Don't Check Your Mind and Progress
You are asking for endless trouble if you keep asking what your experiences mean. Stop checking your progress!
Daily I get many emails from students who want to know what their experiences mean, or whether they have experienced Turiya or some other significant experience.
Let me ask you, "WHAT DOES IT MATTER?" Does having one extra bit of knowledge about where you are help you are all to go beyond all understanding to freedom and total emptiness? No, it just keeps you trapped in the cognitive mind that is trying to figure everything out, putting everything into a conceptual pigeonhole. But satisfying the mind's need to understand and know completely blocks going beyond the mind and that perticular experience you are questioning! Do have come to a dead stop with no more movement possible until you let go of the question and the experience.
You can't get to freedom through conceptual understanding. You have to lose your mind entirely by doing non conceptual things, like abiding in the sense of I Am until the mind and body disappear. This is the first glint of freedom.
Eventually even this will drop away, but you need to stop depending on mind. Instead you need to trust the method of self-inquiry, more properly described as abiding in the I-sense. No experience you have on the way is worth talking about. When the big experiences come, they are self-explanatory and need no one to interpret or check progress.
Towards this state of certainty is where you should be aiming, and that is by just submerging in the I Am, or I sense. All the rest is conceptual nonsense. Be courageous. Go without words, questioning. Just keep looking at the I or the I-sense. Then feel it with your heart. Become one with it, but don't ask if you are there or close, because someone who is there or close doesn't need confirmation, and the asking for confirmation means you are stuck int that one place, waiting for an answer.
Beautiful message Edji..
ReplyDeleteRajivji has also been stressing about this many times.Now I've actually learnt to stop asking about experiences. And just continuing with the practices of self-inquiry.This silent perseverance itself gives a great impetus to walk this path joyfully..Thanks to you and Rajivji for giving the highest possible teaching for us..I bow down..
Regards
Sharada
I appreciate somebody’s new learning. Next step is giving up the easy temptation to promote ourselves above others.
ReplyDeleteAll the “Autobiography of a Jnani” motives students to ask for their experiences. One reads about that idyllic relationship between Ed and Rajiv where the student Rajiv can tell all his spiritual experiences profusely to his Master, and Ed explains them step by step lovingly and with a redundancy of prises for Rajiv.
Wouldn’t who desire to get such a relationship?!!!
So it is just natural now students are asking for their experiences.
I would clarify I am totally agree with Ed and his teaching. The point is that I am the bad attitude to be always on the side of whom has no power. So today I am close to all students who are asking for their experiences and even though I agree with Ed; my compassion and love goes to them all.
Love,
Sergio
You will see that the experiences Rajiv are talking about are very deep, not temporary, and he is quite close to enlightenment. When I responded to his questions, it was not me responding to him. It came from outside me to be his guide. He was already only a hairsbreadth away from awakening.
ReplyDeleteMost, even those with very advanced experiences do not have them in so pure a form, nor are they sequential, nor are they so permanent. They have to stabilize more before the state becomes meaningful and relevant to the next step.
I can understand how some might want a relationship like this and I feel I cannot provide it for everyone. This does make me sad. But when you are ripe, it will happen.
Just by creating and maintaining this site, you have helped me (and I'm sure many many others) enormously. Even after reading Ramana for many years, and now Robert, I still feel like a complete beginner to the practice of self-inquiry. Yet without my having the slightest idea of how it all came about, I found your site and Robert's Satsangs, and felt my heart open with joy and gratitude. Those 'experiences' are more than enough for me right now. I'm still 'Hunting the I', but I'm no longer hunting for other sites or teachers or practices anymore. The search has wound down to that extent, and now I am simply left with the daily obligation of study and practice.
ReplyDeleteThank you,
Michael
And If everything else doesn't seem to work surrender to your Guru. Give your mind, your world and finally yourself to Him. Take rest at His Lotus Feet and never look back.
ReplyDeleteEverything experienced in your beingness is just entertainment...what your Guru is pointing at is far beyond all of this.
I rest at Your Lotus Feet forever Master Ed.
with Love
Marco
Beautifully written. "What does it matter" is really a valuable key.
ReplyDeleteMind is movement but its movement should not concern us. It just happens, moving from one concept to another. I just watch in amazement, just for the fun of it! :)
Thank you Ed Muzica for your wonderfull work, I´ve been reading and visiting your sites for more than two years and this is the first time I decided to write it, as really, what is there to write about?
You really helped me, I will always be grateful for that.
Greetings from Brasil.
"You have to lose your mind entirely by doing non conceptual things, like abiding in the sense of I Am until the mind and body disappear."
ReplyDeleteThese words contain THE question I hadn't been able to formulate.
Thank you, Ed. Thank you, thank you.
Jean
I have to admit that I had jealous feelings about Rajiv, having such a strong connection to Edji, but then I saw that this reaction was totally mind stuff and had to be given up like everything else.
ReplyDeleteNow I am thankful to Rajiv and Edji for this lesson :)
Namaskar Edji and Rajivji,
ReplyDeleteWe can't all be Edji's or Rajivji's but can die trying.
I can understand how some might want a relationship like this and I feel I cannot provide it for everyone. This does make me sad. But when you are ripe, it will happen.
With your grace and guidance may we all become ripe and just drop!
Regards,
Mona
This is Ikemouser:
ReplyDeleteYes i was definately too concerned about experiences, and getting an explanation for them. I need to stop checking my progress, seeing failures, or seeing successes. As you said, i will know when i know.