Hunting the I and the Witness

Correct practice of self-inquiry is so important that I feel a need to articulate its myriad ways, because successful methods are subtle indeed. One can practice unsuccessful self-inquiry for a long time because you have no idea of what you are looking for. Therefore, I will explain the various methods hoping that one way or another will connect with those truly interested in practice.

Some people are able to feel a sense of I Am almost immediately upon introspection and others not. One is by nature, naturally introspective or not. To do self-inquiry, one either has the talent or learns it by practice. The same holds true for psychotherapy. Those who are able to look within and "see" internal, imaginal objects and emotions will do well in talk therapy, while those who lack this skill, will not. However, one can learn this skill through repeated efforts to "look within" the imaginal spaces of the body and mind.

The problem is, a lot of people do not experience an ‘I Am’ feeling or sensation and therefore have nothing to work with. They look “inside themselves” and find only darkness, or they find a myriad of phenomena, such as inner light displays, thoughts, images, memories, body sensations, arising energies, etc., and don’t have a clue as to which is the ‘I Am’ phenomena to be concentrated on. They are lost in a forest of sensations and perceptions and have no sense of I or ‘I Am’.[1]

If you look at the diagram representing Consciousness earlier in this book, you see Consciousness represented as having four levels.  This is only a metaphor because are not levels in a spatial sense, but here are levels in terms of what can be experienced in the totality of one’s inner spiritual mansion.  It is not even a matter of increasing subtlety, so much as you will find that towards which your attention is directed.  If you want to find the I Am, you will.  The same holds true for finding the Witness, the looker or the Absolute.  And, if you have made up your mind after reading Neo-Advaitin books, you will not find either an I-Am or the Absolute; you will only find the top level of Consciousness, the body/world level and will not go deeper.

The Neo-Advaitins urge you to look within and tell you no matter how much you search inside you will not find a me, or an I-entity.  Once you realize that they say, you will understand a myriad of things, such as that the totality of existence is oneness; there is no inner and outer division of Consciousness, and the body and other objects in Consciousness are of the same character as Consciousness itself: dreamstuff.

On the other hand, Nisargadatta, Siddharameshwar, and I direct you to look within for the I-feeling, the I-sense, and when found, just rest in it and love the sensation, and this will take you inevitably to the Self.

Why the vast difference in experience and understanding of these two “schools” of thought, the Neo-Advaitins and the more classical Advaitins, such as Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi?

There are three differences: The Neo-Advaitins do not “believe” in deeper or more subtle levels of Consciousness as do the classical Advaitins, and Western Depth psychology;  they appear less capable of introspection or inner work, being more on the surface of Consciousness; and their “inner” work appears restricted to a sense of inner-seeing, their seeking is essentially visual as opposed to tactile, kinesthetic, or feeling.

On the other hand, Nisargadatta, and those who find the I Am sense or feeling easily, are far more kinesthetic. These people have an ability to feel emotions and inner energies, Kundalini, Chi and Prana, which are entirely invisible to the Neo-Advaitins.  These people are on fire so to speak, easily moved by emotions, love, devotion, empathy for another, and they have easy access to a world of phenomena that are forever invisible to the Neo-Advaitins unless grace descends on them and they have an opening to the I Am and Self, or if they tire of the emptiness of their superficial realization and decide to renew their efforts to explore the inner world.

Let us assume you are not a Neo-Advaitin, or are a reformed one and you decide to go deeper.  The Neos have discovered that there is no inner object we can call an I or a me when looking within, and take this discovery as the end of the search.  There is just Consciousness with no distinctions of inner or outer, objective or subjective.  Everything is a flat “suchness” or “knowingness.”  They will not be convinced otherwise, because that is both their understanding and their experience.

Assuming you are better able to introspect than the Neos means you have a better access to emotions, inner images, internal body sensations, and the inner energies such as Kundalini.  This is the level Siddharameshwar calls the Subtle Body; it is an antechamber to the Self.  The deepest level of Consciousness, Turiya, or the Self, can be experienced in this Subtle Body level as the “feeling” or sensation of I Am, usually first felt as an energy field near the physical heart, such that when found and abided in, develops into a sense of presence, a kind of energy field that surrounds the body and reaches out into the environment.

Following the I Am feeling will take you inevitably to the Self, just by resting your attention in that sensation, abiding there, and deliberately lavishing affection on the I Am.  Love the I Am, for it is your own true Self leaking through to this less subtle, or more physical level of your existence.  Abiding in the I Am is the direct road to Self-Realization which will culminate in an explosive realization of the Self within you as the Other, but also your own self as a phenomenon, as opposed to your own Self as witness, or the Absolute.

This is a most important distinction: there is a difference between the I Am feeling and Self, and the looker, the final Witness, the Absolute which is entirely beyond Consciousness.  It is entirely beyond existence.  It is entirely beyond the I Am.  It is “like” an invisible, intangible, unmanifest entity looking from outside of Consciousness to the inner play of Consciousness, interested in the play, but basically not touched by it.

On the other hand, the Self is the deepest or most subtle level of Consciousness whose character is the ability to know.  Its other characteristic is pure love.  This love/knowingness, combined with the void nature of the causal body which provides the container for all experience at the Subtle Body and physical body levels.  When the Self emerges and presents itself to itself, through you, who is also the Self, and the mind, and the physical body, and the Absolute, it is experienced as divine energy, divine love, explosive Shakti and Kundalini energies, and a sense of overwhelming grace, of being held by a divine presence which appears as “Other,” God, but is also oneself.

At this point, after one has first experienced or realized the Self, one is ready to pursue the final step: finding the looker or Witness, or Absolute.

Nisargadatta is quite clear in his direction: follow the I Am sense; abide there; love the I Am sense and it will release you, meaning you have left the identification with Consciousness behind, and now identify with the looker, the Absolute.

This is a state of feeling like you are utterly yourself with nothing to do, nowhere to go; utterly complete and at rest.  You are now a watcher, everything comes to you and you either welcome it or are indifferent to it. Nisargadatta compares it to always being underneath a shading tree on a hot day.  There is no impetus to move or do anything except rest in yourself as Witness. 

The Absolute is also called the noumenal (of the philosophy Immanuel Kant), or the Unmanifest you, or the Unborn you.  Untouched by Consciousness, it cannot be killed, cut, burned, or bound by anything in the world or sentience.  Sentience, knowingness, is entirely of the Nature of Consciousness.  The Absolute, the Witness, is the principle that knows both knowingness and unknowing, or the final Void of nothingness.

However, at some point you realize that this Consciousness, which appears as a guest to you as the Absolute, is as much you as are you as the witness.  You have the luxury of identify with all of “it,” from your position as the Absolute, and also the Self, and also the various voids, to the most superficial level of your human existence.  It is all you! You are everything or nothing.  You are free to identify with everything in or out of existence, or a small part of existence, like a jealous rage.  You are both beyond everything, but also totally human, feeling the full range of human emotions, desires, and understandings, but also an entity that is now capable of exploring levels of your humanhood that you were not strong enough or subtle enough to explore before.

You can now explore all the parts of you that were denied and repressed from infancy to becoming an adult.  Now you can own everything in you that was buried or repressed by family and society.  Here, you hitherto spiritual freedom of identification now becomes a power to free yourself and others from the conventions and restrictions of society, which are really repressions of your irrepressible human spirit.

At this point you can become an “Avadhut,” a wild man or woman that to the unawakened, appear to be madmen or women, out of control, unconventional, unpredictable, a virtual tiger shredding the bounds of family and society.  At this point you pass beyond the need for the respect and love that drive most people and become totally your irrepressible self, acting from the heart, not the mind or from convention, and the heart is not a lilly; it is a terror!

It acts only to free others in ways others don’t understand.  You begin to incur the wrath of society and the conventional.  You become an outcast, deemed dangerous by those who cannot see deeply who you are or what you are doing.

In a future book I will explore all the inner phenomena that one may experience by going within, including the looker, the Self, and all sorts buried treasures as well as repressed ugliness, hurt, rage and humiliation, that once seen and owned, become pure power. You’ll find all the energies and bliss that you could ever want to experience, that will enliven and entertain you.  You will find joy and completion beyond anything you have ever dreamed of, but likewise, you will find unimaginable levels of pain, loss, loathing, humiliation and brokenness that has been repressed but now has to be own and integrated.

Life is Unfair

Don't identify with the Void as the Absolute

Many people who practice meditation begin to identify with the emptiness they see and feel as their "real self," misunderstanding that to be the Absolute, the witness because everything flows from this emptiness and emptiness, or space, pervades all experiences.

But the Void, the inner and outer spaces, are not the witness, are not the Absolute, because the Void itself is experienced and is an object of awareness.

The Absolute is entirely beyond experience, including that of the Void.  It cannot be experienced itself. You can only be the witness as a position of sentience, but you can know nothing about it.  You cannot feel yourself as a witness, for then it would be an experience of the witness.  Anything, any knowledge is within phenomenality.

Now, some say phenomenality springs from noumenality, that it is a reflection of the Unborn aspect of your being.  Some call the world the "created," meaning it popped out of the uncreated, noumenal, unmanifest, which they call the "real self."

But why would anyone want to call something unknown and unknowable as their real self?  This Absolute, this unmanifest is entirely beyond knowing and experience, including the Void, so why label it and infer qualities and characteristics to it?  It is merely the mind trying to grasp something entirely beyond its ken.  Leave this philosophizing alone.  It does not help in any way to talk about the relationship between the Absolute and phenomenality.  

And remember, the Void, the spaciousness, is part of Consciousness and is not beyond it.

The only "reality" is what is presented in experience, including the world, your body, your senses, emotions, thoughts, etc.  Even though it flows and changes continuously, it is the only thing we will ever know.  We cannot know the Absolute.

Some say look at your experience and find out that which does not change, for that is your real nature. Of course that is the Void, the emptiness that pervades all inner and outer experience.  Yet, it is still an aspect of experience, and is not beyond experience.  Even this silence is not beyond experience.

Yet, you also are the Absolute.  You begin to know this by intuition, then by a kind of inferential knowledge I call apprehension, and then it becomes a certainty once you realize that the Void is not the Absolute.

However, never forget that the you who really counts, is the manifest you, the human living in a world of form and actions.  Do not deny this as being you in an attempt to run away from inner conflict, emotions, or the hurt and hate of the world.  Embrace that human self.

"Real compassion kicks butt and takes names, and it is not pleasant on certain days. If you are not ready for this fire, then find a new-age, sweetness-and-light, soft-speaking, perpetually smiling teacher, and learn to relabel your ego with spiritual sounding terms. But stay away from those that practice real compassion, because they will fry your ass, my friend."

~ Ken Wilber"

It is all about identification

Nisargadatta writes in Consciousness and the Absolute:

"I deal with only two things: What is your identity, and what is your conviction about what you are?"

In I Am That, page 269 he writes:

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. 

Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. (269)

Ed: 

Here you can understand what few have pointed out: Nisargadatta was an empath, and for him. love was a mingling of one's sense of presence with another, a unity in duality.

Typically we take love to be dualistic, I love you and you love me.  For him, love was when one's personal boundaries go down and one identifies with the Beloved, whether person, thing, cat or dog.

But this takes initially an intense love for the apparent other.  Then that person is seen as me, and the love is freed of objects, either me or the other.

"I am nothing" does not mean that there is a bleak wasteland within. It does mean that with awareness we open to a clear, unimpeded space, without center or periphery, which we can take to be our identity. 

If we are nothing, there is nothing at all to serve as a barrier to our boundless expression of love through entering and identifying with the other. Being nothing in this way, we are also necessarily everything.

This is a different conclusion than most draw from reading Nisargdatta, who want only to identify only with the Absolute, which is even beyond the Nothingness of the Void. They miss the love in Nisargadatta’s teachings.

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY, JANUARY 26 AT 6 P.M. PACIFIC

TOPIC: EMOTIONAL "PAIN."

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Dialogue about the Absolute

Darryl : I read the later parts of the introduction to your book just now - and see that this work will address other beliefs systems? Vedanta addressed 'enlightenment myths' and limited teachings, pulling them apart in the analysis of self knowledge. I saw a reference to Nisagardatta, and wondered if your were going to be presenting his "What is beyond consciousness" teaching [even though many say this statement is the result of a poor translation].

Nonetheless, if you are exploring other forms, this may be interesting. If your final solution is what I sense from the end of the intro - as one of experience - you may be presenting a limited path yourself. It will be interesting to see what you do with this. I have thought myself of doing a page exploring and refuting the limited forms, placing them into the greater truth from which their dilutions have spawned.

"A peace so profound you do not want to move so as to not disturb it." Yes, such experience is beautiful! - Yet, if you 'know' your limitless nature as the eternal Self, there is no worry about moving and losing any experience.

Ed Muzika: Darryl, I still don't understand your first paragraph. But here goes:

I have explored a lot more than the path I teach, but choose to teach a "path" that I think will have more impact on the world than taught by my primary teacher, Robert Adams.

Nisargadatta and his teacher taught a path combininbg Jnana with devotion. It is far richer than most Advaita oaths because of the devotion and the energies. Nisargadatta writes about it in his small book on his own awakening, Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization found on my own website, wearesentience.com.

As Nisargadatta got older, he repudiated his teachings found in "I Am That," and talked about the I Am as being a fraud, that you must go beyond Turiya to the Absolute, which is not a mental witness, but the Absolute witnessing itself in its reflection in phenomena.

Of course, one can become aware of oneself as the Absolute, but it is by intuition and by taking the position of the Absolute, to become it.

However, I found those who identified with the Absolute if indeed they did find the Absolute, to be sort of dead, unless, and until they returned in personal devotion to Turiya or to loving someone or something in the world.

At that point they can say with Muktananda, "I have come alive!" And such a life is ecstatic. Daily you dance with God, a return to an apparent duality.

Darryl : I hear you Ed and for the most part am [by experience] in agreement with you. But I'm not so sure about the 'ecstatic life expression.' As the Self, there is no shortage of beauty and love, as all is made of this which is that verily.

Ed Muzika: Does not require what for immense enjoyment?"

Darryl : Does not require 'acting' for enjoyment, completion, fulfillment.

Darryl : Abidance. Appreciation.

Ed Muzika: Darryl, you think that is different from what I said?

Darryl : Ed, your last paragraph of the intro - suggests immersion in particular experiences is required for discovery. This is a bit of a limited view and set-up, no?

Ed Muzika: Darryl, signature awakening events are all important. But they are not actions that can be controlled; they come when they come.

Darryl : Yes - they come on their own, quite without effort.

Ed Muzika: Without the supporting experiences, any spiritual atainments are only the understanding of concepts. The experience creates an understanding deep in the heart rather than the head.

Darryl : Actually I think [language] I differ from you on this.

"Experiences are envelope and knowledge is the [potential] contents."

I think the experiences come [as I have experienced] and without a clear basis for understanding them - we set off in all.

Ed Muzika: You have not been clear in you statements up to now and you are even less clear now. What is your truth?

Darryl : My truth? All doubts have been dissolved and the world has folded into Me. I know well by experience and knowledge - that I am that which is before all appearances of localization and form. I can not change nor have I ever moved or not been.

Ed Muzika Darryl, you are ALSO much more than that.

Ed Muzika: Darryl, I have met SO MANY PEOPLE that make that same claim of identifying with the Absolute. They go about preaching this everywhere, endlessly and even write books about it. Yet, in everyday life they are the same fuckups as everyone else, and they are the same fuckup as before they entertained and bought the concept that they were the Absolute. It is just a concept for most that does not change them one iota.

The new book will be out in about 15-20 days.  The cover is indescribably beautiful, and the book is filled with photos and diagrams explaining Robert's teachings and Nisragadatta's as well as the recent changes in substance and style.  It will be well over 400 pages long.

Here is the short introduction; it provides a small taste of what can be found in the book:

You are not who you think you are. You are much, much more than that!

You are not just your body or mind. You are not just your emotions, thoughts, images, and dreams. You are more than all your relationships, family ties, career, and loves. You are these but also much, much more.

There are rooms within the spiritual mansion that is You that have never been explored because from infancy onward, You (and we all) have been educated, indoctrinated, acculturated, and nailed into boxes of social conformity and multiple networks of thought and communication.

The world of our senses is really an interpretation of an underlying “real” as experienced through multiple cognitive filters. Both the “real” external world and the “real” Self are far different from what we now experience.

This book is about that real world (and real You) which can be experienced and lived in after many of the filters are unlearned.

This unlearning is done through various kinds of self-investigations, both through the use of the mind, but mostly through exercises, learning how to shift awareness out of the “brain,” thinking and cognition, into the heart.

Experiencing the world through the heart's senses reveals a very different You, your real Self, and a very different world that is far more fluid, far more alive, far more energetic than the relatively flat world most of us live in.

This is a world where our bodies, our hearts, and even our minds become drenched in bliss so remarkable that all we can do is swoon and fall to our knees, feeling the ecstatic grace of total self love and love for another. There comes a peace so profound you do not want to move so as to not disturb it.

Finally, there may be an inner explosion like an erupting volcano of joy, energies, light and love that reveal the deepest levels of the Self to the 'little self' you had always thought yourself to be. I call this Self-Realization in contrast to the multitude of other kinds of awakenings or enlightenments so much talked about in Eastern and Western spirituality, although these other awakenings are thoroughly explored in this book.

Remarkably, you lose nothing in this realization, for you are still much, but not all, of what you were before. You still have a body and mind. You still have relationships with family and other. But you have also found the much larger world of flowing and healing energies of the subtle body and world, as well as a basic grasp of the flowing nature of the universe. Going even deeper you become aware of the ground state of Consciousness, the so-called Fourth State, or Turiya that interpenetrates and powers all other states of Consciousness, including the waking, dream and deep sleep states.

Finally, you become aware that you are watching all this unfolding of consciousness, and it does not touch you—you are entirely beyond it, as if in a different dimension. This part of you is not touched by anything in consciousness. This absolute part of you cannot be cut, killed, or injured in any way. This part of you, the absolute, the unmanifest, the noumenon, in one sense is immortal, and in another, beyond even immortality.

All these levels of consciousness and beyond are You. The above outline portrays more or less the progression of my experience. But I do not want you to travel my path. I want to help you travel your own path by taking away your illusions, concepts, contagions, and conditionings. I want to rob you, strip you naked of all your spiritual and scientific clothes so that you can see and experience yourself as something extraordinary, beautiful, loving, and 'divine', but still as a human living in a sometimes harsh and ugly world.

The following essays and talks work at whittling away one belief or conditioning at a time, preparing the way for you to see yourself and the world more clearly day by day. I will suggest techniques for self-investigation and increasing self-love to prepare you for that inner explosion of Self-Realization. I will tell you how to use love for another as an avenue for your own Self-Realization. I will guide you away from teachings that are so shallow that they have a million followers and almost as many teachers, but yield no real happiness.

This book is divided into two sections. The first is my own story, one of a pure cognitive approach to enlightenment, followed by falling in love with a deeper world both within and without, which led to my own self-realization. The next section is devoted to helping you see yourself and the world without filters and convention, so that you have your own Self-Realization based on who you are and where you came from. It may be very different from mine, because I do not try to capture you into one way, one system, but to escape them all to find your truth.

Come with me. Dive deep into your consciousness following the I-Feeling, for it will lead to unbelievably expansive experiences of love, bliss, and the brilliant light of Consciousness which will purify and transform every element of your life. In you this divine Shakti (energy) explodes all boundaries. You will discover through endless periods of blissful dissolution in Krishna-consciousness that you are everything. In that freedom, everything will be about identification: what aspects of everything, mundane or infinite, will you be in this moment?

Edji,

 

I can't figure out what is going on with me.

 

I wake up and there are lots of words floating through my head that would normally create some flow as to what day it is, what I should be doing, etc.

 

It's all a jumbled mess.  I can't figure out if I'm somebody who is dreaming, somebody waking up from a dream, a mother with all these children and a house to run, a seeker, a body, not a body.

 

I thought things were supposed to get clearer and make sense.

 

It all gets so overwhelming for this mind that my only option is to cling to this feeling of existence.

 

Gosh, it just feels like my world is falling apart...again.

T.

Dear T.

The joys of awakening!!!

Shakti is doing her work on you, busting all concepts and inner boundaries.  Give it a few hours and your state will change.  Relax and enjoy the show; don't try to figure out what is going on; it will only screw you up!

 

We are in the last stages of our second book.  Waldo and Lila have been working on it diligently, and Crissy has created a remarkable diagram about Consciousness. The cover is breathtaking.

It will be a large book, over 400 pages, some of which has appeared before on this blog, but then expanded, and some are original writings for this book emphasizing the change of direction of teaching.

It will be available on Amazon, Kindle, and bookstores after I do a book tour, maybe traveling as far as Los Angeles, Van Nuys and Pasadena (local joke--these are all 20 miles apart).

This is just a teaser to get you interested.  Title and everything else are confidential until the book is in print.

Ed Muzika received his Ph.D. in psychology during 1987 after having spent 12 years as a Zen monk under six Zen masters, and a two year stint with Baba Muktananda. In 1989 he met his Advaita teachers: Robert Adams, a student of Ramana Maharshi, and Jean Dunn, successor to Nisargadatta; both were highly instrumental  in his own awakening. Ed went on to develop his own style of teaching, which is more personal, more about bringing “God,” the Self-Transcendent, back into everyday life, loving  relationships, and helping all sentient beings through compassionate action.

This book is about the practical aspects of attaining Self-Realization, an awakening as to all that YOU are by getting rid of all of the concepts, habits, conventions and conditioning that blind you to the greater YOU. To become the Self that you are,  you have to become naked and unknowing. Can you walk with me into Nothingness to discover the miracle you really are? 
>  

Emotions: Strong, Negative and Positive--a Path to God

Negative Emotions, Powerful Emotions

Back in 1986 I wrote a Master’s Thesis entitled, “Enlightenment as a Defense Against Psychological Pain.”  I proposed that many spiritual practices, such as mantra and many forms of meditation were conscious techniques used to escape pain or mood disorders, such as depression.

Freud and other ego psychologists spoke about conscious and unconscious ego defenses such as repression, denial, projection, splitting, projective identification, sublimation, etc., to avoid conscious awareness of the libidinal impulses of the Id, or the crushing guilt and criticisms of the superego. Through these defense mechanisms, the conscious awareness was more peaceful as the ego moderated and modulated both the urges to love, have endless sex, or to destroy obstacles or people that got in the way, and the internalized controller and punisher, the internalized representative of societal repression and convention.

But I spoke of spirituality in many forms as being conscious mechanisms of finding peace and rest from these internal wars, and they were a mere parody of a “true spirituality” where a person sought their own core Self.

Instead, people found peace in teachings of peace.  People found peace by staying in meditation on the various voids or states of emptiness. People lived by concepts of positive thinking, lofty teachings, glad tidings, concepts of being a good person, etc.

Or they used mantra and japa to crowd out all thinking and emotions.  They tried mediation when sexual or murderous thoughts and impulses became too strong.

Eventually, either the methods failed and the person abandoned them, or perhaps they died to their emotional selves, and became sort of deadened. They lost their humanity and became permanent glad-sayers who found everything OK and just as it should be.  Everyone had the perfect teacher or practice for them.  There were no good and bad teachers, it was all relative.  The world and life was unfolding as it should.  All is preordained, no need to think or worry about anything.  Thus, they died to their humanity by means of a concept of peacekeeping.

THIS IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!

When one practices “real” spirituality long enough, has wrestled with all of his or her demons, felt deeply and dealt with death, loss of loved ones, deep jealousy, deep frustration, rage, hatred, as well as love so deep that one becomes lost in ecstatic bliss, then one finds that ALL INTENSE EMOTIONS, once they are no longer feared or resisted, convert into moving bliss then ecstasy.

All those negative emotions when faced, accepted, and even loved, turn into life, love and ecstasy!

But to know this, to feel this, to own this truth you need to be able to experience everything, from the deepest humiliation and expose, to the most intense, ecstatic love of someone you must not love, of forbidden sexual impulses, such as the son for the mother, or daughter for the father.

One of the most powerful keys or methods is awakening ones sexuality.  This allows you to blossom as a human, to love and lust whether consummated or not. There is a rawness in deep romantic love and lust that causes the shakti to flow most powerfully, and which can awaken the Self from her imposed coma of mundane life, conventions and concepts.

To do these things, to awaken to the totality of yourself, requires complete openness, complete fearlessness of exposure before God or man. You life and actions are an open book with no fear of humiliation, retribution, condemnation, or loss of loved ones.

It is so incredible.  You become as strong as a mountain, more fearless than Achilles, more loving than Krishna or Christ, more blessed than Mary, more honored than Buddha, for you cannot be cut by words, hurt by exposure, tempted by money or the concept of peace.

When you have reached this state you no longer run from pain as does everyone else, but you run towards it, for those strong negative and positive emotions are the suppressed and feared you.  When you regain these lost elements of self, the buried, personal self, that integration explodes in you the power to access the True Self, the I Am, the Godhead!

No matter how easily or often you can access samadhis, or dip into Turiya via abiding in the I Am, until you have brought your unwashed, unclean, dishonest, rageful, jealous and extremely needy buried self into the open, and then, going further, showing it to the world, you will not be able to stay there.  As long as you have any fear of God or any man or woman seeing you other than your idea of how you think you should be, your tasting of the Self will be brief.

However, repeated tasting of the Self, the immense source of the I Am, aids immeasurably in giving you the courage and strength to own, appreciate and love everything that arises within you, and to equally prize, love and appreciate those who cause intense emotions in us, both negative and positive, because they are giving you the opportunity to experience God in the form of shakti.

All emotions lead to bliss, to ecstasy, to God if you let them.  Therefore run towards emotional pain, not from it!

Satsang Today, Saturday December 12, 6 pm.

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I reommend watching a movie called "Detachment" about Love

I highly recommend seeing the movie "Detachment" about the hunger for love. Tony Kaye plays a school teacher who loves his students and they transform.  Heart opening.

Satsang Today, January 5 at 6 PM

Satsang today, Saturday, January 5, 6 PM California time

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TOPIC: I LOOK FOR THOSE WHO STICK.

You can never find the I, you can only be it

"If the ego is really a collection of “processes” rather than a single entity, either an I-thought, or an inner psychic form which we can view by looking into our subjectivity, then of course self inquiry or the recent “Direct Pointing” method will always find nothing." --Ed Muzika

What this means:

Nisargadatta said, "Bombay does not exist. It is a collective." By this he means there is no one thing you can point to as being Bombay. There are 10 million people.  Millions of houses. Thousands and thousands of businesses. Streets, parks, colleges. City boundaries, hospitals. Etc. Therefore "Bombay" is a concept, not a real entity.

‘Bombay’ is a word that points to an idea, which in turns points to a bunch of other concepts like city boundaries, people, transportation system. Therefore you can never find Bombay by looking for it as an object, one person or building at a time. It is grasped as a concept by mind. In this way, the word “Bombay” is not findable by a direct pointed search within the city itself, because ‘Bombay’ does not point to anything.

So too with the Self. It is everything really, and cannot be found as a single entity within by direct search. It is the I-feeling, it is the I-thought, it is the inner darkness as well as the lighted Void. It is the waking and sleep states. It is the Causal Body of forgetfulness. It is the inner bliss. It is the body. It is our emotions, the Third Eye, the Heart Chakra, and also the Witness that stands behind all, including the witnessing of the search.

Neither Siddharameshwar not Nisargadatta ever stated that people do not exist, his mother or wife, or denied the existence of his cancer.  He only stated that at that point in his life of being 80 years old, be identified with himself as the Witness of Consciousness, which included everything seen, heard, felt and touched, which is a reflection of the Absolute seen as the world.

Here is something else to ponder. At the end of his life Nisargadatta was suffering extreme pain and weakness. He often said he wanted to die. He was through with life. Therefore he identified with the Absolute: The Witness of all. BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS! This is where he was at 80.

But if you are 30, 50 or 60, you still have lots of life to live and enjoy. You are free to identify with any aspect of your life, not just the I-Am, or Turiya. Not just the Absolute. Feel free to be whatever you want to be in the moment. 

Whatever you do, don't listen to those who preach purity, austerity, asexuality, and urge you to only seek God or the holy, for they are truly stifled and sick people. The technique of Neti, Neti, of denying one thing after another as Self, throws out both the bathwater and the baby.  These scolds send you to a dark hell of puritanical propriety.