Here is my view. I am not a stranger to Zen and Advaita. I was a Zen monk for 12 years and was named the First American World Teacher of Chogye Zen Buddhism 15 years ago. And my greatest teacher was Robert Adams, student of Ramana, and my other teacher was Jean Dunn, successor to Nisargadatta. I wrote books and websites about realizing my true nature as the Absolute, as the Noumenal and taught it for years.

But then I fell in love with a woman and returned to humanity, to life, energies, love, and passionate living. My world was opened up to the individual, to the human, to compassion, vulnerability, and the Life Force.

Now I encourage people to wake up out of the narrowness of entirely focusing on "one's true nature," the unchanging absolute, or the emptiness many mistake for the absolute, and instead focus on living life with love, passion, compassion, accepting the vissisitudes, pains, and joys of everyday life--and in that total acceptance, in the "eating" and metabolizing grief, anger, terror, love, lust, loss,depression, bliss, somehow, somehow, one's own Manifest Self is revealed to you--the Self of love, bliss, power, Shakti as she dances through our lives.

I am not talking about experiencing for the sake of experience, but to focus on them, bring them into our hearts, thereby owning those energies previously avoided. And somehow, somehow, the long hidden Self within is liberated and we find God in us. We and God are one. We are incarnations of the divine.

This is a spirituality of embodiment, not of quietude and peace.

With the discovery of this Manifest Self, finally I knew who I was as embodied sentience. Knowledge, existence, and bliss were mine in the midst of the total activity of everyday life lived to the fullest.

As to service, I emphasize service as a path to the love needed to complete oneself. I have been a tireless animal rescuer for 25 years as well as a liberal political activist fighting for justice, equality, and openness in government and society.

There is so much more to real spirituality than Ramana and his infinity of teaching successors, and Nisaragadatta and his infinity of successors.  There is so much more than Neo-Advaita, self-inquiry, the Absolute, the Unchanging, or Zen and the Void. 

There is SO VERY MUCH MORE......

If one digs deep, one can find an infinity of experiences, of love, the Life Force, Shakti, then amazing pain and suffering, death, loneliness, followed by uplifting energies and bliss, wild energies, the experience of the presence of God in oneself, grace and gratitude, then later of pure evil luring at our heart's source.  

Sometimes we experience the wildness of a dancing Zorba, followed by the coolness of Ramana, followed by by the sexual passions of a woman, followed by the cold compassion of Mother Teresa.  Follow this by deep grief over a parent's death, or shaking at the contemplation of one's own death.

Throw away your obsessions with Ramana, Advaita, Nisargaddta, neo-Advaita, Papaji, Tolle and all the other teachers of the Absolute.  Throw away Zen with its cool emptiness is form, and formis emptiness. 

Instead read about Ramakrishna, Osho, Tantra, Muktananda.  Read tales of pineal gland orgasms, Kundalini, Shakti.  Dance with the dervishes.  Follow Tweedie and her guru. Cry a thousand gallons of tears.  Become totally alive as a human and an incarnation of the divine into human flesh.

Feel the vulnerability.  Feel the fear.  Feel the loneliness, misery.  Then feel the ecstasies of God realization and grace in oneself.  Feel the arising Kundalini in your spine.  Learn to see in the darkness, feel the earth's magnetism, feel the life force in trees and in your lover, be open to worlds within worlds.  Feel the gratitude of having someone to love.  Be able to dissipate clouds.  Learn how to heal with energies.

Taken together, all the Advaita and neo-Advaita teachers in the world together embrace a very narrow range of spiritual experiences of Self, No-Self, Absolute, Witness, peace and quietude.

THERE IS SO VERY MUCH MORE!!

Edji

The Differing Self-Realizations of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta

Many people think Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta shared a common message.  This is absolutely not true.  Ramana was life-affirming, and considered self-awareness of the I-sense the reality, while Nisargadatta considered the I, the I-Am, sonsciousness to be an illusion to be transcended so one could 
 escape “the mischief” of beingness or Consciouness into peace and quietude.

To me, they are both true but talk of different levels of Self.  Ramana talks about the Manifest Self, the Atman, the immanent God within, while Nisargadatta talks about the Unmanifest Self, that knowing principle that exists prior to Consciousness, which for him was the only reality.

I supply quotes below from both Ramana and Nisargadatta to prove this point.  They talk about two different levels of Self: Ramana about the Manifest Self, and Nisargadatta about the Unmanifest Self, the Witness, the Absolute, or in Kant’s term, the Noumenal Self.


RAMANA’S AWAKENING EXPERIENCE--3 DIFFERENT DESCRIPTIONS

He talks about the reality of the I.  It is the only real thing, this Self-Awareness.

"It was a sudden fear of death. The actual enquiry and ascertainment or discovery of 'Who am I' was over on that very day. Instinctively I held my breath and began to think or dive inward with my inquiry into my own nature. 'This body is going to die', I said to myself, referring to the gross physical body. I came to the conclusion that when it was dead and rigid (then it seemed to me that my body had actually become rigid  as I stretched myself like a corpse with rigor mortis, thinking this out), I was not dead. I was, on the other hand, conscious of being alive, in existence.

So, the question arose in me   'What is this l? Is it this body who calls himself the 'I'?  ' so I held my mouth shut, determined not to allow it to pronounce 'I' or any other syllable. Still I felt within myself the 'I' was there  the sound was there and the object calling or feeling itself 'I' was there.  What was that? 

I felt that it was a force or current, a centre of energy playing on the body, working on despite the rigidity or activity of the body, though existing in connection with it. It was that current, force, or
centre that constituted my personality, that kept me acting, moving, etc., as I came to know then and only then. I had no idea whatever of my self before that. Once I reached that conclusion, the fear of death dropped off.  It had no place in my thoughts. 'I' being a subtle current had no death to fear. So, further development or activity was issuing from the new life and not from any fear.

I had at that time no idea of the identity of that current, or about its relationship to Personal God, or 'Iswara' as I used to term Him.. Later, when I was in the Arunachala temple, I learnt of the identity of my personality with Brahman, and later with Absolute Brahman, which I had heard of in 'Ribhu Gita' as underlying all. I was only feeling that everything was being done by the current and not by  me. Since I  wrote the parting chit, I had ceased to regard the current as my narrow 'I'.

That current or  'Avesam' was now felt as myself not a superimposition. he awakening gave me a continuous idea or feeling of my personality being a current, force, or Avesam, on which I  was perpetually absorbed whatever I did, read, or when I walked, spoke or rested.."

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi

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It was in 1896, about 6 weeks before I left Madurai for good (to go to Tiruvannamalai/Arunachala) that this great change in my life took place. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it nor was there any urge in me to find out whether there was any account for the fear. 

I just felt I was going to die and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or any elders or friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and there. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: 'Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.' And at once I dramatised the occurrence of death. 

I lay with my limbs stretched out still as though rigor mortis has set in, and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, and that neither the word 'I' nor any word could be uttered. 'Well then,' I said to myself, 'this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of I within me, apart from it. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.' All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truths which I perceived directly almost without thought process. 

I was something real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with the body was centered on that I. From that moment onwards, the "I" or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death vanished once and for all. The ego was lost in the flood of Self-awareness. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time. Other thought might come and go like the various notes of music, but the I continued like the fundamental sruti note ("that which is heard" i.e. the Vedas and Upanishads) a note which underlies and blends with all other notes.

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In the vision of death, though all the senses were benumbed, the aham sphurana (Self-awareness) was clearly evident, and so I realised that it was that awareness that we call "I", and not the body. This Self-awareness never decays. It is unrelated to anything. It is Self-luminous. Even if this body is burnt, it will not be affected. Hence, I realised on that very day so clearly that that was "I".[web 6]


NISARGADATTA’S TEACHING ON THE I AND THE I AM SENSE FROM THE “NISARGADATTA GITA” AND FROM "CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ABSOLUTE."

Several quotes are cited out of many almost identical quotes; they prove the point that Nisargadatta thought the I-sense, the I, the I-Am was illusory, and that what you really are was that which was before the I, which he calls Witness or the Absolute, which is also prior to Consciousness--the witness of Consciousness.

1. The ‘I am’ is the sum total of all that you perceive, it’s time-bound, the ‘I am’ itself is an illusion, you are not the ‘I am’ you are prior to it.

1. Your Guru, your God, is the ‘I am’, with its coming came duality and all activity, stay on the ‘I am’, you are before the ‘I am’ appeared.

1. Only be the ‘I am’, just be, the ‘I am’ has appeared on your homogenous state, the one free of the ‘I am’ is liberated, you are prior to the ‘I am’.

1. Worship the indwelling ‘I am’ in you, it is the ‘I am’ that is born, it is the ‘I am’ that will die, you are not that ‘I am’.

1. Remain focused on the ‘I am’ till it goes into oblivion, then the eternal is, Absolute is, Parabrahman is.

1. All knowledge including the ‘I am’ is formless, throw out the ‘I am’ and stay put in quietude.

1. With the dropping off of the primary experience ‘I am’ all experiences would vanish and only the Absolute remains.

1. Keep focused on the ‘I am’ till you become a witness to it, then you stand apart, you have reached the highest.

FROM CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ABSOLUTE:

In deep sleep, consciousness was in a dormant condition; there were no bodies, no concepts, no encumbrances. Upon the arrival of this apparently wakeful state, with the arrival of the concept "I Am", the love of "I Am" woke up. That itself is Maya, illusion.

Q: Does Maharaj mean that the experiencer of the three states is the Self?

M: That is the Saguna Brahman state; because of your beingness the other states are. The dream world is very old, it is not new. You see old monuments in your dreams. Your beingness is very powerful.
The emergence of this beingness itself constitutes time. Everything is beingness, but I, the Absolute, am not that. 

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Consciousness is time flowing continuously. But I, the Absolute, will not have its company eternally because consciousness is time bound. When this beingness goes, the Absolute will not know "I Am". Appearance and disappearance, birth and death, these are the qualities of beingness; they are not your qualities. You have urinated and odor is coming from that - are you that odor?

Q: No, I am not.

M: This beingness is like that urine. 

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Maharaj: The principle which can know itself is in the organism. In a worm crawling, it is there, because the worm knows itself instinctively.
By listening to my talks you will be transformed back to your original state, prior to your birth. Right now, in spite of your present life, it will happen. My present talk is quite different now, at a higher level; therefore I do not invite anybody to listen to my present talks. I recommend that nobody should come and listen because they will develop a dispassion for their family or daily life.
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When beingness forgets itself, that state is Parabrahman. This knowingness is not your true state, it is the outcome of the food essence body, and you, the Absolute, are not that.

My point is that Nisargadatta and Ramana have two entirely different teachings.  For Ramana, all that there is is Consciousness, awareness of the I.  The I is real.

For Nisargadatta, the I, the I Am, Beingness, Consciousness, are all unreal.  Only the Absolute is prior to Consciousness as real.  Beingness is not real. I is not real.  Only the Absolute, the Witness beyond Consciousness is, and that cannot be an object of knowledge because it is the source of all knowledge.

Nisargadatta’s “truth” is the truth of Robert Adams, that the I does not exist.  That who you are is that which witnesses and is aware, or awareness itself.  This is the truth of my first two awakenings in 1995, outlined in my book, Self-Realization and Other Awakenings, and my website, http://wearesentience.com. 

The truth of Ramana is the same as revealed to me by my third awakening in 2015, awakening to what I call the Manifest Self, self-awareness of the life-energy.

In the largest sense, you can say that Ramana was life-affirming, while Nisargadatta characterized life, beingness, Consciousness, the I-sense, as illusion, as the mischief to be transcended.

These are both true but each has a very different message, a different feel.  One is life-affirming while the other is life ignoring.

For a long time I taught Nisargadatta’s life ignoring and to abide in that which was prior to Consciousness.  But after my third awakening to the divine within, to God, to the I-sense, I changed completely to a life-loving orientation.

Conversation between Tony and Ed

Once Robert responded to a student who asked why his teaching was different from Laksmanan by saying, “My message is different; each teacher has a different message.”

Tony, you appear to believe there is only one truth when in fact Nisargadatta and Ramana had very different messages. For example, for Ramana, everything that was, was Consciousness; Consciousness was all that there was. For Nisargadatta, Consciousness itself was also an illusion, not just what presented in Consciousness. The truth was that he was the Witness, the Absolute, prior to Consciousness.

Now you keep using words and concepts in totally uncontrolled and undefined ways, tossing the words about carelessly, without operation definition, and blaming me for not understanding them because you use them the same way as Ramana and Nisargadatta. But you do not, because even Ramana and Nisargadatta differ from each other as to the most fundamental.

Look at the words you use and try to make sense of them undefined as they are: “return to silence,” “eternal bliss,” “beingness,” “unchanging reality of Self,” “Only that which does not change is reality,” “expansiveness of unbounded awareness.”

Don’t you see: none of these words or phrases is defined. You are just repeating what you have read without fleshing them out with your own experience.

Take your first paragraph to me and see if you can explain what you mean:

The shift to knowing that what you really are is unbounded awareness, necessitates a complete surrender of the very mind that is pursuing the inquiry. The nature of the mind is to objectify. Awareness cannot be objectified. When there is no mind, which is limited, the unlimited is revealed. To be established in that is to realize the Self. The mind will no longer concern itself with such questions of seeking. Subduing the mind is the key, not intellectual understanding. It is not easy because identification with the egoic mind is very strong.

Tony, what do you mean by “the shift to knowing what you really are is unbounded awareness, necessitates a complete surrender of the very mind that is pursuing the inquiry?”

How does the mind surrender and to whom?

Then you say the nature of the mind is to objectify. Awareness cannot be objectified.

This is truth by your definition, not your experience.. 

Where there is no mind, the unlimited is revealed.

This again is definitional argument, and again experientially what you are saying escapes me.

You did not answer my question. You said being was unchanging, but I said it disappears in deep sleep. Nisargadatta agrees with me, but Ramana does not. Nisargadatta says he was prior to beingness and that beingness depended on him.

You are not discussing any of these issues, just accusing me of not understanding Robert, Ramana, and Nisargadatta, but I do understand them deeply, Tony, and I have a different message—a message for our time. I speak of realizing the Manifest Self, the divine within—God.

You have no response to this but to dismiss what I say as missing the point. But I can and have many times carefully described the experience of realizing the Manifest Self where you see yourself as an embodied human being and also as the embodied God. God has become embodied in you.

This is not a non-dual teaching because it admits the separate existence of human beings, but all are in-God, or God is in them. The experience is of being totally immersed in the totality of being an embodied human being with layers of self, from feeling the physical body, to feeling emotions, to feeling bliss, to feeling sorrow, pain, and suffering in oneself and others, and all of this is made possible by becoming alive in God, or vice versa, God gives life to you.

It is a new message to you Tony, and more similar to Christ’s than Robert’s message, or Ramana’s.

As to your question about whether I am at peace or not, I can only say I am both at peace, but also far beyond it, because I am also the Life Force, Shakti, the grace of God, the Witness prior to Consciousness, I am bliss, but also experience loss, sadness, grief, anger, and many other feelings, and welcome them all equally.

When I first started practicing self-inquiry 47 years ago, I had no idea of what I was doing. I just blindly followed Ramana's directions of following the I-thought and finding its origin. Of course the originating place of the I-thought is emptiness, so I got to know emptiness real well and thought that emptiness is what Ramana and Zen were all about.

Unsatisfied with emptiness, I never stopped reading books by spiritual giants, Ramakrishna, Yogananda, the Bhagavad Gita, biographies of Zen masters, koans, etc., and got to realize I had no clue as to what spirituality was about. Was emptiness the totality of spirituality?

I studied with six Zen masters over a period of 10 years, learned the answers to hundreds of koans, and mostly had thousands of experiences in meditation of "No-Self," where the I-sense disappeared, and 'I' became the entirety of my experience of the world, which led me to ask, "Which is real? My everyday experience of my body, mind, and world, or my meditation experience of no-I, no-self?"

I never then for a moment considered that both were equally real. I thought one had to be real and the other unreal, a construct of mind. Now I know both are equally real and that "reality" meant my experiences of the moment, and are not found in some final state, such as of a certain type of awakening, or some permanent state such as of Sahaja Samadhi. Also, I found Zen and emptiness quite lacking in love and human attachments, which was experienced as "coldness," and after a dozen years, I needed warmth.

The states I passed through, the Samadhis, the sleep, waking, and dream states, the Subtle Body, Causal Body, and Turiya--all experienced separately were all part of the one truth of what I am: all these things, these experiences, these states are all me, including the saving grace of love.

But at the beginning and for 40+ years it was all a muddle trying to "understand" what all of these different experiences and states "meant." So I got real comfortable with knowing nothing. One Zen Master--Seung Sahn--referred to this as becoming dumb as a rock with the realization that no truth resided in words and concepts, so let them go by knowing nothing.

Knowledge of self and Self escaped me, but I rested easily in not knowing.

However, when I finally had the experience of knowing who and what I was, realizing that the sentience that I was, the pure experiencing of experience, everything fell into place.
All of my spiritual practices, tens of thousands of hours of emptiness meditation and self-inquiry, of Kundalini-raising and body scanning, or koan-work and endless reading--all led to different classes of spiritual experience. Just emptiness alone was highly variable with "Progressive stages of emptiness meditation." Kundalini experiences were infinitely variable as well other experiences within the Subtle Body and the spirit world, and various energy and bliss states.

I even found the Absolute, which is the intuition of the Witnessing principle: that knows both existence and non-existence.
But it is the experience of Self that brings true understanding: I am that which knows, and knows not-knowing, but I am also everything that is known. All are me, from my experience of my body, my emotions, my fears, lusts, desires, weaknesses, my loves, my experiences of bliss, psychic energies, attachments, my experience of love, of Grace, of God, were all me; I was that which experienced everything, and also I was everything experienced.

This is when I developed the concept that I was a "spiritual mansion" with hundreds of different rooms of different kinds of experience all of which were simultaneously existent, and many of which can be experienced simultaneously or successively.

At this point my attention began to turn away from exploring to: 1. sharing this teaching, and 2. trying to make the world a better place through animal rescue work and animal causes.

But my message for you now is this: Fear not anything that arises in you; it is all you from depression, abandonment fears, fears of one's own feelings, fears of the environment, feeling vulnerable, feeling anger or rage--it is all you!

There is no separate you that can be hurt by feelings or "wild" emotions because they also are you and are not to be run from, repressed, or guarded against. Everything is you; embrace everything as your self!

When you can do this, you become complete and can truly realize your self as the Manifest Self, as sentience itself, as God incarnated as you, and with this comes unerring knowledge of who and what you are.

And you do this by a self-inquiry of feeling into one's sense of presence, thee I-sense, and being open to, accepting, and loving all that arises from within as a result of the feeling inquiry, as well as all that arises from environmental circumstance. We let everything into self and thereby become Self.

DIFFERENT PATHS FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS

Spirituality is a very confusing and sometimes dangerous place.  It is filled with competing concepts, gurus, experts, voicing conflicting worldviews, methods, goals, and expected rewards.  There is no end to the knowledge base within spirituality.

Seekers come into spirituality for many different reasons:

Seeking truth.  That is looking for concepts that they can believe in through truth or faith.

Seeking God.  This means somehow contacting something entirely beyond our selves.  Something bigger, something “divine,” something immortal.  This can be in the form of a belief about God, or a direct experience which we can call God.  Such would be experiences of grace, redemption from guilt or fear, experiences of total light, bliss, and inner energies, experiences of complete, total gratitude for being alive.  In  any event, it consists of experiences that are totally beyond anything experienced to that point in a person’s life that is transformational in some sense.

Seeking emptiness, the Void.  This is the focus of Buudhism and most in Advaita accept this as a goal.  The intent is to get beyond or “before” a personal self, or “transcending” the personal self and finding the underlying reality of the Void, which is like the pre-Einstein concept of the ether, which permeates and contains all matter, the Void, emptiness, permeates and contains all experience, including of the world and one’s own body, thoughts, and emotions.  By dwelling or abiding in the Void we find peace, because we are “larger” than any experience, any emotion, any fear, depression, anxiety. The goal could be Nirvana, or snuffing out of the self, transcending desires and the so-called ego.

Seeking the witness, which is he source of my own existence, the witness, which itself cannot be witnessed. The witness is even beyond the Void because it experiences the Void as an experience of nothingness, or emptiness.

Now the Witness can be believed in as a concept, because it cannot be directly experienced itself, OR, one has a direct experience of one’s own self being the “knower,” as the sense of oneself being the principal of knowing, or that which knows both the experience of being awake and aware, and also that which also experiences unawareness, non-existence. That is, I experience myself as that “something,” or source, that boths knows existence, but also knows non-existence.  I am knowledge and the origin of knowledge itself.

This experience can not be explained in any other way because it talks of existence beyond experience, that is aware of existence and (in the sleep state) non-existence.

Seeking spiritual knowledge, psychic powers, healing powers. his is the area of seeking “siddhi” or Subtle Body energies, chi, Reiki, Quantum Touch, astral projection, controlling weather, etc.  This is exploring the interface between our common physical world and the internal astral and energy worlds.

Seeking Kundalini awakening.  This path is halfway been seeking a direct experience of God and doing energy work in the Subtle Body.  All three paths become mixed together.  Awakening the Kundalini energies, which is the specific form of the female principle of Shakti within, is a path of energy worship and abidance that leads to ecstatic states of bliss, love, and engulfing energies.

Self-Realization of the Manifest Self.  This is my path.  This is seeking the direct experience of myself as a personal, human self, as well as the Spiritual Self of the direct experience of God through love, devotion, and self-acceptance of everything that arises when doing self-inquiry or looking and “feeling” within one’s own sense of self, and also feeling witin one’s internal darkness and iner space.

Here the “Self” in its final form realizes the identity of Self as the Void, as the Witness beyond even the Void, as also the direct experience of God, and as direct experience of one’s own spiritual of divine Self, which is also God.  One also realizes that one’s own human, personal, limited human self is part of the totality of Self.

Self-Realization of the Manifest or experiential Self, really encompasses identification with all levels of Self, the the experience of oneself as being a human being, vulnerable and dualistic, along with the constant direct experience of the Void, along with the continuing awareness of being that abstract principal of knowing and not-knowing, as well as the direct experience of God, and one’s identity as God.

As such, Realization of one’s self as the Manifest Self really encompasses all levels of spirituality: acceptance of one’s limited human self and groundedness in physicality, direct experience of the Void simultaneously, the direct experience of God simultaneously, direct experience of one’s energy or Subtle Body energies, including Shakti that pervades all levels as does emptiness, and experiencing oneself as the Witness, the knower of all things.

Email to me:

Dear Edji,

I ressonate a lot with several of Steve's recent experiences. I've also had that experience of your heart center as divine. Or at other times: My heartcenter is your heart center or there's an Edji placed in my heart and focusing on it sends me into bliss.

When I move around in the world things are quite normal, but as soon as I take a break and relax there's bliss and a humming in the body.

I have to learn a lot of new procedures at work at the moment and I feel sooo stupid and slow. My brain doesn't want to take in new information: I'd rather just be absorbed by all the things which goes on inside. In the end things seem to work out. I do what I need to do on an almost unconscious level where I wouldn't be able to explain what I'm actually doing.

There's both a fear of and a desire to give up and become totally dysfunctional.

Energy is often strong in the evening and night, especially when I've been listening to chantings. A few days ago everything was green when I closed my eyes. All kinds of green moving and changing.

Thank you so much for this path, Edji.

My Response:

Yes there is a lot of heart energy and light as well as bliss on this path of discovering the Manifest Self.

Yes, the desire to be nothing except the experiences of bliss, love, light,and energies is sometimes very strong; the desire to become "dysfunctional," is a desire just to be Self alone and forget human responsibilities..

Some actually enjoy going into a mental hospital to rest in bliss and be taken care of.

Some would view what I say with horror, as if such a vew were crazy or irresponsible. But the life of the Self transcends all such mundane judgments. If you want to know and be your Self, it requires a total dedication to the task no matter what the consequences.

I remember early on in my path having so many Kundalini experiences I thought I was going insane, but I persisted because knew the life I, and all others, was living was the true insanity.

Sri Edji, Just a follow-up from yesterday. Something big has changed in how I regard my time in the military.

These 'flashbacks' have been so real especially when the original feelings restate themselves and its probably because I now allow all the feelings and emotions to penetrate this body and mind.

So for some reason now I can tell a more positive story from a different perspective because of being in the military as I had now experienced an extremely wide range of experiences, feelings and emotions that my family and friends never would. And they wouldn't understand either.My exposure ranged from very good happy times with soldier buddies as close as brothers and the bad times as disregarding the sanctity of life itself.

I hadn't fully realized that living in a hell of a war zone would provide a wide range of benefits and new abilities until now with a maturity of deeper insights into the World, its people and simple daily activities. I could never have attained such a wide range of experiences and education without being a member of the U.S. Army.The alternative of participation in University life or just going into work place would not have provided anything close to the 2 years employed by Uncle Sam.

Coming home from Vietnam I walked in the door , , and feeling strangely sat in the living room with my family but it seemed that we had little to say or talk about so in about 10 minutes everyone except my little brother had left to 'do their thing'. Tom and I had always been close so we talked while everyone else just disappeared into their world. At the time I really felt lost and alone, except for my brother being there, but now many years later I could see that my family and people in general dislike leaving their 'comfort zone' and most people did not want to hear of my expanded experiences....and would leave the room but that is not my loss. I was the one who had grown. I do not feel the need for their understanding.

I can and back then--could see the limitations the world, society and people place on themselves. Where I had lost many of the belief systems taught by schools and churches a new set of values took its place. An appreciation over many years for life and sentient beings started to settle in. Hunting animals, fishing and eating meat all stopped. Money and status has little meaning. The falseness of the World started showing itself.

All this crap just led to a deeper search for meaning. What was this existence about? So I read and read and studied and practiced without really getting anywhere probably because it usually involved looking to the outside.

Fast forward....A Guru, Sri Edji called me, recognized my plight and pointed the way and gave me the needed guidance to begin...to begin the True Journey back Home. So my life today is evermore expanding into other dimensions sometimes even beyond all logic and reasoning, wonders beyond belief and again I don't expect others to understand.

Peace and bliss are now mine...

My Reply:

Yes! Seeing the hell of the world is quite sobering. All the hopeful, narrow ideals fall away, giving you the chance to go within. But you didn't do that until I gave you permission--and look what you have done with it!

Three messages from Steve:

Edji,   I hardly remember writing this,,,this morning.  Its like a forgotten memory.

Its Almost 12:30pm right now and I just got out of bed.  Have been closely connected to the light radiating out of your  Heart Center and it has just been sending me into Total Bliss all morning and even being awake it is still there.If anyone could see the light radiating out of you they would fall to there knees as I am doing now.Deepest Love, steve

Edji,  All of a sudden everything turned white  and peaceful.  Like a huge fabric sheet was presented in front of me.  I somehow knew this was..........??   I can't put words to it.

I really don't seem to need music any more..I just think of you and your Heart Center right next to mine. this body has been 'vibrating' all day so far.      

I just see your body as a background but your Heart Center is like some of them pictures of Jesus with his heart radiating light.  

Yours is very forceful  (God you and Jesus would have been great pals)...blasting right out of your chest....and sending me flying!!

Sri Edji,    One thing I noticed is that I can hear about 50% better.   I can hear little noises that I couldn't before.  Plus I can smell like a cat.  This awareness is multiplying in more ways than one.

My Response:

Enjoy the wonder.  You are experiencing the rush of energies some call Shakti, some Grace, some Kundalini.  It is flowering in you now and after a long while will settle down into just an experiencing of the Self, you, as Steve, and God all rolled into one.

Just the majesty of the experience reveals to you that it is greater than anything human--hence divine--and it is you.  This is a place of magic why you can fly to astral worlds, change weather, develop telepathy, and all that--interesting for a while, but ultimately to let go and just dwell in the happiness of Self.

Edji,  I feel like our female kitty ....in heat....this body is just recycling pleasure from head to toe.  

Its mating season, me and the  I AM...just going around and around. Hate to even move just rather sit or lie down and FEEL IT.

Like a python within my body, rubbing against every nook and cranny trying to mate. 

It just keeps on going and going and going  like the Energizer Bunny.

And the Moon even got in on it last few nights radiating all that Power and Energy.

My God, you must live in paradise all the time...well it feels like I'll be joining you sometime.

S.

EMAIL TO ME:

Dearest Edji,

Pranam!!

As you have accepted me as your disciple and because we are geographically so far,  I want first of all to tell you about myself, as I have surrendered myself to you, I want you to know everything about me.

You know what, I have been searching for a living guru for the last 14 years. I am 32 years now.

In 2001, both of my parents were killed. A brutal murder.  That guy was caught the same day and in prison from then till now.

I went through the long phase of depression. There was the void in me. No life there. 

I visited many holy places of India in search of peace. Read lots of spiritual books to understand the meaning of life and death. I practised tantra. The left hand path, practised and tried to talk with my parents ,, hahaha...... succeeded in some ways. Entered into the dark world of inner confusion, hatred and frustration for a long time.

I was later in 2009 involved in Osho movement. I practised dynamic meditation and that enabled me to be normal again with long sessions of catharsis. I was normal human being again from 2010.

But in deep sense, I knew that I need a living Guru. There was a fire in me to understand, to realize the inner meaning of existence. I wanted to know myself. 

I got married with a lovely girl and now have a son  of 2 years.

Practically, I am OK with the material life.

When I encountered youR blog and website, your words hammered me from the inside. I was shattered and for the first time came to understand the true meaning of spirituality. There was no meaningful direction of my meditations. You were the fire to kindle my heart. 

But still as I was practising witnessing for some time, I did not give enough ear to listen to you properly.  

And there came the state of emptiness which shallows my aliveness. I was there but as a ghost. It happened for two months. I was not unhappy but still there was no meaning in that. I was just a witness to everything happening around. I got the taste of witness. There was no emotion, no love. No sex was possible. There was no BODY. So far and distant I was from this existence. There was suicidal tendency not because I was depressed but because there is nothing in life that can bind me to the existence.

And then, I wrote you the last enquiry. You told me to feel it and I felt the inner being. This I AM. I came back to life. 

( Edji, I know this is so much like a free association, but I hope you don't mind)

And last friday, I was in a room of a friend. He is a very good friend from the university. We talked mundane matters. And out of blue, I started talking about the Self. He was listening and I started feeling something big entering in the room. The vast, strange thing start happening. If it was only for me, then there would have doubt. My friend also start crying. We both were in a vast energy field and energy was penetrating me from every pores of my body. Wisdom happened there. Love happened there. 

For the first time in my life, I understand the meaning of love that Jesus, Osho and You are talking about. I felt the Me there. The manifested SELF. It may be illusion Edji. And I don't have that state now. 

That episode had a tremendous effect on my friend. He was so much changed. The frightening thing in this is that my friend called me yesterday and told me that I am his GURU. I am so scared EDJI. He told me that he found divine in me and my presence. Guruji, what is this? I certainly know that there is nothing like divine happening to me. But why people feel that way. My wife is also acting a little differently from that day onward. She is looking at me differently. But let me tell you that I am not in bliss as in that evening.  

Sri Edji, My guru, I have found you and you are my true Self, my true love. You please guide me further. 

I do not want to lose this understanding. I want to go deeper. 

How do I live my life? 

with devotion,

MY RESPONSE:

The death of your parents, as terrible as it was and is, dragged your attention within and pinned you deep inside.  Then you struggled to find a way out, to find the light, and for a brief time you found Witness-consciousness, and realized that is not for you.

The message of the Manifest Self, along with all your inner work, produced the outcome of the Self revealing itself to you.  You are blessed to have  experienced the Self like this so fully and for a prolonged time.  In the future the experiences will last longer and become deeper.  Shakti will bring your physical and Subtle body completely awake in light and bliss, and you will surely know God within who is and will conscioussly become your constant partner.

I am so sorry that you lost both parents in such a way.  When I lost my own father by a sudden heart attack, I was devastated beyond all reason.  Had I also lost my mother at the same time, I doubt I would ever have recovered.

Stay close to me and the energy of our lineage will help you experience your Self ever more frequently.

Dear Edji,


Pranam!

What a difference, what a difference!!


I accepted this manifestation and God is showering on me with love, bliss and deep understanding of the humanity.


I am human again, with body, mind and feeling. This throbbing of the heart, hearing the chirping birds, looking at a tree, any sound make me enter into this beingness. I am ness is the root of this existence. And this I am ness is God. If I understand this I am ness, I understand the creation and dissolution of the universe. Yes, I AM ness is the seed of existence. 

2 days ago, I was with a friend and both of us felt this overwhelming energy of bliss and peace showering for more than 3 hours continuously. 

He never was a practicing meditator! How was that possible? Is this bliss contagious?

Edji, I have surrendered my self to you. Please accept me. Bless me with your love and light.

MY RESPONSE:

CONGRATULATIONS!

Actually successive  episodes will get deeper and more intense. Of course the likelihood of increased episodes of strong negative and positive emotions are also more likely as part of the awakening sequences.  You become sensitive to messeges from the unconsciousness about parst of you that remain buried and unseen, and want to return to life.

For Steve it was the horror of Vietnam; for Syndria it is attachments and abbandonment, for me it has been sadness and loss.  Your lost humanity must be fully reclaimed and then God--the Self--shows himself to you, embraces you, takes you briefly  to heaven in the flesh, then you come back totally changed.

Yes, someone in tune with you will likely feel something, and if he is sensitive, and you both are in tune, both will feel it.  We did that a lot in Satsang: broadcasting and receiving energies and bliss.

Dylan’s Poem Speaks to me:

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Dylan expresses my own frustration at having explored the depths of spirituality for 62 years, having studied with many of the greatest spiritual teachers of the 20th Century, who finally stumbled upon the greatest discovery possible in spirituality, only to find that when I speak of it, convey it, teach it through words and even energy transmission, has had little impact on mainstream spirituality and the Zeitgeist of our time.

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Yes, we all know that one day we will die. 

But because my entire life of learning about Self and Other, teaching this wonder of Self, of our divine nature that explains everything and ties us altogether within God, has had very little impact on the suffering of the world.

For that, I rage against the dying of the light, the dying of my own Consciousness because of what I could have done to relieve the suffering men and beast had only I realized God earlier in my life, and began to speak the words I speak now 40 years ago before all the legions of fake, and half-baked spiritual teachers turned 21st Century spirituality into the mockery it is.

Modern spirituality is so utterly Pollyanish, positive-thinking, and ego-gratification  oriented, that the humility needed to surrender all that is irrelevant to knowing God within, has no foothold.

How to teach humility when half of mankind wants to escape suffering by withdrawing from feeling, wanting, attachments, absent a self, into a Nirvana of absolute peace, while the other half follow a wide spectrum of teachers of energy work, psychic phenomena, changing the world through affirmations and positive thinking.

There is no room for the message of a teaching that says, “As weak and pitiable as your life appears to be, if you give up all spiritual escapes and dreams of spiritual transcendence, as well as ever seeking life’s external pleasures, and instead look within, then FEEL WITHIN, reown the vistas of your humanity, your emotions, your love, neediness, fear, and rage—all those things society, family, and spiritual teachers told you to reject, and within that often described inner hell, once accepted fully and brought into one’s own self, find Self and the life divine.

In fully embracing your weaknesses, vulnerabilities, fears, hostility, you find the wisdom and bliss of God realization as Self.

Who listens to this message that you must descend into your own inner hell to find the light, because that hell is a self-created prison for all that you have rejected, and only by opening that prison will you have the power and energy to face God.

So, for five years I have been speaking this truth of truths: go within, feel within, open your heart to your own inner suffering, lostness, confusion, psychotic visions, lusts, loss of control, sexual fantasies, the Void and eternal emptiness, the Light of Consciousness, and to Love eternal paving the path to Self.  Who listens?  A very few.

The great teachers are dead and none have replaced them.  Nisargadatta, Ramana, Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti, even Osho.  Now the spiritual world is filled mostly with young, apparently charismatic midgets, teaching self-affirmations, self-fulfillment, or self-transcendence through various teachniques, and the greatest joke, teachers who claim not to be teachers, and claim there is nothing to teach, and no one to be taught, but make $600/hour teaching this.

I just watched a documentary on the Scientology church, Ron Hubbard, and the church’s opposition to psychotropic medication and psychotherapy, and who of just the largest three corporate entities out of 21 that comprise Scientology, are worth 1.5 billion dollars!  The tapes of Ron Hubbard are of a truly creepy, frightening man, who was worshipped, and who spread a cult of death based on a theology that were are inhabited by the ghosts of a long dead civilation called Thetans, that have to be extirpated, or cleared, through the use of E-meters (ohmmeter).  To become “clear” through E-meter monitoring can costs tens of thousands of dollars, and after that, there are more planes of progressive attainments costing many tens of thousands more.

In such a world, a message that God is found in one’s own inner hell, one inner feelings, confusion, fears, and vulnerabilities, has little persuasion.
Where is our center where we can all live in peace, not killing animals nor causing real harm to others, especially where “harm” today mostly means offending someone with a racist, ethnic, or feminist slur, while the real harms of war, corruption, corporate greed, are ever more deeply ingrained into our culture and psyches?

Therefore I rage against the dying of the light, my death, and my weak deeds, that had I discovered my truths before the tsunami of fake spirituality wash the world almost clean of Truth, might have made a difference.

Yes, I still burn inside.  Every day, most every hour, I am aware of the Life Force, the Sentience within, that burns and seethes like a cool fire revealing the background of ecstatic bliss of Self.  Yet it burns almost alone, and for that I feel such sorrow.