1. It is just amazing how much I love my cats. Each has a very separate personality and wants to be touched or held in different ways.
2. 
   Maxie just comes up to the arm of my chair and yells at me until I pay attention and pull him onto my lap and pat him the way he likes. He stretches out beautifully until he is limp and about 7 feet long it seems.
   Kali just sits in my lap and goes tp sleep near instantaneously. I pet and rub her I a way that she likes.
   ...

   One by one they come to me or I to them. We greet, I pet, they lick.
3. 
   To share consciousness with them is my greatest delight.
4. 
   
5. But we have lost our four oldest since we have been in our now hone near Phoenix. So sad.

EMAIL TO ME FROM STEVE:

Sri Edji,   I could feel your Powerful Grace all night long last night .  Very very strong!!

Read chapters 3 and 4 of the 'Ultimate Medicine by Nisargadatta and the Ashtakakra (translated by a Vietnam Veteran too!),  and immediately could feel something flowing in to me.   Gradually it got stronger and it was .....well I turned into Consciousness.   

Everything around me, sights and sounds and smells and all were there and I was them.  Even this body is Consciousness...Just a dream.

Not at all like the experiences of bliss where I became the grass and wind and clouds. This is totally different.

I feel such a deep satisfaction and happiness right down into my toes.   And it is here to stay because I work with it all day and all night..........no way will I ever ignore this happening..........until you tell me its time.

And thank you so much for focusing on Consciousness in your blog and the Youtube sites.

This is really what it is all about and your teachings just hammer the point but it took a long time to get this You are Consciousness thing.  Studied it in the past but never made any sense.

Do you want me to keep diving into this wonder for the future?    I'll be glad to!

Thank you for calling me to you Edji....you have to be one of the most powerful Guru's in the World....your Light in the Heart Center says so.

Deepest Love,   your devotee,  steve

Everything changes once you let go of the belief that you are a body that manifests life and consciousness, and instead realize the YOU are that consciousness itself, as is everything else around you in the world.  As such, your true nature is of universal consciousness and are everywhere and everything.

This is just the beginning of your unfolding as consciousness reveals to you all of its secrets, including that consciousness itself is a fake, and that you are entirely beyond that show.

And with this you become happy, happier and more peaceful than you have ever known.

Robert Adams said this to everyone at every Satsang, but it is so hard to let go of conventional beliefs about existence and the world.

Consciousness Speaking to Consciousness About Itself and Beyond

This video overviews the teachings of Nisargadatta and Robert Adams about who you are as Consciousness itself, and as the Witness--a two stage process, and what is necessary to realize this understanding.

Link: https://youtu.be/G00fyPoIp58

Bhakti

Our beautiful and precious Bhakti, at least 18 years of age, died last night rather suddenly.  We had been treating her for two years for chronic upper respiratory viral infection, but often thought there was something worse going on.  She had been taken to our local vet and seen by three different doctors over the last year and a half, including just two weeks ago, but they found nothing wrong other than rhinotraciitis, for which she was treating.

Her sudden death came as quite a shock.  This morning I am taking her to our vet to be cremated.

March 19, 2017 Satsang on Consciousness

https://youtu.be/0_u4HWzJ5J8


https://youtu.be/0_u4HWzJ5J8

Yesterday I had what I consider a strange, but rather common experience.  On Wednesdays I have informal Satsangs.  One of the visitors stated it was a relief to go to a Satsang whether his in a donation box prominently present.  I have never charge for Satsang.  At times we had long retreats, and I left a donation box out, because it is kind of traditional, and I have very limited sources of income.

But this person seemed to believe that the teachings should always be free.  Even Robert said that, yet he always had a donation box prominently in the open, and would prod two of his students to make regular public announcements that monthly donations were expected to meet Roberts living expenses.

But this person complained about being with the famous European teacher and that money had become an increasingly important item in their sangha, with monthly dues expected, donation boxes, and increasing charges for retreats.

However the closest model that the West has to a spiritual teacher, would be there be that of a psychologist or psychiatrist, or of a priest or preacher.  If this person were to go to a psychiatrist, he would probably be charged $200 per visit lasting 20 minutes, and $125 if you were going to a psychologist for 50 minute session.  Naturally, parishioners donate to support the church whether it is Catholic or another question branch, and the priest receives both living expenses and perhaps an additional salary, or as provided a place to live.

Surprisingly, when I have had an Asian visitor, especially from India, all have been very generous in providing a donation even though I never asked for it.  They understand the truth best expounded by Robert Adams himself.

Robert said, there is a special relationship between the spiritual teacher or guru, and their students.  The guru takes care of their spiritual needs and guides them through the vagaries and sticking points on the path to attaining complete freedom and knowledge of oneself.  In exchange, the student takes care of the gurus physical life needs, including rent and food.  Usually this is all that a teacher does, they do not have their own separate livelihood to support themselves, pay the rent, pay for food, connection to the Internet, website etc.

The attitude that money should not touch the spiritual equation is extremely naïve if not plain stupid.  Throughout history, both monks and laypeople have taken care of spiritual teachers from Zen master, to the Tibetan llamas, to the Buddhist monastic class.  In India, the relationship between the groom and student is even more special.  Students often dedicate their lives to make sure that their teacher is well taken care of financially and healthwise, as well as protecting them from criticism or scorn, or any possible scandals.

I was with Robert for total of about eight years, six years of which were in Los Angeles.  During those six years I gave Robert approximately $14,000 for his support, and the support of his wife Nicole and his two daughters.  This is not to boast, but only because I knew of the sacredness of the relationship between a guru and his student, and I was showing gratitude and my fulfillment to meet my sacred obligation to my guru’s life.

Anyone who expects the most precious of all teachings, the teachings, instructions, and methods that lead to total liberation of the self, total freedom of the self, gauging the ability to go beyond human and existential bonds of any kind, to require no effort, no cost, or no obligation on their part to the teacher really is not in a position to take advantage of those teachings as his or her heart is not yet in the right place.

Learning how to give more than one gets in exchange is an important lesson in life that flows out of an open heart and an open mind until such as attained, the teachings cannot be read, heard, or understood.  Thus the giving becoming more important in the receiving is an extremely important life lesson.

One just has to look into the relationships of great crews of the past in relationship to their students.  One has to look to the relationship of Zen masters to famous monks throughout history to see the reverence and obedience shown to the master by the student even years after their self-realization.  One looks at the lesson of Milarepa and his relationship with his teacher Marpa.  Do not begrudge a teacher, if he or she is your teacher, of anything they need to make their life more comfortable or more healthy.  Only by being totally open and devoted who you get the fullest benefit out of their teachings.  If you are tightfisted, your tight mind.

There are some gurus that have very large missions in life, and build large organizations that become worldwide phenomena, and set tens of thousands of people unto a spiritual path, offering them at least in initiation into the process of self-realization.  Great swamis such as Muktananda or Yogananda build organizations that have spiritually benefited tens of thousands of people.  Such organizations cannot be built without money and dedicated demo tease to build the buildings, set up monasteries and ashram’s, and run the ceremonies as well as help write the books that set forth the teachers teachings.  These are sacred duties to be gratefully accepted by student serving not only the teacher, but all of humanity, but even more, serving their own selves in terms of spiritual openness and growth.

Then there are others like Robert Adams, who said he never wanted large numbers of followers, and did everything possible to make sure the number of followers he had was small.  He stated that all that he wanted was 10 close disciples to really get what he had to give, and each of them to give to others in the world.  Yet, though over the eight years I saw many hundreds of people come and go from our Sangha, I know of only three or four that stayed close to him this entire time.  Spiritual students tend to have rather instable commitments both to teachers and others in relationships.  Myself, before I met Robert, I studied with I believe seven Zen masters for differing lengths of time, and literally a dozen other spiritual teachers from different traditions such as Muktananda, and Dhyan Yogi, both kundalini teachers with devotional bents.

Do not be like these wishy-washy students.  Be steadfast in your devotion to your teacher and to your own commitment to your own self in terms of the goal of ever pursuing relentlessly self-realization.  It is only such a steadfast commitment and persistence that will lead to the results you want.  

The realization that you are not your body, at first comes as a great shock.  You realize you are consciousness itself.

But then, as you begin to leave your body behind, something begins to happen.  Something great.  Because you begin to be happy.  You begin to feel totally relaxed.  You begin to feel peace as you never felt before, because you realize that when your body dies, you do not die.

Something changes in you.  What you had experienced before as wild energies of firebreathing Kali, as the bliss of Shakti, now becomes the effortless joy of resting in your Self.

At this moment you become free, joyously free!  You are Consciousness itself, just awareness of Self.  No longer a body bound by space and time, you are effortless awareness of the infinite spectrum Of Self.  What more can be said?  You are free.  Totally free.  Resting as your Self.  Alone.  Free.  Eternal.  Joyous and free.

It all starts with that great transitioning moment where your identification changes and you no longer believe that your body is you, when you experience your body as something that is not you.  It is merely an appearance within you as Consciousness.  From that moment on you become aware that the I-sense is no longer associated with your body, but is all around you, like air, like space, like the sky.  The I-sense it radiates in all things, from the sky above to the earth below, and I am that I.  This is the real beginning of your spiritual life, of your joy, of your freedom as Self alone.

The most important step one can take towards understanding who and what you are is realizing you are not your body, but you are the totality of your consciousness, in which your body is an appearance.  If you can find in you a sense of self, of I Am as a sensation, you need to see and feel clearly that the I Am, most especially the 'I' sensation, has no identity with your body.

You have to understand, 'see clearly', and feel clearly, that all that you know is provided by your mind and your senses, including your experience of your body.  You have no form.  Consciousness has no form.  It is not fixed, and objects arise and disappear in your field of consciousness.

That which you regard as you, your body, was not present as an object in your consciousness until you became self-aware, self conscious as a separate I somewhere early in childhood.

Presently you are aware of your body and identify with it, protect it, feel its pain and pleasures, but if you silently observe both the sensations and appearance of your body, you will observe that it does not "feel" like your sense of self, your 'I' experience.

If you spend some time abiding in your sense of I, you will understand that your I-sense has no identity.  It does not "feel" the same as your body feels, nor your thoughts and mind.  Emotions happen to the I sensation as a witnessing subject who has the ability to take that emotion into the I sense temporarily, allowing you to integrate that emotion into your larger sense of presence, or being alive, energetic, and sentient.  But ultimately, emotions are not you either.

The inner energies you may feel, the sometimes raging an burning energies of Shakti, the divine feminine, too, is not you. The bliss that comes with acknowledging this feminine life force, that too, no matter how powerfully felt, or long felt, also is not you.

And thus you progress in self-inquiry, going deeper and deeper into hitherto unexplored aspects of your self-experience, the further away you get from your body and the world, and have experienced a progressive loss of identification with all aspects of your consciousness that previously you regarded as you.  

This too is the point of Buddhism, to reach the utter peace of separation of your identity from all aspects of consciousness, thereby experiencing complete and utter peace of being away from the drives, expectations, and fears of being a moribund sentient being, subject to the drives, desires, fears, suffering and pleasures of the flesh.

So, complete realization is a two-step process: realizing the inner divine fire, Shakti, with her fierceness and bliss, and then going deeper, becoming the pure witness.

Now, knowing this, realize how rare such knowledge and attainment is.  Most people only play around the edges to this depth of self-abidance, self-knowing, and self-realization.  It is attained only by great effort, great determination, great persistence, to see that fundamentally you have no identification with anything in consciousness. Not one in ten thousand travel this way.

SATSANG TODAY, SUNDAY MARCH 19, NOON ARIZONA TIME, 3PM EAST COAST TIME

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

and sign in with the password:    edji

Come a bit early and listen to chanting.

ONE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

It is incredibly difficult to become and remain still. The more relaxed and still you become, the more the internal energies can and will be felt. Those who are really quiet feel Shakti, the life force, consciousness and its light to be like a volcano of raging energies. The only rest from that energy is the nothingness of sleep.

This is also true for most people who have no spiritual bent at all. They cannot keep still. They need to divert attention from their own restless energy inside, either in drugs, or in other diversions such as ALL forms of entertainment. All diversions distract one's attention from one's own deep self into entertainment, from relationships, to television and movies, to exercising, to hobbies, to spirituality that does not focus on one's own self. Prayer, gods, rituals, book reading, all divert attention away from the burning energies within.

Those who turn their attention inwards will be exposed to a world of intense energies, emotions, feelings, body sensations, kundalini phenomena, astral realms, and spiritual entities. One's very nature is just energy and light, but until you are strong enough to tolerate them directly, you'll run into distractions to evade them.

The only way to make it through this layer of self, these energies, is to learn to be still despite them, still enough to let them pass through because of the inner space and permeable nature of that space that accepts and allows those energies to play through without being forced to react of move at their bidding.

It is not difficult to turn within and find one's own internal energies and the bliss of consciousness. In fact, just finding those energies initially is a blissful empowerment of and by meditation on self.

But then you begin to distinguish between consciousness and attention, or the focus on differing aspects of consciousness, and real spiritual development begins. You become aware of emptiness, the subjective sense of space, and its permeating, non-resisting essence. You d...iscover an inner ‘light’ that accompanies introspection, the so-called light of consciousness.

Gradually you discover the inner energies, maybe at first just like an electric spark near the heart, which upon focusing there, grows into an awareness of an inner ‘field’ of energies that fill up one’s internal emptiness with a ‘sense of presence’. One’s identification with your body at this time, begins to migrate to an identification with your sense of presence, an electromagnetic inner body permeating your essential emptiness. You are now identifying with a different aspect of consciousness than with the body, which is also an aspect of consciousness.

Then you may go through years of Kundalini experiences or perhaps years of bliss, where again you change identification to that of being flowing Shakti, joyful energies, wild energies, exalting exuberance. In this stage one talks about the divine feminine, the goddess, creating energies, Ma Kali, and the experience or realization of the Manifest Self.

After this period, attention flows backwards towards the perceiver or witness of the show or play of consciousness, the deep self of just being, just existing, watching the comings and goings of consciousness as an impersonal process, passing phenomena, knowing nothing in consciousness now has anything to do with you as you are now, and essentially how you have always been when not caught up in the mercurial spinning of awareness within the whole panoply of consciousness.

Then you might find yourself asking, “What the hell was all this for,” having returned states of "normal" consciousness  of alteration between waking, dream, deep sleep, and knowing and non-knowing.

We Are Nothing But Light--Beings of Light

If you end identification with your body and mind as you, and thereby conclude that all that you know, experience, see, and feel is consciousness, and therefore YOU are not who you thought you were, but rather are a being of light, an appearance within your own consciousness, as is everyone else.


We are all consciousness, just consciousness.

And since our primary sense, sight, which creates the appearance of the space, of each other, and of our bodies, we know we are nothing but light. Creatures of Light.