Never Give Up! Watch to End

New Snowden Revelation about XKeystroke program

Snowden's latest revelation.  The NSA's completely unsupervised access to all of your data through XKeystroke program. Fisa court said NSA programs probably unconstitutional.

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

http://www.theguardian.com/world...

• XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data • NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches • Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history

Why Masters Criticize Each Other

Beloved Osho

I do not understand why enlightened masters are critical of each other. Are they not all working towards the higher good? Are they not different flavors of the same truth?

The question you have asked is almost impossible to answer for the simple reason that you are not enlightened yet. You don’t know the ways of the enlightened ones. You don’t know their devices, you don’t know their methods; hence the misunderstanding. An ancient story may help you.... In a great city there were two sweet shops, and one day the owners of both the shops started fighting with each other. Naturally they had no other way to fight, so they started throwing sweets at each other. And the whole city gathered and people were enjoying the sweets that were falling on the street.

When two enlightened masters criticize each other it brings tremendous joy to those who can understand. Its taste is just unbelievable. They are not enemies, their fight is not of the ego. Their fight has a totally different context.

They fight because they know one thing: that the goal is one, but the paths are many. And each master has to defend his path, knowing perfectly well that other paths are as valid as his. But if he starts saying that all the paths are valid, he will not have the impact, the influence on his people. The journey is long and he needs absolute trust.

He is not a philosopher propounding a system of philosophy. His basic concern is that your commitment to the path should be total. To make it total he condemns all other paths, he criticizes all other ways. It is just out of compassion for you. He knows the people on the other path will also reach; and he knows that out of compassion the master on the other path has to criticize him, has to criticize his ways.

This is just a simple methodology to protect the disciple from influences that can take him astray. And the mind is very, very clever in going astray. If all the paths are valid, then what is the necessity of commitment? If all the paths are valid, then what is the necessity of being total?

If all the paths are valid, then why not travel all the paths, why not go on changing, enjoying different ways, different methods, different sceneries? Each path will pass through different lands; there are paths that will go through the desert, and there are paths which will go through the mountains, and there are paths which will pass through beautiful flowering trees.

But if you travel some time on one path and then you change the path, you will have to start again from ABC. Whatever you have learned on one path is invalid on another path, and if you go on keeping it within you it is going to create tremendous confusion. You are already in a great mess; no master wants you to be more confused!

Your mind always wants change. It does not know devotion; it loves fashions, its interest is always in some novelty. So it will go on moving from one path to another path, becoming more and more confused because each path has its own language, each path has its own unique methods, and each master is going to defend his path against all the other paths.

If you move on many paths you will collect contradictory arguments; you will become so much divided you will not know what to do. And if it becomes your habit to change paths – because the new has a certain attraction for the mind – you will move a few feet on one path, a few feet on another path, but you will never complete the journey.

One day Jalaluddin Rumi took all his students, disciples and devotees to a field. That was his way to teach them things of the beyond, through the examples of the world. He was not a theoretician, he was a very practical man. The disciples were thinking, “What could be the message, going to that faraway field... and why can’t he say it here?”

But when they reached the field, they understood that they were wrong and he was right. The farmer seemed to be almost an insane man. He was digging a well in the field – and he had already dug eight incomplete wells. He would go a few feet and then he would find that there was no water. Then he would start digging another well... and the same story was continued. He had destroyed the whole field and he had not yet found water.

The master, Jalaluddin Rumi, told his disciples, “Can you understand something? If this man had been total and had put his whole energy into only one well, he would have reached to the deepest sources of water long ago. But the way he is going he will destroy the whole field and he will never be able to make a single well. With so much effort he is simply destroying his own land, and getting more and more frustrated, disappointed: what kind of a desert has he purchased? It is not a desert, but one has to go deep to find the sources of water.”

He turned to his disciples and asked them, “Are you going to follow this insane farmer? Sometimes on one path, sometimes on another path, sometimes listening to one, sometimes listening to another... you will collect much knowledge, but all that knowledge is simply junk, because it is not going to give you the enlightenment you were looking for. It is not going to lead you to the waters of eternal life.”

Masters enjoy tremendously criticizing others. If the others are really enlightened, they also enjoy being criticized. They know that the purpose of both is the same: to protect the vagrant mind of the disciple. To keep him on one track, they have to deny that there is any other path anywhere that can lead you except this one.

This is not said out of an egoistic attitude; this is said out of love. This is simply a device to make you committed, devoted. The journey is long, the night is long, and if you go astray you can go on round and round for eternity without finding anything.

[...]

Gautam Buddha criticized the seers of the Vedas, he criticized the seers of the Upanishads, he criticized Mahavira, he criticized everybody that he could find – Krishna, Rama, all the Hindu gods. Continuously for forty years he was criticizing every old scripture, every old prophet, every old savior.

But he was not an enemy of anyone. He was criticizing all those people so that you could be unconditioned, so that you could be freed from the clinging with the past which cannot help you. When a living enlightened being is present, he cannot allow you to remain clinging with the dead, which can only be a weight on your heart but cannot become wings for your freedom.

It needs tremendous insight and meditative understanding to have a little glimpse of the world of an enlightened person. I have criticized many: only a few of them were enlightened; most of them were simply frauds. The frauds have to be absolutely exposed to humanity.

Even those who were enlightened have become only a tradition, a convention, a dead belief. You have to be freed from their grip also, because they cannot help you, they can only hinder your path. They can become your chains, but they cannot become your freedom.

I can become your freedom. I am your freedom.

When I am gone I hope there may be still courageous people in the world to criticize me, so that I don’t become a hindrance on anybody’s path. And those who will criticize me will not be my enemies; neither am I the enemy of those whom I have criticized. The working of the enlightened masters just has to be understood.

You should remember only one word, and that is compassion – compassion for you, compassion for all those who are still not centered in their being, who are still far away from themselves, who have to be called back home.

An article about love that I totally agree with

Article by Keay Nigel.  I agree with him 100%.  Life is all about love, intense, insane, blind love. This is the kind of love that in many can lead to self-realization.:::::::::::::

A Quote That Will Completely Change The Way You Think About Love
JUL. 29, 2013 By KEAY NIGEL info

Recently I came across a love quote and up until this day I’m still quite surprised by how much it has made me reflect on the way I see love and how I love. The quote comes from a 1996 film called Dream for an Insomniac:

This quote grips me, because it’s antithetical to what I’d previously believed in. I had always advised my girlfriends, NEVER invest more than what you think the other party is putting in: “Don’t like/love him more than he likes/loves you.” Because it’s not safe for your heart. Because you might get hurt, you might fall too deep, you might lose control of your own emotions and thoughts. Because he might not be worth it after all.

But I was wrong. Now I know otherwise.

Love should be mad, reckless and dangerous. It ought to be! It should require your every ounce of courage and every iota of strength. Love like you’re doing a bungee jump. Take the risk. Love like it’s all or nothing. Give your best. Because we only have one life to live.

If you don’t love fiercely and carelessly right now, then when? When you’re eighty years old sitting on a wheelchair?

Abandon yourself and your logical reasoning. Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows not.” Maybe what we all need is a bit more of “crazy” and less of that logical thinking and self-restraint.

At some point you will realize that the more you try to dissect love to study and understand it, the less you know and the more confused you get. Perhaps love is not something we can try and calculate, and its worth, not something we have all learned to fully appreciate yet.

So love, even if it’s going to hurt afterwards. Love, even if you don’t know what the future holds. Like C.S. Lewis said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” Love, and be loved like you just don’t care. Love without fearing. Love without trying to control it. Because fear and control only diminish the glory and beauty of love, making it just another “mediocre thing in life.”

Now is time to let love become something it should be. Something extraordinary.

Next time when love comes to you, think of it as an incoming wave, dive in and immerse yourself in it. I promise you that you will come up as a new person. 

Kundalini Experiences Within an Advaita Context

Many straight Advaitists are now talking of adding Tantra, Bhaktic, or Kundalini practices to their pure jnana talks because they have found just words alone are ineffective for most.  This includes the Facebook Advaitins as well as people closer to home.

As the story of my own three years of Kundalini experience may be relevant for some within the context of Advaita or that of someone on a Bhakta path, I’ll recount a little of it below.

I previously said on FB that the Kundalini snake ascended up the right spinal channel instead of the central channel, and all Kundalini phenomena disappeared as soon as I went to Mt. Baldy to study with Sasaki Roshi. Some Kundalini teachers have said if the Kundalini ascended in any channel except the central channel, it was a mistake.

My response:

Surely I can speak about the three years of Kundalini awakening and experience that happened to me back in the late 1960s.  The right channel was only the wrong channel based on something Jan Esmann said. For me, Kundalini ascended in the right channel, and it was painful, especially when it ran into my heart chakra.  It repeatedly got stuck there for most of six months or more, and was incredibly painful.  Even though the full body of the Kundalini snake could not rise through the heart during that period, some slender strands of energy did continue up my spine, into my brain and skull.

Later, the full Kundalini worm bore into my brain and upwards to a point at the top of my skull, and then penetrated through my skull into the space above.

At this point, the Kundlini began circulating downwards, through my face, into my heart, gut and root chakra. It arose in the root chakra, ascended into the brain, penetrated the skull and went outwards into the space above, and from there began a return circulation through my forehead, face, mouth, throat, into my heart, and downwards into my gut ending up again in my root chakra.

However, it was the other associated experiences which were most remarkable, not the actual Kundalini "snake" itself moving up my spine. I have no evidence that ascending through the right channel was wrong in any way.

During this two year period following ascension into my brain, I became extraordinarily sensitive to the earth's electromagnetic field, and to electricity in wires in the walls. I became very sensitive to the electromagnetics from the coils in the mattress. I had to sleep on the floor.  I had to sleep always oriented in a certain way to the earth’s magnetic field.

I could see in absolute darkness. It was as if I had infrared vision. A starless, moonless deep black night was as if it were a bright day for me. The moon's energy was cold and blue, and exposure to the moon’s rays seemed to pull the life energies out of me.  I had to hide from the moon’s rays around the time of the full moon.

 I could feel the life energies in trees, grass and plants.  I could “commune” with trees and plants, something I can still do today. I could “align” to their energies.  The same with animals; I could feel what it was like to be them and to experience their experiences.

I had a strong and sustained illusion that I had become a woman giving birth to a truth child. I literally felt the fetus and the birth process. Colors and sounds were vivid and stood out in marked contrast to the way I had experienced them prior to Kundalini.  All feelings were intensified also.  Everything was intense, because everything was now experienced thoughtlessly, without the filters of mind.

I was awash in uncontrolled energies everywhere, inside my body and outside in the environment and I felt assaulted and overwhelmed by them.  I didn’t know how to handle their intensity.

I did nothing to manipulate these energies, I only experienced them. My practice then was straight Ramana-style, self-inquiry, trying to find the origin of the I-thought.  This was my only practice.

Almost all of these Kundalini experiences disappeared the day I stepped onto Mt. Baldy, except for occasional movements in the spine and sensitivity to the energies in life forms. What happened then, almost from the first moment of formal sitting in the Zendo, is that I would go into a no-self Samadhi, a unity experience with the totality of the world, within minutes of beginning meditation. This continued for the entire three months I was at Mt. Baldy.  “I,” Ed Muzika disappeared, and “I” became the world: the trees, the sound of the wind, the blue sky.  I no longer had a body or mind; I was the entirety of space and of everything in space.  I was the totality of the world.

Thus, the subjective Kundalini experiences vanished, and in its place was the constant experience of space and unity with all phenomena within that space. At Mt. Baldy, I learned to go into samadhi almost immediately, and experienced that hundreds of times when there and thousands after I left. The Kundalini process as experienced then disappeared and became no-self, I am everything experiences.

I was well on the way to an identification of me or self with emptiness, the space inside and outside the body, and the phenomena of the world.  One more step was to come later with Robert Adams, which was to obtain a permanent identification with emptiness as a primary identification, and then with that which lies beyond emptiness, the absolute, the noumenal.

During this period I lived in a world of energies, of magic, where the walls and ceiling breathed and was alive.  Where everything in nature was radiant and had energies associated with it that gave it a sense of sentience, of personal relatedness to me.  In a sense it was all me, but none of it looked or felt like it did before the Kundalini experiences. The entire world was alive, sentient and interacted with me.

This is why I find Deeya and Myron’s experiences so enticing, because I lived in that world for three years, and can still feel it around them, once again: the world of magic and cocreation, where it and I were not separate, one experiencing the other, but of collaborative experience.

I CONFUSE A STUDENT BECAUSE I DO NOT AGREE WITH OR VALIDATE A TEACHER HE LIKES:

Hi Ed,

I hope your surgery recovery is continuing to progress and has revealed new insights to you.  I am writing because I have some more questions and thoughts I wanted to put forth to you.

First, I have to press you on why you don't recommend Hale Dwoskin.  I have now been to 2 of Hale's retreats and had some great experiences there.  His teachings have had a great impact on my life.  It is peculiar to me that you and him teach such similar things yet appear to not get along.  Along with Lester, the 2 teachers he draws the most from are Nisargadatta and Ramana, just like you.  He often uses a process similar to the "hunting the I" inquiry that you talk about.  Basically he will ask you whose feeling/thought this is.  If you are identified with the false center, the answer will come "mine".  Then he asks, "In this moment, if you do not go into memory, can you actually find this me?"  For me this has often caused my mind to come to a complete stop.

Not only do his teachings seem quite effective, but as a person he seems to be very genuine and an embodiment of what he teaches.  I have talked to him in private several times, have both praised him and called him out on things, yet his mood never seems to change.  He always seems to be in a content, nonchalant state.  I've never gotten the sense that he wants anything from me or is ever putting me down or up.  His answers to people's questions always seem to be lucid and insightful as well.  Most of the retreat he just free styles, letting people bring any issues up and then taking it from there.

I write all this to you because when teachers appear to not get along, it arouses resistance in me.  It means either one or both of them are not genuine.  It calls into question the trust I have placed in teachers or teachings.  Does that make any sense?  In your last email you said you don't know what Hale teaches these days.  How can you not recommend him if you don't even know what he teaches?  I don't mean to be too abrupt, but that was a question on my mind after your response.

Anyways, I had more questions for you on other topics, but this email is long enough.  Thanks for all you do in teaching and helping others.

Have a good night,

B.

Me: You assume that any two "genuine" teachers mostly agree about everything.  Hale may help many, but what help?  So he was a nice guy to you and spoke clearly?  What does that mean?  He is authentic, enlightened, an "spiritual expert?"

Your arguments supports the idea that any two articulate experts, that listen and can help someone in any field, must support the expertise of another expert or else clients get confused and don't know who to listen to, or their general faith in experts is called into question.

Good.  Self-Realization s about uncovering who you are, not who reliable experts are.

SATSANG TODAY AT 6 PM.

SUBJECT:

KUNDALINI AND THE ENERGY OF SELF

GO TO http:satsangwithedji.weebly.com

Sign in with the password "edji" two times.  Mute your microphone to prevent feedback

MY KUNDALINI EXPERIENCES 40 YEARS AGO

My former student, Lila, likes to challenge most every post on Facebook, saying I misunderstand Shakti, Kundalini, etc., and then tells the story of her current unfolding, as if it were different from what I am teaching.  This is her way of staying attached to me, yet rebelliously separate.

But, as the story of my own three years of Kundalini experience may be relevant for some within the context of Advaita or that of someone on a Bhakta path, I’ll recount a little of it below.

Lila asked on FB how I can talk about a Kundalini path, if, as I said, the Kundalini snake ascended up the right spinal channel instead of the central channel, and all Kundalini phenomena disappeared as soon as I went to Mt. Baldy to study with Sasaki Roshi. Her current guide, Jan Esmann, had said if the Kundalini ascended in any channel except the central channel, it was a mistake.

My response:

Lila, surely I can speak about the three years of Kundalini awakening and experience that happened to me back in the late 1960s.  The right channel was only the wrong channel based on something Jan Esmann said. For me, Kundalini ascended in the right channel, and it was painful, especially when it ran into my heart chakra.  It repeatedly got stuck there for most of six months or more, and was incredibly painful.  Even though the full body of the Kundalini snake could not rise through the heart during that period, some slender strands of energy did continue up my spine, into my brain and skull.

Later, the full Kundalini worm bore into my brain and upwards to a point at the top of my skull, and then penetrated through my skull into the space above.

At this point, the Kundlini began circulating downwards, through my face, into my heart, gut and root chakra. It arose in the root chakra, ascended into the brain, penetrated the skull and went outwards into the space above, and from there began a return circulation through my forehead, face, mouth, throat, into my heart, and downwards into my gut ending up again in my root chakra.

However, it was the other associated experiences which were most remarkable, not the actual Kundalini "snake" itself moving up my spine. I have no evidence that ascending through the right channel was wrong in any way.

During this two year period following ascension into my brain, I became extraordinarily sensitive to the earth's electromagnetic field, and to electricity in wires in the walls. I became very sensitive to the electromagnetics from the coils in the mattress. I had to sleep on the floor.  I had to sleep always oriented in a certain way to the earth’s magnetic field.

I could see in absolute darkness. It was as if I had infrared vision. A starless, moonless deep black night was as if it were a bright day for me. The moon's energy was cold and blue, and exposure to the moon’s rays seemed to pull the life energies out of me.  I had to hide from the moon’s rays around the time of the full moon.

 I could feel the life energies in trees, grass and plants.  I could “commune” with trees and plants, something I can still do today. I could “align” to their energies.  The same with animals; I could feel what it was like to be them and to experience their experiences.

I had a strong and sustained illusion that I had become a woman giving birth to a truth child. I literally felt the fetus and the birth process. Colors and sounds were vivid and stood out in marked contrast to the way I had experienced them prior to Kundalini.  All feelings were intensified also.  Everything was intense, because everything was now experienced thoughtlessly, without the filters of mind.

I was awash in uncontrolled energies everywhere, inside my body and outside in the environment and I felt assaulted and overwhelmed by them.  I didn’t know how to handle their intensity.

I did nothing to manipulate these energies, I only experienced them. My practice then was straight Ramana-style, self-inquiry, trying to find the origin of the I-thought.  This was my only practice.

Almost all of these Kundalini experiences disappeared the day I stepped onto Mt. Baldy, except for occasional movements in the spine and sensitivity to the energies in life forms. What happened then, almost from the first moment of formal sitting in the Zendo, is that I would go into a no-self Samadhi, a unity experience with the totality of the world, within minutes of beginning meditation. This continued for the entire three months I was at Mt. Baldy.  “I,” Ed Muzika disappeared, and “I” became the world: the trees, the sound of the wind, the blue sky.  I no longer had a body or mind; I was the entirety of space and of everything in space.  I was the totality of the world.

Thus, the subjective Kundalini experiences vanished, and in its place was the constant experience of space and unity with all phenomena within that space. At Mt. Baldy, I learned to go into samadhi almost immediately, and experienced that hundreds of times when there and thousands after I left. The Kundalini process as experienced then disappeared and became no-self, I am everything experiences.

I was well on the way to an identification of me or self with emptiness, the space inside and outside the body, and the phenomena of the world.  One more step was to come later with Robert Adams, which was to obtain a permanent identification with emptiness as a primary identification, and then with that which lies beyond emptiness, the absolute, the noumenal.

Lila, it is in this circumstance that I can speak of my Kundalini awakening and experiences over 40 years ago.  It is old news.  New for you, old news for me.

However, during this period I lived in a world of energies, of magic, where the walls and ceiling breathed and was alive.  Where everything in nature was radiant and had energies associated with it that gave it a sense of sentience, of personal relatedness to me.  In a sense it was all me, but none of it looked or felt like it did before the Kundalini experiences. The entire world was alive, sentient and interacted with me.

This is why I find Deeya and Myron’s experiences so enticing, because I lived in that world for three years, and can still feel it around them, once again: the world of magic and cocreation, where it and I were not separate, one experiencing the other, but of collaborative experience.

Beyond Kindergarten Awakening

The most common Advaita or neo Advaita teachings circulating on the Internet, is an experience of realizing No-Self, or no separate self.  This is taken as the final truth by many.  No self, nothing needs to be done, for there is no self to do anything.  Life and the world just unfold, and the witness is in utter peace, therefore the unfolding is judged to be perfect. There is no way “I” can effect any change on the unfolding, because “I” do not exist.

Here, “I” is perceived to be merely a story or multiple sets of stories that involve memories, ideals, patterns of living, beliefs about oneself, and oneself embedded in culture and society.  When these stories are seen as empty beliefs, concepts, one suddenly “becomes” the containing space of all inner and outer objects.

In this state the phenomenal universe, including the body/mind, is seen as a continuous, unbounded oneness, with the body/mind embedded in an empty matrix of space.  I, emptiness, and the world are one.  They are not separate.

However, this is kindergarten realization, only a first step.

Later, by looking into the inner/outer void one can discover two different selves totally unrelated to the “I” that was destroyed above.

Within that oneness, the emptiness of the body/mind, one can still feel a sense of self, or I-ness.  True, the identification with the stories disappears, but the I-sense remains as a highway to “other” areas of Consciousness that are currently out of our current awareness.  Awareness needs to become more subtle to perceive the I-sense, especially after the apparent discovery that the “I”—as inner object, is unreal.

One thinks one has destroyed the I and there is nothing more to do, but if “you” continue to peer into that inner emptiness, especially in the area around one’s subjective awareness of one’s own heart, once again you begin to feel the energy of the Self, both of the subtle body energy of the body/mind mechanism, but also the divine aspect of Self, first seen as God or Goddess.

The first awakening is only about destroying the power of concepts, ideas and words in your life.  The second awakening will be of Self-Realization and a reentry into the world as both the Self-of-All, and the individual awareness arising from the body/mind complex, or individualized self.

The first awakening of no-I, no-self, can take two paths:  One leads to an identification with the absolute, the mystery knower of all, and even beyond the knower; or it can take the path towards self-realization, and a reentry into the relative world of phenomena.

The Self is traditionally of a two-fold nature: the unmanifest mystery, the noumena, or the Absolute, which is the knowingness; and the manifest Self of the divine and individual aliveness and energy of the body/mind.

When, post awakening, the individual experiences that he or she CAN continue to progress in spirituality, and he or she becomes aware of the energy of the self within, as he or she abides in that energy, that feeling of being existent and alive, loving it, feeling it, accepting it, that essence grows and becomes a very solid sense of presence that infuses and pervades one’s felt body mind, almost like the Holy Spirit.  Eventually, the aspirant identifies with this sense of presence as self again as opposed to his or her body.

I Am becomes this sense of presence.

Continuing on in this manner, the OverSelf, or the divine Self, Turiya, Satchitananda, the lovebliss body is recognized as one’s own, and that which energizes the smaller self of the body/mind.

When this Self is realized, either gradually or suddenly, and the connection between the body/mind sense of presence, and the divine Self is totally accepted, then one has entered into the beginning of real enlightenment.  The gradual unfolding of the unity of God and individual is part of the final phase of full awakening.

AMAZING!  FOR YEARS PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME IF THERE WERE VIDEO'S OF ROBERT ADAMS.  I THOUGHT THERE WERE NONE.  BUT FROM  OUT OF THE BLUE A VIDEO, OF VERY POOR QUALITY, WAS SENT TO ME.  I HAVE NOT REVIEWED THE ENTIRE VIDEO YET, BUT IT IS AUTHENTIC AND SHOWS ROBERT IN SATSANG.

THE VIDEO IS CIRCULATING AROUND AND I AM SURE IT WILL BE AVAILABLE ONLINE SOON, ALTHOUGH IT CANNOT BE THROUGH ME.

NICOLE ADAMS AND THE INFINITY INSTITUTE HAVE BEEN RUTHLESS IN SUPPRESSING ANYTHING HAVING TO DO WITH ROBERT ADAMS NOT COMING FROM INFINITY INSTITUTE. sHE AND INFINITY THREATEN TO SUE ME EVERY YEAR OR SO STILL, CLAIMING EVERY WORD THAT EVER CAME OUT OF ROBERT'S MOUTH IS THEIR COPYRIGHT, AS IS ANY PHOTO OF ROBERT.  YET THEY DO NOT HAVE EVEN ONE PHOTO OF ROBERT ON THEIR WEBSITE. STRANGE.

The Dilemma of the Quiet Ones

Many stay in the background at Satsang, or stay even further behind just reading this blog.  They may never have a real teacher an perhaps never a deep love relationship, for such are too frightening and challenging.  What to do> Love them, accept them.

Sometimes they find it easier to establish closer relationships with other members of the sangha, and that is their entry to returning to love.

TO ME:

Hello Ed,

My tendency is to sit in the back row, like I do in satsangs with you, not saying anything or risking engagement. With your help, I have located the sense of happiness, which is sometimes blissful. However, I usually cannot maintain it in the presence of others, at least not for long. I experience that happiness "internally", but not expressively. There is no love in that bliss, except perhaps in a generalized, non-personal way. So even these experiences of happiness become justifications for not engaging others. That happiness seems to decrease to the degree I engage. My paranoid reaction to this is that I believe people "take" or "block" that happiness to the degree that I engage them at all. Solution: stay in the back row.

Likewise, I don't know how to engage you authentically or how to ask authentic questions, if there are such things. I've written to you previously, mostly about "the void behind", which was my preoccupation. I knew even then that I asked those questions wanting not merely a verbal response, but some validation from you or some indication that my question revealed I was special or advanced. Now, I don't feel much compelled to ask questions, as any verbal answer is only just that. But that too provides me the necessary internal justification to stay quiet and remote in the back row, seemingly safe and unseen.

What I'm describing is obviously different than your directive to "shut the fuck up". This is characterological, full of the narcissistic tendencies you wrote about recently. Even though I can see this, I'm left in a bind– I cannot seem to engage you authentically, and sitting in the back serves primarily as a defense against such engagement. I move slightly toward you and then immediately pull back at any perceived slight and take up my customary position. I vacillate between envy of the circle of regulars around you, but then I feel relieved not to have to deal with the relational shit you describe in your recent post. Of course, I do this not only in relation to you, but to all others. (Also, since my computer camera and microphone don't work, I have a fine excuse to remain in the shadows. The many sound and connection problems at  online satsangs also provide good cover.)

I struggle even to stay in the room, much less to enter the fray of relating and inevitable injury. I feel stuck, or maybe I'm unwilling to feel any more vulnerable. I'm at the point where it seems the only viable spiritual path is to sit in the company of a realizer, but I feel that something more is required on my part. I don't want to love because I feel that I only lose love in trying to connect, that energy is only taken from me, and that the happiness I experience must be denied and sacrificed to feed ravenous others. Since this happiness is too precious for me to allow those losses, I remain where I am, feeling my hidden occasional happinesses, my internalized blisses, my private experiences of spaciousness, expansion, and release. But none of these are realization.

NO SATSANG TONIGHT.

WEEBLY WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO SIGN INTO THE CHAT ROOM. I'VE TRIED TWO SEPARATE COMPUTERS AND TWO BROWSERS. 

NO LUCK. TODAYS WAS TO BE A DYNAMITE SATSANG. TOO BAD.

The most incredibly cruel and sickening video of the Chinese meat trade I have ever seen including cooking alive and throat cutting, clubbing.

Chinese "civilization" does not exist.


Makes me think McCarther was right; we should have H-bombed them back into the Dark Ages in the 1950s. If you are not shaking after watching this, I don't know what else could do it.

Mindblowing Satsang Today

SATSANG TODAY, JULY 20, 6 PM

Entirely new topic.  There is some confusion as to how what I teach fits together.

Self-inquiry, either the Ramana form, or abiding in it and loving it, has the end the self-realization that the seeker, the seer is you, but where you have been looking is not you.  The sought, the Self, is the seeker.  With this you become one with everything, space, the Void and every phenomena within it.

However, the approach of love has a different end: the realization of your divine nature, full of bliss, ecstasy, the light of Consciousness, beingness, along with a sense of absolute humility and submission/surrender to that which is greater than you. And with it, the descent of the most amazing grace, completion and love.  This is the realization of Turiya, Satchitananda, lovebliss.

However, the object of love needs to elicit a different kind of love than normally what humans mean by love.  It is altogether beyond anything you have experienced before, and usually requires the presence of someone who totally rests in that state, or a person who is resting at the edge of a bottomless abyss of this ecstatic love, who requires only a little push to fall in and sink.

Go to: http:satsangwithedgi.weebly.com.

The password is "edji" and it is required twice.

Ex President Carter Says there No Longer is a Functioning Democracy in The U. S.

Former president Jimmy Carter speaks at dedication ceremonies for the new George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, Thursday, April 25, 2013. (Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT via Getty Images)

Former President Jimmy Carter announced support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden this week, saying that his uncovering of the agency's massive surveillance programs had proven "beneficial."

Speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carter also criticized the NSA's domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation's principles.

"America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time," Carter said, according to a translation by Inquisitr.

No American outlets covered Carter's speech, given at an Atlantic Bridge meeting, which has reportedly led to some skepticism over Der Spiegel's quotes. But Carter's stance would be in line with remarks he's made on Snowden and the issue of civil liberties in the past.

In June, while Snowden was scrambling to send out asylum requests from an airport in Russia, Carter appeared to back the former NSA contractor's efforts to remain out of U.S. custody.

"He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far," he told CNN, saying that nations were within their right to offer asylum to Snowden. "I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial."

Snowden has been hard-pressed to find support among U.S. politicians. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have declared Snowden a traitor who deserves to be prosecuted for his leaks. The White House has also been persistent in its attempts to bring him into custody. Last week, the administration criticized Russia for facilitating a meeting between Snowden and human rights activists.

Narcissistic Injuries and Running

I watched a Satsang with David Spero recently.  85 people attended.  At first he sat in silence for 20 minutes then he answered questions from the audience.

The thing I noticed immediately, was his impersonality.  David did not talk about his own experience at  all. Instead he talked to people about their experience and what it meant in rather abstract terms, even if they had not expressed their own experience.  He assumed their experience from the question asked, then enfolded that presumed experience of bliss within a talk about beingness and emptiness as qualities of one’s deepest nature.

I also noticed many people blowing smoke up his dress to get his attention, by saying things like, “You look especially beautiful tonight,” or, “Tonights session seems exceptionally powerful.”  He ignored these totally to his absolute credit.  He was not allowing anyone to capture him in any way through flattery or intelligent questions.

In this way, David was totally different from me as he did not allow anyone to touch him.  He was totally impersonal.  I would have thanked the flatterer as a matter of respect, acknowledging I had heard the attempt to flatter. I am not affected by flattery, but I do understand the narcissistic need of the flatterer to feel heard.

In this way I am very different from many teachers.  I am highly engaged on a personal level with many students, and it is disturbances within the personal relationships that invariably lead people to leave: The feeling that I have not listened to them deeply, perceived them deeply, or that I favor one person over another in terms to time spent with them.  Sometimes even a deliberate sarcastic expression or a politically incorrect swear word rubs them so much the wrong that they run away feeling hurt.

These people should have studied with a real teacher for a while rather than daydreaming about what a teacher is supposed to be like, usually, some idealistic offshoot of the Ramana legend.

Looking back over the past three years, I see that EVERYONE who has left the sangha has done so because of a perceived narcissistic injury, the most common class being jealousy or envy that someone else is closer to me than they are. 

Two left because I criticized someone on the facebook page of one of these students.  I criticized Jeff Brown on one of these student’s FB page, receiving a stiff rebuke by email. I supposedly broke the bubble of peace and acceptance required to be on that page causing great rage and an inability to speak about the event face to face. Just a run, run, running away to a new teacher.

B. left because I paid more attention to two other students rather than him.  He felt his dedication and apparent surrender to me deserved more attention.  He left the comment that I had abused every male member of the sangha because I spent more time with Janet or Lila. His true level of surrender or commitment was demonstrated when he dropped me like a hot potato for another teacher.

J. left because—supposedly—I spoke daily with L. about many things;  J. wanted to be the only person that had this kind of relationship with me.

A1. left because she was turning our sangha over to other teachers, or was actually teaching members of our own sangha these other teachings and I told her to stop.  She felt I was attacking her freedom of speech.  However, she also felt left out as I was not following all of her directives about how satsang and the sangha should be run.

A2. left because she worked hard to build the sangha and thought I owed her for all her work.  She claimed she was high maintenance, but deserved it.  She left when I refused to grant her most of a day together the following week as I had several intense business deadlines to meet.  She was found crying for hours in her garage in her car because of my “abuse.”  She also warned me that J. would destroy the sangha as well as A1.

R. left because he felt that I was not empathic enough to notice he was in a spiritual crisis and adequately address his needs to talk.  He also blamed it on J. and L. for not reaching out to him. This abrupt reversal was just 3 weeks after sending me a loving email that he did not understand the satsangees who attacked and criticized me on FB.  I received no communications before this abrupt reversal.

V. left because she felt I never opened my heart to her.  She is right; I never did.  She never opened her heart towards me either, and spent almost all conversational times talking about narcissistic injuries sustained with her previous guru. She said she wanted me to be a spiritual friend, but then left a devastating personal attack book review attack on me on Amazon.

L. left because I spent too much time with another student when she was in town, taking time from L.

All of these people left because they and I had a personal relationship.  I treated them like people, friends, as someone special, but at times failed to meet their personal needs, or they felt jealous or envious because I spent more time with someone else.

You see, David Spero avoids all these traps and time-wasters by remaining relatively aloof and impersonal.  He offers bliss and knowledge; but I would find him utterly too remote to have been my teacher. Robert was remote too, but in a different way. He touched the earth lightly leaving no trace, but he spent a great deal of time with his close students at lunch, movies, satsang, and at celebrations.

I offer the same or similar bliss, far different teachings in terms of the words used to describe the metaphysics, different practices, and mostly, a huge emphasis on love--loving others and loving all aspects of one's own self.

The closer you get to me, the more your neediness will be exposed and your heart torn open over and over until it stays open. Huge incredible love and attachment will be followed by equally huge loss or perceived failure on my part, after which I will be reviled on endless FB forums and blogs as being an abuser or user of people.  The good is often buried with the bones of the relationship, and only the evil I supposedly did, lives on.

Eventually, one has to get to a place where narcissistic injuries are accepted as challenges to your false self and false or illusional expectations, and not as an event to run from.  Rather, they are to be embraced as opportunities to explore the personal self to and lose those aspects that have haunted us our entire lives. This is what is meant by cooking. The closer you get, the hotter it becomes.

Some will argue this one, saying this is abuse. But it is so only in their minds. Who is the abuser and the abused? It is a process of destroying illusions of relationships or impossible expectations, which is ignorance,  and settling for what is there, which might be called truth.

Sorry, no satsang again today.

The surgery totally upset my metabolism and my “states.”  Right now I feel either dead, very tired, or amazingly and subtlely blissful with love, sexuality, and surrender.

I can never know even an hour ahead of time how I feel, and I feel no movement to share all the new states and experiences coming my way.  That is, the teaching juices are not flowing. 

Please give me another week.

I feel there are big changes coming given that there already have been big changes since the surgery.

Anyone who denies the body, by talking about an absolute true nature untouched by body or the deeper bodies, is just full of it.  Our bodies certainly are part of our manifest existence, and any shock to the body WILL cause huge movements in the Consciousness manifestations associated with the body.

After LA Satsang this past weekend--Very Cool!

Dear Edji,

Thank you for having us in your home!

Last night I had an unpleasant dream [I rarely recall dreams, having – long ago -- found them a huge waste of time to try to recapture]. It was a frustrating experience. 

While “sleeping” I realized that it was a dream, like any thoughts, and that I could deal with it as a meditation: finding that pleasant ground state that is always present. Thus I was able to let go of my reaction to the experience and just let it be.

Similarly, this morning (while sitting for “meditation”) I rediscovered that I need not reject my thoughts. I can investigate them just as I have done with pain. When I do so, they lose their substance, so to speak. It's not so much that I look to see who is thinking, but when I investigate, there is nothing left except this sense of who that has been aware of the thoughts

Very cool. I attribute these little insights to our time together.

I thank you again

C.R.

Amazing Grace!

The hip replacement surgery got me out of a rut.

For the past two years I have been swimming in bliss associated with Self-Reaization, and a kind of personal sense of ownership of everything.  All is me as it arises and it arsies in every differing forms.

Since surgery I have been in only one state of consciousness where there is little to no difference between sleep, waking, and dream consciousness, and the easy flowing of experience settled down to only one state.  No longer able to turn off consciousness and go to sleep or dream.

Then last night I slept again for the first time since surgery.  And today, the original shower experience of awakening to no-me, no-phenomena, no self awareness/consciousness returned.  I was not real again. Not human.  Not a form.  Not even an image or a thought.  I was nothing, and I was blissful and laughing at the same time.  WHAT UTTER PEACE; WHAT UTTER BLISS!

The Ashtavakra Gita best describes what I am today, the same as 1995, but with exquisite and ever more subtle bliss. http://www.wearesentience.com/uploads/7/2/9/3/7293936/ashtavakra_gita__byrom.pdf

This “body/mind” suffered the severe shock of surgery sending the whole apparatus to cycle again from the beginning, but this time with exquisite bliss.

Post surgery details.

Pain was severe last night and all night.  Got maybe 2 hours of sleep.  The strange thing is the pain had never felt so intense while motionless before.  It is as if I just discovered the pain for the first time.

In addition, I was afraid of peeing in bed. When the catheter in my penis was removed post surgery, I began having intense urgencies to urinate whenever I felt the slightest amount of urine in my bladder, leading to wetting myself many times in the hospital. Awareness of this caused me to remain awake also.

I am on Coumadin to prevent bloodclots, which have a mortality statistic of 9/10 ths of one percent.

My blood sugar is still out of control, varying from 121 to 200 over 24 hours.  This is worrisome as it had been completely controlled before surgery.

My right leg is swollen by 30-40%, feels very heavy, mushy and is hot.  I can't lay on it because of pain.

But, I can walk well now, up to 200 feet at a time, and maybe 1200 feet during the day.  All bliss is gone, but I feel energies moving through me very powerfully.

I have been having problems concentrating recently, making  it difficult to return emails or compose new blog entries in response to students' questions.

Michael is staying with me and is feeding the cats, doing chores for me and otherwise helping out.  He has been invaluable.  Unlike others who said they would come and stay, he has come and stayed.

Six days post surgery, I really question why I did the surgery.  The doctor made no mention of possible side effects like increased diabetes, leg swelling, etc.

Also, for six days I have been getting almost no sleep and have tried to fight the effects of continuous consciousness with various medications as in the past, but the change in venue and schedule has destroyed my ability to just become unaware, to switch off.  

Now I am aware at least 22 hours a day and that awareness contains a lot of uncomfortable physical and mental  sensations, including not being able to differentiate a dream state from a waking state until a nurse cam into my room at midnight, and finally found she was not part of any dream. There was absolutely no difference between the states.

I am even aware of the period of unawareness, or deep sleep, between the continuous states of waking. I am aware there is no phenomena during that phase.