Satsang today, November 30, 2013, one hour earlier than usual at 5PM California time

Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com. 

Sign in the password "edji" on two different screens. Mute your microphone. 

Satsang from Phoenix Arizona by menas of Starbucks WIFI.

September 7 Satsang available now

Edji Online Satsang September 7, 2013 from Edji Sangha on Vimeo.

Matti Discovers Self as the Energy Bodies

Dear Edji,

I feel am not this body, but a creature of energy. I take a deep breath and feel my relaxed dominion over things around me. There are many humans below me, few by me and none above me. I am creature that hunts and devours. There is no true love, only shades of position. Golden energy shines inside me. My being is strong and sparkling. I exist and roar. I have charisma and meaning as my tools.

This is shining personal beingness that has been always inside me and I have felt it sometimes, but now I can access it on will. There is nothing else quite like it. This is as intoxicating as the most extreme feelings of love I have experienced. However I wonder if this all is somehow wrong and evil?

Matti

ED’s REPLY:

You are on the right track, for there are two aspects of Self:

The witness

The love/energy/bliss body, Turiya.

Many think it is just the impersonal witness that is self-realization. Even Nisargadatta adopted this concept near the end of his life, but up until the time of his first book, written many years after his awakening to Krishna Consciousness, he emphasized love and the various energies, whether of the Subtle Body, or deeper in Turiya, the basic sentience and bliss thereof.

Most definitely , the Self is not just Parabrahman, the Witnessn.  It is ND the manifest Self, Turiya, as well as the balance of existence.  But the energies and love fill the manifest emptiness with light, power and sentience.

This is your best so far.

Ed

Bhakta, Bhakta, Burning Bright, in Kali Yuga's Dark Night

Email from Steve who attended our October Retreat:

My Dearest,  I AM IN LOVE.  I am truly in Love. 

With what I do not know but it is coursing through me this very minute. Every atom of my being is deeply in Love. This is so overwhelming and deep and meaningful-never have I felt this much encompassed and surrounded in such an elixir of Divine Grace.

This is not a personal love it is impersonal and a thousand times deeper than the deepest waterfall. 

My dear Love Edji, you and Deeya placed a piece of coal in my soul and it is turning into a untouchable Diamond that lies so deep within this soul, its brilliance is drawing me directly to it, its radiance is pulling me to it (I AM coming Home). Finally I am on that footpath of Light.

Just your compassionate thought produced a whole new reality.

How can I ever thank you, its impossible to repay the Divine but only by your example can others know of the true brilliance that exists before them.

I bow my head to the Lord.

God took me today.

Everyday you breathe through me

The Kindness of you Heart

I bow to You both.

Oh! what a wonderful thing to be so DEEPLY in LOVE

It burns....and a fire has started.

OH! I LOVE YOU.  steve

MY  REPLY:

Fantastic Steve!

But I need to caution you.  Such fantastic love usually is accompanied by a flip-side of negative emotions often called the Shadow Side.

The Shadow manifests when the Beloved fails the expectations of the Lover for one reason or another.  The Lover feels rejected, despised, ignored, jealous or hurt, whereupon the darkside needs to be worked through in what is often called "shadow-work."

This is when most relationships break up, and the former Lover becomes a hater and a hurter.  There is a 180 degree turn from projecting positive elements onto the Beloved, to projecting negative elements.

At this point, the former Lover must understand this is where the deepest spiritual work occurs--working through the shadow.

Usually it is not all positive then all negative, but a cycling between the two.  It is very, very important not to run away at this time.

This has happened to other students, though not so dramatically as is the case with Lila.

Think back into your own life.  Remember when you were overwhelmingly in love with someone then something happened, an affair, a breakup of some sort, and then how much you hated that person for a long time and perhaps broke off the relationship yourself.

Or perhaps someone loved you totally, madly, but you also felt love for someone else, or maybe you left the first relationship for love of someone else, and the first Lover went nuts and became your primary hater.

It is very, very important not to leave the relationship if the other leaves it open despite hate going one or both ways.  You owe it to yourself to work through the shadow, the negativity.

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23, EARLIER TODAY BY ONE HOUR

SATSANG TODAY AT 5 PM CALIFORNIA TIME. 

THAT IS ONE HOUR EARLIER THAN USUAL.

I AM NOT SURE IT WILL WORK.  I AM IN ARIZONA AND WILL TRY THE WIFI AT A STARBUCKS AT 6 PM ARIZONA TIME, WHICH IS EQUAL TO 5 PM, LOS ANGELES TIME.

I AM NOT SURE HOW THE STARBUCKS VENUE WILL WORK OUT.  I MIGHT HAVE TO SWEAR LESS.

GO TO http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com.

sign in on two different screens with the password: edji.

Phoenix

I have been in Phoenix since Saturday. The 377 mile trip took a little over 6 hours.

I was pleasantly surprised to find my 96 year old mother in better health and mood than when I last saw her, 2-1/2 years ago.  She looked younger and healthier, probably because of the excellent care received from her healthcare worker, Lorretta.

Her previous caretaker of many, many years really did not provide the same level of care as now.  Lorretta prepares one to two hot meals a day as opposed to merely microwaving TV dinners.

I have a pesky cold that has hung on for 22 days, but I have been on antibiotics for 5 days, and I feel better.

Take care and I love you all!

August 10 and 24th Satsangs Now Available

Edji Online Satsang August 24, 2013 from Edji Sangha on Vimeo.

On the WAS website:
http://www.wearesentience.com/satsang-videos.html

On the WAS Vimeo page:
http://vimeo.com/79294995

Edji Online Satsang August 10, 2013 from Edji Sangha on Vimeo.

FROM A STUDENT AT OUR LAST LOS ANGELES RETREAT:

Oh My Loving Edji, These burning arrows of Love from you and Deeya are killing me ever so slowly. They penetrate my body and as they rip through, the SEARING pain is overshadowed by the TREMENDOUS BLISS. I feel like a ghostly yo-yo, entering the world and then leaving it. Even the slightest daily events get my heart center rotating and tears start to flow. 

I am desperate without your presence even though I can feel you all the time, almost physically at times - it is just not enough. I am never going to leave you Father and Mother. Forgive all my begging as it it my HEART screaming for completion. Oh what a Glorious day when we become one. 

I can feel many angels and saints and lights surrounding my meditations, along with your so loving presence. 

p.s. please send Grace to my wife also! She is watching this happen and secretly wants to join in also.

FROM A NEW VISITOR TO OUR ONLINE SATSANG ON SATURDAYS:

Satsang was pretty amazing. I couldn't figure out how to use the camera on weebly.com, but you should have seen my dog. He was totally blissed out. 

There were big heart and crown energies for me. A little challenging to ground, but manageable. I was really surprised how strong the energy was just via internet. 

I'm really happy that you sent me a message, and then I was home alone (with the dog and cat), so it was just perfect. Thank you.

THE DISCREDITING OF EXPERIENCE IN SOME SPIRITUAL CIRCLES

There are many spiritual teachers who tell us to ignore experiences because they are temporary and come and go.  They say the only “reality” is in the unchanging source, variously referred to as “beingness,” “emptiness,”the “source,” etc.

They say resting in this beingness reveals the manifest world as a flowing stream of manifestation, delightful to watch, and yet not touched.  These people talk of wanting nothing, seeking nothing, being nothing, and the profound peace they feel.

However, no matter how much they try to escape this fact, they are still talking about an experience: the experience of watching an unending flow of experiences and yet still unattached, unaffected, feeling happiness and great peace.

One of the characteristics of many of these people is the feeling they convey of having direct access to a higher truth than you have, and extolling their experience of an indifferent witnessing of the experiential flow.

Please tell me how the experience of being a witness apart from the flow of other experiences is in any way, superior?

Having dwelled in their delusions of superiority for a long time, having felt arrogantly supra-knowledgeable, I know what a trap this is.  These people often talk of others as living within the confines of learned stories, repetitive patterns of childhood-fostered beliefs and societal-accepted patterns.  But they don’t realize they are living out their own story of having attained non-attaining, escape from the common experiences of others they regard as trapped in stories.  But they are still trapped in their ideas of having found a truth worth conveying to others of a kind of impersonal, non-seeking, ordinariness, which to them, is extraordinary.

Ironically, many of these people refer to their state as “true self” as opposed to the false self of multiple stories of the mind, but there is no feeling of self, no sense of me, and they take this as transcendence.

However, this impersonal witnessing is hardly a state to be admired because it lacks “juice.”  “Juice” is the capacity to fully immerse in that stream of experience and take it into the “me,” the sense of I Am, and living from there entirely energized and enlivened by the Life Force.  There is such unbelievable joy flowing with, swimming with the flow of experiences, temporarily identified with those experiences as they unfold, as opposed to being separate and witnessing them.

From this place we reclaim the I Am, follow it to its base in our consciousness revealing that base qualities of objectless awareness of love, energy, knowledge and bliss.  This I am IS JUST AS PERMANENT AS THEIR UNCHANGING WITNESS, because without an experience of the I Am, there is no experience of the witness.  It is only the flow of experiences being witnessed that reveals the witnesser to the witness.  When the movie of Consciousness stops, the witnessing is ended, and the witness has nothing to perceive and all self-awareness disappears.  Without the stream of experiences, the witness does not exist  in the sense of being known or knowable. Only the presence of the I-Am sense, the sense of me allows a self-reflexive knowing of self.

It is my firm belief that all these teachers who talk about witnessing the flow from an impersonal stance, either have lost that sense of I Am, of personal self, or have never experienced it.  Many, many, people to not experience a solid sense of self, of aliveness, or joy and sorrow-filled juiciness.

SATSANG TODAY-SATURDAY NOV 9, 6PM CALIFORNIA TIME

GO TO http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com.

SIGN IN WITH THE PASSWORD 'edji' on two different screens. Then mute your mike.

LET US CLEANSE SPIRITUAL DISCOURSE OF MEANINGLESS TERMS AND SEEK ONLY SELF-REALIZATION

Let us be clear about several things.  The terms “enlighteNment” and “awakening” are useless.  They convey too many different ideas to too many different people.

Let us settle on the term “Self-Realization” as perhaps the only one that MAY HAVE an operational/experiential definition, and we can define it in several ways.

But I want to make it absolutely clear that Self-Realization” does not mean one has improved one’s mind or soul in any way.  One has not progressed and necessarily become more purified than before, although that may be the route some take.

One does not become something superior or better than one was before.  There is no progress towards a higher state.

The mind is not eliminated, but it does become a tool of the Self.

What happens is that FOR WHATEVER REASON: grace, meditation, sadhana, God or guru, you, as an individual, suddenly know who you are as Consciousness or awareness or Witness, and realize you are not just the body, but that your body is in you.

You are sentience itself, you are life and the Life Force (Shakti) itself.  Your essential nature is bliss, energy, and love, not the body, mind, or emotions.

You always were this Self, but because of misconceptions, confusions, focus on body, mind and emotions, you never saw your own Self clearly.

You are that Life Force.  You are the knowing of that Life Force.  You are the principle of sentience, of being aware of both body and Consciousness.  You are the energetic spark which explodes into your awareness like an H-bomb revealing that your little body/mind unit is nothing but the infinite energy and knowingness of the infinite flowing through you.  You and God are one.  That is the feeling of that experience.  God and I are one.  He sits in and around me, and I willingly serve as his servant.

DISCUSSION ON DAVID GODMAN'S GASPUMP INTERVIEW

DAVID GODMAN GASPUMP INTERVIEW,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xayU4f5--I.

As you know, I spent 8 years with Robert. In this interview David says there is no Ramana lineage, that basically, all those current gurus who prominently feature a photo of Ramana at their Satsangs are just living off the fame of Ramana. He rejects the idea that these teachers claim to be part of the lineage because Ramana inspired them, or because they felt Ramana visited them astrally, like he visited Robert as a child.

He also stated that after death, Robert and Ramana just disappeared and had nothing more to do with the world. Poof--gone.

David also claimed that gurus did not intentionally interfere in any way in the spiritual development of others. There were no astral meetings in Ramana's awareness.

David also stated his opinion that in all the world there were not more than a handful of humans that were in the same class as Ramana, and that Ramana himself only pointed to dead gurus as having his understanding. David felt no teacher he knew of was really a descendant of Ramana and no one alive was in his class.

We could say no one David knew of was in Ramana’s class, because Robert often stated that the greatest ones are quite private and remain unknown.

Interestingly enough for those deep into epistemology and ontology, David clearly outlined Ramana’s concept of pure idealism, and that was that the individual created the entire world and that world we perceive dies when we die. He does not take the view there is a real world out there that we all participate in, or like Nisargadatta, who held that Consciousness, with its aspects of Shiva and Shakti, are appearances only that arise out of matter—insentient flesh bodies.

AS TO EVERYTHING DAVID SAID TO THIS POINT, I STATE CATEGORICALLY, ROBERT AGREED WITH HIM 100%.

Robert said he never visited anyone astrally, and never interceded in anyone’s spiritual development other than as a friend.

Robert said when asked how many enlightened beings were alive now, he said that they could be counted on one hand.

I know half the people on Facebook now claim to be enlightened, or at least awakened, but Robert would disagree. I am sure they will express their disagreement on this thread, holding that there are more enlightened beings in the world than ever before.

LET ME SAY THIS: THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD CLAIMING TO BE ENLIGHTENED THAN EVER BEFORE, BUT THE BAR OF DEFINED ENLIGHTENMENT IS LOWER THAN EVER BEFORE ALSO. I DO NOT CLAIM TO BE IN THE SAME CLASS AS ROBERT, AND I DO NOT TEACH AS HE TEACHES BECAUSE I DO NOT SEE HIS TEACHINGS AS APPROPRIATE FOR OUR TIMES. OUR TIMES DEMAND A SOFTER AND MORE BHAKTIC, SURRENDER STYLE APPROACH.

REALISTICALLY, IF YOU LOOK AT ROBERT’S AND RAMANA’S TEACHINGS, THEY CONSTANTLY TELL YOU TO LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE, IGNORE IT, IGNORE YOUR EMOTIONS, IGNORE YOUR THOUGHTS, IGNORE YOUR PROBLEMS AND JUST LOOK WITHIN FOR THE SOURCE: YOUR SENSE OF I.

WHY WOULD ANYONE WHO FOR 50 YEARS PREACHED TO OTHERS TO IGNORE THE WORLD, DON’T BELIEVE IN IT, THEN STAY BEHIND AFTER DEATH TO GUIDE A LINEAGE AND TO INTERFERE IN A WORLD OR MANIFEST THROUGH A PERSON AS A CHANNELED ENTITY?

HOWEVER, HERE IS THE ONLY PLACE I DISAGREE WITH DAVID, AND IN A SENSE, ROBERT.

Though Robert stated he never intentionally blessed or changed his student’s lives, yet magical things happened around him all the time. In addition, Robert would constantly talk about the magic he witnessed as a wanderer going from guru to guru in India. Like a guru being in two or three places at once, or a dead teacher coming back to life in a different body right in front of him. There is also the story of how he brought his little dog Dimitri back to life in order to help him transition across.

Then also was his constant vision of he, Ramana, Jesus and Buddha coming together at the moment of his death in the middle of a mountain, then ascending into pure light. Robert did experience this on his death bed and called out to those around him whether they saw Jesus and Ramana, etc.

While Robert denied the magical, it happened around him all the time and people experienced astral visits from him, which he denied.

It is my opinion based on my own experience and being with Robert for 8 years and with Jean Dunn, that there is far more in the world than was dreamt of by Ramana and Robert. I think Robert was open to this world, and talked about it a lot, but at the same time he had Ramana’s idea that there was only Consciousness, no separate Ramana or Robert to do anything.

As such, rather than say there was a Ramana lineage, let us say Consciousness has always acted as if there was such a lineage, sort of manifesting through the living personages of Ramana, Robert, and Nisargadatta, but also through the intangible legacy of their teachings and influences left behind. We can say that the Self of all acts through channels, and whether the individual at the center is aware of destiny acting through them or not, does not mean it is not acting through them and continues acting through them long after they are dust, just as all famous conquerors and religious figures of the past, such as Jesus, Buddha, and Mohamed continue to have tremendous impact 2,000 years later.

I began to feel Robert’s presence within me about 7 years after he died. At first I felt this presence urge me to put up my original website, itisnotreal.com, as a testimony to Robert. All that it did was to present Robert’s teachings. However, because of constant legal harassment from Nicole Adams and her Infinity Institute, I gradually had to remove anything of Robert’s teachings and photos, which led me to develop my own teachings, some of which are quite at odds with Robert’s because I focus more on the manifest world and spiritual processes in it more than did Robert.

As to the master Advaitins opinion that there are so few enlightened beings in the world, this is just their opinion based on their experience, and reflects a kind of one-sided development.

 We can take even a different view.  The Buddhism and discoveries of the various Tibetan schools is very different from the non-magical, non-philosophical Zen schools.  Ramakrishna is very different from Ramana Maharshi, Poonja and Nisargadatta.

Muktananda and the Kundalini gurus have entirely different spectrums of spiritual experiences and understandings.

I think the "spiritual" universe is very large, larger than contained by any one branch or school.

I think various masters and mystics are talking about very different parts of the spiritual universe of experiences, and no one school contains or understands more than a few rooms of hundreds if not thousands of "rooms" or categories of spiritual experience.

And on Facebook, we are actually talking to different people whose natural inclination leads them to one category of experiences, perhaps sequential, perhaps not, and others to whole other categories of experience.

These become acculturated and made into schools, like the five Zen traditions, or the three major Tibetan traditions, or Shankara style Advaita.  Others follow a more Bhaktic tradition with emphasis of surrender, love and service.

It is not that any school is better, holier, or truer than any other tradition.  Each is partial knowledge, partial experience, and none--at the highest level--is to be either discarded or worshiped as the end-all.

For example, I am learning more from my students about the nature of "reality," the world, and myself from my students than I have learned from anyone except Robert, because I get to know them so well and deeply.

My students have taught me about love and its power.  They have taught me about Kundalini and Shakti.  Each is different.  Each sees and feels both themselves and the world differently.

Some see it as does everyone else, some see the world as flowing energy states and being alive, and with their help, I can begin to see myself and the world as they see it and as they see themselves, and I expand and appreciate each more and more.

David Godman's interview with Rick Archer

I watched David Godman’s interview at Buddha at the Gaspump http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xayU4f5--I and have a few opinions about the opinions that David expressed.

Please look at this 2 hour review and we can discuss it later.