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.
Realizing the Manifest Self--the Life Force permeating our humanity--and the Unmanifest source from which it arises.
This is as clear as it gets. One should accept this and move on with this knowledge.
ReplyDeleteDear Edji,
ReplyDeleteyesterday I attended your Satsang. Very nice! I'll be back. I understand now much better your perspective and where you're comming from. I like it very much.
It seems to me that there are two different and irreconcilable spiritual destinations, aims, goals: love (tasting the sugar) and liberation FROM love (being the sugar). The Advaita Sages - including Robert, Ramana, Nisargadatta - aimed for the latter, while others opted for the former.
The Advaita sages (like Nisargadatta) seem to say that love (equated with the I AM, maya) will burn itself out and the aspirant will merge with Parabrahman, but this may only be true for a few; others may be able to love on forever!
All the best,
Abe
P.S.
How to attain Para Bhakti (Divine Love) by Swami Mukundananda - 3/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kv3ycukU4
Those who run after liberation (mukti) - what is the Sadhana? You stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking. All they do is to meditate on the formless aspect of God - "I am God, I am God, I am God." When they leave their body, if they attain perfection in their sadhana, once they leave their body they go and merge into the effulgence of God called the brahma jyoti (Divine Presence). That was their goal: how can I become one with God? The soul goes and merges into the brahma jyoti and it remains there forever. Now they become devoid of the bliss of seeing God, the blis of relishing his Divine pasttimes, the bliss of serving him.
The person who has merged into God is now devoid of the bliss of God. So the bliss of God is experienced not in advait(a) but in dvait(a).
These souls - the God-realized saints - they retain their individual personality to relish the bliss of Divine Love.
Those that run after liberation - "too much pain, too much pain" - get liberated. They have become devoid of [Divine Love] forever.
That is why the bhakti saints say: "This desire for liberation is the biggest danger. Stay away from it."
"This desire for liberation is like hell."
"The biggest fault on this path will be to desire or to embrace liberation."
"Those souls who have understood from their
Guru ... look on liberation as a witch."
"That person who considers liberation to be like a witch and runs away from it will get prem ras (Divine Love)."