I have at times recommended that those who do not have a genuine Advaita teacher in their area, study with a Kundalini or Chakra teacher so at least they get to experience bliss and the energy body processes.
I can no longer say that. I have had a lot of experience with several of them lately, and indirect experience as related by others who I have referred to such teachers, and I find none of them are really open from the heart.
Instead, they are immersed in energies, working with them, manipulating them, which has resulted in them from being human. It substitutes bliss and energies from having an open heart, being vulnerable and deep. All have personality structures that are quite defended, ultimately highly reactive, because they do not allow negative feelings to just ass through them. They cannot let sorrow or sadness into their hearts.
Many, like Adi Da, are filled with very reactive personalities even as they proclaim they have none, and have transcended the personal.
Many, like Adi Da, are filled with very reactive personalities even as they proclaim they have none, and have transcended the personal.
Fooling around with energies all the time makes one ego-oriented because of the efforts needed to stay in or increase bliss.
Oddly, true spirituality of the Carl Rogers or the Robert Adams types, lie on either side of the energy body, and involves either being fully human, open to the frailities and sufferings of being human, indeed, using those pains and suffering to go deeper into the life force, or taking the 1980s Nisargadatta modality of immersing in the I Am sensation in order to disidentify with the body and reidentify with consciousness itself, as a whole, as a way-station to realizing the unborn absolute within.
I have just looked at You Are That, the 1960s and early 70s talks of Nisargadatta, and there he talks about immersing oneself in the pains and suffering of life as the clearest path to true bliss as opposed to bliss that arises from Kundalini practice. This is what I was saying 2-3 years ago. His later talks were all about disidentifying from the body, reidentifying with the totality of consciousness, and worshipping the life force as a way to transcending everything by being the absolute watching it all.
In a sense, Nisargadatta traversed a very similar path to my own.
ReplyDeleteWalker Traylor asked: What do you think now about the Nisargadatta's early bliss book (I forget the name,the one you often referenced as support for engaging or at least relishing in these energies)?
Edward Muzika Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization. He speaks of my own experiences with what I call the Manifest Self, and he calls the Atman, the Life Force and Consciousness acting together. He speaks of utter devotion to that life force and I Am, which I became aware of myself after becoming aware of the life force and Self in another.
David Spero, asked me with whom I experienced bliss, and asked whether it was with Muktananda. After I mentioned that I found bliss, grace, and realization of the manifest self through love of a woman, he cut off all communications. I knew that he had no knowledge of the path some call devotional advaita, and which Nisargadatta wrote about.
Edji, are you now the unmanifested, the consciousness, something in the consciousness, some combination of the previous three or something else?
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