Krishna Gauci was born in Monterey, California, and was raised in New York City. Thirty-four years ago, he moved to the Pacific Northwest. He presently lives in Portland with his wife, Vivian. While pursuing his spiritual endeavors, he has worked as an auto assembly line worker, a New York City taxi cab driver, a cabinetmaker, and a bus driver.
Krishna has a background in the practice of Buddhist Meditation and has been a devotee of the Spiritual Master HWL Poonja (Papaji) since 1993. He has been a part of (what is now) the Trillium Awakening Community since 1998, and is a founding member of the Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle and the Institute of Awakened Mutuality. He has been holding Satsang since 2000.
Krishna on his development:
“I’ve always been involved with one or another form of growth, and it’s not easy to see where it all began. I was raised a relatively secular (even atheistic or at least agnostic) cultural Roman Catholic. For about five years in the late 1970s, I was a fervent evangelical Christian. On the other extreme, I was later a disciple of the controversial iconoclastic Indian teacher Shree Rajneesh (Osho) for five more years in the early 1980s. While it’s challenging to draw stark lines, I consider this period my spiritual infancy.
It wasn’t until later, while working with the American teacher Ken Lloyd Russell (“The Way of Seeing”), that I felt encouraged to explore more serious, traditional approaches. Although primarily involved in Buddhist Dharma, I was also drawn to the view of Advaita Vedanta after my first reading of “I Am That” by Nisargadatta Maharaj in 1984. At this time, I began a Zen sitting practice, and then later, Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism, emphasizing Devotional and Dzogchen practices. These were informed by receiving teachings and practice transmissions in the Nyingma lineage through Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche and later through Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche.
In 1992 I attended the Satsang of the teacher Gangaji and became exposed to the radical Nondual teachings of HWL Poonja (Papaji), her Master. Poonjaji was both an enlightened disciple of Sri Ramana Maharshi (the renowned Master of Advaita Vedanta) and a Master of the Vaisnava Bhaktimarga tradition in which his family raised him. My meeting with Him in January 1993 drew me into a profoundly personal and devotional Relationship, an unexpected turn of events for someone who considered himself a Buddhist.
I spent much of the 1990s helping spread Sri Poonjaji’s teachings in the US, supporting and assisting those teachers connected to Him. These friends and fellow disciples of Poonjaji included (in order of my meeting them) Arjuna Ardagh, Hanuman Golden, and Catherine Ingram. Hanuman Golden is the friend I spent the most time with and is a sterling example of the integrity, loyalty, and devotion that Poonjaji inspired.
Poonjaji’s life was a bridge from the ancient to the modern. Being a down-to-earth householder, He was the essential heart of the tradition, making itself profoundly ordinary and incredibly available to people where they lived. He freely and entirely gave me my Self. I am forever in gratitude to Him. While His “passing” happened in 1997, I am still His disciple.
I became involved with the community and work of Trillium Awakening (Formerly Waking Down in Mutuality) in 1998 and then became a teacher in that work in 2002. While the teaching emphasis was somewhat different, I considered it continuous with all that had come before in my life.
Over time, while In the context of teaching, a new and unique perspective made itself known to me that I began calling The Tapestry Mandala and The Tapestry of Being.
The Tapestry of Being is a framework for expressing the unfolding that I’ve experienced; it includes understanding that became clear as a result of my living out the implications of multiple schools of awakened teachings that sometimes appear to be in contradiction with each other.
As for myself and Poonjaji: He is my Master in my heart and my bones, so for me, He can never be “past.” But, still, I must confess that I live and teach in ways that I would have not anticipated earlier. So, I’m now happy to be teaching in a way that addresses the whole of people’s experiences yet supports them in relaxing into a deep trust in Being and the recognition of That which transcends everything.”