Lost at sea and the first taste of unconditional love

“I just felt this amazing love, this unconditional love that’s just appeared out of nowhere.”

Vishrant describes how his education in love did not begin in a meditation hall, it began with a cyclone and a sinking boat sixty miles off the coast of Western Australia, sharks circling, the cold water pulling his body into hypothermia, with his partner beside him he saw the odds of survival as zero.

Vishrant felt regret in a such a deep way, seeing that not checking the weather was going to cost someone he loved dearly her life and yet, in the same moment, something else arrived that did not come from thought, a sudden tenderness that asked nothing, an overwhelming sense of love. It was Vishrant’s first experience of unconditional love.

By a miracle they were rescued at 2am in the morning, climbing up a net thrown down the side of an oil tanker in huge seas, into a different kind of future. Yet the deeper rescue was internal because the experience opened a window that could not be closed again, it showed him a value that success could not purchase, it revealed that the heart was real, and that without love one is actually bankrupt.

From there the story becomes about orientation, because once a person has tasted unconditional love the old priorities begin to look strange, the achievements that once felt solid begin to feel hollow, the endless striving begins to show its price, the inner being begins to yearn for a different kind of wealth.

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When success has no heart, it is bankruptcy

“Even though I was wealthy, I was bankrupt because I didn’t have heart.”

He explains that at the time he was a successful publisher in Perth and had already retired at twenty eight, he had property and money and the outward markers that many people imagine will finally settle the nervous system, yet inside he could feel the absence, he could feel that the very thing he wanted most was missing.

That missing quality was heart, the simple capacity to feel love and to live from love, and when that capacity is absent the mind keeps collecting, always hungry, never satisfied for long. It keeps building while the inner world is neglected, keeps winning to avoid a deeper sense of loneliness and disconnection.

So, he did something that most minds will not consider, he walked into his offices and gave his companies to his staff, he gave away the furniture and the structure and the identity, he walked out broke, not as a dramatic gesture but as a clear choice.

He then took off his shoes and walked around Australia for four years, looking for what could not be bought, letting the old version of himself fall away piece by piece, learning how to relax without the constant need to be the warrior he had made himself into.

Becoming a nobody going nowhere

“As a nobody going nowhere, I didn’t have to support an ego.”

Vishrant describes how difficult it was at first to release the identity of being a somebody, because the ego does not only cling to pain, it also clings to status and story, and it does not surrender easily when it has been fed by success.

Yet he found that when the performance stopped, something in the body softens, the breath changes, the mind has fewer reasons to tighten, and in that relaxation a different intelligence becomes available, an intelligence that does not depend on reputation, an intelligence that can sense love as already present.

He shares that after those years of walking he did not want to return to publishing or business, so he returned to university and trained as a psychotherapist and a naturopath, as a way to serve, because service became his compass, a practical expression of the heart.

In his language the way of the heart is not sentimental, it is a noble path, it is the choice to live from what is most valuable, and he points out that many people were trained to be efficient machines, trained to compete and defend, trained to function. The training is useful for survival, yet it rarely shows a person how to sit with themselves and feel what is true.

Openness is the doorway to love

“We don’t get to experience heart in closure and defensiveness, we get to experience it in openness.”

When asked about ambition and commitment Vishrant draws a distinction, ambition collects and uses resistance, it pushes against life in order to accumulate, while the heart does not need resistance, it needs openness, it needs the willingness to soften the armour that keeps feelings away.

He says ambition is a form of closure because when a person is striving for more, the nervous system tightens, the mind narrows, the body becomes defended, and in defensiveness love is difficult to perceive.

He teaches that the degree of love a person can perceive is connected to how open they are willing to be. That openness is not naïve, it is the willingness to stop contracting in the face of life, the willingness to meet experience without bracing.

This becomes a daily practice, because bills arrive and old wounds flare, and in each moment the question is simple, is the being supporting openness or supporting closure, is the mind feeding fear, or is it learning to relax into what is here? Openness is not a mood, it is a commitment.

Making fear and failure okay

“Fear only survives if we resist what it is we’re frightened of.”

He offers a teaching on fear that comes from childhood experience as a diver when the fear of sharks stopped him from getting in the water. He learned to make it okay for the worst to happen, and when the resistance ended, the fear lost its fuel and dissolved.

This is the same principle he applies to ordinary life, when the mind is afraid of confrontations, lack of money or the possibility of negative outcomes it contracts and then sees that contraction as reality. The contraction is simply resistance, and when resistance ends the nervous system opens and action becomes possible without panic.

He also speaks about failure, pointing out how schooling conditions people to get it right every time, which keeps them in stress and supports fear, and he learned to make failure okay, not as an excuse to fail but as permission to relax.

From this relaxed state, the heart can be perceived and the path becomes less about controlling life and more about meeting life, less about managing one’s image and more about living from what is true.

Undoing programming and healing the wounds

“Anything that caused contraction in me was undone.”

Vishrant explains that to remain in unconditional love, the obstacles have to be removed. Expectations and belief systems that create contraction have to be questioned and this undoing prepares the mind for love and also prepares the mind for enlightenment.

He speaks of time in Osho’s Mystery School where the work was reverse engineering, not making a person bigger or more powerful, rather taking away what blocks the heart. He acknowledges he had a lot to work on including abandonment, betrayal, and rejection wounding from early experiences. He describes that the undoing was not self-improvement, it was a dismantling of the inner defences which block the perception of love.

Healing those wounds mattered because unhealed wounds can be manipulated, and he did not want to be moved around by unconscious pain. Vishrant wanted freedom, he wanted a mind that could not be coerced by fear or lack, and he wanted a mind that could remain open to support living the way of the heart.

He emphasizes that anyone can find heart if they are willing to be open, and he brings humility into the picture because service requires the setting aside of the “I” or ego, and he learned humility through ordinary acts of service, like washing dishes and mowing lawns for free.

Sitting in the buddha-field

“When we’re in a field of energy that is love, or a buddha field, it opens us right up.”

Vishrant explains that unconditional love is not an idea the mind can own, it stands alone. The mind tries to claim it and says “I love you”, while the deeper truth is that love is there and the “I” is borrowing the language.

Retreats with Vishrant are all about being in the presence of the buddha field for an extended period of time. People sit with him in a shared space as he sat with his teachers, there are opening exercises and talks and questions, yet the heart of it is the energy field, because in a field of love the system relaxes and spaciousness becomes available.

He points out that most people did not grow up inside a field of love, they grew up inside stress and survival, so returning to ordinary life after a retreat can bring contraction back, yet the practice remains the same, openness, because love becomes obvious in openness and disappears in closure.

Come to Satsang with Vishrant.

If this teaching speaks to the part of you that is tired of striving, tired of fear, and tired of seeking love in the wrong places, his invitation is simple: accept yourself as you are, notice where you close, soften where you defend, and let the buddha field remind you of your own capacity for love.