A Dialogue With Francis Bennett

The following is a dialogue between Francis Bennett, with whom I have had some communication over the years. Look him up on Facebook. He has deep experience as a counselor and we tend to see things very much alike.

Francis Bennett:

If we are able to watch our fear, our sorrow, our distress, our anxiety whatever it is, we prove by that ability that we are not that which we can observe. We cannot be anything we experience as an object. We perceive our true self simply by being that self.

• Shane Sheila Very good

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like
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  Ed Muzika No, we don't perceive our true self by being that self. We apperceive it, meaning at first we know it is true. It is not an experience, but an intuition, a knowledge. Gradually the feeling grows as an intuition, a conviction, that I am that which has the knowledge and is beyond both experience and knowledge. Beyond, in the sense of prior to.
  
  However, later comes the understanding that we are also that which we perceive, feel, love, and serve. We are everything, both the witness which is a pure knowledge of the unmanifest, and everything in the manifest, including Self as manifest, as the divine, appearing as God, but which is really us.

  2 hours ago · Like · 3
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  Francis Bennett Yes Ed, I agree with you. I think both statements are true on different levels. What I am trying to point to here is our ability to dis-identify from all our distresses, to not feel that the feeling I am feeling right now, no matter how overwhelming, is ultimately "me" or is the entirety of what or who I am. In offering a lot of spiritual direction and pastoral counseling over the years I have found this to be very useful for folks who are feeling overwhelmed and taken over by difficult feeling states. But I don't feel we are essentially in disagreement, just speaking from different perspectives, different angles. If you look at a mountain from one direction you will see a seemingly different mountain than if you look at the same mountain from another direction! 

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  Francis Bennett The key word in my above comment is that the feeling state is not "ultimately" me. In other words...while you are correct in saying that ALL is ultimately the Self. we are never CONFINED to be any one thing on any absolutr level...Does that make sense? 

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  Francis Bennett I think Ed you speak here of the "collapse" of the witness. While I know it is true that the witness does eventually collapse, i think for many, being aware of the witness initially can be very skillful and helpful in navigating difficult feeling states that they may be experiencing and feeling overwhelmed by.

  about an hour ago · Edited · Unlike · 3
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  Francis Bennett I should have said," We cannot ULTIMATELY be anything we can observe as an object". However you are right that, since that object arises and ceases in THAT which we are...that object IS INDEED, a temporary manifestation of That also. You were quite right to correct my wording, which is often quite flawed. Sorry!

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  Paul Schwartz I'm confused--wasn't it Krishnamurti that said the observer and the observed are one--was he pointing to what Ed was pointing to? 

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  Stephen C. Galleher What a great thread! Both Ed's response and Francis's dialogue with Ed and with himself have elucidated a very tricky and profound point. Thank you, gentleman!

  about an hour ago via mobile · Unlike · 2
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  Ed Muzika I agree with you completely Francis. What I see is a continuum of experiences or "rooms" of identification. Sometime you can be the witness, sometime you can be the emptiness or void that contains all inner phenomena, sometimes you can be the external space that eats up all objects in its oneness. Sometimes you can be a human falling in love with a tree, a cat or a woman. Sometime you can be ecstatic bliss that arises just before the Self reveals itself as the "other," or God inside you. Sometime you can be that arising God energy or goddess within you.
  
  I call it an ability to pass through various rooms of spiritual experience, and freely identify or not with any room or its contents.
  
  I think that some non-traditional Advaitists can all too easily be stuck in a prior to consciousness, witness or Absolute and die there as an emotionless zombie, while a neo Advaitan is caught in the beingness of now as are many Zen practitioners. 
  
  Personally, I now emphasize love, human love as an entrance of Self Realization through recognition of God in another, allowing it to arise in ourselves through true devotion and surrender. Or, becoming aware of inner states of bliss and energy/light that also arise through ecstatic love.
  
  Personally I teach this way more now because I enjoy the beings I meet in this Bhaktic room, and I think these kind of people don't ever become lifeless zombies, but saints who actually are of service to the world.

  about an hour ago · Like · 2
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  Ed Muzika Paul, K. was talking about an experience where there is no apparent boundary between the seer and the seen. They are one. You become one with the sunset, etc. This is just one kind of spiritual experience. One class of experience so to speak. Different teachers emphasize different classes of experience as "ultimate."
  
  I like my students to get to know many classes and choose where they want to spend most time, or let the rooms choose them.

  27 minutes ago · Like · 2
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  Paul Schwartz Thanks for expressing, Ed--and Francis--I've always been curious about this "experience."

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  Francis Bennett Yes Ed, I am more and more seeing the wonder of deep integration of the Absolute and relative. This is what you represent here so beautifully! Thank you! 

  13 minutes ago · Unlike · 2
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  Ed Muzika Thank you Francis.

  8 minutes ago · Like · 1
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Thank you so much for your generosity.

Email to me:

To Me re: Self-Realization and Other Awakenings.

Good day, dear Edward! I liked the posts on your blog! My friends gave me a book by Stephen Wolinsky, "I am that I am." I have read a few pages and my brain is wrapped in a pretzel. I'm really tired of all the concepts. You offer something quite different. Living through the heart. I feel different emotions in my heart. I had not paid attention to it. They are real. They are alive. Thank you. With love K.

http://hdcity.net/sr_order.html

Self-Realization and Other Awakenings - Ed Muzika

hdcity

A Student's Love Dilemma

To Me:

Hi Ed,

I know you said there shouldn't be questions in love and serving but it pressures me from inside.

Am I doing something wrong 'practicing' love? There comes a great pain with tears, pain in the gut-chest, it feels like a wound has opened and there is longing, then it mixes with some kind of condemnation because I see behind that feeling a strong wanting and needing and I know that it is egotistical. Am I not seeing something through and that's why this wanting and needing does not go away? It deepens and feels sometimes unbearable, and very restless, and I can't even sit to meditate on it.

Please advise something. I need some anchor for I don't know what is going on. It hurts and I want to run to some sort of activity, but at the same time I don't want to suppress it.

On other times I feel bliss and feel singing heart, wanting to give, to care, but this pain spoils this true love. I once even saw inside deep darkness a child that is engulfed in some kind of self-pity, attention seeking, needing love. How can I grow him into mature love?

Thanks,
A.

To Me:

I just wanted to share that finally 'the book' arrived (your book:), and I just opened it randomly and got a nice answer to the questioning I wrote on the first letter last week about personal love. The answer was:

Page 92, Self-Realization and Other Awakenings:

"Now your heart is torn open and you feel great anguish, self-doubt, second guessing, wondering what you did wrong, depressed and angry.  But in fact you are just beginning a new journey of aliveness, rawness, and intensity...."

I haven't read books in ages: kinda was dead to books, but somehow wanted to grab this.

Well, as for now i feel a profound peace, sitting totally numb, resting from whole emotional baggage and sleepless nights, I never thought love is so 'cruel', hahaha....

I even missed last two satsangs in many years... just fell totally asleep before start...

I hope after some time i will able to share more, let’s see where it takes...

Take care, Ed.

To Me:

From Self-Realization and Other Awakenings: "But this whole trip is made so much easier if you fall in love with someone, something, or an animal. This outwardly directed love, IF YOU ARE MATURE ENOUGH, can lead to Self-Realization."

How to be mature? Since i fell in love with a woman, it is tearing me apart and it seems it leads nowhere, endless feelings and emotions coming and going, sometimes leaving me dry and numb and then fear arises about that this is it, it has ended... why I can't open fully up, i don't understand, please help.

I can answer to your question which you gave me 4 or 5 years ago: "What do you want?", which I couldn't answer because I didn't knew. I was thrust on the path by some mystical experience. I didn't know what was I searching for, just exploring, like sitting on the lake and exploring waters for scenic views of fish and flowers....

I want self-realization, but I don't know what it is. 

I don't want voids anymore, i don't want astral planes anymore, i don't want ghosts, I don't want emotionless witnessing... I want to open love and share it with others. But everything is fluctuating and heart closes and I fall into some kind of depression or sadness, then it opens and it closes...

I don't know anymore how, what, why, who... turmoil...

To Me:

How can it be, I am crying and at the same time feeling such immense gratitude, it rises from the gut, I have never felt like this...

It all happened very suddenly, when you changed topic in summer at satsangs to emotions, love. I prayed to experience personal love, which I knew not, only sympathy or physical attraction.

And after half a year, recently, it just struck me hard and in an instant at work. Since then I am going through turmoil and feel like I will go mad soon, I know I shouldn't ask help and just go through it myself, but it seems that everything falling apart and I need to grab.

It is burning; I feel it consuming my whole body, so many currents flowing through, with it comes not only bliss and awe but sadness, doubts, fear of which I cannot see the cause, since the lover accepted me and I.... 

It is hard to articulate what I am experiencing, this is mainly deep feeling which I cannot describe, many various emotions and feelings coursing and changing rapidly, and that is what drives me crazy; it is too fast. 

I want to worship beloved and I fail to see everything else around, world is disappeared, cannot work at all, everything disappeared, only she remains, and you as someone who is like a ground or 'something' I can still hold onto, I don't know how to explain this... this is concepts.

When deep sadness arises I fall back to void, I identify with void which is always beneath everything that is happening and it, in a sense, kills it; it sucks in all experiences and I am dead again, and the next minute I am again born with all my experiences. With sadness comes gratitude...

Ed’s Response:

I read your letters with amazement. You are doing exactly what you should be doing, and feeling exactly as you should be feeling.

Each person gets into spirituality for a different reason.

I got into it originally to find out the truth of what is real and not real. I had many spiritual experiences and awakenings addressing exactly that question.  I traveled through a world of endless questioning and endless experiences of voids, emptiness, witness consciousness, no-mind states, no-self states, and all kinds of conclusions and knowledge derived from these states.  So, I became a master of the workings of mind and the nature of no mind, no self states.

But, I must tell you that the fundamental knowledge  gained was even all this meant nothing.  Just more knowledge gained added to tons of worldly knowledge gained by a life-long pursuit of knowledge and two Ph.D. programs.  All knowledge is futile.  The heart never rests from such pursuits.  There must be a different way. But nothing came.  Mostly I dwelled in emptiness, listening to sacred chanting, and trying to take care of a lot of animals even while teaching meditation and Advaita, as well as Zen.

You might say, like Robert Adams, my teacher, I was dead to the world.

Then mother Kali, mother of the universe, sent me someone who awakened my heart and with it came all the trials and tribulations about which you speak. I was repeatedly torn open, jealous, possessive, frightened, ecstatic, blissful, and filled with new inner energies that poured through my body bringing me complete aliveness and gratitude.  I had come alive from the sleep of mind and states and brought into the world completely, single-mindedly, fixated on my woman and love.  Love had brought me alive, and its frustration even more alive.

Now the same thing is happening to most everyone in our Sangha.  They are coming alive to the incredible beauty of love and all the internal energies and colors of the Subtle Body that has its root in the deepest level of consciousness, the Fourth State, Turiya, or the Self.

Nisargadatta may talk about the Absolute and witness consciousness which is beyond Turiya, and yes, it is important to understand and apprehend this unmanifest Absolute because with it comes the recognition that the essence of your true nature, whether you want to call it awareness, Witness, or the Absolute, or the Unmanifest, or the Noumenal world, is that YOU are immortal, entirely beyond the world of life and form.  Your true nature in this sense is immortal.  Actually it is altogether beyond existence, so it is even beyond immortality, for the terms “mortality” and “immortality” apply to existence, to the world.

Really, this is a nice place to rest and you can feel really secure here because you are untouchable by death or life, sickness or health, emotions, or a lack of emotions.  In a large sense, you are dead to the world.  I had become dead to the world through the pursuit of ultimate truth.  Then love brought me alive.

Therefore now I teach Advaita and the nature of reality for those who want it, and I teach love and life for those who want that.

And the way I teach it is to give up all concepts including those of Advaita; give up all concepts and conventions that now rule and organize your world, like ideas about career, marriage, proper behavior and appropriate ways of communicating and dealing with people.  Give up scientific knowledge, spiritual knowledge.  Give it all up and learn how to live from your heart.

To do this is often painful, for most people live by the mind and feel very insecure and frightened giving up the knowledge through which they operate in the world.  It can very frightening to become clueless, to know nothing since our society places such a high value on knowing things, even knowing trivia.

However, applying the way of no-knowledge, or radical loving from the heart, of learning how to follow the heart is even more frightening and more painful than learning how to give up dependence on knowing, dependence on the mind.

You see, in most of us, because of civilization and the same tight shoes and uniforms it has made us wear since we were two or three years old, most of us are emotionally crippled in many ways, and this crippling must be set right before we have a true realization of who and what we are.

This is what these amazing love affairs trigger: dealing with the crippling. 

There are no easy ways or formulas to help you through this time.  You just have to suffer and enjoys the swings both of the quality of your relationship and your moods.  After a while, the moods and emotions will grow and grow until you feel you cannot tolerate any more and then they will subside.  A few days later you’ll find you were mistaken, for your emotional “pain” will be much worse than you ever expected it could be, but a few days later, you’ll find a deepened love that you did not feel was possible.  

And thus you grow, ever expanding in your ability to feel emotions, pain and being alive to the point you often may wish you were dead. And you continue to grow, continue to seek love from another, until the day comes when your Self shows itself to you, and you begin the process of total Self-Realization, seeing and feeling your own sense of presence as a human being, invaded and sublimated to the great Self of All in you, in a world-shattering experience of the divine, of Shakti, of the Mother, or Kali in you.  You are Kali and Shakti themselves, not a mere mortal, and certainly not just the Absolute, the Witness, or ParaBrahman.  You are God incarnate.

This is what I teach, and this is exactly the path you are on.

At this point, no worldly instructions can be given to you, but I am here to hold your hand through the whole process. God bless you and keep you.

Which path is Muzika teaching?

Dear Edji

I have been following your blog since late 2009 and have read at least if not all your posts and Q&As..

Initially when you were talking the methods of self-inquiry and Gnana marga only (making mentions about love, energies and Bhakti not very often), people seemed to like it a lot. Now when you are talking about the path Bhakti and love as a means to get in touch with the beingness, everyone seems to have a been taken aback..Many things happened on FB and the blog which seemed to unleash a rainbow of emotions in the participating sangha members and apparently in you too...

Do you think the path of love or devotion can be an unfailing path to get in touch with our beingness..? Are there not too many pitfalls in it where the identifications with the body, gender, energies and sensations, lead to creation of more vaasanas and get us trapped in the same? I feel this is the fear of most people, these days in resorting to devotion, Bhakti or love..Are you setting it as a common path for everyone who wants to get in touch with the Self? Or do you choose the path for each disciple of yours?Why not advocate the path of selfless service also(devoting the energy on say social service, family duties, simple domestic activities or intense physical exercise or activity as a path of releasing shakti and bringing stillness (Basically Karma yoga))? This way more people shall be benefited too..Not like in love, where just the two or just one person(in case of devotion to a deity) is involved..

Pardon if the question is childish...But this is a genuine doubt..Why not choose the proportion of Karma Gnana Bhakthi in alignment to each one's vaasanas? Why are your posts very polar at different points of time? Or is this some way of cooking us all?

Love

Sharadha

ED:

Sharadha, very good question, one I am sure many ask.

This is why I teach as I do:

Really, I want you all to find your own way, but you do it with me holding your hand.  We are walking together, side by side, hand in hand, while you wonder about your existence.  You have to meet your existence and the world, and one another from the heart.

You can only do that once your mind stops, gives up, and becomes clueless.
My teaching is to drop all concepts about enlightenment, God, the path, Awakening, karma, meditation, etc., and allow feeling from the heart rather than thinking, judgments and oughts from the mind to control your existence.

Now, today we have a strong current of Advaita pervading everywhere and people grab onto these concepts, and many think that just understanding them is enlightenment.  It is not.  Understanding is of the mind and the mind can never grasp beingness or the heart.  Mind has to go to learn how to shut up the constant thinking, talking and searching done with the mind, and solidly rest in beingness so that the heart can lead your life.

But this is not so easy, because there are so many concepts about what an enlightened being is like or is supposed to be, so many concepts about Awakening and who is awakened or not.  Currently the idea is going around that everyone is awakening easily just by looking inside for a few seconds, into beingness, and not finding the self as an object.

But this is hardly the first step; you have to learn how to feel with the heart, literally.  There is a heart-center, and you need to learn how to perceive the world through that heart center.  When you can do this, finally you are at the beginning of the path.
Given this step you can really love, really love like never before.

But this whole trip is made so much easier if you fall in love with someone, something, or an animal. This outwardly directed love, IF YOU ARE MATURE ENOUGH, can lead to Self-Realization.

This is the path I now teach, a path to knowing yourself, not to the Absolute, not to the witness, not to residing in and identifying with beingness.
Yes, I could teach a path of service, and I do mention it a lot, such as ending the killing of animals for meat.

But the way I respect most is love as a royal road to Self-Realization.  Once you have Self-Realization, all the other types of awakening are easy to find.  But the way of Self-Realization only begins when first you grasp yourself as God, as the divine, as the Self, and there after your life is so rich. Unlike the Jnani, you never feel you may have missed something.

From Bulgarian Questioner

TO ME:

Dear Edji,

I am writing you from Bulgaria. I have read your words on self-inquiry and many of the materials on your website and found it very helpful.


I don't know how to begin this, so for now, I'll just go straight to the questions.

One of the difficulties with getting myself to steady practice is that I am still not sure what I am supposed to do. I have read a lot on the topic hoping to find the clearest possible explanation. Your explanations are one of the best I found. So sometimes, if I have doubts, I re-read them.


It's clear to me this is NOT an intellectual or verbal question that should happen in the mind, but (as also Mooji put it) it's more a kind of a looking, observing, researching... looking for the one that is aware of the looking itself, and resting as that (by looking I mean experiencing - both of external and internal). I have read Nisargadatta Maharaj's words on this, Ramana Maharshi, Jiddu Krishamurti, also read on Buddhism and mindfulness, and it seems to me that they somehow approach the same thing with different words. However, it seems there are subtle differences, so here are some unclear points that I'd like to ask you about.

Nisargadatta talks about consciousness and awareness as two different things. It turns out that consciousness is that knowledge "I am", i.e. the simple feeling, the axiomatic knowledge that I exist. From his words, it seems that we should stay with this without identifying with thoughts, emotions, body, etc. and at some point we are supposed to realize that this "I am" quality is quality-less, and is the same as the "I am" in everyone else, and that it has nothing to do with our thoughts, feelings, emotions, senses, body, etc. - we are none of this. So it seems this is the first level of realization - the knowing of "I am". But he says we are beyond that - pure "awareness that is unaware of itself". He asks us to remember the moment when we came to know "I am", which seems an unanswerable question, because I cannot remember when I started to exist, it seems it has never been. Maybe it's a way to point us to that awareness on which that "I am" happens, right?


Is this the same awareness that Jiddu Krishnamurti talks about, the 'choiceless awareness'? I remember Ramana said that this choiceless awareness is our natural state when he's been asked about Krishnamurti. However, Krishnamurti does not use the self-inquiry method, but invites us to become intensely aware of *everything*, also to observe ourselves without judging - thoughts, emotions, reactions, mental patterns just as we observe things that we take to be separate from us. i.e. to blend the inner and the outer, as I understand it. And he calls this true meditation. I remember Nisargadatta himself pointed out this as another way to go about it - observing. Is this the same as mindfulness, and how does it relate to the so-called 'witness consciousness'? Anthony de Mello and Osho also talk about this awareness and observation, particularly by using awareness of breath, body sensations, emotions and thoughts, from which a sense of deep silence and rest will become to open. So, is this the same awareness that Nisagadatta talks about? Also, is the 'consciousness' / "I am" he talks about the ego knot you mention in your writings?

However, it seems to me that when I do self-inquiry, the method itself often puts me in that state of awareness that J Krishnamurti talks about, so I kind of expand internally and things, including my own life, become distant, though for very short time. I've had similar experiences as a child, before knowing anything about all this, particularly when I've been out of home and I've just had this doubt if I am really on the street, if there's anybody there at all, and who is actually on the street, which made me intensely aware. I've had such momentary flashes that are simply unforgettable. I remember I have shared this with my parents back then, saying that suddenly everything feels unreal. It's like I am there and the next moment I am not, but somewhere that cannot be pointed and has no dimensions, or whatever. And it's been scary, because it's like a sudden understanding that I am not what I have thought myself to be, it's like I and everything have never been, and the entire 'reality', existence are about to collapse. This takes a few fractions of a second or a few seconds leading to some palpitations and anxiety, and then it's over.


I'd like to ask a few other questions, if it is fine, but perhaps in another email. I would appreciate if you have the time to clarify for me.

Regards,

K.

FROM ME:

But there is so much to clarify! It would take me a week.

You want me to compare, contrast, and unify terms and states used by 6 different teachers.

This is a question to ask an academic, a philosopher, not someone who is trying to lead you to a different place than they are.

Are you not REALLY asking for clarity as to how to practice for yourself, and what the "true" state is when you end the game?

Well, this cannot be done.  Even I am not completely clear what Ramana means sometimes, or what Krishnamurti means at other times. I only know what I mean.  Both of them talk based on their own experience and the cultural context and language from which they express their understanding.

So, I advise you to start from where you are. You need to ask yourself the question, what am I looking for?  What do I hope to get by asking Ed these questions?  What will the clarification do for me?  Will it help me find what I am really looking for, and what would that be? Or would it only lead to the need for further clarifications, ever more subtle?

Can the mind ever find what you are really looking for, or are you looking for something that must be found without knowing, say for example, by means of the heart--whatever that means?

This is the place to start.  What are you looking for?  Is it a state of some sort to be attained, or is it something I already have buried somewhere in my consciousness?

Ask yourself these questions first, then we can continue.

Love,

Ed

SATSANG TONIGHT, SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 6PM PACIFIC DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME.

BRING A QUESTION.

Go to satsangwithedji.weebly.com and sign in with the password "edji" twice, then with your own name.

Sometimes you have to change browsers to make it work.  Chrome often fails.

Has the Neo-Advaita fad peaked?

Everywhere you go on Facebook, the neo-Advaita and Zen-like postings and gurus are still going strong, emphasizing being in the Now, which is a concept, emptiness (also referred to as Void), no separate self (whatever that means), and that self and Self are merely concepts, but nowness is not.

Wherever I go and post anything about the experience of small self or Big Self, God and the divine, I am in conflict with those who extol “ordinary mind” which is absent self, ego, or I-ness.

These neos, and neo-like posters, and they are legion, can be very caustic, like John Troy or Robert Salzman, or avoid dialogue between the “Selfers,” like me, and current Tantric and devotional Advaita teachers like David Spero, or Jan Esmann, and the older generation of shakti-gurus like Muktananda.

Recently, Stephen Bodian, who Robert Salzman cites as supporting his own ordinary mind and newness teachings, posted on his FB page about empty mind and staying in the now.

I commented asking if he wanted to start a dialogue between the selfers, like myself, who after 20-30 years of abiding in the now, empty mind, the void, or have dwelled in the witness state for long periods, and then have experienced something new, explosively: the arising of a sense of self as a personal, body-mind, and also the experience of the divine, of God as Other, who appears to me, the small  self, and in a sense destroys the small self by infusing it with the divine, with bliss, love, surrender, with ecstasies and energies.

You see, the selfers feel the emptiness gets filled with somethingness, presence, energies and aliveness.  This led Muktananda to say, “I have come alive” (from nonbeing, emptiness, the unmanifest state.

Stephen’s response was, “I have no comment Ed.  Thanks for sharing your view.") Then someone else added two comments about those who are Bhaktas, and start or finish their paths with somethingness rather than emptiness, such as Nisargadatta and Shankara.  Stephen sort of sarcastically replied with a “show me” response to the other commenter, Stuart Sovatsky.

Then Stephen commented he had not expected his post to result in a philosophical debate.

I responded it is more than a philosophical debate, we are talking about two fundamentally different approaches to spirituality, that of Jnana and emptiness, the Now, and that of the Self, of fullness, bliss and ecstasy, love and surrender. We are talking of spiritual experiences, not of philosophical concepts.

With that, Stephen Bodian took the thread down.  He does not want to dialogue.

John Troy and Salzman on the other hand are far more belligerent, just frankly denying the Self exists, and that anyone who perceives a self is deluded and narcissistic BECAUSE THEY DO NOT EXPERIENCE A SELF. They have a storyline from which they do not deviate.  Self does not exist separate from objects in nowness.  In nowness there is only oneness.

Yet, in these emptiness people, you will find very little expression of love or even talk of affect at all except as objects that arise and pass away.  As Sasaki Roshi told me, “There is no love in Zen.”  You will also find little about love in the neos.  It is all about the joy of being in the present. There is no talk in them of surrender or service or of passionate love.

So, the next time you puruse a neo FB guru of the neo Advaita Nowness persuasion, see what part love, surrender, devotion, and the divine play in their worldview. Very little.  Non-dualists have a hard time dealing with love that is dualistic, and may talk about some ideal sense of love, like love without some quality they think love should not have, like neediness or erotic desire, but you can feel in them the lack of juice.  They are kind of dried up and angry because they really don’t accept their own humanity.

I think the neo fad has passed its peak.  Some of the FB neo gurus are even talking about the fad passing.  Thank God!! Now we can get back to God and bliss, rather than just peacefulness and self-acceptance.

Alexander Kollmann on Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

"This is by far the best book on the very delicate and subtle subject of spirituality & Self Realization I've ever encountered!!

If I was stranded on an island and was allowed only one book "Self-Realization and Other Awakenings" would be my definite choice without any hesitation.

This book is simply a masterpiece! Every page has the power and potential to lift one higher and higher - simply by reading it! I had no idea that one could actually go so high in bliss and ecstasies - and with the right guidance (which is given and outlined in the book) could drop into this amazing peace (this peace that passeth all understanding) soooooo easily!!

What a blessing and gift to humanity! Thank you, Dr. Muzika!!

PS: If Amazon had a 10-Star rating scale, this book would be the only book or article I've ever purchased on Amazon with a full 10 Star rating from my side. (Silence of the Heart would have gotten an 8 Star rating )

Sadness

Donations have dropped almost to nothing.  Six months ago they were close to $1,800 a month.  Now they have been under $300 for three months in a row, most of that due to one person who donates $200 each month.

Because of visitors, I have not been able to do any medical reports in two months, therefore no income from this source.  Getting into the mental mood to do this kind of work is difficult for me.  It requires a whole change in focus and beingness in the world to do this detailed, careful critiques.

I have had to cut cat food donations to two people completely, and gave reduced rations to Marie who cares for almost 145 cats.

The income from the new book is far less than half of what I got in donations, and there has been hardly any income from it in the least two weeks.  Books only make money if they see well, and mine is not.

So, if you can see your way clear to do it, please donate using the paypal button on this blog.

Satsang Today, Saturday, March 23, 6 pm, Pacific Daylight Savings time

The essence of what I teach.

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Jesus and Advaita

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6

This can be understood as perfect Advaita teachings if we just add one word, which makes Jesus perfectly clear:

“I am IS the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (I AM).

That is, recognizing and abiding in the I Am is the way, the path to truth and to God, as well as feeling totally alive.

OPENNESS CAN KILL AS MUCH AS SECRECY

I posted last Friday that secrets and holding things in can kill you.  I know people—my own students—who held desperate secrets about things they, or others did, that twisted their entire psyches, and the only escape was to go into silence or Robert’s beyondness.

Robert was almost 100% secret. He revealed almost nothing of his past or present.  Many of us, his students, speculated some notorious past, hiding from the authorities for crimes long before (jokingly of course).  Nicole Adams, his wife, refused to let anyone post or publish his photos and threatened to sue anyone who did so.  The editor of Yoga Journal called me one day, frantic that Nicole had threatened to sue the Journal if he published the photo of Robert that I gave him.  The photo was never published.

This secrecy led to one disaster after another in our own Sangha because no one knew where Robert stood on anything, as he would tell one person one thing, and another person something else entirely.

At other times I have been with people who unburdened themselves of long held secrets about themselves or others that was followed by an almost miraculous improvement in health and mood, going from suppressed rage or depression into an exuberance until the next buried secret began to emerge.  However, once they saw the value of complete openness, everything began to emerge in a floodtide.

On the other hand, sometimes secrecy or little lies are better than fully opening to truthfulness, not in an ideal world, but in the world we live in where we fear losing that which we have by being open.

I conclude that sometimes lies and secrecy are more advisable than openness, as many relationships that you are in cannot tolerate openness, and it would be lost, if, for example, you told your significant other you love someone else.  Not that you would leave the relationship or cheat on that other sexually, but only that someone else has taken a large chunk of your heart and made it his or hers.

However, just maybe, in that hidden relationship you can be completely open, loving and committed.  I don’t know.

I think one has to become very mature and learn when to be open and when not to be open.  There are so many stories that can be told here about married people falling in love with someone outside that marriage and what happens as a result.  In some cases the married partner killed themselves after the discovery of the partner’s love.  Sometimes the marriage was destroyed.  Sometimes the love of a lifetime was abandoned for sake of the family.

I do know that love is ruthless.  It wants what it wants when it wants it.  It wants us to shout out our love to all near and far.  It wants us to leap into our cars or planes and fly to the other.  Every moment of the day and much of the night we think about the other to the detriment of our lives here and now with our job, our spouses or children. What to do, what to do?

Yet that same mad, fanatic love changes us.  Our hearts fill with energy, and currents of ecstatic and often sexual energy course through our bodies daily.  Love becomes a visible current of light and energy coursing between genitals and brain.  We become ecstatic and worshipful.  We only want to be with our lover for only here do we finally at home, rested, loved, and whole.

And this state of intense, focused, insane, all-encompassing love, makes us realize we are love itself.  This love itself so intensely felt is a precursor to self-realization with the explosive recognition of our true nature as Christ or Krishna Consciousness, or ecstatic love and an energy beyond measure that fills us with awe and gratitude, and we only want to worship and serve that Other that has arising in us that feels divine because of its immense power and majesty.

And that power surges through us, fills our small self, the sense of presence of being alive as a human, with aliveness and an ability and desire to worship and serve, not only itself, but all other sentient beings which share this Self-nature of consciousness.  But most of all, we want to worship and serve that external lover who ignited our heart’s fire.

Somehow I feel that this love cannot and should not be stifled, for the telling of its story can set others’ hearts on fire, and everyone can feel the love, power, and peace of being both a vulnerable human and the divine itself, complete in itself, yet loving and caring for all as a shepherd for all sentient beings.