When the West Listened to Advaita: Ramana, Realization, and Relevance
Born into a Roman Catholic family in the United States in 1955, Timothy Conway’s life took a decisive turn at the age of sixteen. In February 1971, a sudden and overwhelming spiritual awakening—what he describes as an act of sheer divine grace—left him with an unshakeable certainty: that God alone is Real, here and now, and that all beings are expressions of one supra-personal Divine Spirit, made of love, joy, and peace. The experience did not draw him away from life; it radically reoriented his way of living in it. From that moment onward, Conway dedicated himself to articulating and freely sharing what he calls the “real Reality”: Infinite Open Awareness, ever-present, prior to thought, and closer than any idea of self.
Educated in Los Angeles by Catholic parents, priests, and nuns, Conway initially excelled in athletics and even considered entering the priesthood. A decisive intellectual and spiritual shift occurred in 1972 during his studies in psychology and religious studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There, the disarming question “Who am I?” opened him to the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi and to the non-dual currents of Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and other mystical traditions of East and West. That encounter set him on a lifelong spiritual odyssey.
From 1980 onwards, Conway travelled extensively across Asia, Europe, and the United States, meeting numerous spiritual teachers and immersing himself in living traditions. He spent time as an ordained Buddhist monk in upper Burma and journeyed widely through India during the 1980s, encountering many revered saints of the period. Alongside this lived search, he lectured and wrote prolifically on non-dual wisdom, transpersonal psychology, and spirituality, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Academically trained in psychology and religious studies, Conway holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in East–West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. His scholarly work ranges from a master’s thesis on “energetic empowerment” across religious traditions to a doctoral dissertation exploring optimal well-being and spiritual realisation across mystical and psychological systems. Yet his work has never remained confined to the academy. Deeply grounded in sacred texts and lived lineages, he writes and speaks with special reverence for the great mystics of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, Taoism, Jainism, and indigenous shamanic traditions—figures he regards as humanity’s elder siblings in Spirit.
With characteristic understatement, Conway often remarks that he never felt the need for a special “spiritual name”: Timothy, from the Greek Timotheos, already means “one in awe of God.” That sense of awe found early expression in his award-winning 1983 essay This Is All a Dream. Over the past four decades, he has facilitated non-dual satsangs, taught and counselled seekers, sung sacred music, authored influential works such as Women of Power & Grace and Women of Spirit, and undertaken large-scale research projects on Indian sages, Zen traditions, and spirituality in cinema.
Today, Timothy Conway describes himself not as a guru, but as a kalyāṇa-mitra—a spiritual friend. In this interview, he reflects on his awakening, his encounters with living wisdom, experiences of personal loss, and a central conviction that runs through his life’s work: authentic spirituality must unite inner realisation of the true “I” beyond ego with an active, compassionate engagement that recognises “the I that is we.”
Presented to Indica readers, this conversation is more than a personal spiritual narrative. It is a reflective engagement with questions that are civilisationally urgent. Though born and formed in the West, Conway’s thought has been deeply shaped by India’s non-dual spiritual heritage and the living legacy of its realised saints. Approaching India not as a spiritual marketplace but as a reservoir of lived wisdom, his journey offers a cross-cultural yet profoundly Indic perspective on God, Self, and dharma—one that insists on clarity of realisation, ethical responsibility, and compassionate participation in a troubled world.
Please describe your spiritual awakening on February 16, 1971, while you were just 16.
By pure Divine Grace, that afternoon, suddenly transformed a sports-addicted boy, suffering depression and existential angst due to athletic injuries and, after a serious case of strep-throat illness, into a heart-opened mystic, revealing that God alone is Reality. On that day, a tremendous sense of wonder, bliss and gratitude spontaneously arose, and the depressed identity was instantly, replaced by a fresh new openness rooted in the ‘I AM THAT AM.’ It was a clear revelation that formless Divine Reality emanates, animates and orchestrates every aspect of “our” lives, which are actually not “ours” but God’s—God’s way of experiencing life as a human, a cat, a bird, a fish, or a celestial being. In the case of “Timothy,” the previous sadness, ennui, and meaninglessness, suddenly turned to unconditional bliss, and simple sensations of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste became so vivid, perceptions seemed so rich, and relations with fellow beings ever so dear.
The life-changing spiritual opening made me awe-struck over God’s Power. The past years seemed relatively dim and superficial. As the weeks unfolded, everything and everyone could be easily cherished as God’s miraculously manifest forms. I never again became bored, my shyness vanished and felt intimately connected with each being I encountered. Indeed, I appeared so bright-eyed and numerous people (including my sister and parents) quickly concluded I must be taking hallucinogenic drugs. I explained that I was entirely clear about God as the only Source and Substance of our lives, far superior to any drugged state.
How did your journey to Advaita Vedanta and to the teachings of Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi happen?
In September 1972, at 18, while doing a course in psychology and religious studies at University of California at Santa Cruz, after a chance meeting, Dan McClure, a young psychic graduate student “initiated” me into self-inquiry practice: “Who are you? Really, Who ARE You?” After silently gazing each other for a while in stillness and fullness, he said, “Timothy there are two paths in spiritual life: the way of white magic, working with forms and energies, and the way of mysticism, realizing what is prior to all forms and energies and living from that. You are a mystic; go read everything you can about Ramana Maharshi and the Zen tradition.”
Following his advice, I bought a few books on Ramana Maharshi and Zen Buddhism. I had already been reading the Gospels about Jesus and books on the Christian saints and spent the next 12 years reading many books on saints and sages of the world’s mystical traditions—especially the holy men, women, and texts on non-dual wisdom and devotion. It was a way of attuning to and aligning with the holiness/wholeness of so many spiritual heroes and heroines in their love of God / Goddess, Brahman-Ātman, Buddha-Nature, Dao, Allāh, YHVH, pure Divine Spirit. I read extensively to develop greater empathy, understanding and feeling for the various religions worldwide—their notions of the Divine, their favorite patron saints and spiritual ancestors, their transformative practices and what holy virtues they most treasured.
During the 1980s you met and learnt from several Indian sages. Who were they and what did you learn?
In 1984, I met a deeply mystical Bengali saint of Śākta Hinduism, Shree Maa (Śrī Mā) of Kolkata, on her very first day in the USA. She was accompanied by her longtime fellow renunciate, the American Swami Satyanand Saraswati.
In 1986, reading the book, Mother of Sweet Bliss, presenting Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) aka “Amma’s astonishing life and inspirational teachings, I began telling people about her and when she initially landed in San Francisco in Spring 1987, several of us welcomed her at the airport. She was available to anyone who wanted to meet her—sitting in a simple chair welcomed people to her bosom and lap, spending 16 to 20 hours a day, every day, “mothering” people. In late 1987, on my re location to Santa Barbara, California, along with friends, we launched the local chapter of the worldwide Amma movement, devoted to community seva/service, meditation, advaita study and bhajan-singing.
In 1987, I first met spiritual leader Amiya Roy Chowdhury (1910-92) of Bengal, a householder saint, a singer and music advisor for All-India Radio, then a movie producer. Dadaji, as he was addressed, with his extraordinary energy of Divinity oozed bliss-love. I met him again in 1988 in private at his little family home in Calcutta and felt that “God” was no mere concept, but a living Reality.
In 1988-89 I could spend time with Śivabalayogi (1935-94) , the famous child-yogi of South India. He used me as one of his two instruments for anointing during a very large gathering of hundreds of people in Las Vegas (of all places) where my good friend Bill Bailey had invited Him to visit. He liked to listen to bhajan songs to Lord Śiva, and made me lead the musical team at a number of his gatherings in Nevada and California. I’ll always remember his childlike innocence and immense presence as a true siddha-yogi.
You also met Annamalai Swami, Nisargadaatta Maharaj, Yogi Ramsurat Kumar and Mataji Krishna Bai.
On my first visit to Tiruvannamalai in December 1980, I met Annamalai Swami (1907-95), the most beautiful spiritual son of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. When the sun was about set and twilight deepened, we shared silent gazing for nearly 45 minutes. Feeling a deep connection, the Swami invited me to live in his little ashram. Thereafter, I visited the Swami frequently during my four sojourns at Ramanasramam, and I will always remember Annamalai Swami’s reply about his Self-Realization, “It’s like zero-gravity, nothing is pulling you anymore.” The Swami was a superb example of freedom from any unwholesome saṃskāras.
In December, 1980, on my first day in Tiruvannamalai, I met Yogi Rāmsuratkumār (1918-2001), dubbed as the “God-child of Tiruvannamalai,” in a small house near the ancient Aruṇācaleśvara Temple. Later, during all my visits, we spoke of God and the life of surrendered devotion (he spoke perfect English). One night in 1981, inside the dimly-lit house, he invited me into his mystic state by wiping out thoughts with the waving of his hand fan and occasional quick puffing of a cigarette. He once told me, “cigarette smoke itself used to give me a headache, and then Papa (Swami Ramdas) taught me how to smoke them”—a cryptic reference, surely, to his taking on people’s karmas and transmuting their unwholesome saṃskāras to wholesome ones.
I considered Mataji Krishna Bai (1903-89), spiritual companion and successor of Swāmī “Papa” Rāmdās of Ānandāśram, Kerala, as a radiant jewel with a most beatific expression of loving-kindness in her eyes. During my first visit, Mataji had taken good motherly care of me and on the penultimate night, she granted me a private interview in the presence of Swami Satchidananda. She revealed that how decades earlier, Papa had insisted her to let go his Guru-form that she had constantly visualized inwardly and instead directly awaken her to the formless, all-pervasive Self.
I spent ten decisive days in January 1981 with the illustrious jñāni of Mumbai, Śrī Nisargadatta Mahārāj. Among other things, Maharaj’s unique “alternative teaching” on being one with the Vital Power or Prāṇa-Śakti, “the God of your universe, without which you wouldn’t exist, feel, move, function,” is an useful method for householders for inquiring into our very Source. I’m profoundly grateful to the fiery, feisty Maharaj for his “clarity and charity” in dissolving this 26-year-old fellow’s last conceptual concerns, so that only straightforward functioning remained.
What is your role as a spiritual-friend counselor?
My role is what the Buddha calls a “kalyāṇa-mitra” or helpful spiritual friend, encouraging people in direct, deep awakening to the treasure of Divine Spirit within. And, furthermore, finding ways to heal dear “ego-ji,” the personal consciousness or jīva that can be so troubled or traumatized by various happenings in the adventure of each soul, each personal disguise of the Supra-personal Divine, endeavoring to find a way Home to God’s omnipresent HERE.
Some of the helpful ways I share with people, depending on their spiritual temperament are:
- Direct-intuitive “Knowing by Being,” a Self-inquiry into and natural abiding as the profound truth that, at the beginning of each passing moment, and throughout all vanishing moments, we are always this utterly open, unchanging, unborn, formless Awareness, as revealed by the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.
- Methods to develop exquisite empathy through realization of the omnipresent Self of each and all selves, which promotes several core virtues: spontaneous loving-kindness, compassion, unselfish generosity, patiently steadfast understanding, and easy ability to forgive and not hold grudges, and so forth.
- Utterly simple, deep relaxation (“let go, let God”) in “just stopping” and abiding as great stillness.
- Classic Buddhist mindfulness methods for clarity about the very nature of phenomena—which are ephemerally passing, insubstantial “like a dream,” and not worth clinging to with attachment-aversion, as the Buddha explained the three marks of phenomenal existence, impermanent, not-self, dissatisfactory.
- An “attitude of gratitude” and awe together bring a sense of fullness and wholeness instead of feelings of deficiency and fragmentation, and a sense that, existentially, in our depths, “everything’s alright,” instead of “something’s dreadfully wrong.”
- Nondual devotion or abheda / advaita bhakti for the One who is manifesting as everyone.
- From my extensive background in psychology and sacred traditions of spirituality, I’ve also drawn on several other ways or methods of encouraging souls to find great freedom in our transcendent True Nature.
Please elaborate on the phenomenon of “energetic empowerment.”
After the life-changing spiritual awakening, for the next 12 years, I extensively studied the world’s sacred traditions, personally encountered or read about various spiritual movements of the 20th century. I read fascinating accounts of people—spiritual leaders, their followers, and unaffiliated aspirants—who had undergone remarkable experiences of powerful current of energy running through them.
For my M.A. thesis (1983), I had collected numerous tales of these “energetic empowerments,” which are often accompanied by tremendous healings, visions, trance-states, involuntary expressions of vibrating, trembling, weeping, laughing, shouting, unusual bodily postures, gestures, and so forth—even paranormal happenings like levitation. Much of the literature and oral lore about this multi-faceted phenomenon conceptualizes it as a “transmission,” a conveying of energy to a person from a Deity or “charismatic” healer or spiritual leader.
I concluded that we must consider these energy infusions or empowerments as a kind of “resonance field” phenomenon—rather akin to how the sixth string of a guitar will begin to vibrate and sound when in the presence of another guitar whose sixth string is sounding. Otherwise, the very real psycho-spiritual danger is that people dualistically think some special energy must be obtained or procured from someone or something else. And then an insidiously needy “grace chase” ensues wherein folks slavishly monger after persons perceived as special fonts or dispensers of this Divine energy. And as we’ve learned over the centuries, the palpable energy might initially seem impressive, but if the source or the “recipient” is not functionally pure, it can turn into a dangerous energy that leaves people (leaders and followers) disturbed, restless, deluded, greedy, lecherous, violent, or insane.
When people become overly dazzled by and hungry for “exotic experiences,” they usually neglect to enquire into the nature of experience itself, and the Source-Host for all experiences, the Open Capacity for experiences, the Divine Self.
I would say, too, that the blessing force or energy-empowerment “resonance” can manifest in extremely refined, subtle ways without the dramatic fireworks, yet still profoundly heal people’s “sheaths” of physical body, subtle bodies, lower and higher mind aspects, and deepest roots of personhood. This is the Grace-full Power of genuine Divine Love, Light, Reality.
Tell us about your work, ‘Women of Spirit: Saints, Teachers, Healers, Sisterhoods and Goddesses of East and West.’
I chose nine women of deep God-realization and dramatic life-stories: the Italian-American saint Francesca Cabrini, stigmatic Therese Neumann of Germany, Russian immigrant Mother Maria Skobtsova of Paris, Pelagia the Holy Fool of Russia, and India’s Hazrat Babajan of Pune, Anandamayi Ma, Anasuya Devi, Shyama Mataji and Mata Amritanandamayi to spend more time discussing their lives and legacies. I selected them from a pool of hundreds of extraordinary women from ancient times up into the modern era, and from all religious traditions and denominations. That huge assembly of women and their teachings I wrote (1,200-pages), and in 2017 uploaded it online as an entirely free resource. It is my attempt to present “herstory” instead of merely all the “history” that has been written, so heavily focused on male figures within religious history.
You say that many ills afflicting our world today demand more from us than just a mystical spirituality, rather we also need an “engaged” spirituality one that extends its concerns beyond our personal spiritual development.
The gist is “mystical” or sagely spirituality is about authentically awakening to the inconceivably all-glorious, Supra-personal Identity, the omnipresent Self or true I (the Divine I AM THAT AM). “Engaged spirituality” is about loving and serving “the I that is we,” the personal selves, and endeavoring to root out and heal injustices against sentient beings, including nonhuman persons, our fellow animals on this planet.
For a parallel in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Torah’s ancient twin injunctions “Love the Lord thy God with all one’s soul, heart, mind and strength” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself (the Self!),” which Jesus / Yeshua echoed as his two greatest commandments (along with a new one: Love thy enemy), can be said to represent the core thrust of mystical spirituality and engaged spirituality, respectively.
What is your understanding of God?
As far as a mere human heart-mind can surmise, and by way of summarizing some of what I’ve discussed earlier, God is the Divine Dreamer of this dream-like Kosmos, the ONE Who Alone IS, utterly transcendent (beyond all) while simultaneously fully immanent (as the Heart of all). The nearest and dearest Beloved, the Clear-Light Source and Substance of everyone and everything. The single awesomely intelligent Sentience miraculously sourcing the gazillions of sentient beings. The Supra-personal (not “impersonal”) Reality or Divinity emanating and animating all personal consciousness’s or jīva-souls, and mysteriously orchestrating their associations with bodies, lifetimes, relationships, and so on. In sum and essence, God is the Absolute Being-Awareness-Bliss-Grace-Love (Saccidānanda Kṛpā-Prema). All praise to this magnificent Life of all lives….
Across the sacred traditions, what are the criteria for authentic spiritual realization?
The topic for my PhD dissertation was the shared supreme values and virtues among the most eminent sages, saints and scriptures across our global sacred traditions, especially within the major world religions of the East and West. I showed how, underlying both the inter-religious and intra-religious differences in aesthetics, cultural contexts, theological languages and rituals there is a shared or common set of virtuous character traits and life-values articulated and exemplified by our holy men and women.
Through thematic analysis in reviewing a vast body of spiritual literature and interviews with a number of teachers from diverse spiritual traditions, I could prepare the list of criteria for “optimal well-being,” a generic term to include what in individual traditions describe as “mokṣa,” “Ātma bodha,” “nibbāna/nirvāṇa,” “God realization,” “sanctification,” etc. Virtues like oneness with the Supreme Reality of God (Brahman, Buddha-nature or Dao), loving-kindness, empathic compassion, equanimity, unselfish detachment and un-attachment to paranormal phenomena. (one can read further in my blog: enlightenedspiriutality.org)
Why do you consider the meat/corpse-eating cult, the world’s worst death-cult and as one created by the masters of brain washing?
The most evil, Satanic way of producing food is the worldwide omnivorous “standard American diet” (SAD) (with regional ethnic cuisine variations) which brutally exploits and then murders vulnerable, innocent animals en masse, causes untold human misery and disease, and destroys our planet’s precious irreplaceable eco-systems. For many decades, enormous sums have been spent by food corporations and their front groups in lobbying politicians and government agencies and in manipulative advertising to hypnotize people into eating animals and their secretions (eggs, milk), which are increasingly rife with toxins and pathogens.
With estimates of more than one trillion vulnerable sentient beings slaughtered every year on land (about 80 billion) and sea (horrific hundreds of billions), 99% of that number killed (usually, confined, tortured, then killed) by monstrous Big Food entities, this is the world’s worst death-cult, the worst ongoing atrocity. Read David Nibert in his eye-opening book Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict (2013) to know about this horrific terrorizing of our fellow beings.
Moreover, medical-nutritional science has repeatedly proven that diets heavy in animal flesh and dairy/egg secretions are the leading killer of human beings via heart disease, diabetes, cancers, strokes, hypertension, obesity, and other afflictions. Lars T. Fadnes and others have analyzed the literature and statistics and shown that a whole-food plant-based diet will add many years of longevity for people who shift to it—even adding 8-9 years of life for men and women who switch in their 60s.
For spiritual health, balance, sane pragmatism, ethical justice and the moral good, we also need to affirm that the unnecessary torturing and killing of animals, maiming of human workers, annihilation of eco-systems and entire species is evil and wrong. We can help workers and corporations shift from wrong livelihood to right livelihood, such as creating plant-sourced proteins that are far healthier, cleaner, and safer. Plant-foods are morally, medically, environmentally, and economically superior in every way. To continue as consumers and governments to support the atrociously ruinous meat/fish, dairy and egg industries is to insanely guarantee that this planet will see more and more needless death of sentient beings and destruction of their habitats and societies.
Message to the readers.
It is an invitation: First, to fully discover and clearly abide in/as the Divine Reality, our real Identity, the Self of all selves, the ONE pure Spirit dreaming and playing as each and every soul (the gazillions of souls). And, secondly, to let all our motivations and actions be for truly loving and serving the diverse beings encountered as precious manifestations of the Unmanifest ONE. May this be so, by Divine Grace!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author. Indic Today is neither responsible nor liable for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in the article.
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