this preparatory work in previous lifetimes. I often meet students who naturally have a deep propensity for Bhakti or karma yoga, even without labeling it as such. That’s why, as teachers, we sometimes introduce jñāna yoga first, just as Krishna did. Because just in case this isn’t your first time on this path, we want to offer the real deal upfront.

Jeff Carreira: Bhakti came into my path because I fell in love with my teacher. That is what initiated me onto the spiritual path. I’ve often said that if my teacher had been teaching Christianity or Islam, I would have followed that. I studied Advaita Vedanta simply because that’s what my teacher was offering.

But you bring up something that I’d really love to talk to you about. You run a wisdom school, and within that, you offer different teachings to different students, based on what they need. I find that very inspiring. I’ve encountered other teachers who present their teaching as the only way. If it works for you, that’s great, but if it doesn’t then you’re made to feel like you’re doing something wrong.

Years ago, I had a realization that we’re each on a unique soul journey — a long arc of lifetimes leading us toward union with the Divine. And in any given lifetime, our soul needs something very specific from us. My spiritual practice is part of how I serve my soul’s larger journey. It doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s path. It’s tailored to the unique needs of my soul in this lifetime.

I would love to hear your perspective on the relationship between a particular lifetime on Earth and the soul’s larger journey.

Acharya Shunya: Because of the awareness we have, a human birth is rare. And the desire to know the Self is even rarer. Like you said, you fell in love with your teacher, so your teacher started a chain of events that led to this conversation we’re having now.

There’s a Sanskrit term: mahāpurusha saṁśrayaḥ, “to come into the presence of a great being”. And it’s said that all three of these circumstances, human birth, the desire for truth, and the connection with a great soul, are granted by a greater divine reality beyond our comprehension. But if a teacher comes and gives you a formula, “twenty minutes of this, twenty minutes of that, morning and evening, and you’ll be liberated”, or says, “here is this mantra,” or “breathe this way,” and then puts everyone through the same mechanical process, it's a disappointment.

In our tradition, we believe that the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutras, these are profound teachings where even a few verses can transfer you from the transactional plane to the ultimate reality. And then you are left to discover for yourself what was illusion. That process of realization cannot be systematized. Our job as Vedic teachers has always been to bring that transmission to the ready soul. In one lifetime someone may perfect bhakti, but bhakti means you are no longer clinging to the crumbs of saṁsāra. You are holding the Ultimate Reality itself. You become the Mirabai. You become the saint within. You don’t even need a Hindu altar, bhakti is universal.

Bhakti moves the ego away from its addiction to worldly happiness and into a divine communion that yields true ānanda. That’s what we support as teachers, not by putting students into a tight framework that controls their experience, but by offering the full spectrum. Because some may have practiced bhakti in a past life, we can’t assume everyone must start there. Some may now need karma yoga, or rāja yoga, or what I call upāsana yoga, meditations and self-disciplines. Others are ready for jñāna yoga, the inquiry of Advaita. Throughout all of it, the purpose remains: the discovery of the sovereign Self.

This new style of teaching, focused on just one technique, really began in the West. A few Indian teachers came and perhaps didn’t fully see the ātman in their students. Instead they saw difference – race and culture – and unintentionally diluted the teachings. Maybe their intentions were sincere, I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But what happened was that the teachings got simplified. A handful of verses from Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras became the whole of yoga. Or hatha yoga was treated as complete. Systems formed. Money got involved. Eventually, this pop-guru culture got exported back to India.
These days, every guru seems to have a signature method. Even I’ve been advised, “Shunya-ji, just focus on one thing. You’ll become a very wealthy teacher.” But I already have the true wealth, ātma-jñāna, and the joy of offering back what I’ve received. That’s my yajña, my sacred offering.

Students like you, Jeff, who are truly listening, will carry this wisdom forward. You will pass it on. That’s what we do: we light lamps in each other’s hearts. I can’t offer a rigid formula because I wasn’t raised by rigid teachers. I was raised by Brahman itself, in the form of the Guru. How could I reduce that to a technique and deny myself the joy of living transmission?

I know you know this too: every time we teach, we ourselves expand. The real teacher is the teaching. We are all students of eternal truth. So yes, this simplification of the teachings is unfortunate. But I wouldn’t say that Ramana Maharshi diluted Advaita. If you study his Vedanta Sāra, you’ll find it contains the full scope of Vedanta. Yes, he offered a technique, “Who am I?”, but that’s different from minimizing the whole teaching to a technique. We all have our own emphasis. If I wanted, I could focus on teaching just one yoga. That would be legitimate. But I’m fortunate, I’m able to teach all four paths. I can even teach Ayurveda, philosophy, and the Divine Feminine. So why shouldn’t I?

If Īśvara, the ultimate ātman, is flowing through me in so many forms, why would I hold any of it back?

Jeff Carreira: I deeply appreciate how you’re bringing the full path of Vedanta to light in your work. I know that can feel demanding, especially in a spiritual marketplace that often prefers quick solutions and simple formulas. But the truth is, enlightenment itself makes demands. It’s not you, the teacher, asking something of people. It’s the nature of the path itself. The journey to truth requires depth, sincerity, and the willingness to be transformed. And that’s not something that can be packaged, or rushed.