InSwedish                

Kristian Dahl-Madsen (b. 1929) grew up in a family with many siblings, on a larger farm in western Jutland, Denmark. The upbringing in the countryside offered Kristian a lot of time by himself out in nature. He has said that he, despite the most common childhood programing (upbringing) the young child maintained the ability to have contact with the essence (the self beyond the self, thoughts and feelings) and the related bliss. About age 14 he got hold of books about meditation at the local library and texts of Ramana Maharshi. He is often alone in the woods meditating and experiencing so called satoris (bliss). Kristians grandfather, who lived to 96 years of age, has a significant influence on the child and teenager Kristian and his spiritual development. Kristian describes his grandfather as "always warm and loving, always optimistic, always fearless, never in a bad mood and with a rare capacity for lucid".

As an adult Kristian undertake an engineering education and in the late 1950s he moves to Sweden. On a trip to the Canary Islands in the early 70s, he by chance got in contact with the psychoanalysist Nina Thymark. This came to be the starting point of both a thorough self-psychoanalysis and the following education to psychoanalysist. When he in the late 70's became interested in New Identity Process (NIP), he did a training with Dan Casriel in psychotherapeutic methods like emotional catharsis and bonding (the human need for close contact and relating). After a few years as practicing analysist and therapist, Kristian meets Osho (spiritual masters, also known as Bhagwan). The meeting is vital and Kristian follow Osho to Oregon USA, where he stays in two years as the masters devotee (disciple). In 1982 Kristian undergoes the transformation that leads to enlightenment, (a state of constant contact with the essence). Back in Sweden, Kristian leaves his job as a senior engineer at Asea's research department, and initiate course activity with dream analysis, meditation and Identity Therapy. First he settled in Norway and then in Dalarna, Sweden. The meditation centre Kvarnen in Gravendal was purchased in 1989.

The following are questions and Shanti Kristians answers from different satsangs in Gravendal.

Question: Can you describe the methods for psychological and spiritual development that you use here?
Shanti Kristian: A psychological process is necessary to achieve the inner calmness and inner silence that is intrinsic for spiritual development where the goal is de-identification with the ego (self image), mind (thoughts), emotions and body.

Since Buddha many methods have been developed for this purpose. All techniques we use are life affirmative and are largely derived and developed from the mystic Osho and the psychoanalysist Wilhelm Reich. Our psychotherapeutic methods are Identity therapy (NIP) and dream analysis. In order to see through the deepest programings (learned patterns) of the ego, work with the Enneagram-types has also proved to be very valuable. Initially the Enneagram was introduced to the West by George Gurdjieff and is a personality typology, mainly based on innate temperament and on coping strategies during upbringing.

Through the psychotherapeutic process the unconscious is made conscious and an emotional openness is created by cathartic work with emotions. This leads to less identification with the ego, mind, emotions and body. In this way the awareness (conscious presence) increases without major effort. Additionally, when these psycho-therapeutic processes is combined with various meditation techniques and refined energy work (access to life-energy), a further development is made possible which could result in a substantial devotion to the existence (our innermost being) - which eventually leads to enlightenment.

Question: Can you say some more about de-identifying with an ego that is not functional?
Shanti Kristian: No ego really work.

Question: But surely, isn't it is necessary to build an I, a self-image, during upbringing?
Shanti Kristian: It is absolutely necessary, otherwise we would not be homosapiens, that is true.

Question: And if you did not get the opprtunity to build a functional ego during upbringing?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, then you need therapy, there is not much else to say. But the ego of most people aren’t that broken than it couldn’t be made to work with the help of psychotherapy.

Question: A lot of people believe, or hope, that happiness can be found when they have come to an end of a psychotherapy process.
Shanti Kristian: Now you're already talking about a minority of people. But yes, Dan Casriel, the founder of Identity therapy, claimed that not only is this therapy about reducing symptoms and suffering, the purpose of the therapy is also to become happy.

Question: If the goal then is enlightenment, we are talking about a very small minority. Can you say something about the difference?
Shanti Kristian: To in advance tell anyone who wants to start a psychotherapy process that they won´t be happy by therapy alone, is impossible. Engaging in a psychotherapy process is in itself a major project. But the full contact with the essence is in general not achieved only by going through a psychotherapy.

Question: So the explanation is that psychotherapy leads to an ego or self-image that is well functioning, but real happiness only occurs if we stop identifying with the ego?
Shanti Kristian: I cannot quite agree with that statement. It is rather when you no longer have disturbing programing that you become able to hear and feel the longing for contact with the innermost being. It is difficult to understand that contact with the essence is the most important thing, when one is full of programing and neuroses. Mainly, this is what it is all about.

And what do you do when your psychotherapy is completed? Yes, most people can not tolerate the feeling of 'nothingness' , so they revert to some of their old programing. This is what always happens after a very successful psychotherapy, unless the person manages to find something on the spiritual path. The reality is so "a-es dhamma sanantenum" like old Buddha always replied, "it is the law of nature".

Question: In what way will dream analysis help with de-identification of ego and mind?
Shanti Kristian: Dream analysis, just like any other psychotherapy that works, make room for the essence and meditation increases when the head is no longer full of old programing. Therapy will help clear the brain. People who come direct 'from the street' and who hasn’t looked in to their programing, has significantly more difficulty to meditate and to get in touch with the essence.

Question: To interpret dreams from a spiritual point of view is quite unusual, quite unique is it not?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, it's not something that is practiced among psychoanalysists in general. Dreams have lots of meaning that do not have to do with psychotherapy directly. Dreams can also have spiritual content and symbols. All who have been here know that dreams can be very helpful for the spiritual development.

Question: How common is it to combine psychotherapy with spiritual development, as you do here?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, after Osho it has actually become quite common. He managed to spread the message that one first needs to clean up some among ones programings and have a certain level of ego function. Otherwise it is, one very difficult to arrive at the spiritual path, and two it may be dangerous. Previously a lot of seekers in India got crazy. It does not happen these days when you first undergo psychotherapy. To try to sit in meditation for several weeks in a row with all the programing intact, is really horrible. In India they often ended up as village idiots more or less, and were regarded as holy people who was respected. They were called 'mad paramahansas', meaning 'crazy saints'.

Question: What would you like to call the message that you want to bring about?
Shanti Kristian: There is no learning and no theory. To try to express it as some kind of learning is not possible. What I want to mediate flows directly from the essence. To theorize about it, is again a back door to the mind (brain activity). It is not a teaching about how the spiritual development works. It is all a question about having direct contact with the essence, from where the clarity emerges by itself. My task is to facilitate direct contact with the source.

Question: And what one is trying to do with psychological and spiritual development is to remove obstacles to reach the source. Is that correct?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, evolution can remove some barriers, other obstacles is disclosed by other means. We have enlightenment within us. It can not be eradicated. It is only a question of removing what hides and obscure?

Question: You call what you offer for Spiritual Hedonism. Can you describe what it means?
Shanti Kristian: It was Osho who coined the term. Someone asked him a long time ago, in 'Poona 1' (Oshos ashram, the spiritual center), if he wanted to describe the essence of their way in just a few words. Then he replied: "spiritual hedonism".

In English, one could translate it with 'life affirmative spirituality'. It is a spirituality which does not renounce something that is natural or has to do with life. It is to simply comply with the principle of the desires of our drives that we carry inside.

In most religions, spirituality ment to mortify or torment yourself. For example fasting or locking yourselfs up in a monastery, has nothing to do with spirituality - on the contrary, it is delaying the development. You do not get enough access to your energy if you avoid all sorts of things and refrain life itself. Eventually life energy disappeares and you thus lose the opportunity to really get in touch with the innermost core. It is tragic that it´s been like this for hundreds of years, both in the east and in the west. Today, it is perfectly clear that to live life fully is a much faster way, even when you are on the path of a seeker.

Question: Hedonism is often associated with a kind of ruthless lust, a lust at others expense?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, but then it is material hedonism, this is spiritual hedonism. Spiritual enjoyment is of course not on someone else's expense.

Question: What roads lead to spiritual hedonism?
Shanti Kristian: Almost all the meditation techniques we use are based on it. But Identity therapy has clear hedonistic elements. What Dan Casriel with such compassion used to explain is that when bonding (exercise with physical and emotional closeness) actually works you experience the closeness as 'just delicious' - i.e. as a direct contact with the essence. This is why identity therapy is so effective - it is life affirmative, in conjunction with several other psychotherapies.

Question: The meditation techniques that you offer, one can say, is to practice both experiences of joy and to reinforce awareness (conscious presence)?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, and spiritual hedonism is also about getting in sufficiently high energy regarding more subtle energies. It is very satisfying once you discover and experience this. A direct way into these conditions is Osho's variant of re-birthing (release breathing), which could lead to a satori, a bliss state, if you have sufficient awareness and really engage in all stages of the meditation. It is not a coincidence that the group members always select this exercise when I ask which meditation they wish to do. Whether people are fully aware of it and fully experience a satori, or only get some gleamts of it, still it´s something in this exercise that will give everybody a taste.

Question: How does high energy help us in the process of spiritual development? Shanti Kristian: We are keen on contacting high energy states in many different ways. We must remember that all primitive people have, without exception, used shamanism to ensure the high energy needed to make spiritual contact.

High energy always tends to bring the mind some what in the background, and thus increas access to meditation and contact with the essence or 'being', through the bliss state. Many meditation techniques - often hedonistic - is simply out to get the mind puzzled. For example dance meditation, body meditations or singing mantra songs. When we use the exercises derived from Bioenergetics - with movement and breathing - it occupy so much of our attention that there is no longer room for mind activity. Often we focus on getting access to energy in all the seven chakras in the body. You can not become enlightened unless all seven chakras are open.

Energy levels is also affected by exercises performed in a group. Participants reinforce each other's energies. Energy is contagious and the whole is more than the sum of its parts. But most important about getting high energy levels is to practice awareness, and experience joy and ecstasy intensely. This provides a taste of the bliss that is the natural state of the enlightened one.

Question: So the goal of this life affirmative spirituality is enlightenment?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, it is the aim that all mystics have.

Question: And that is why people gather around a mystic?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, it's what you want. It is the energy that humans always have sought. It provides contact with their own essence - with the very, very innermost core. It is actually a contact with the energy you lived in at the beginning of your life - before words, before we had a mind (thought activity), before you had all present problems. For most people, it is difficult to remember how it felt. But, in any way, there still is a certainty in our deepest core.

Question: What does it actually mean to wake up, to be enlightened, to be a mystic? Shanti Mayi (American mystic) at one occasion said that "when you take your first step on the way of the seeker you are already lit, then you only need a refinement of It". Can you comment on that?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, you will be enlightened on the day you accept that you are a seeker, even if you still do not fully understand that you are enlightened. However, what you understand is that maximum development now is the most important thing in your life. And that leads to a totally dedicated seeking - which is synonymous with a refinement of 'It'. You will do everything in your power to develop and thus finally arrive at what the 'non-doing' is, an ability to 'just be' without being identified with anything, not even your thoughts, feelings or your body. You are able to rest in this harmony as long as circumstances do not require otherwise. When something happens and you need to react, you will notice that your thoughts, feelings and your body will function only as tools. These tools can be very sophisticated and valuable, but you don’t identify with them. You are identified with the essence wich is something much deeper.

There are many ways to refine 'It'. Each person must find his or hers own way that suits him or her best. Compared with old times, this is a luxury we can afford today. Earlier generations masters only offered one or two techniques to their disciples, whether they were suitable or not. All known techniques are available now, and remember that there are no new methods, they have all been known for millennia. The mantras that we sing (chanting) existed in India thousands of years before the viking age.

Question: Can you say something more about how spiritual hedonism can take us to enlightenment?
Shanti Kristian: Enlightenment is associated with bliss. Spiritual hedonism is about joy, the joy of doing what you deep down want to do. And what you want, of course, is associated with joy. There are several different levels of joy. We have the joy of the body, which can be very sudden and is characterized by its relative short duration. Sex is for example a short-term pleasure with the exception of tantra (practitioners of Indian love art), but then you also have other levels of joy involved. Then there is the joy of the mind, the joy when we for example solv difficult tasks. A mathematician could almost swoon of delight from solving a complex equation. We all exeprience some of that joy when we work things out or solve a problem. That joy last a little longer, but is not quite as significant as the pleasure of the body. The next level is the aesthetic pleasure, the pleasure in seeing something beautiful. The aesthetic pleasure is characterized by beeing even more lasting and more subtle than the previous ones.

Finally, there is the joy of the essens, what we call bliss. This joy may remain forever but is also so subtle that most people take long time to tune in and explore it. By practicing awareness, and have a hedonistic attitude you gain contact with this deep joy. It becomes a way to move to places where the eternal joy reside, what the enlightened one experiences, in the bliss of the essens.

Question: Are people of today ready for Spiritual hedonism?
Shanti Kristian: Try to read the writings of Buddha. They contain thousands of rules and to follow them largely means a continuation of the parents upbringing. Two days before Buddha died, he told his closest deciples that they could remove all minor rules. The only problem was that he forgot to tell them which rules were 'minor' and which were 'major'. As a result, the deciples kept all the rules. Buddhists of today therefor live by thousands of rules and this aspect of Buddhism of course is totally inhuman. No, there is no one who has see through that these rules which has been used for thousands of years, is completely hostile to life. Nor in the East or in the West have there been any faith in people's innermost, intentional nature. Hedonism, the lifeaffirmative aspect of life, was as quickly as possible taken away from children through uppbringing. So it is not until now we barely has begun to recognize, that this is what we want deep down, what our drives wants, that it is the real thing.

Do notice that I am talking here about our drives in its non neurotic form or in its natural function. It is bad methods of upbringing that leeds to neurotic drives. Thanks to some people who has seen through these thousands of years of upbringing, as Osho, Dan Casriel, Wilhelm Reich and some of his followers, it is clear that in our innermost being we carry with us what we had with us from the beginning, what is true, and to follow the pure principles of pleasure is the right thing to do. But it has taken thousands of years of development to come this far, with inconceivably suffering as a result.

Question: Is it possible that humans prefer to get messages that fit her neuroses and programing?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, most people want someone telling them what to do, should do, and so on. They want to have commands and regulations. Therefor it is difficult to simultaneously be interested in far reaching emancipation. Several factors prevents the majority from listening and hinder them in following their inner voice. Jesus had great difficulties in the country where he appeared. This is one of the reasons why he was so incredibly misunderstood. He tried repeatedly to explain that heaven is something within man, but people could not understand other than that there must be something up there, above the clouds. There was´nt any tradition, and they knew nothing about this in that civilization.

Sermon on the Mount is the only one of Jesus' preachings that slipped through the censorship. They simply did not understand what to censor. When Jesus for example said, "blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for they belong to heaven ..." nobody did understand what he meant! What he means of course is that those who have been able to release the mind is blessed. The same applies to the second bliss explanation he came up with. When he said "you have to be like a child" he referred to the contact man has with the essence early in life.

Question: Can anyone become enlightened?
Shanti Kristian: Yes, everyone has it within him- or herself. It is really just a question of finding the way back to it. It is often hidden beneith many layers, but anyone can dig it up.

Question How does it feel to be enlightened?
Shanti Kristian: The last stage before you become enlightened, is a state of continuous 'Yes'. It is a condition where everything feels good and when one has stopped producing problems in life. This condition is similar to what the ancient Greeks called 'agape' the divine love. Most people have had an experience of how it feels to be in love, when you also are in a state of 'Yes'. Not a simple yes but a 'Yes' to the person you´ve fallen in love with.

A prerequisite to become enlightened is to fall in to this comprehensive affirmative state, and this is not something you do - it is a 'happening'. Several different conditions of course is required for this to arise. An essential prerequisite is that you somehow have had some contact with an enlightened person. You may have met such a person, listened to him or her, or just read something the enlightened one have said. Meditation and esoteric techniques are other ways to create the conditions for becoming enlightened. Still it is a miracle when it happens, when we suddenly discover that we have ended up in a state of bliss. You wake up one day and discover that you are in state of 'Yes' to everything! This condition will then remain the rest of your life if you happen to be enlightened. The most direct way I can describe how it feels is ... - Yes, thank you it feels good!

Question: Why is it necessary to let go of identification with the Self and the thouhts for this happening to be possible?
Shanti Kristian: Because the ego is always in a 'No'. Because the mind is twofold, which means a 'No' or a 'Yes' to one or the other. It is not possible to be in a state of 'Yes' if you not been able to free yourself of the mind that always categorize. The ego is always in opposition of the essence. As long as one has not let go of the ego and has not desidentified with the mind, you work against the possibility of enlightenment. This is one of the reasons why various forms of 'surrender', of letting go, is so central. It is essential to leave no stone unturned and to give what an enlightened person suggests a chance. To let go by trying that which is offered by the master and see where it leads is a good approach. Not to listen to the mind and ego, but just follow is an automatic exercise in letting go, in being in a state of 'Yes'. Most people who participate in our Vipassana week usually experience that the sense of being in a state of 'Yes', is increasing.

Question: On a 10-graded scale how satisfied are you with the success of your disciples?
Shanti Kristian: Jesus would have been jealous if he had had such disciples instead of his twelve nutcases. They misunderstood him all the time and it is perfectly clear that we understand what it´s all about to a mutch larger extent. It is a matter of degrees of openness here, of course. Some are open already the first time they come here, while others may be completely closed of in the beginning.

Question: Do you have any tips to what we further can do to accelerate our development?
Shanti Kristian: You can never practice too much awareness. It is essential for the development to go faster. Through awareness you will see what you are doing and can penetrate deeper into what humanity has longed for in 1000´nds of years but only a few really got hold of.

What does it mean then to practice awareness in daily life? Well, to always 'be' and to be able to rest in your being, to always have contact with the essence. This transformes you - you can not walk in the same way as you did previously, you can not speak in the same way, you can not eat in the same way and you can barely drive a car in the same way. This attitude in the end permeates everything you do.

Buddha called it mindfulness. The concept of mindfulness can be easily misunderstood, as if you're supposed to walk and think with the mind, but this is not at all what it is about. It simply means 'being', all the time, ie awareness. Sometimes he also called it self awareness - by self he means the essence. Awareness is nothing more than the essence, and remember, awareness is always choiceless, that is without values, without taking any position for or against. It only reflect what happens, inside and and outside oneself, as if it were a mirror or camera.

Awareness is to be in contact with the essence, so to answer the question of what I recommend, it is to always practice awareness - in daily life, all the time, in almost everything you do. Finally, you can get so far that you are fully aware during the night when you sleep. You observe that you snore, you do not want anything, but observe your sleep and your dreams, loud and clear.

Question: For those who do not know you and will choose you as a master, what does this mean?
Shanti Kristian: It means the same as always when you choose a spiritual master. You try to follow the instructions and suggestions given by the mystic, the best you can. Perhaps you will discover that the meeting feels right at a deeper level, or continue to look until it feels right with someone else. When you have chosen your master you will try to let go and give it a chance. How will you know that you´ve found the right one? Yes, this is a question of letting the essence take control, allowing the intuition to feel that there are something here by this mystic, who has a deep resonance within me. If you do not feel this deep resonance, this 'Yes', we have still not found the right master.

Question: And it is not to be confused with a 'No' then?
Shanti Kristian: Well yes, of course it is. But it is not the mind that will leed us to the mystic that we need to have as our leeding star. That decision is not made through logic thinking, but a message that must come from the essence.