Jonny: Hi there, so I hope you really enjoyed today's episode. On top of this, we've got some bonus content to share with you now, all courtesy of Ananta, as she kindly gave us her consent to share her experience in that Japanese prison. Such an important time for her, we didn't really get a chance to discuss it in depth during the actual recording, but Ananta offers this now, what she describes as the story of her time in those incredibly harsh conditions and of her awakening, the door that was opened in her to who she really is.

She is a captivating speaker, I think you'll find that out now. Her account details all kinds of amazing things: how she felt overflowing with compassion for all beings, even the prison guards, how she felt the pain of humanity and the world moving through and yet also immense love, boundless love. It is so, so fascinating.

Without further ado, here is Ananta's telling of that story. I truly appreciated our time together and if this moves or speaks to you like it has done to me, then I guess please do go and check Ananta out on her YouTube channel or try to catch her in one of her upcoming retreats in Thailand or in the UK later this year. The details are all in the show notes.

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Ananta: Hi Jonny. First of all, I want to say like I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. It was great to meet you and share with you and I've been feeling moved today, inspired by what you said at the end of the conversation actually, I've been feeling moved to give you an add-on. 

At the end of the conversation, you said to me that you do these conversations mostly because you want to hear other people's experiences. Then it came to me during the night and this morning that, in that case, I want to give an add-on in response to your first question.

You asked me was there an experience that changed everything, that I knew that there was no turning back and it changed everything forever. Yes, there was and I didn't go into details about that purposely with the reason, like, I'm hesitant to describe that whole experience and lead people into the confusion, or the idea that they need to wait for that experience to happen and until that experience happens, then they don't know or they're not there yet.

I've seen it a lot in working with people, so I'm hesitant about really going into that experience. However, with you inspiring me to speak this, as you said that you're interested in how other people have experienced this and how that turning point, so I'm going to zoom in on that and just give you, like, some details of that experience.

So, okay, right, during that time, at that point in the life story, where I was at, this body was in excruciating pain on the physical level, on the mental level and on the emotional level. And it was truly beyond unbearable, you know, and there were no outlets, there were no painkillers in any sense and it was extreme and it was ongoing. I wasn't just sitting in a cell by myself all day reading books in my little special retreat, I was working in a factory and I was being made to work every day harder than I did yesterday. 

We had to continuously better ourselves and I was working on a sewing machine, which I didn't know how to do, I was useless, and having to get exact precision. So you've got to have your eye on the needle, you've got to be totally present, you've got to get it right, and I was continuously getting it wrong, getting screamed at and all this kind of stuff. So, the intense pressure on the system was having all kinds of effects on my nervous system, on my emotionality… there was a breakdown.

It was the only time in the life that I ever felt suicidal and I actually wrote that in my diary while I was in there. If I read what I wrote back today, it's just like, oh my god, it's really the darkest night, you know. 

So, of course, there was resistance to the experience, of course, and this particular night I came back — we used to get brought back every evening to the cell and we were not allowed to lay back on the bed until like after 7 p.m. , we had to sit and we couldn't lean back against the wall — the body's in so much pain and you can't lean back against the wall and you can't lay down. You've got to sit, and if you break that you're screamed at and you get points where you can get punished and all this kind of stuff.

So, each evening I used to read like one page of a book from who happened to be my guru at that time Rajneesh, Osho — I was totally surrendered to the truth that was coming through his voice — so I'd read a page of that and it would just go so directly in and he was all the time talking about enlightenment and this stuff.

Anyway, every evening I used to read a page of that and really take it in and really digest it and really merge with it, and really sit with it until I really, really recognized what was being said. But this evening I was too exhausted to even do that and I laid down on the bed and I just started to sink into the pain. And I did have a lot of prior experience in body work — I told you I was a body worker and I had a lot of cranial sacral — so I really knew how to travel down inside myself and watch.

So this evening I sunk into the pain and I started to — not with any intention like this is going to get me out of it or this is going to get me enlightened or nothing, nothing, it was just there was no other way — so I dropped into the pain and I started to breathe into it and open into it.

So it was like dropping down and then taking a breath into the pain and then the body would start unwinding and lead me into deeper pain. And the deeper it went, the more excruciating was the pain, yet, because I was like guiding it from the witnessing, you know, I was in it, but also detached. So I was breathing into it and going with this unwinding and following, following that movement.

And there… then I lost myself. You know, like there was no more direction or separation to the experience the way I see it now. And so I dropped right through it, right through the pain into a deeper level at the core of being. These are the words I have now I didn't have then, that then opened into vast, vast, endless space.

And I kept dropping into that, and as it opened, it was like expanding light. It just kept opening and opening and I was going and going and, there came a thought like, “oh, what's this, what's happening?” and I just watched that thought go by and kept, kept letting go into it and it kept opening and opening and opening. 

And then it turned into, like, never-ending bliss — and I couldn't feel the body anymore. I just couldn't feel the body anymore. 

I was gone in this like, like there was no prisoner, there was no prison, there was no… I was in another level where none of that existed. If I look at it now and I give it words, I'll say for Pure Awareness, none of that existed. Yeah? 

So the letting go into that and… letting go… and letting go… the thought came, this is freedom! This is free! 

And I just kept going with that. And the more I kept going and letting go in that, and enjoying it, the more bliss came. And I was like that the whole night. 

In my own interpretation at that time, remember this is like 26 years ago, it seemed like I'd found a door, I'd found a doorway.

So when I, when I, I won't say I woke up in the morning — because I never slept, I hardly ever slept when I was in there — but in that space I could go what they call astral travelling, you know, I could go anywhere, anywhere, I wanted. You know, I could go to England, I could go to… I could go in the supermarkets and I could get… you know, it was just quantum.

That was one level of it. So when I returned back to the one in the uniform, playing the role of prisoner, everything was different. There was only Now, there was only just What Is, there was no separation to my experience.

So although it was still painful, and although it was still undesirable, there was no separation to the experience. 

So then I began to notice the beauty of this. You know, they'd be screaming their head off and there was a little chuckle inside of me, like a little smile inside of me — and then a little voice would come with it and go — nobody can take this, nothing can take this smile. Yeah.

So then this little voice started to give me these pointers of where I was free. And so I could be standing there, they'd be screaming in my face and there'd be this like little inner smile going like, nothing can take this, nothing can take this, like, and looking at the one screaming at me, seeing the prisoner over there, you know. 

So it all changed and the days following and the weeks following, my heart, my heart was bursting with a love that was uncaused, right? There was no other, there was no one giving it to me, there was no, there was no cause, it was causeless.

And so I was also continuing to read these one pages of Osho's books and with what was happening and the transmission that was coming through the pages, I was shifting and shifting into what he was pointing to. But there's no way that I could have related his description of enlightenment to what was happening to me. I didn't, you know, there was no interpretation of that because I was still, you know, I was still feeling all the human feelings. So I didn't put two and two together, so to speak. 

So yeah, the heart was bursting out with this love and this compassion for all beings and seeing the suffering of everybody, including the prison guards and feeling the pain of the whole humanity and feeling the love and, like, it was like the whole world was moving through me. I was knowing myself as the WHOLE world.

Anyway, no experience lasts, and that experience was in certain moments, right? There were also all the rest of it still coming and going. And, but every night it was like I'd found this doorway and I could every night go through this door and go out into this vast bliss, freedom, placeless place, right? So that became available to me anytime I dropped and went through the door. That's my words, how I could interpret it at that time.

So yeah, when I, when I got released, which was a big shock, it was another big shock to come back into the world, into this crazy world with people all talking nonsense and I couldn't relate to these people. I couldn't play the game of being somebody in this world and having these conversations. I felt so alien.

So when I came back — and I told you, all of the personality triggers started coming up, and yeah, I didn't know what to do with it in relationship — I just was like, you know, I can see right through it, but what's that!? How do I, how am I going to walk? 

You know, there was confusion and there was nobody to point the way. And, but I started to — I found, I don't know if you've ever heard of, maybe not, but Gangaji? And she was a spiritual teacher that came through Papaji in India and she was direct pointing, which is what I do, which is directly pointing to what you are, which was a different style to Osho.

So when I heard one of her talks and she was pointing to — to what you are, to who one truly is, to That which is always free, to That which is untouchable, to That which is in the midst of all experience, is unchanging and everlasting and doesn't age and doesn't, uh, has never been hurt. And so it was like recognition, recognition, there was recognition of what had been recognized in the jail.16

So I started to — the penny started to drop that she was saying that I am That. But then my question was like, what about all this stuff, you know? 

So I went back to India and very quickly through, through a really challenging relationship, I, you know, it's those challenges that kind of propel and I searched for the way. And, um, I quickly was directed to a teacher, Delano, who had been many, many, many years with Osho and then had been with this other style of direct pointing with Papaji. Anyway, I went to her and she was doing, an intensive enlightenment, intensive one month process.

And I signed up and I went and the very first — it was nine investigations through direct inquiry — and the very first investigation was the direct inquiry of who am I? And the moment that she started speaking on that, it was just like, bang, bang, bang, bang, recognition, recognition. And that just started opening and opening and the knowing dropped in — the way she describes the drop dropped into the ocean, the drop drops into the ocean.

There is no more a drop searching for freedom. The drop drops into the ocean. There's only the ocean.

So in that moment, there was recognition of the recognition that what I had opened into in the jail, is what I am. That it was not this place that I'd found, through this doorway, that it was not somewhere I could go. It is who am I? It is, I Am That.

I Am That. Bang. It was over.

It was over for any kind of searching. It was over for the little me that needed answers that needed — it was over, over, over for who I'm not. And yet it was the absolute beginning of, of being born into the walking and talking of this.

So I was, in that very moment, I was still in an extremely challenging relationship where he was like a recluse and he was rejecting me. And we were living together and we were doing this intensive together, this course, and he saw me getting it and it made him so angry because he was, like, left out or whatever, and he rejected me.

And that triggered all my stuff, all my little girl, all my wounding, all my everything. And I'm sitting there like blissed, like pouring and pouring and pouring with bliss, while these rejection triggers and things are just like all coming through me, like waves rising in the ocean. And that… you know, this teacher never spoke on how to integrate these two levels.

She never spoke about embodiment. She was only for the absolute recognition, which is beyond the me story, beyond the small identity, beyond. So it was only absolute, and I absolutely needed to know what to do with all this pain, what to do with the drama that's playing out. What to do, you know. And I was sitting for hours in a park, like just merging with all of nature. Like there was just no separation between what I am and what that is.

It was just merging in pure, pure, eternal love. And at the same time, I had this head fuck going on in relation with this guy. So I started to make recordings, and let that speak. And as I let that speak, I'd listen back to it. And when I listened back to it, I could see through it. And when I could see through it, I could speak to it.

And that was the beginning of this true voice coming through from Source, directly from Source, transmitting the message that I was hearing for the first time, coming from emptiness, not coming from thinking, and speaking to my mind. You know, like in Sanskrit, in the Indian language, giving Satsang, transmitting the truth to the mind. And this was the beginning of seeing clearly how to integrate this.

And then I knew that, you know, I had to feel it, I had to go directly into the feeling. So I started to… I became my own teacher within that. They call it the Satguru in this language. I found the Guru, the Inner Guru. 

And yeah, so the process started from there. And then when I started to work with people, I, from the beginning, was working with these two levels, bringing about the recognition and working with all the stuff.

Now, what is the difference in — you know, because I was on that course with, say, 20 or 30 others, just like I was in prison with 600 others, and they didn't wake up. And I was on that course with another 20 or 30, and they didn't wake up. There was only like maybe two, yeah?

Some got the experience in a moment, but the experience passed. Right? What made that difference, that it didn't pass for me? 

The experience of bliss has to pass, yet this direct knowing is not an experience, it is a knowing. And a knowing is not dependent on any experience, right? Anyway, blah, blah.

What made the difference, I would say, was the value. 

You know, when I had found in the prison, I had already found the value of going through that doorway. And I had already found the value of this little smile that nobody could take. So that value. 

You know, I found the immense value of every single little — everything was sacred, you know. So I was already walking with this sacredness and this value for the tiniest little things. So when that clarified, the value was immense.

And, not many are able to value it, because they value all that that comes and goes. Right? 

So yeah, I wanted to give you this add-on, yeah, because I feel you were asking that in the beginning, because this is what changed. There was no turning back ever again from there, you know.

And I didn't go into it on our call, not to create, because I've found that, you know, I did have a very explosive and expansive experience and that can easily trick the seeker into comparing that to what experience they're having, and it's just so far away. And that can keep someone searching for another 30 years, you know.

So yeah, I get hesitant about that, but here it is. And again, I really appreciated sharing with you and talking with you. Thank you for inviting me, and a pleasure to meet a final cup winner rugby champion. Even though I have no idea about that world, the thing that really brought our paths to cross is the immense passion and value of what this is. Yeah, so thank you and Namaste.

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So that's it for another episode of I Am.

It's brilliant to be sharing this unfolding experience with you all. If you'd like to get in touch with either me or the guest, then all the information you need is in the show notes. I welcome all and any feedback.

I really want all of you to have a hand in guiding the feel of this show and the path of the conversation as well, so just keep them coming in. Until next time, I'm Johnny Wilkinson, and this has been I Am. This show is brought to you by Mags Creative.

The executive producer is Megan Hill-Smith. Assistant producer is Alex Macy.

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