All spiritual philosophy that can be stated in words is totally false.

We do not live in words. We live in the world and our bodies. Even this is a lie. Even this is not true. It is said only to make a point that the map of thoughts is not the terrain of our experience.

To say all is Consciousness, Brahman, Shakti, One, Nowness, etc. conveys a point of view about our experience, and is simutaneously both a radical over simplification and over-complication. It adds a spiritual "truth" to experiences which have no truth value, either false or true.

Words twist and shape both our ideas about our experience and our experiences themselves as well, as they provide "meaning" for those attached to belief systems, whether religious (God, reincarnation, heaven, eternal life, Jesus, Buddha, etc.) which are myths of emotional convenience.

Words and concepts create categories of reality which are only conceptual, attempting to make sense of our experience.

Science too is just that. The theories create worlds of atoms, quasars, electrons, fission, black holes, entropy, etc. which are "convenient fictions" that help us arrange, order, and control other elements of our experience.

"Our experience" has at least two levels: Our experience without words, and our experience with words, concepts, beliefs, and emotional reactions flowing from these concepts and beliefs.

Almost all of spirituality is aimed at reframing your conceptual systems from whatever they were before contacting spiritual teachers/teachings, into the frame of the new teachings, whether of neo-Advaita, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity, Mohammedism, etc.), mostly for purposes of bringing a sense of security and peace to the converts.

Even the teachings of religions and spiritualities that direct attention to awareness of ourselves or to self-inquiry usually do it with some concept of what you will find when following their methods, such as the instructions of the Diamond Sutra, or of Nisargadatta, his teacher Siddharameshwar, Robert Adams, Ramana, Muktananda, Buddha, etc., who all promise that if you follow their methods of attention direction, you will find what they did, that you will experience what they did, such as "awakening, "enlightenment," "Nirvana," "Sahaj Samadhi," etc.

They all say you are deluded by wrong thinking, but following their methods, you will have the correct experiences, and correct meaning, freedom, enlightenment, etc.

But don't you see, they are all leading you down a path of just reframing your experience, and on a path towards Nirvana, Self-Realization, God-Realization, N0-thought, Choiceless Awareness, etc.

All methods of escape from the network of thoughts appear mostly to change emphasis and meaning within your network, and not to free you from the network as a whole.

Freedom from meaning, the network of thought, past experience, judgments, only come when thinking totally stops, or else one goes deeper into one's own experience than living in the map, rather than in experience before thought.

I call such a state moving one's center of consciousness out of the head into the heart or gut--both different experiences--from where the thinking mind, the network of thought, is experienced as just background chatter, and your awareness is of your own experience alone, not of your experience as interpreted or promised by others.

The way is easy to practice, but difficult to persist, because the mind always seeks assurances, security, and raises doubts, making moving your awareness to the heart or gut very difficult.

The easiest way is to "look" for and "feel" for the I Am sensation somewhere in your chest area, the so-called "spiritual heart" area. Find it. Dwell in it. Accept it. Love the I Am sensation, let it in your heart, swim in that sensation as much as possible.

That alone will work wonders. The sensation will grow, become a sense of presence of the energetic being you are, and everything you are will be experienced over time, until eventually all spiritual experiences, meanings, and thinking will end, and you will be your experience as it is before thinking. And you will find then the wonder that you are, experience you never dreamed of.

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AWARENESS VERSUS CONSCIOUSNESS

Nisargadatta sometimes made an artificial distinction between awareness and Consciousness, sometimes calling the distinction as Witness or the Absolute versus the Manifest, the world, or the body. I understand the why of that distinction because we all "appear" to experience a witness in our experience, witnessing our minds, thoughts, our bodies, and the world.

Nisargadatta posits the I Am sensation (not the I-thought) as being the intermediary between the Absolute and all appearances, and says we (the Witness, the doer) should rest our awareness on the I Am sensation as a focal point, and awareness will reveal the I Am sensation (and idea) to be the Self (the Atman or Manifest Self), which eventually will dissipate, leaving only One, where there no longer is an identification with the I Am, with the Self (Atman) or the experience of a separate Witness or Absolute. There no longer is any sense of separation, or even an I am everything experience; identification disappears.

Here one can say everything is Shakti, or Brahman, or Consciousness; the words used make no difference, because at this point you are no longer moving anywhere. You are everything, all motion, without desire, without any preferred direction or goal. You are unmoved and unmoving with absolutely no detachment or attachment to anything happening within or without, leaving one in the most exquisite state of subtle bliss, and utter, utter peace.

It is easy to say that there is no Self for someone who has not yet experienced his or her Self.  Those who claim there is no Self mostly have not experienced it.

Yes, there is a false kind of self consisting about all the ideas we have about ourselves, such as gender, age, occupation, family, human, etc., but if you look inside long enough, the emptiness you perceive washes away your identity with these identifications with ideas.

But if you "feel" inside for your sensee of self, your I Am sensation, and abide there for a long while, the Self will show itself to you and blow you away with its majestic presentation of energy and light, and you will never be the same.  Now you identify with the life force coursing through your body and sense of presence.

Slowly the identification with this manifest self of life, energy, and presence fades in silence, leaving just happiness and complete openess to all that occurs, within and without.  Then the Self is no more. 
What you are is sentience, awareness, enerrgy and light.

So anyone who says there is no Self should be asked, "What is your experience of you body and your self now?" If they simply say they do not experience a Self, what kind of teaching is that?  What is the value in that?  Unless they have experienced a sense of divine within, the light of Consciousness, the life force, what are they offering except freedom from identification with IDEAS of who you are, and not the extraordinary experience of your "divine" (seemingly, that is how it feels) Self, and within it the emptiness that permeates and contains all things.

Friday and Saturday I only felt relief at Bodhi's death; relief that he was no longer struggling to breath. Bodhi had been going downhill for the last year, but that accelerated during the past three months, and swiftly accelerated the last two days.

It is very difficult being with a dying friend you love so much, and constantly feel for.

And he has been a constant presence in our lives for 19 years, and now he is here no more. Despite all the other cats being here, to me the house feels empty, and I seek Bodhi's always accepting presence of silent strength.

Today I feel an almost crushing grief.

OUR BELOVED BODHI DIED YESTERDAY

Bodhi is best known for his photo with Robert's photo.  But Bodhi was unique.

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I first met Bodhi in September of 1997 when I was feeding a colony of feral cats near the beach in Santa Monica. Suddenly one day as I was feeding the seven remaining cats, a large kitten bounded into the place I was feeding them. He was definitely a kittne, maybe seven months old, large, happy, fearless and bounding with energy.

He integrated immediately with our other cats at the time, a very playful kitten, running and playing.

But as Bodhi grew older, he seemed to lose interest in the ther cats, and was just very quiet, loving to lie near me or Kerima.  He was a large cat, maybe 15 pounds.

Many times I thought he was Robert because Bodhi was born about the time Robert died in 1997, and as he grew older he had that same quiet depth that Robert had.  

For the last 4-1/2 years Bodhi had been suffering from kidney failure, which gradually worsened.  During the last several months we were giving him sub-Q fluids everyday, and gradually added other medications as his condition worsened.

He could barely walk at the end, getting out of his bed to go to his litter box 3 feet away, or to his water bowl just outside the box.

Daily we'd carry him to our enclosed patio to lie in the sun as long as he wanted.

But two days ago his breathing became labored, and his nose grew plugged with phlem.  He struggled to breath. We started him on anti-biotics.  By this time he had eaten nothing for three days.

Watching him struggle to walk, ignore food, fall over repeatedly, and then struggle to breath, broke my heart and Kerima's.  Michael was moved to by Bodhi's plaight and was of mixed mind to putting him down.

But finally we took him to his vet yesterday, because he was fighting to breath.  Al during the day I gave small doses of Buprenorphine to quiet his panic and make him rest easier.
The vet had set up the room especially for Bodhi like a little alter.  He was given an anesthetic to put him to sleep first, and about 10 minutes later the pink shot of 10X overdose to still his heart.

Kerima cried a lot, but I felt such releif for him. He no longer had to struggle just to breath.  But his loss is great for us. He was 19 years old when he died, and it is unusual for a cat to live so long.

I have always told you, my readers, the truth.

I speak about all aspects of spirituality, and especially against teachings that deaden you to your life by convincing you that the ego must die, that the real self is entirely untouched by life, humanity, and that one should steadfastly attempt to go beyond life.

I constantly talk about my own experiences and speak from them whether I am wrapped in extreme states of bliss or grief from the loss of a pet.

I speak from a place where emotions are to be embraced, not simply observed to rob them of their importance.

I always speak from a place of experiencing a vast, spacious emptiness that pervades my body and the world and is lighted by its own essence.

I never say to ignore the world or your feelings because they are temporary and impermanent.

Three years ago I was embraced by endless and continuous states of bliss, and that is what I spoke of, as well as my sense of presence, my energy body permeating my physical body and radiating into the surrounding space.

Now I speak more of the emptiness that pervades all phenomena including my body, my sense of presence, the light of consciousness, thoughts, and the external world, leaving me totally content as I am in whatever temporary state may be happening.

I argue against teachers who teach that continuous bliss is the end state and one needs to do chakra meditation, awaken the kundalini, do endless mantra, pranayama, and visualizations in order to pump up one's energies, or to transmute negative feelings into positive ones to "elevate" one's mood and energies.

For I have found even the Self is empty, and the empty Self is happiness.

The Void robs all teachings of any meaning, so the head no longer rules your life.  Your center of gravity sinks into your heart and gut, revealing the world and one's own self to be entirely different than you thought, and extremely peaceful.  And very, very deep.

Now you are totally open to whatever is, not needing to practice or pump yourself up through any method. Pumping up, trying to increase one's energies or bliss can become a kind of hell of spiritual progress that goes nowhere except for more bliss obscuring who you are.

Awareness 24/7

Ask anyone who claims to be aware 24/7 to describe that experience and they cannot, because the mind is absent in deep sleep, and it is the mind that articulates and explains experience. Robert never described his experience of being aware during sleep.

Generally what they say is what Ramana said. After you awake you are aware that you slept well. You "remember" being self-aware after you wake up and the mind can remember being aware of sleeping well (or poorly).
That is all.

But almost everyone has this experience, this knowledge.
So when someone tells you he is enlightened, awakened, or is aware 24/7, ask them to describe what they are talking about.

You will find almost without exception, that they merely repeat teachings offered by Ramana, Nisargadatta, Robert, etc., as their own, with the same arguments about Self, No-Self, no separatre self, non-dual, Now, oneness, or the Witness/Absolute.

Advaita teachings are the worst because their arguments are so mental rather than experiential. Advaita is easily turned into apparently logical arguments, as opposed to the experiential paths of Kundalini, chakra awakening, energy work, Tantra, etc., where you actually have to have numerous spiritual experiences of progressive opening.

THE MEANING OF ZEN

Zen is about two things: emptiness of phenomena and emptiness of concepts/words.

The emptiness of phenomena is perceived through inwardly directed attention. This can be any type of self-inquiry, such as looking for the I-thought, feeling for the I-Am sensation, watching thoughts to find the gap between them, witnessing emotions, or immersing in the experience of them. Anything that gets you to experience your insides, including being better grounded in body sensations is appropriate/

The emptiness of words and concepts is more difficult to "get" because it means the total destruction of the world you thought you lived in. This kind of emptiness is different from the experience of emptiness, even though one can experience thoughts themselves as dissolving in space, or arising from emptiness as little cloud-like entities.

The emptiness of words and concepts is realized when you truly understand the difference between experience and phenomena compared with the world created by one's network of thoughts. The world and self created by words is absolutely different from the world directly experienced when thought stops. The no-mind world is experientially rich while the world created by thought is very narrow and fixed in comparison. The world experienced thoughtlessly is very fluid and constantly changing, while the world of thought is as fixed as the is the duration of the meaning of the words used in describing that world.

Strangely though, when you are thoughtless, empty, you are as fluid and flowing as the world so that nothing appears to move as your awareness is everywhere at once, containing and flowing along with experience and events. Then one is total spontineity, utterly flowing, uncontained yourself, and 100% responsive to whatever arises.

The Zen koan system was devised to systematically destroy the thinking mind of Zen students by helping them find the "sticking points" of "wrong" concepts, which when seen through, releases you from its fixedness. You relax and sigh, feeling a sense of relief because your world as you experience it, is less contracted than before, and you are more open to experience the real world than before. This process is progressive until you cannot be fooled by word-created problems.

Unfortunately the koan system grew out of an ancient Chinese culture, and thus irrelevant to the modern West. Seung Sahn's remake for the West is really too simplistic and truncated to provide the freedom ancient Zen masters enjoyed.

In spirituality there are many words you have to find as empty of meaning, empty of any object being pointed to, and thus be free of spiritual philosophy in order to experience yourself and the world directly.

These words have to been clearly seen as having no referent, nothing like these concepts exist in the world.

These words are just labels while experiences are alive. flowing, changing. This is the hardest thing to accomplish because the entire network of thought has the whole of society, education, science standing behind its reality and adding new concepts and words every day.

THE WORDS AND CONCEPTS THAT MUST BE REALIZED AS EMPTY, WITHOUT IN ANY WAY HELPING US TO LIVE IN OUR BODIES OR THE WORLD ARE:

non-dual; oneness, One; enlightenment; awakening; I; I-thought; I-sensation; ego; identity; Beingness; Now; God; self; Self; mind; emptiness; Void; truth; love; emotions; Chi; Kundalini; Shakti; Kali. Just to name a few.

The word 'emptiness' in no way conveys the experience of emptiness or the experience of an empty mind. Words are only maps, and everyone, depending on their backgrounds, reads those maps differently, and we can never know whether the words spoken by Mr. X, means to him what they mean to me. It is only when the network of thought is absent that we can feel that two people sharing nearly the same place in space and time, are experiencing the same thing.

Just as a hint, some comedians are dead on in making us aware of our hidden beliefs, preconceptions, ideals, and political correctness. Zen masters and other teachers also bring out and destroy our preconceptions about Zen, spirituality, life and love. Each day they eat away at our network of beliefs, habits, and inflexibility.

Spiritual Benefits of Being Older

FROM STEVE:

Sri Edji, Thank you for your latest blog...it is very inspiring.
My view of this world is also changing. I know its a stage of consciousness and its getting to be fun. Even an oil change for the car today turned into an exciting experience. All the flowing 'energy' just came and went through my being...the waiting room has a total universe there and it came from deep inside and splashed all over that auto dealership.

The newspaper was there and it included tons of stuff so anyone reading it may experience all sorts of emotions...from elections to a local book sale. Newspapers just don't have any pull on me anymore and the mind is much, much, quieter so the words are just blah blah.
This underlying Purple River of Bliss is just constantly flowing through my Being and it is the only thing that commands any worthwhile attention.

Sometimes I feel like I am sitting in your warm comfortable chair with you looking at the lap top seeing how the devotees are doing.

Setting with Grace.

steve

My Response:

In my own case, it is a matter of age. I have done everything in life that I wanted to do in the external world. Combine that with 50 years of looking within, and you find someone who finds himself more fascinating than anything in the external world.

The saame with Steve. He is weathered and finds his own inner world more fascinating than the outside world.

This is what it takes. A complete reversal in the direction of awareness from outside to inside.

AND OH, WHAT WONDERS YOU WILL FIND.

And, depending on how you look within, feel wining, what methods and mediations you use, different things and experiences are found.

There are those who work on chakras with visulalizations and breaath, those who look for the I-thought, those who abide in the I-sensation, those who merely sit in silence.... Each is a separate path.

Those who wax eloquent about the absolute, the witness, the unchanging are missing the wonder and fascination of all the internal activities that abundantly manifest in kaleidoscopic patterns of ebbing and flowing energies, complete relaxation, bliss, and the happiness of knowing one's own Self.

Every breath--a wonder!  The simplest task a miracle!

Visitation

Once you gain deep entrance to your inner world, nothing remains the same.  The external world loses both its charm and its horror.  The inner world of emptiness, flowing energies, light, bliss, muscle and organ movements becomes far more interesting.  The inner world is filled with activity.  This is not like day dreaming with images, memories, and thoughts, a whole new realm of inner phenomena fill that inner space—the Void.

As your awareness deepens new things keep happening, from bliss that lasts days, weeks, or months, to the experience of inner aspects of your own sense of self.  For me, I first felt that I experienced God in me, as light and fantastic energies arising and expanding.  Then I saw the divine was really me.

Then I became the sentience coexistent with the entirety of existence, aware of the emptiness, aware of all things in the world; everything became me, and I became everything.

Then the process of identification dropped and there was no me, no world.  All that there was, was everything, inseparable, without time or thought.

Then strangely yesterday I had a visitor.  An energy being, who was me, appeared in me as a separate aspect of myself.  Before, I had felt this as God, and then as me.  But this time it was like a new being, a separate being with its own mind and energy, who wanted also to play in this body along with me who had no location.

It was subtle, was translucent, energetic, and made me so happy by its presence.

Of course it was me, but an aspect I had not seen before with its light and magical presence--dancing.

For the last 6 weeks I have had either Max or Michael taking care of me, which means I didn’t have to do much except sit in my easy chair and feel and observe within—almost continuously.

I can see why Robert never wanted to leave his rocking chair. The unfolding of the inner world that occurs in silence and residing in one’s inner world is enjoyable beyond belief.

AWAKENING TO EMPTINESS

Some have asked me what it was like to totally awaken to emptiness.

Rather than describe it, I'd rather share a metaphor.

Imagine being on a mountain in the middle of a desert on a cool spring night with no moon. You look upwards into the black, empty space, seeing countless stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way. Your breath is taken away by the vastness of space!

Then imagine the ground falls out from under you, yet you stay in one place, not falling. You look down, but no matter how hard you look, you can see nothing, just unending emptiness.

Your breath is taken again for now you are suspended alone in absolute infinite space in all directions, and momentarily you are gripped by fear, for there is no one but you, all alone.

Then you are aware that no thinking is taking place. The shock of being suspended in infinite space continues to leave you breathless, as if there were no atmosphere to support your life, and you do not need to breath. If you look within, instead of thoughts, images, self-talk, there is nothing--just empty space, absolute quiet, and no one to observe all this, yet observation is happening. There is no I within, no person, no self.

You are the vast, empty space that permeates all things, unbounded, no subject, no object, just the world, your body, and your mind permeated by emptiness. In it, all forms are empty, and emptiness is and contains all forms.

This is what the first awakening is like, awakening to emptiness, and it is what the neo-Advaitins try to describe as the totality of awakening, but which they themselves hardly ever experience. For most it is just an understanding.

This is baby enlightenment, the first step on a long, long journey of self-discovery and of unraveling one's false self and opening to the majesty of the infinite Self within.