Love and the Self:
From Robert Adams:
Robert's December 13, 1992-12-13 Satsang. He tells how to love yourself by loving the self that appears in the moment. This was in response to a question asked of him: HOW DO I MAKE LOVE TO THE SELF? DO I LOVE THE HIGHER SELF? LOWER SELF?
ROBERT: The self im speaking about is not the higher or lower self. Think of someone you love unconditionally, ultimately, no strings attached. It may be your dog or cat or a person. You have to have unconditional love for this and feel that love. Realize that love you feel is love for yourself, you are the guru, god, Krishna, your wife. Feel that love.
This requires practice. If you practice this you will develop really fast. Most people think they have to love the self that appears or love god or brahmin. You cant love God if you dont know what he is. You cant love Brahmin if you haven't experienced it. You have to love something you've experienced. And it expands, becomes all-pervading.
Ed: As a friend stated:
When one loves intensely, one moves from loving a person to loving existence, to becoming Love itself. The experience of becoming love is the purest experience of knowing the Self. Love is the the totality of what can be known of the Self. Love is the manifest aspect of Self, the aspect we can know.
Realizing the Manifest Self--the Life Force permeating our humanity--and the Unmanifest source from which it arises.
I find the use of the word Love on a search for the absolute a very misleading concept.
ReplyDeleteLove is an emotion.
Emotions are the invention of the mind and boredom is the gate because in boredom we have a lack of any emotion to excite us.
Love is a brilliant concept as a step on the way to those that require it but as a key specifically attuned to unlocking the I Am consciousness I am very dubious - please expand on what you mean by love if it has been lost in translation.
Thanks
Mike
that's so beautiful and simple!
ReplyDeletethank you Ed!
This is the crux of the method I teach, which is to find the absolute through the I Am, exactly as described by Nisargadatta as his own method, of locating the sense of I Am, of existence and presence, loving it, and then comes release as the knowledge comes within the I Am that you are beyond it. Your true nature is prior to consciousness, but that knowledge is within consciousness.
ReplyDeleteNow, it is true you always are That, or that, and consciousness is the messenger, or the manifest aspect of the mystery that is you, but the knowledge of who you are comes either as a vast opening experience, or slowly, and gradually as a growing conviction, first that you and the world are consciousness only, and then that consciousness is only the manifest aspect of the Self, and a great deal remains hidden from consciousness as the unmanifest.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteInitially, when Love is personal there is a lot of emotionality. But as it expands, the mind is transcended, Love becomes objectless and Love becomes your state of being. Everything that is witnessed is loved, existence is loved, there is no choice. Love has become your function so to speak.
At least that has been my experience.
K.
So the expansive love of consciousness is the absolute ?
ReplyDeleteTake love, focus upon it where it is unconditional, focus it down to that point then expand it into everything ... this is the practice in a nutshell - is that right ?
Sorry but I do not get it. To me you are still talking in concepts created by the mind. At best I reckon that you can only use language that points towards the centre, because the I Am is unquantifiable and indescribable. Love is a function of attachment within the psyche, of finding the most advantageous partnerships and is basically an unconscious driver for sustenance to the very ego that we are trying to stop in its tracks.
Love is a very powerful and positive emotion. Thus it does not provide a sustainable current without its equal in the negative. Without alternating poles - there is no current. That realisation and internal actualization thereof is the very expansion that you seem to be indicating to me. So at that point love drops as does hate. They do not go away but are welcomed as part of the flow of the totality of energy to which we are connected.
Thanks
Mike
There are at least one million concepts about love. Nisagadatta said the foremost energy, shakti, is the love to be, the I Am. Loving the I Am, knowing it and loving it is the gate to the absolute, not the absolute itself.
ReplyDeleteOther call Shakti love, or love, Shakti.
You are trying to understand the concept love from the point of view of the body and the individual, but in the above, both Robert and my friend were talking about love as a characteristic of universal consciousness.
That is, consciousness has some universal characteristics, one of which is speciousness, another is knowingness, and the third is love. you really have to know all three before you can transcend consciousness.
When you think of love as only an emotion and a way for one body to select another for mating or parenting, you miss the point.
Thank you Edji, for these beautiful teachings.
ReplyDeleteMatthew
So could one also say the process works like this?
ReplyDeleteLove is grown so to speak by loving a person, you feel it more and more everyday as you think of them, meditate on your love for them. All the while keeping in mind, your really loving yourself. The love may manifest in various body sensations. Then one day, after its grown and enveloped you, it changes to loving existence or "loving just being alive". You stay here for awhile, immersed in it. Then it becomes just love itself.
But all these changes happen of their own accord, you dont try to change or speed up the process, you "just be" with the love all along and let it take care of you.
This is sort of it. Love grows for the person, expands, changes colors, flavors, intensity and fills you up. At some point you realize it is you feeling that love in your own psyche and body for the other person.
ReplyDeleteThe filling continues in terms of movements and completions until you feel totally filled and complete with love.
Then you realize your foremost identity is love itself. I am love. You are love.
Its no fun dancing alone.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there a million concepts of love. Which is why I find it a terrible word to use in these explanations. Again to me Shakti is only half of the puzzle, the feminine principle only. One pole of the current of unified power.
ReplyDeleteNow for consciousness to have characteristics also confuses me. Surely it only has chrachteristics to the mind that attempts to analyze and categorize it. Consciousness is spontaneous and unpredictable because it operates outside of the ego or heart mind thus I find any attempt to pin it down very hard to understand.
Thanks again
Mike
First, I am niether charlie nor Ramana and neither a Neo-Advaitan.
ReplyDeleteI do not what Roberts was taching, so I can't say anythin about Robert. I made this post at the bottom of the page and I am amking it here, so people can read it. I hope your are going to post
Ed, this is not the way Nisargadtta taught about I AM. Please! I do not know what has happend, but you, Ed, you have already made an expalnation about Nisargatda method in your 2nd or 3rd Satsang last year. That is the way Nisargadta taught the self-inquiry.
I want to be clear hear. I am talking about your last year Satsang
http://www.wearesentience.com/satsang-003---dec-2.html
Ed, I am not here to crtiisize you. But your teaching style has changed. Nowhere is the above Satsang you are talking about Love. You know that's why many people are getting confused because of change in your teaching style, which is fine, but it's almost opposite to what you were teaching last year.
Now, you are teaching more about Ramakrsihna, not Nisragadtaa. Again, Nisaragadtta never taught that. I do not care what Jean Duan told you about your understanding. Jean never wrote any book about Maharaj's method.
Ed, I have nothing againist you, nothing whatsever. This is your blog, your website, your teaching, your style, but please be more clear. I think many people can get confused and are getting confused.
And, you talk about Ramakrsina. Ramakrishna was a saint and this is what Ranjit Maharaj, Nisargadtta's dharma brother said about Ramakrishna is his interview.
"Many saints also don't understand, I dare say now! Ramakrishna Parmahansa was there and some realised person met him. Ramakrishna told him that he was only worshipping Kali Kamata. A power, a Godess - her name was Kali. That person told Ramakrishna, " Take that photo and spit on it, then only can you realise." These are all worldly affairs."
Here is a link for this whole interview
http://www.inner-quest.org/Ranjit_Interview.htm
So, that'a about it Ed. I amnot here for a long discussion. MY friens, please be clear. Please, I know you want to help your students, but please be clear.
Thank you!
But he did teach about it this way. It is not so obvious if you read Jean Dunne, but it hits you in the face when you read the Nisargadatta Gita by Pradeep Apte.
ReplyDeleteYou find the I Am sense, or the sense of presence, the sense of existence, or energy and you focus on it. Let it grow, love it.
But it really, really helps to have an external world object, as Robert states above, to focus on and to fill up the I Am with love, initially found outward, and then found to be the essence of I Am within oneself.
Then the I Am begins to show you all its aspects.
Now, Pradeep seems to hold that the purified IAm is the Absolute. I disagree with this conceptual scheme and substitute my own lie: the i Am, and love, are the manifest aspect of the self, while the unmanifest, the hidden is the absolute.
You see, it really does not matter which conceptual scheme, which lie, is more true. What is your experience?
Even here, you should know what it is that you are looking for. Are you looking for knowledge, conviction, or an existence beyond consciousness?
One thing you need to know. I wrote a book called "Enlightenment as a Defense Mechanism." What I meant is that a lot of people seek transcendent states to get away from depression, confusion, anger and other emotions, especially poor self-esteem.
ReplyDeleteThey use all kinds of mental techniques to escape these feelings and images, above and beyond the defense mechanisms Freud and all the others talk about.
Now, there are a whole bunch of spiritual seekers who are very comfortable talking and feeling love, but they have a heard time with anger, jealousy, criticism, analysis, and many other "harder" feelings and mental processes. Facebook is filled with them. And, they never really talk about how they are feeling and whether they are happy or peaceful, etc.
According to the "standard theory" in spirituality today, set forth by a bunch of people, these seekers will fail because they are not really going to a goal, but running away from their own feelings and pasts.
They really need to stop and face themselves and change psychologically and spiritually before they are comfortable enough to stop seeking, either because they reach a place of completion, or because they run out of seekers gas and the will to change and confront themselves.
Then we have a whole bunch of people that are Advaita types, they want truth, and they don't want much to do with the world anymore for whatever reason. They see themselves and the world and are fed up with the misery of the world. That is, they are not filled with neurotic suffering, but are fed up with ordinary human unhappiness.
These people truly seek nothingness, the void, the unmanifest, but they can only ever find the manifest aspects of nothingness, that void we see within and around us, that is not the void, but its reflection in awareness.
Now, these people tend to fail before they get where they are going because they dry out and lose their juice.
Maharaj tried to increase the juice with worship or guru and chanting. He also introduced the idea of learning to love the source of us, the I, or the I-sense, the process of which can be ecstatic and fun, which increases happiness and effort.
Robert, as above, advised the same way.
Now, if you want to state your experience of how Nisargadatta taught, please do.
Going through the negative is certainly the path of the true seeker. If we cultivate only positive energies then you are an escapist (or merely normal !). However, if you learn to keep your centre within the negative then the process has well and truly begun for you.
ReplyDeleteTo be able to sit in the midst of negative circumstances you need to have learned to cultivate transform and redirect all energy, whether positive or negative. Which means having a practice in place to transform any energy that comes your way. Also that you have worked through your whole psyche thus dropping all Karma with the ego and being left free to act spontaneously from the source at any moment.
A great deal of problems arise from the transcripts of Gurus and Masters. This is because it is very likely that they were talking to a psyche or a group of psyches that did not have the same triggers as the reader does. The teaching of the inner master is alive and individual to the energies present in that moment. It loses alot of power as it is interpreted and reinterpreted by the mind. Just look at how religion has watered down and detracted from the original message over the years.
Then we get down to fighting over interpretations and setting up new factions and new religions of our own. All because we are grasping at a moment long past and living by words that were not necessarily either spoken to us or that are relevant to us.
Everything is a pointer and a clue. Manifested in our reality from consciousness into the mind. It is up to us to follow everything back to its source...
If boredom/dispassion was the gate, i should have long ago been realized.
ReplyDeleteIsaac
Contradictions appear only then when one has not seen through conceptual world. Thus, these particular discussions are meaningless totally.
ReplyDeleteIt is like, suppose, I have read a Maharaj book, I have created my own concepts about those concepts in book, and now I am trying to cling to those self created concepts about concepts and discuss about how right or wrong someone says about those concepts in Maharaj book. What a mess.
Instead I could read a book and try to purely look where those book concepts are pointing to and recognize and realize it. Then, because of that book and because of Power running this show, somehow I get here to Guru Ed. Now, instead of conceptualizing about concepts, I just listen to what Ed says and that listening itself opens many doors which has not been recognized previously. But how can I listen if I am filled with self created concepts about concepts?
What a mess :)
beinbliss
All concepts are self created. You carry around your universe in your mind. A chair is something that you sit on, an apple something that you eat and emancipation from your own ego needs the assistance of a master. Some concepts are more detrimental and confining to the psyche than others.
ReplyDeleteMost people find the master externally because of their self created concept of what a master is. Yet the master is there internally and anyone that helps you to find it is there to help you sidestep the ego and let you see it for what it is, or more accurately what true reality itself is at the very ground of existence.
The fastest route to finding the internal master is a complete practice. Philosophy is great and a fantastic means to keeping the baby (ego) from crying. But understanding the I Am presence is meaningless without an experience of it. The fastest route to experience it is through learning to correctly cultivate all energies and to transform them into a fire of vitality powering everything from meditation to washing up. Physical and Energy practices are not often expounded by philosophers and it would be pointless for them to do so because their medium is not often 1 to 1 these days and to transmit this information requires personal contact. Large followings are also impossible because of the attention required to transmit a complete and worthwhile practice.