Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati: ‘The benchmarks most of us use for happiness, sadly, are actually things that don’t bring us any’

You came to India nearly 25 years ago. What prompted you to take the trip, and what compelled you to stay back?

I came to India at the age of 25; it’s now just over 26 years. I would love to say that ‘oh, I recognised the shallowness of the material world’, but it isn’t actually true. I came to India with a backpack on what I thought would be a three-month adventure trip, on a break from my PhD program. I grew up in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, quite literally, and graduated from Stanford University. I was in the middle of getting a PhD. I had everything that we are told you need to be happy – a good degree, a good job, money, a nice house in the right area of town — and grew up amidst so much privilege, opportunity, and wealth on every level, not just financially, that it never occurred to me that there actually was a whole other world that was deeper, richer, fuller, and more meaningful. That is because we – my friends, family, and myself – had all of these things we were told one needs to be happy; yet no one was really deeply happy on that core, fundamental, spiritual level. But I didn’t even know it was possible.

However, in addition to the privilege, opportunity, and blessings, I also experienced a lot of challenges, difficulties, and even trauma in my early childhood that led to pain, anxiety, anger, stress, and depression. As such, at 25, though I was managing my life, I was not deeply happy. However, no one ever said to me, and neither did it ever occur to me that there’s an alternative by which you actually can be free of the pain, anger, stress and that constant sense of not enough-ness. So, I came to India just on an adventure. I had no idea I was going to find all of this because I had no idea this existed. I was an avid traveller and had travelled a lot throughout Europe, England, America, South America. When India was suggested, the only reason I even agreed is that I am a pukka vegetarian so I thought at least main achche se khaana kha paungi. But I had no idea I was going to have an incredible spiritual awakening experience that would heal me. I thought I was coming for some fun and good food, but the divine plan had something much deeper and fuller in mind.

​Tell us about your ‘journey of healing and transformation’ from Hollywood to the Himalayas, which also happens to be the title of your latest book.

When I got to the holy banks of mother Ganga, Rishikesh was the very first place we went to. This is why I always say that it’s been a journey of grace. Sitting over a cup of filtered coffee in Delhi, I opened a 500-page Lonely Planet guidebook and said Rishikesh, just like that. At that time in the Swarg Ashram area, where Parmarth Niketan Ashram is — where I now live– there was only one hotel, and somehow sitting in Delhi, I thought wahin rukenge hum. So we got to the hotel, put our bags, and I said I’m going to the river (Ganga) to put my feet in. But when I got there, I had this incredibly powerful spiritual experience of oneness with the divine. I was not a religious person, and neither was I someone who identified as a spiritual person; I was a scientist getting a PhD in pediatric neuropsychology. But, there I was having this extraordinary experience of being one with the divine. I knew this is where I was meant to be, and over the next 7-10 days, I had a series of experiences — like a voice telling me ‘you must stay’ — that made me realise not only was I meant to be in Rishikesh, but at the Parmarth Niketan Ashram. So, that’s also where the title of my book Hollywood to the Himalayas comes from, because my journey really was that, quite literally, the physical journey. But then, I didn’t spend hundreds of hours writing a book just to share my journey, but I took the time to write the book to say that it is actually something everyone can do. Yes, my physical journey was actually from Hollywood to the Himalayas, but the transformation was a journey of mindset — from a Hollywood way of thinking to a Himalayan way of thinking — which was a shift from suffering to joy. It’s a very open, raw, vulnerable, funny story but what I really wanted to share is that everyone who reads it can actually make that shift, too.

Writing a memoir and opening up about your vulnerabilities is not easy. How would you describe the experience? 

When I had finished the manuscript, I sent it to several people — renowned leaders, spiritual leaders, and best-selling authors. By God’s grace, everyone gave positive feedback. But there was one person from India who asked me if I was sure I wanted to be that open and vulnerable, as religious leaders don’t talk about that kind of stuff. Also, now that I had established so much love and respect, what would people think about reading about the vulnerable details of what I experienced in my early life? That is when I realised that we live in this illusion that there is a gap between spirituality and humanity, that people who are spiritual beings are somehow not human – we don’t feel hunger, thirst, fatigue, anger, sadness or urges; that somehow we have become exempt from that which makes us human — setting the bar impossibly high. So, I realised I need to be honest because when you read the biographies or autobiographies of these very few really enlightened masters, they are awe-inspiring but they don’t make you feel I can do it. But my story is one that I really hope makes everyone, who reads it, say ‘I can do that’. This is a woman who knows anger, pain, suffering, and emotional roller coasters but also a woman who knows freedom, bliss, fulfilment, and awakening; and if she can make that mindset shift so can I.

But making a mindset shift is easier said than done. As such, in all these years what has been your understanding of the popular yardsticks to measure happiness, anger, success, etc.?

The benchmarks that most of us use for happiness, sadly, are actually things that don’t bring us any happiness. Raises, promotions, careers, more money, power, new cars, and new houses are not actually things that give any kind of lasting happiness. What I’ve learned in all of these years is that happiness is actually our nature. As we grow old, we are told more and more this is who you are, this is your self, or that you’re not beautiful enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not talented enough, you’re not popular, funny, charismatic or successful enough. So, we spend our lives trying to fill something that’s not even empty. As we try to get more possessions, success, and degrees, we are not actually close to happiness or peace. What I have learned is that real happiness and peace are actually about letting go of attachment to all of that which is what you would call false self. Letting go of my attachments, expectations, grudges, and anger is where happiness lies; so it’s actually a process of letting go rather than gathering more. Success, far from being about titles, and money is actually about how many minutes a day or hours a day can you live in the truth of who you are, not as somebody competing with someone else not as someone who thinks I don’t have enough I’m not enough, I need more.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati with her parents in Los Angeles. (Photo: Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati)

Is there anything you’d like to change or alter about your life in all these years?

I don’t have any regrets at all. Obviously, when I came to India as a 25-year-old white American raised in a Jewish family, I knew nothing about its culture, people, language, or even sanātana dharma, just that I love vegetarian food, and I made a lot of mistakes. But from all of those mistakes I learned, so I don’t have any regrets at all. However, when I first came I used to think, kaash maine yahin janm liya hota toh wahan se aane ke chakkar mein nahi padna padta, but soon realised that it actually was really beneficial that I was born in America because now so much of the work that I do is speaking to audiences from all over the world and the ability to really understand that culture, and be a cultural bridge has been a wonderful blessing. So now I don’t see all of that as a chakkar, but as a huge blessing that has enabled me to to share these teachings.

Lastly, even after all these years why do you call yourself a ‘reluctant spiritual seeker’?

[Laughs] The term reluctant spiritual seeker was actually given to me by the publishers of the book when they were first coming up with a description for it. But here’s why: when I came to India I was not on a spiritual path, not consciously. Consciously, I was an academic. I was not someone who abstained from anything or someone who had ever identified as a spiritual person. But, I wasn’t reluctant as in mujhe nahi karna’, but more about not being aware of what really my dharma was. I had to essentially be dragged to India by the cosmos through the allure of good food, rather than the allure of a spiritual path. If I knew this world of spirituality I would have searched 24 hours a day for it. So the divine universe had to kind of trick me into coming by the promise of a lot of good meals in order to get me onto the banks of Ganga and give me that beautiful experience.

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