ROBERT ADAMS AS ADVAITA GURU AND SHAMAN

Those of you who follow Robert Adams, my teacher, let me ask you a question to ponder.

When Robert states that we should ignore the world, ignore our reactions to it, because the world is not real, “it is not as it seems,” what does he mean? More powerfully, he even says “The world does not exist, it is like a mirage.”

What does he mean? A mirage over what?

Some of us who have had some sort of awakening experience, especially of the non-existence of in internal, objective ‘I’, for a long while experience objects in the world to appear like a hologram, sort of transparent against a background of the Void, or beingness, or emptiness which acts as a screen or container onto which objects are seen, felt, heard, tasted, etc.

This is the Zen-like world of the Heart Sutra where we read, “Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form.”  Internal forms, such as images, thoughts and emotions, emerge from the background of internal, imaginal space, while external forms such as chairs, cars and people supposedly emerge from and return to empty space, even though few of us ever really see that unless we are on psychedelics or are diagnosed with a mental disorder.

There is more about Robert that very, very few people know.

Robert was an empath.  He practiced psychometry.  He used to touch objects gently, run his fingers over things to get a “feel” for whoever owned or created it.  Whenever he received a letter, before opening it, he’d run four fingers around the edges of the letter and also touch the front of the letter.  He used to do the same with some objects in a new room he was in, or when riding in my car, he’d run his fingers over the dashboard, as if divining some deep mystery of the car.

It was as if Robert “felt” by means of his fingers a world within the world I saw, but which was invisible to me.  I wondered what he found so interesting about a world he claimed did not exist.

When I directly asked him at lunch as to what he meant by the world was not real, did he mean it just keeps changing and nothing was permanent, he said yes.  That is, it was impermanency that made the world and us as human unreal, and that the underlying unchanging beingness, the witness, was the real.

Yet I knew there was more to his story than just that.  If you spent time with Robert you would know without a doubt that Robert was seeing a world differently than you did.

Robert’s eyes were large and almost always unblinking.  He could look at you or a scene for two or three minutes without shifting his gaze at all, and he would not blink during that time.  He could sit in his chair by the rear window of his condo and just stare at the backyard scenery for hours.  Most thought he was in Samadhi perhaps witnessing some inner truth, Void, emptiness or joy, but if so, why were his eyes open?  He always looked like he was staring at a different world and that this world was of no sue to him at all.

Even his wife Nicole repetitively commented that Robert was an alien from a different world and she expected one day a flying saucer would land and take him back to his home planet.  Even his own wife thought Robert was from a different world.  Does this not suggest that Robert actually experienced a different world from our commonly accepted world of fixed objects, cause and effect and flowing time?

Another thing: Robert often had “visions” which he explained were not dreams, but visions of entities or of an alternative landscape that no one else saw.  These visions were quite common and sometimes he spoke about one or another of them at Satsang.

His most common and repetitive vision when he was a youngster, was of seeing a two foot tall dwarf with white hair and beard standing at the bottom of his bed speaking “gibberish” to him.  This vision disappeared about the age of seven. And at that age Robert developed a siddhi.  He would just think of something he wanted, the most famous example he gives was of wanting to learn how to play a violin, say the word ‘God’ three times, and shortly he would get what he wanted, such as when his uncle brought him a violin the next day to learn to play.

Thus Robert “co-created” events, entities and objects in our commonly experienced manifest world just with “magic” of some sort, with ritual. Let the average neo-Advaitist chew on that one.  His intentionality of wanting something was often followed by his getting it after a short ritual.

He often restated his most common adult vision, which was of him, Ramana, Jesus, the Buddha, and others, coming together in the middle of a mountain and ascending together as light bodies towards heaven.

He had this vision again just as he lay dying, telling family and friends around him on his deathbed that Ramana was there, pointing to everyone where Ramana was standing, and Jesus and others.  They came to him just as in his vision, and then he died.

Shortly before that by a month or so, his dog Dimitri died.  The story is found by clicking the Dimitri tab underneath the Robert tab on the wearesentience.com website. Someone found Dimitri’s dead in a room of his condo, and they tried to revive him.  Blood was coming from his mouth as perhaps he had an aneurism.  He did not revive.

A few minutes later, the woman who told me this story, went by that same room, and saw Robert with Dimitri. Only now Dimitri was live, sitting up and looking into Robert’s eyes as Robert bent over to greet Dimitri’s gaze.  Then Dimitri laid down again and died.  Robert told the woman, “He was having a hard time passing, and I helped him.”

All of these incidents points surely to the fact that Robert actually lived in a different reality than his wife, family, friends and students.  Indeed, I am certain Robert was a shaman, able to see, feel, taste and touch a different world concealed to most, that existed side-by-side with the common world the rest of us saw, a hidden world within the world we all experienced.

This is what differentiates Robert from other Jnanis:  he was also a shaman who lived in a different reality from more common jnanis such as Nisragadatta or Vivekananda, but much more in line with teachers or the Kriya or Raja Yoga traditions, such as Yogananda’s lineage of Mountain Gurus.

I know now that what Robert meant by the world is an appearance only, a mirage, is that the external phenomena were only the clothes worn by “the real,” and underneath the appearance were worlds hidden to most except to other empaths or shamans like himself.

Robert never directly stated there were other worlds hidden within the one we commonly experienced, but he did say there were a myriad of other worlds, other realities, but he never directly stated he had access to these.  Part of this is that Robert was very careful about the teachings he expressed. After teaching for 40 years he knew what he could say and do and get away with without creating too much controversy for himself.  I think he knew if he claimed also to be a shaman, claim powers, claimed to teach about others world, it would confuse his students who were trying to escape from this reality and to find peace within.

This double teaching that the world was not real, and we should only go within to find the Absolute, or the Self, did not fit well with the teaching that the manifest world was not as it seemed, and was really covering over a world of magic and infinite dimensions, a world of energies, ecstasies, astral projection (which he frequently talked about), mysterious healings, and the dead coming alive to be possessed by the presence of a dying master. (Also found in the life of Robert on the wearesentience.com website.)

Indeed, he would reserve such teachings for the mature student who had already become Self-Realized and would not lose that realization by the distraction of siddhis, visions, ecstasies, and other sorts of “magic.”

Highest Wisdom: Ignore words completely; become stupid as a rock.

No matter how many times I tell you this, you're still thinking, thinking, judging, judging, coming to conclusions, trying to work out your life. You have to let go, totally, absolutely, completely.

--Robert Adam

 There is such a sense of release and relief once you truly let go and allow yourself to become completely clueless and stupid. Robert told me my awakening was so slow in coming because "You are too smart."

 A lot of my students even get insulted when I tell them to get stupid. They think I am putting them down by not treating their questions seriously, or that I don't have answers to their "deep" questions and therefore, I am not a proper teacher.

"Truth," whatever that is, "awakening," whatever that is to you, never, ever comes through thinking about reality, meditation, self, consciousness, the absolute, or even the method.  It comes from stopping relating to oneself and the world through the mind, by learning how to feel deeply, and opening ones heart.

Then the "real" changes.  It becomes less solid, more flowing, softer, and far less predictable. And, it becomes far more bountiful, giving, rather than taking, just as you do.

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY, APRIL 27, AT 6 PM CALIFORNIA TIME.

Topic: misconceptions about self-realization, self, awakening, that which does not move.

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Co Creation of Everything by God and Human

Really, there are no words to express how I feel now two years after awakening to the Self, myself as a body/mind human named Ed, living side-by-side with the divine, which I call Self.  Both are me and I revel in both.

I cannot create an ontology, a metaphysics about reality, to explain what is real and what is false or imaginary.  I cannot find any fixed truths or principles. I can hardly explain to anyone even how to make a peanut butter sandwich. Yet, I “know” everything more deeply and profoundly now than ever before because thought cannot impose any cover over that which I see, feel, and hear.  Now I no longer know about things, I feel them directly within and without me, within and without my sense of presence.  We co-exist in each other. That couch there, and that chair there co-exist in me, separate, yet not separate.  Separate in appearance, but not separate in essence.

The same with people.  Some I feel are me in a deep way. They feel inside me, in my chest and gut as solid entities, interpenetrating, and feeling them stronger internally than the impact they make on me seeing them.  I am grounded in feeling, not knowing, yet a different knowing is there, and it is so hard to explain this knowing.  It is not of the mind, concepts or learning, nor is it intuition, a leap of understanding and coming to a correct conclusion. 

Concepts cannot take hold in my mind.  I forget “facts” given to me within an hour. I forget what I had for breakfast or lunch. Who cares?  It is unneeded data. Nor do I plan what to eat later.  It does not matter.  Mail accumulates.  Who cares? Newspapers lie unread, dishes unwashed.  Who cares?  So what is going on in me?

I HAVE COME ALIVE!!!  I no longer live in the world of men, the old world of society, tasks, accomplishments, work, etc.  I am free of all that except my sense of responsibility for those who love me and care for me, and those who need me and what I can give.  I live in pure Consciousness.  I am not a man nor this body/mind, I am Consciousness itself, God, space, Self.

I HAVE COME ALIVE!! The energies that started just a few years ago now dominate my waking life. All day long they play through my body/mind/presence as ascending, descending, lateral and swirling currents of bliss and ecstasies. And, I am happy.  The happiness is separate from the bliss and currents.  Each day I grow happier and happier.  It is difficult to describe this happiness except as a profound acceptance of myself as other than what I thought I was, for I am the Self and I am also the body/mind Ed.  This is not an intellectual understanding, but a “felt” knowing of the entire body with its center in a quiet heart.  I am grounded in an identification with Consciousness and its sentient core. I swim in Consciousness, not in any objects.

And my body is alive!!!  The energies have “enlivened” every corpuscle of matter in me.  Each muscle, each limb, each internal organ is now felt, and they are alive.  I can hear and feel “my” heart, lungs in operation, every muscle group, my intestines, bladder, stomach as cooperating entities within me, my sense of presence in and around the body; yet the body is not me, nor is the body as fixed and stable as I thought it to be when I did not know it from the inside.  I can change it with my intentionality.  I can change and control its inner currents, and with this understanding, I know something else:  I co-create everything! The world is just an apparently external body.

This body/mind/presence called Ed, as small self, has its own intentionality which works hand in hand with the intentionality of Consciousness, or the apparent world.  Nothing is fixed, everything is unfolding in an almost magical way, some of which is understood by science, but much of which is not.

The loosening grip of concepts and conceptual understanding, words, and the meaning of words effects a miracle of change with regard to knowing oneself and the world. When words and concepts no longer matter you begin to see everything, internal and external, differently, with feeling, and even deeper, as a co-creator with Consciousness, with Self, of the reality/world/ and body mind “we” live in.  It is so hard to paint a picture of what I mean with words.

Consciousness and I are one, but the body/mind entity that is Ed is a separate, “personal” source of intentionality with regard to everything external and internal to that personal, that exists side by side with the intentionality of the universe, which is the Self, the same principle of sentience that arises in all sentient beings.

And, I am so very happy resting in a bath of ecstatic energies that is enlivening my body and radiating outwards to everyone as a kind of acceptance, a caring and concern.  I am so happy that for hours I cannot move for fear of disturbing perfect peace.

The love I feel for my own sense of presence and the Self cannot even be called love anymore, only perfect acceptance, groundedness in sentience, peace and bliss.

I feel totally unable to tell anyone where I am or what I am, but I am not what you think and see. You can only know me when you are me, and in my world, that is possible.  We can enter into each other’s existence in deep ways, a deep communion, not even conceived possible by me a few years ago.

I feel a profound sense of ownership of everything; it is all me and mine to have and to hold, to protect and to nurture.  The body has become a mere object to me, I do not need it.  But as an object, I can change it, heal it and others purely by my intentions. I cannot explain it any further, but the intentions need to be backed by techniques for managing reality.

And, as a matter of fact, learning these techniques can lead you to a deeper knowing/feeling of yourself, which becomes deeper and deeper until you have explored all levels of yourself, and the Self reveals itself to you. In other words, this is another path of Self-Realization, through love of others, surrender, devotion, and the awakening of energies in your consciousness, which some call Shaktipat, but can be explained alternatively as the awareness of the individual resting in Turiya, also called Self, also called the fourth state. Atman rests in Brahman, and both are held by the unmanifest Absolute.

Our “Real” isn’t very real for the one who sees, hears and feels from the heart. For him, the world is magic.

 Siddharameshwar, Nisargatta’s teacher, had a model of Consciousness and a larger reality that included the Absolute which was outside of Consciousness, and which knew Consciousness.

Consciousness had four levels, the waking body and world seen, the Subtle Body, the Causal Body, and the “deepest” level, Turiya, or the Fourth State of Consciousness, also the home of the I Am, also known as the love/bliss body.

The aspirant was to start an inquiry for Self, the sense of existence, in the waking body/world state, and gradually go deeper and deeper following the I, not the I-thought, but the feeling I am, penetrating through the subtle body with all of its energies, the mind, visions, emotions, voids, emptiness, space and time.

After penetrating the Subtle Body, one had to follow the I Am through the Causal Body of complete unknowing, the complete absence of knowledge, even of the self.

Finally, the aspirant penetrates through that body and emerges in the root level Consciousness, Turiya, the love/bliss body, and dwells in Satchitananda, existence/knowledge/bliss.  This is the level of the Deepest Self, one’s True Nature as manifest Consciousness, as the entirety of the world and Self and beyond.

However, even here the aspirant cannot rest, for he or she sees that he or she is apart from the witnessed Consciousness, including the Self.  This one who is apart he called the Witness which contained the principle of knowing Consciousness, but the Witness was not Consciousness, but was beyond it, untouched, unborn, the ultimate subject of everything witnessed as object.

So, there was Consciousness, our manifest or phenomenal existence, with its four levels, and the Absolute which was entirely beyond existence in the sense it was the unmanifest, noumenal, in Kant’s terminology, the thing-in-itself, not as it is viewed as a phenomenon. You could call this the subject of all that is experienced, including the Self, both personal and divine, as found in Turiya.

Thus we are both an Absolute, an unseeable, unfeelable, unknowable witness, and the totality of Consciousness that is the entirety of our manifest existence, including the love/bliss body and the divine.  Ultimately we are beyond even God and Self according the Siddharameshwar.

Ramana Maharshi had a similar model except he included the Absolute within Consciousness and called it Turiyatta.

To both these lineages, Consciousness was self-contained, it did not depend on anything outside itself.  For Nisargadatta, the Absolute was his truest nature, and Consciousness was merely a picture show he watched from beyond consciousness.

Using this model we can understand the differing paths of the Jnani and Bhakti.

The Jnani, using his mind and inner visual sense watches, watches and watches Consciousness endlessly, penetrating the different levels perhaps in a linear fashion as per the model, perhaps not in a personal, idiosyncratic mode.

Although he passes through the Subtle body, it is not done with the intent of enjoying it, but to see that it does not contain either the I Am, or the Self.  The intent was the see that what was here in the Subtle body, was not ‘me’.

Next, the unknowing principle of the Causal body was explored, then Turiya, where the Self lives, and still, the ultimate subject is not found until the aspirant realizes that it is the ultimate subject that has been witnessing the entire seeking, and there the Jnani finds his rest, disidentifying even with the Self of Turiya, the energies, ecstasies, and mental elements of the Subtle Body, as well as the entirety of the body/world consciousness we live in on a day to day basis.

Note: It is not easy to find this understanding of Nisargadatta and Ranjit unless you carefully read the works of their teacher, Siddharameshwar.  It needs to be noted here that this model talks about levels of Consciousness far beyond the “here and now” teachers of experience in the Now, the “present” of everyday “beingness.” For these neo-Advaitins, Consciousness is whatever is happening in awareness in the now, whatever arises.  For Siddharameshwar, this would amount only in attending to the most superficial level of Consciousness of the body/world, and would never result in Self-Realization which takes place in Turiya.

Self-Realization takes place on two levels: 1. where the aspirant identifies with the witnessing subject, and disidentifies with Consciousness, and 2. where the aspirant finds the divine, the Self within Turiya, the love/bliss body and identifies with it.

Nisargadatta, the Jnani, primarily identifies himself with the non-existence of the Absolute, as “existence” is a property of objects in Consciousness, and not of anything that lies beyond Consciousness.

Now we can make a tremendous discovery: The two different Self-Realizations are usually accessed differently.  The Jnani is really only interested in the Absolute and intentionally ignores the qualities of the levels of Consciousness because he is really only interested in the ultimate, that which is beyond heaven and earth, beyond existence and Consciousness.

AS SUCH, HE OFTEN FAILS TO EXPERIENCE THE SELF-REALIZATION FOUND IN TURIYA, THE LOVE/BLISS BODY, AND HIS REALIZATION IS NOT COMPLETE UNTIL HE TURNS THE CORNER AWAY FROM ONLY AN IDENTIFICATION WITH THE ABSOLUTE, BUT WHO THEN RETURNS TO CONSCIOUSNESS TO FIND THE DIVINE SELF IN TURIYA FOR A SECOND SELF-REALIZATION EXPERIENCE AS THE DIVINE AND AS LOVE/ECSTASY.

That is, at this point the Jnani becomes a Bhakti, more and more identifying with the tantalizing bliss/love/ecstasies of embodied Consciousness.  He is returning to the world, the so-called return to the marketplace of flesh and bone, of life and death.

At this point, the Jnani turned Bhakti can freely identify with everything at all levels of Consciousness from the unknowing of the Causal Body, to the ecstasy love of Turiya, to the energies experienced in the Subtle body, and finally down to the non-fixed nature of waking consciousness and the world, no longer experienced through a network of thought, it becomes a flowing thing, non-fixed, where even intentions can remake the world.  Thus he enters the world of magic, or co-creation, of healing energies, flowing auras, inner lights and continuous ecstasies, surrender to Consciousness and bliss.

The point is the Jnani has turned the corner from witnessing, watching, analyzing, ultimately gaining identity with the Absolute, to feeling, to embracing love, ecstasies, energies and a flowing reality with its visions, intentionalities, and subtle body entities.

Now we can make another discovery.  The person who is devotionally constituted, the person who loves and desires to serve and who would never injure a flea, has a very different path towards Self-Realization.

This person is more feeling and kinesthetically oriented. This person is more likely a woman with intense internal burning fires, a fiery emotionality, and a tremendous need and aptitude for love.  This is the Bhakta.  Her path is so very different from the Jnana.  The Jnani proceeds step by step, exploring his inner world ever more deeply, with an exclusionary attitude of I Am “not-this, not-this.”

The Bhakti on the other hand, explores with an inclusionary attitude of, “Oh my God! I am this, and this, and this too!”  In other words, as the layers of consciousness are explored, the Bhakti owns each one, identifies with each new level, each new experience and incorporate it into herself.

Thus she proceeds into deeper and deeper levels of exploration until she enters Turiya and thereby finds the source of all the ecstasies, blisses and visions she has been experiencing for years at the level of the Subtle Body.  She finds her God or goddess within, and finds she is it, as well as all the levels of Consciousness she has explored to that point, identified with, and then integrated into herself.  Hers is a path from the very personal to the impersonal of God, of such great ecstasy, bliss, surrender to Consciousness that is beyond mere human knowing. Her states are far beyond anything she could have known or even considered just a few years before. 

At this point she is a complete saint, a shepherd of all things, a compassionate presence mitigating the harshness of Consciousness. Yet, even she needs to turn a corner too, aware from the bliss-Consciousness, to the emptiness of the Absolute, because she realizes at this point that though she is all powerful, all loving, all-sentient, she is beyond even all this, and she recognizes in Consciousness, that which is beyond Consciousness, the Absolute.  She realizes her non-being nature, her unmanifest, unpresence.  She has turned the corner towards the Absolute of the Jnani, and the Jnani-identification/realization as the subject, the Absolute.

For both the Jnani and the Bhakti, there is complete joy in turning the corner.  For the Jnani, a whole new realm of existence has opened up as he begins to explore and own all of that which he rejected before: The existence/knowledge/bliss of the Self, the complete peace of Unknowing, all the energies, bliss and powers of the Subtle Body as he begins a return journey of owning everything within Consciousness as himself.

For the Bhakti, she finds rest after a lifetime of ecstatic and painful emotionality, surrender, and of intense involvement in surrender and service to the suffering masses, animals, etc.

Also, the Jnani realizes at this point that the whole model of the four levels of Consciousness and the Absolute behind that is really nonsense.  The model was only useful as a pointer, a suggestion of a sequence of experiences he would pass through on the way to the ultimate Self-Realization.  The model is not real, but was a crutch used to attain an understanding of his nature as the Absolute.  At this point he drops all models of reality and begins seeing it in the raw, without the mind’s interpretation based on models or his past conditioning.

This is where things get interesting, because he begins to realize that nothing is as it seems, or has seemed in the past.

The world is not real as he felt before.  The underlying things he knew before become a flowing, a fluxing of space and time.  There is no solidity in the world, and everything changes, reacts quickly and easily to the power of one’s own intentionality.  The world becomes an entertainment and a plaything.  He has visions increasingly of things and entities not seen by ordinary perception.  His world is not solid and true, but ever changing, wild, insane, and dynamic beyond measure.  It is a world of magic and cannot be described in words, and even art and poetry fall short as they are only symbolic representations of the real, and only someone who also experiences the underlying reality could “get” the symbolic connection.

Seung Sahn Soen Sah referred to this part of one spiritual path as the return to the marketplace, from awakening, to becoming a regular person again.  It is a world of magic, ritual, healing energies, intentionality, auras and visions.

By “intentionality” I mean the cooperative co-creation of reality by the individual aware of a separate personal existence, and the Self of All, Consciousness as manifest reality.  They are not separate, but the connection has to be realized.

Here the mind is no longer functioning except out of habit, but the Jnani/Bhakti ignores it, living instead from the heart, in silence, experiencing continual flowing of reality, sometimes in bliss, sometimes in emptiness, sometimes in deadness.

Each day is new and nothing ever remains the same. Everything is always ever changing and flowing.  There is no secure ground to stand on, and the Jnani shines, or he is home in a land of magic, love, compassion, endlessly involved in and exploring inner and outer worlds, which are neither inner nor outer, and in complete happiness and joy.

The Jnani does not think.  His gaze is fixed on the underlying changing flux of the “real” world as experienced without conceptual stabilization. He does not live in the world of the person who has never explored himself, and has not gone beyond present beingness.

You can get a taste of this world by just sitting in silence wherever you are and look straight ahead with unfixed vision at some objects or a wall.  Look with no thought, a suspended mind, look from an awareness not centered in the head, but from an awareness centered in the heart, a still heart.

You can begin to see reality flow, shapes changing, flowing.  The walls begin to move, to swirl, and each object has an aura.  Many have seen such things but hardly note these experiences because they “know” that the world and objects are stable and solid.  They dismiss these experiences as illusory, or as mirages or hallucinations, but in fact, are glimpses of an underlying reality that is not fixed.

As a matter of fact, this is the day to day reality of the mystic and the advanced Bhakti.  The world is an ever changing entertainment filled with magic, bliss, but also at times, hellacious emotional and physical pain and upheaval that needs to be suffered and managed, and finally transcended by finding the layer of joy/ecstasy that underlies even the most severe emotional or physical “pain.”

Also, this is this world that many of us are teaching from.  We show people their world is not as they have thought ot imagined, and they become awakened to the mystery of ordinary reality, which is no longer ordinary, and eventually to their own True Selves by means of exploring their perceptions and feelings in real time, as well as the energies and bliss of the Subtle Body, which gradually leads them deeper and deeper towards Turiya and the Absolute.

Rather than the “not this” exclusionary approach of the Jnani, this aspirant uses an Bhakti-like inclusionary exploration of the various levels of Consciousness, gradually unlearning everything they ever learned about themselves and their world until they have a transcendental awakening to Self and the Absolute.

At this point, there is no more to be explored, nothing more to attain, but only to exist within a matrix of reality that flows, with or without a personal sense of self depending on time, place and identification, with each moment being a new discovery and unfolding.

In the end, the Bhakti becomes the Jnani and the Jnani the Bhakti, living in co-creating reality habitation with the Divine which is also us. It should be understood that this model just presented is only a model, only a pointer that suggests one model of spiritual development and stages. But there are many models of reality and development, from the various Buddhist and Sufi models with emphasis on either understanding or feeling/love, and even Christianity and Judaism, such as the writings of Christian mystics and their spiritual unfoldment. 

Today I awoke and lay in bed for a half hour before I opened my eyes.

“Reality” just flowed.  It was as if I were fully awake, seeing, hearing, listening to everything, and reality “flowed.” Instead of solidity built of mind and concepts, the experiential world was not compartmentalized into seen, heard, felt, and imagined.  It was only one, not divided, and it flowed, slowly, gently, sensually. Some ecstatic energies coursed through my body, but mostly there was just a silence in my presence which flowed, peacefully and joyfully. I watched, separate, apart, the flowing of the seen, heard and felt, as well as the images within, all one, all at peace, nothing fixed or solid.

But mostly there was light, many lights. The walls became multicolored lights flowing in slow motion swirls, dancing, bending, twisting, like a bath of brilliant white paint with a dozen colored mixes thrown in, being stirred by an unseen rotation around an unknown center or gravity.  With such a world, how can it be grasped by mind? Only from the freed heart’s silence can it be known.

The energies, whether called Shakti, Kundalini, Chi, whatever name coursed through my sense of presence, mixing with the painted world’s motions, inseparable.  Only one, but many colors, many shades, one mystery.

How can I convey the beauty and serenity of such a world-flow?  In this world, nothing is fixed, intentionality itself becomes cause, and the colors change their tune and timing, swirling round and round, up and down in unending flow.

I dance with Shakti and she dances with me.  I am witness to the interplay of she and Self, and I am happy, so very happy, for I know what I am; I am the Self.

Then today my two beloved students both call, Rajiv and Deeya.  Deeya tomorrow will address hundreds of students and introduce them to Radical, Devotional Advaita through the medium of a class on healing.  She is taking hundreds towards Robert’s unfolding miracle, from traditional Advaita to devotional Advaita and garnering accolades from all over the world.

Then at noon today, my spiritual son, Rajiv, and I finally meet after three years, along with prodigal daughter Andrea.  Such love we shared, he and I and she.  I felt his power and saw for myself how he has progressed. We embraced and bid each other fond farewell.  Hopefully both will return soon to Los Angeles. And Andrea flowers as a film maker, singing the song of Shakti, the divine goddess in upcoming films. O blessed is the Lord.

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY APRIL 20, 6 PM CALIFORNIA TIME

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Topic: Problem students and what to do with their ashes.

Whether you worship Christ, Krishna, Kali or Allah, you actually worship the one Light that is also in you, since It pervades all things. Everything originates from Light, everything in its essence is Light. 

~ Sri Anandamayi Ma


Ed:  I would add whether you worship any of the above, or a man, or a woman, a child or a cat, you actually worship the one light that is in you.  The object of love is not important, while the quality and intensity of love is.

And when the self of all is perceived within, as God or self, or another, she/he is experienced as blinding white light, stupendous love and devotion, and infinite grace and gratitude.

DO YOU WANT LIVE SATSANG IN LOS ANGELES?

I'd like to start a live satsang in Los Angeles, specifically in the West Valley, at my home.

It would be on Thursday or Friday nights at 7:30.  Is anyone interested in attending?

I know I used to attend them with Robert at 7:30 Thursday evenings, and traffic was a big consideration.

Therefore, if there is a strong interest for Saturday evenings, the on-line Satsang could be changed to Thursday or Fruday.

PLEASE EVERYONE, THOSE NEAR LOS ANGELES, AND THOSE FAR AWAY, LET ME KNOW YOUR PREFERENCES, AND ALSO WHAT WOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT WORK FOR YOU.

EMAIL ME AT: satsang(dot)online(at)gmail.com.

Francis Bennett:


What is the true goal of all spiritual practice? It is to bring the ego, with all it's suffering, all it's fear, hatred and delusion, to a final end. Then only the Self remains, who's essential nature is infinite Being-Consciousness-Bliss! 

Ed's Response:

Francis, is it time now to inquire deeply as you suggested we do together yesterday? 

I have to disagree that the goal of ALL spiritual practice is to bring the ego to an end.

Nor do I understand what anyone on FB means by the word “ego.”  Almost everyone on FB uses the term, but I have never found an ego inside me, nor an I, nor have they offered a definition.

Psychologists have offered incredibly complex theories about the "ego" with includes its executive functioning to coordinate all activities of the person, put things in order, as well as providing the basic abilities to cope in the world. But what do you mean by the term? Mind?

You say the ego suffers, has fear, hatred and delusion. But what is it?  Can you define it?  I think a lot of people would call it all of our shoulds, oughts, should nots, must do ideas that cause us concern.  But these are only thoughts.  So by ego, don’t we sometimes mean conscious conflict in our minds, between what we want and what we should do?

Or by ego do we mean the mind that measures, judges, and figures out what clothes to out on in the morning and make a checklist of activities to perform during the day?  Again, this is the executive functioning of mind, thoughts, not a separate ego-identity.

Then you state a premise that when the ego dies, Self remains.

How do you know that?

Are you stating your ego has died and only Self Remains, therefore you know from firsthand experience both what the ego is experientially, that it has ended, and now you are the Self?

Or, is that something you have read, that when the ego ends, the Self remains?

Are you stating Self is the totality of our consciousness, both the objects in consciousness as well as that which is aware of the objects, without the conscious presence of thinking, or of an ego entity?  And by Consciousness are you suggesting the “here and now” beingness of the neo-Advaitins versus the levels of Consciousness of Ramana and Nisargadatta?

Where to begin?

Could we not say the problem is not the existence of the ego, but our identification with psychological conflicts as they arise rather than an identification with the substrata of consciousness, whether the superficial beingness of here and now, or a deeper awareness of the Subtle, Causal, and deeper levels of Consciousness where the divine might be found?

For me, it was my experience that the longer and lovingly I attended to the sense of I Am, the happier, and in fact more blissful and ecstatic I got. Also, I was able to feel more love and more internal relaxation until at one point there was an explosion of the “divine” within me, that was experienced by a small me as the Other, as God.  In other words, the small I, which could be called ego, as sense of personal presence, was suddenly graced by a vision or explosion of God within, which was felt to be an infinite presence, and after a time, both the small and infinite presence merged.  And, I no longer identified with the small-shit problems of everyday life  because I felt the presence, power and purity of God as myself.  I identified with presence, not the body, mind, ego, problems, emotions.  They were all still there, but I identified with now with the presence of sentience, of life and Shakti (internal energies, bliss, love).

But is this experience proof that this presence is infinite, and in another post you said it was eternal? But just because it feels that way, how do you know otherwise than this feeling that the Self is eternal?

I have had this experience but I do not know it is eternal.  I might have faith that I am eternal, but I have no proof.

Indeed, Nisragdatta and his teacher, Siddharameshwar, state the sense of presence, the so-called self, disappears when you die and only the Absolute is left, which is the unknown, unknowable, unmanifest witness that posseses the power to know Consciousness.  Only Consciousness is touched by death, but not the observer, who is unkowable and a vast mystery.

Relax the Mind: shut it down and feel your heart!

The keys to awakening are many, but when I try to give one or two, people argue with me.  So many who have not awakened want to teach me about awakening.  They read Nisargadatta or Siddharameshwar and feel they understand completely based on the pointers found there.  Then they know everything.

Some want to keep their minds until the end and argue that the words, ideas, and thinking, that you have, have no bearing on awakening, that the “Shakti” will awaken you in due course no matter what the mind does.

But until you become conceptless, until you become empty of pointers and certainty about ANYTHING, you really are not much closer to any true awakening.  But few believe this.  They insist on keeping the mind, reading books, listening to other teachers, following their own inclinations and strongly held beliefs.  They become closed to suggestions and lose their way because they follow the way the mind says is the way, and in doing so, do not lose the mind and gain the heart.

The way is to lose your mind, become conceptless, and operate from the heart.  Let go of everything you know.  Do not want to become a teacher explaining things to me or anyone else based on what you have read and what you have told yourself.

Then follow a path of love.  Find yourself and love sink into the I Am as deeply as possible.  Love it, welcome it, and with a mind filled with wonder, explore it every moment of the day.

And, if you can, love another.  Love another as deeply as humanly possible. Each day that you love leads to the next day when you can love even more deeply.  Loving is like a muscle, except that learning to love is like learning how to relax a tight muscle.  Each day you learn how to relax it a little more. Love your teacher.  Love your spouse or lover.  Love your cat or dog. Love, love, love until you become love itself.  You will be love, become love, radiate love like a million candlepower lovelight.

With the internalization of attending to the I Am, and the increasing loving gained from loving something outside oneself, the Self in you becomes aroused and one day will reveal itself to you.  Everything you do now, every bit of meditation, following the I Am, feeling the internal energies, worshiping god or the goddess, loving your cat---all aim at this day when the Self reveals itself to you, the little self, the sense of presence you have as a human being.

This will be the most important day of your life, when you realize who you are as a manifest being, as an embodiment of the divine.  Gradually you and the “other” become one, and the small sense of self which had been in communion with God, disappears and there is only one, united sense of presence.

At this point the mind hardly operates except to help others, or to help them see the truth of themselves, and the bliss will flow.  Love and bliss beyond comprehension will flow through your presence infusing the world and those around you.  Your fire will light their fire, and your love will blaze forth igniting a forest of similar souls.

Forget about the Absolute, what it is and what it means.  That will be revealed to you in due time.  Instead concentrate on your own sense of existence, your own love.  Concentrate on the energies found in the subtle body, love them and enlarge them.  But do not label them as Shakti, Kundalini, or Chi, because as soon as you do you have added a story onto them which will distort how you experience them, and ultimately will slow your self from realizing Self.

The idea of the Absolute, the idea of no separate self, the ideas of beingness, nowness, the idea of the unmanifest versus the manifest, of absolute and the relative-----all these ideas prevent the utter simplicity, the utter, untainted purity needed for Self-Realization.  You need to become empty of knowledge and conviction and just be filled with love and the unnamed energies.  You need to be like  baby in this sense, of just having an open wonderment to what is arising in you, a loving wonderment.

In other words, I cannot urge you enough to “Shut the fuck up and FEEL.”

This is funnier than Self-Realization

North Korean Cavalry

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY APRIL13, 6 PM, CALIFORNIA SAVINGS TIME.

GO TO: http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com. Sign in TWO TIMES, with the password "edji." Then sign in with your own name or whatever. 

This may be just a pure energy satsang with mostly chanting and distant shaktipat.

A concise, graphic explanation of my teachings:

This is the kind of devotion for the other, love for the other, of which I speak, which can awaken Shakti within you, the recognition you are alive and are love.  The heart's flame is lighted and Kundalini arises.

This is not dead Avaita, this is not being in beingness or the Witness, or the Absolute, this is surrender, falling at the feet of the Beloved, whether inside or outside of your body-mind.

When I saw this photo I literally became ecstatic, connected to my own Beloved, both within and without.  Even now the energies still sweep through me, "enlightening" me, bringing me to the full flame of devotion.

• Stuart Sovatsky devotion for that you still exist ... when you know the difference rare knowledge too often extremely hard to come by ...

  April 5 at 12:33pm · Unlike · 7
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  Tina Benson Were we but to love each other with this kind of immense gratitude every day...just upon waking up and finding each other still lying there beside us each morning...

  April 5 at 2:26pm · Like · 4
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  Stuart Sovatsky go for it

  April 5 at 2:41pm · Like · 1
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  Dave Gilstrap So true Stuart. I had worked as a volunteer for hospice, massaging patients in their home. The experiences of others so fully appreciating the moments they had left to live, plus their loved ones dropping any ill attitudes they may have previously held of the hospice patients brought a more profound understanding of the practice, in Zen circles anyway, of meditating on death.