OUR COUNTRY IS IN DEEP, DEEP TROUBLE!!!!

"THEY" KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU--EVERYTHING.

SEE ARTICLE BELOW FROM HUFFINGTON POST:

David BromwichProfessor of Literature at Yale

The security policy of the U.S. government from Cheney to Obama has passed from secret surveillance of communications abroad to secret surveillance of all communications at home. In what stages did it happen? Some day the history will be written; for now, it is instructive to rehearse the facts. Five years ago, Barack Obama was a candidate for president who pledged to filibuster a congressional bill awarding amnesty to telecoms that illegally gave information on American customers to the government. When Obama backed down from that promise, he pledged, if elected, to have his attorney general investigate the surveillance of Americans and bring the NSA and the justice department back within the limits of the fourth amendment. As it turned out, he made Eric Holder his attorney general, and the security policy of the Obama administration came to be defined, most of all, by its harsh prosecution of whistleblowers who brought to light illegal searches and seizures by the government.

Yesterday in the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald offered a startling glimpse of the program of systemic surveillance Dick Cheney innovated and Obama has refined. A FISA court order, obtained by Greenwald and linked in the article, compels the Verizon Business Network to furnish for the NSA "on an ongoing daily basis for the duration of this order. . .all call detail records. . .created for Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls." This command is sweeping. It makes Verizon hand over to the FBI all "From" and "To" information about all phone calls made by all customers using Verizon. The order is dated April 25, 2013. It expires on July 19, 2013. It is classified "Top Secret," and due to be declassified on 12 April 2038. It is one of the approximately seven million documents which the Obama administration hides from most Americans every year.

This revelation is only the latest indication of the modus operandi of the Holder justice department. If anything has slowed the public challenge to the conduct of the attorney general, it is that his infractions against the first amendment bruised different parties in such diverse ways. The Right has taken most seriously the language about "conspiracy" used to obtain secret warrants against the Fox reporter James Rosen; while the liberal side has been struck by the unraveling of the post-Watergate restraint on vendettas against investigative journalism. But the character of the FISA court order shows how far the abuses have reached beyond party. William Binney quit the NSA in 2001, in disgust at its policy of encroachment in the name of protection. Today on Democracy Now, Binney gave a precise idea of the extent of the data that Verizon is commanded to surrender to the Holder justice department:

NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it's been all the companies, not just one. . . .If Verizon got [a FISA order], so did everybody else, which means that, you know, they're just continuing the collection of this kind of information on all U.S. citizens. That's one of the main reasons they couldn't tell Senator Wyden. . .how many U.S. citizens are in the NSA databases. . . .If you collapse it down to all uniques, it's a little over 280 million U.S. citizens are in there, each in there several hundred to several thousand times.
Thomas Drake, whom the justice department harassed and prosecuted for whistleblowing on the massive "waste and abuse" at the NSA, made a related observation in the same extended pair of interviews. With an indiscriminate generality of focus, such as this order demonstrates to be the rule in the Obama administration, "there's no need now to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Let's just call it the surveillance court. It's no longer about foreign intelligence."

A generalized approach to prosecution emanates from the White House itself. Death warrants have been issued for "signature strikes" by drones on human targets whose names are unknown, and against whom no specific charges are stated. The justification? Their pattern of observed behavior is a "continuing and imminent threat" or a "continuing, imminent" threat. Well, a continuing imminent threat is a good deal like a chronic acute illness. It gives an automatic warrant for a doctor to prescribe x-rays and antibiotics every day for a lifetime. But our doctors, in this case, live in the sky and you cannot get a lawyer to sue them for malpractice. With the presidential jargon that christens assassination as "delivering justice" to terrorists and speaks of unknown victims as a "continuing imminent threat," this administration has been engaged in a purposeful corruption of language. But that corruption is necessary, since, without it, we might not accept the change of morale in which we are being invited gradually to acquiesce.

And what of your phone calls, reader? And what of mine? In the connection between the dates of certain calls and certain subsequent events, may it not be that a "signature" or pattern worthy of prosecution will be discoverable at some future date? Medical records also will be subject to the same interested construal if a government agency large enough and operating under secret orders can lay its hands on them. There is, in fact, a deep correspondence, which we tend to ignore, between the protection-state at home and the war-state the government operates abroad. Still, in the initial response to Greenwald's article and the court order, Republicans have been characteristically worried about the leak and not the contents of the leak; most Democrats have been silent; and a bipartisan inertia has appeared in comments by senators Feinstein, Graham, and Chambliss: they knew all along what was happening, they say, and Americans should be grateful for the acts of a state that has the goodness to protect us and the discretion to do it in secret. But there are fresh warnings, now, from senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, and from others too: Jeff Merkley and Barbara Mikulski and Dick Durbin, and a Republican, Mark Kirk, and an independent, Bernie Sanders. The warnings all say: the more we give to the government on the pretext of sheer protection, the more it will take and use as it pleases.

The press has scarcely begun its pursuit of the issues around the AP and James Rosen seizures. There is work to be done -- but now, with the Guardian disclosure, reporters may claim to question the government as direct and not as mediating advocates of the public. The president who has heard fewer unrehearsed questions from the press than any president in modern times should be made to answer for his experiments against the first and fourth amendments. Let reporters ask what data he supposes government is not allowed to collect. For it has come to seem on the face of things that there is nothing the Obama administration will not claim a right to know about us for our own good.

Even now, government aides are most concerned about "the magnitude of the leak." The question that troubles them is not, How did we come to this? but rather, Shall we prosecute the whistleblower? The pattern is so galling and tedious, and its harms so invisible to all but a few, that we may be tempted to relax and wait for the next election. But remember again the language of the court order. On an ongoing daily basis. All call detail records. Including local telephone calls. The next president will inherit this. No names, no records of words (not yet), no inculpating or exculpating evidence (just "signatures"), but still: these are outlines of the communicative behavior of upward of a million persons, with similarly compelling orders out to the other telecoms. The aim is to capture by index the whole of the U.S. population. The amazing and routine FISA order is a blind command for the opening of a thousand eyes.

The plainest rebuke to such procedures comes from the language of the fourth amendment itself.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
By what right are the addressed envelopes of the spoken communications of 280 million citizens plucked from the air by government and filed away? Supported by whose oath and what affirmation? There is a simple force to the words of the fourth amendment after all. It says: we do not live by secret laws, and we will not abide by general warrants. And to the comfort offered by senators Chambliss, Graham, and Feinstein, who ask us to sleep well and sleep long, there is a simple reply. In what country do they think they are living, and under what constitution?

POLICE STATE IS US!!

Two days ago, the Guardian posted a judge’s order that required Verizon to hand over daily records of ALL Verizon customer domestic and foreign phone calls on a daily basis, of ALL Verizon customers.  Data log would list at least the phone numbers involved and the length of the call.

Extraordinary as this shocker is, today they, and the Washington Post, as well as Huffington Post, wrote that ALL phone carriers are doing the same for all phone calls for all land and cell phones in the country. AND, THEY HAVE BEEN DOING SO SINCE 2007!

EVEN MORE SHOCKING, TODAY THE GUARDIAN AND THE POST PUBLISHED INFORMATION THAT THE NSA HAS ACCESS TO ALL INFORMATION ON ALL SERVERS OF ELEVEN MAJOR TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES INCLUDING: Microsoft; Google; Yahoo; Facebook; Skype; AOL and Apple, meaning everything typed on gmail, Hotmail, Yohoo, Skype, etc., is an open book to the federal intelligence agencies under project “PRISM.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-2%20Special%20trail:Network%20front%20-%20special%20trail:Position1&guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-2%20Special%20trail:Network%20front%20-%20special%20trail:Position1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/nsa-prism-data-mining_n_3399310.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/nsa-whistleblowers_n_3398618.html

The Guardian today commented on the information gathering element of this massive intrusion on privacy:

NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal

• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple

• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007

Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

The Guardian, Thursday 6 June 2013 18.05 EDT

Jump to comments (537)

A slide depicting the top-secret PRISM program

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.

An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.

The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.

Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.

It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.

Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.

The extent and nature of the data collected from each company varies.

Companies are legally obliged to comply with requests for users' communications under US law, but the PRISM program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies' servers. The NSA document notes the operations have "assistance of communications providers in the US".

The revelation also supports concerns raised by several US senators during the renewal of the Fisa Amendments Act in December 2012, who warned about the scale of surveillance the law might enable, and shortcomings in the safeguards it introduces.

When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers.

A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian, underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more.

The document is recent, dating to April 2013. Such a leak is extremely rare in the history of the NSA, which prides itself on maintaining a high level of secrecy.

The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world's largest surveillance organisation, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.

With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.

The presentation claims PRISM was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

Sophia Receives SQ Fluids

Two weeks ago I reported that Itta, one of the colony managers I help, had a sick cat, Sophia.  Sophia had been a much larger cat weighing 10 lbs., but now weighed a little over six when she went the the vet.  The vet guessed kidney failure or hyperthyroidism, but Itta could not afford the $179 for blood tests.

Because Sophia was around 15, and was not eating, I guessed she was dehydrated and it was probably a kidney problem, so I treated her as if she had a kidney problem and she improved dramatically.

For the last two weeks she has received "fluids" called Lactated Ringer's Solution, SQ (under the skin), 2 X week.  We now need to go to three times.  In addition, I gave Itta prescription food for kidney failure, Science Diet K/D, cyproheptadine to increase hunger, and powedered aluminum hydroxide to reduce blood potassium levels to reduce nausea.

Sophia is doing much better now, with less anxiety, little crying compared to before, more activity, and muh improved eating and drinking.

In addition, after administering fluids, I ran healing energy through her body.  She did not want to leave my lap.  She just stayed there for 45 minutes, totally relaxed.

I promised photos and they are below.

Itta is helping hold Sophia above.

Next is a photo of Bhakti, which you can see is a highly relaxed cat.

Satsang today, Saturday June 1, 6 pm California time.

Subject: Who knows?

Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com


Sign in with the password "edji" two times.

Then please mute your microphone.

NOTICE!! Open House

I am planning to have hip replacement surgery in a little less than a month, on June 26.

Unlike the previous surgeon I consulted, this one performs what is called an anterior approach surgery which spares the major muscles from being split, which is a surgery much easier to recover from than the traditional approach through the gluteus maximus, and which requires a much shorter recovery time.

But I will not be able to feed the feral cats for about two weeks, or until approximately July 10 or so.

I am thinking of throwing my home open to visitors and continuous satsang during that period of time as I will be mostly housebound. Surgery is a good excuse not to do anything except sit and talk.

The previous surgeon had said surgery would be risky for me, as I have a permanently collapsed left lung due a dead nerve controlling the left diaphram.  Apparently, this presents a risk when the gas tube to the lungs are removed.  It can take part of the lung with it.

However, this new doctor only uses a spinal anesthetic, as the surgery is shorter and less extensive than traditional approaches which requires a general anesthetic.

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY, MAY 25, 6 PM, CALIFORNIA TIME.

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SIGN IN TWICE WITH PASSWORD "edji."

TOPIC: I NEVER KNOW UNTIL THE LAST 5 MINUTES

Itta and Sophia the cat

Itta is a very small, 62 year old woman living near me who feeds about 50 feral cats as well as her own.

She was laid off from her full-time job as a librarian from the LA city libraries two years ago because of massive budget cuts to all departments.  She now works on an on-call and sometimes on a temporary, part time basis.

She barely makes the rent and utilities and has very little money for her own food and for her cats and the ferals.

I give her about 80 lbs of dried food and about 50 cans of wet food a month to help her out. Marie gets three times that because she cares for 150 cats, and Rosa for about 100.

Recently Itta broke her left elbow and had surgery, making it more difficult to function.

Yesterday she called me asking whether I could help her own, older cat, Sophia, who had lost a massive amount of weight and was not eating or drinking.  The vet said the cat had either kidney failure or hyperthyroidism, but Itta could not afford the $180 for blood tests.

Itta asked me whether I knew of anyone who could give Sophia subcutaneous fluids as each time she got fluids she improved.  The vet recommended fluids twice a week, but Itta could not afford the $39 each time.  I told her I could, as the IV sets and Ringers were set up for one of my own cats with early kidney failure: Bodhi.

Itta showed up with Sophia in a carrier. Sophia is a beautiful Calico cat, obviously once much larger, with very young looking, light blue eyes and the clipped ear that indicated she had once been a feral cat.

We placed Sophia in Itta’s lap and I gave her 120 cc’s of Rinerger’s Solution with a 20 gauge needle.  Sophia was completely relaxed and seemed to enjoy the slow fluids and the attention.

Itta was incredibly thankful, repeating over and over to “Sophia, I love you and Ed is your savior.”

I also trained Itta how to give fluids herself in the future, but in the meantime, Sophia will be getting her fluids at my house until I receive more IV sets in the mail.

I also gove Itta 2 cans of Science Diet KD, which is a low protein, low Magnesium and low phosphorous diet food for kidney failure that I had at home. I’ll buy her some more in a few days.  I also gave her several pills used to stimulate eating for cats who are not eating.

Itta thanked me profusely and left with Sophia.

Fifteen minutes later she called.  She said Sophia was eating like she hadn’t eaten in a month, just breathing the food into herself.  Sophia had not been eating at all, and had even stopped drinking water.  Giving fluids often has that effect on cats, an immediate hunger and thirst.

We both rejoiced, and I felt satisfied that I had helped her and Sophia. 

Sometimes, because I have been doing it so long, feeding ferals feels more like a job than something I do that brings me joy, but Sophia’s dramatic short-term improvement, and giving Itta some hope that Sophia may be around longer than she thought was very satisfying.

PHOTOS COMING NEXT WEDNESDAY.

The Horrorof Chinese Fur Farms--

The following video is hard to watch. The killing and sometimes skinning alive of dogs, cats and rabbits.

Olivia Munn Bares All to Expose Fur Farms

Actor Olivia Munn—star of HBO's hit series The Newsroom— is taking her role as senior financial reporter to a new level by exposing "globalization at its worst" in her brand-new undercover video exposé, which reveals never-before-seen footage of animals being beaten, stomped, genitally electrocuted, and skinned alive on Chinese fur farms, where there are no penalties for this abuse. China is the world's largest exporter of fur, andundercover investigations repeatedly reveal what the fashion industry won't tell you: foxes, minks, rabbits, and even dogs and cats are mercilessly killed in order to make fur coats, vests, trim on jackets, purses, and other accessories.

"Who needs fur to feel beautiful?" Olivia asks in her beautiful print ad, shot by top photographer Emily Shur, as a poignant reminder that fur only looks good on its original owner: the animal.

Olivia reminds us that when it comes to violence on fur farms, "There's nothing good about pretending like you don't know." Please take a minute to watch the undercover video footage. Then share the video on Facebook and Twitter to let your family and friends know not what they might be wearing, but whom.

Check out Olivia's exclusive interview with PETA to learn more about her thoughts on fur and exotic skins. 

Satsang today, Saturday, May 11, 6 pm California time.

Satsang today, Saturday, May 18, 6 pm California time.

TOPIC: I have no idea. Maybe the same bullshit as last time, but with lots of love.

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

sign on with password "edji" two times

INSTANT NO-SEPARATE-SELF AWAKENING VERSUS SELF-REALIZATION

I get so very tired of hearing friends and others on FB give no-self pointers.  For them, everything begins and ends with the discovery that self, I, me, are just concepts.  With the disappearance of that concept you supposedly are left in the poignant presence of infinite beingness and peace.

But this is only a baby step. The first baby step.

I assure you there is a self and there is a Self.  But the path to finding both only begins with the disappearance of the concept of self.

Then one needs to look within that beingness and find the "feeling" of life, the feeling that you exist, which Nisargadatta and Ramana and I call the I-Am sensation.  Focus on it.  Play with it.  Love it.  Follow it and abide in it.  If you do, it will grow and grow and great love will come into your life along with great bliss and joy.  But it takes time.  The outward looking of many years of being a human must be replaced with many years of looking inward, towards the body, the heart, emotions, and the emptiness/presence which permeates all.

Loving that presence, loving that I am, loving yourself, and more importantly, loving another madly, completely, totally, will one day result in Self-Realization, a recognition of the divine life-force of awareness and energy within you as you.

This is so, so, so very far from the near instant enlightenment of the neo-Advaitins and the direct pointers.  It is an entirely different universe with infinite flowing energies and a reality that never stands still and itself flows as easily as a small stream.  What wonder then.  This is real awakening.

Don't lose sight of love after beginning to experience bliss and ecstasies

Let’s get real about Subtle Body energies, love and Self-Realization.

I use the term “Subtle Body” as do Nisargadatta and Siddharameshwar to indicate that part of Consciousness that lies between our experience of the physical body and the phenomena revealed by the 6 senses including intuition, and the more subtle level of Consciousness known as the Causal Body, where nothing is known; there is in it a complete absence of knowing or even self-refection. One consciously goes unconscious, and one is aware of nothing, including being aware.  In its depths is complete forgetfulness. 

I use this model not because it is “truth,” for there is no truth in words or concepts, but as a model, a hypothesis, used to contain and explain a wide range of spiritual experience.  For example, this model contains 1, the world we see, and our experience of our body, the 2. Subtle Body phenomena of thought, emotions, energies, bliss, fantasy, visions, etc., as well as 3. the realm of non-knowing, or forgetfulness, of non-existence of the Causal body as experienced in deep sleep and various meditations, and lastly, 4. the Fourth state, AKA the stateless state, Turiya, Self, or the lovebliss body, as love and bliss are the key characteristic of this state.

The essence of Turiya is also defined by Advaita as Satchitananda, or existence, knowledge and bliss. Knowledge here does not mean concepts, but awareness of objects and of awareness, or self-awareness.

Such models are often needed at the beginning of se;f-study because a lot of people require such structure in order to let the mind rest and just practice a spiritual method, such as self-inquiry or self-abiding.  You need to remember this, for some day you may be a teacher yourself, and you will need to be able to answer students’ questions either from a model or without it. This is a good model if they need one.

Even beyond Consciousness, this model talks about Parabrahman, which is the witness of Consciousness, lying beyond Consciousness, not part of it.  This Parabrahman, is not touched by Consciousness, is not born into Consciousness, and is only aware of itself when it witnesses Consciousness as passing states, including Turiya, and realizes even That is not part of It as the Witness, Parabrahman.

Parabrahman stands apart from Consciousness, and witnesses its play.  You would say that the witness is not part of existence, for it is never known as an object, but only as “me,” the subject or an absolute self witnessing Consciousness from a “distance.” That is, I become aware of myself as witness only when I no longer identify with Consciousness, either as “beingness,” or “here and now,” or of the totality of Consciousness as a oneness state where I become an impersonal One, and I Am even separate from lovebliss.

Now Siddharameshwar and Nisargadatta as well as Ramana, provide a method for exploring the various “levels” of Consciousness, which is the use of a mantra, such as “Who am I?” or better, locating the “I Am” sense, and following it, abiding in it, and hopefully playing with that sensation by loving it, welcoming it, wondering how it would feel if it flowered.

According to the model, following the mantra or I am sense “deeper” and deeper and deeper leads to an experience of Self, of Turiya, (the blissbody), the root level of Consciousness which is experienced as light, love and bliss/ecstasy/power.

From there one realizes that despite identifications with various levels of Consciousness, as Parabrahman, you are the “deepest” level, apart even from Consciousness and even love/bliss.

However, at this point Siddharameshwar warns the practitioner to continue to be devoted to the Self as found as Turiya, as well as all the rest of manifestation of Self and the individual found in Consciousness, presumably to prevent becoming dead to one’s own Self and the world. If one habitually identifies with that which witnesses Consciousness, the meditator will die to the world and Consciousness, as Nisargadatta said was happening to him at the end of his life.

Both he and Robert Adams, my teachers, were dead to the world.  They were “finished” with it; they had tasted all it had to offer and found the world wanting in terms of drawing their attention.

You need to understand that these 4 levels of Consciousness and the Absolute coexist, and once you are aware of each, they are all always equally accessible.  That is, the Causal body of forgetfulness, nothingness is always there, always existing even when in the ordinary waking state, the dream state, the sleep state, and in Turiya.  One can always be aware of it existing in and around your Consciousness once you have tasted each level it in its separate purity. 

All four levels of Consciousness and the Absolute Witness all simultaneously exist.  One just has to tease each out of the totality matrix. The Subtle Body phenomena, the Causal Body, Turiya are all simultaneously available to itself and to the Absolute.

Now, as to the Subtle Body, one might say it is both the container of subjective phenomena, or inner special awareness, and all of the subjective experiences available to a human that include thought, imaging, images, memories, emotions, the I Am sensation, chakras, and also inner sounds, like tinnitus and other spiritual sounds, visions, astral projections, love, bliss and inner energies, whether of the Kundalini-described sort, the generic term Shakti, Chi, meridian energies, and orgasms. Included are the various visions of lights, whether of oneself, or the Self, as a blinding white light, or enormous spectrums of colored lights found associated with various inner flows of emotions or energies, love, devotion, etc., or seen externally as auras, or energy fields of a flowing and not solid world.

Now, the love, bliss, ecstasies, and much of the light phenomena are really “leakages” of the Turiya root source Consciousness into the Subtle Body area of Consciousness, felt at the Subtle body level as either I Am, or as a withdrawn and distant Witness according to the Siddharameshwar model.  That is, practice of the mantra of abiding in the I Am, leads one’s awareness to ever more subtle and more invisible states including the blissful “knowing nothing” of the Causal Body, and experiencing total ecstatic bliss and light of Turiya.

Of course there are many other models of the entire awakening process, some of which totally ignore the Causal Body, ignore the experience of no-experience, or the experience of vast emptiness and the Voids.  Other models totally ignore the ecstasy bliss states and go only for emptiness, beingness, Void or the Absolute.

In fact, even within the Subtle body you have a choice of what to look for: The sense of I Am, which will take you to Turiya, the love/bliss area, or to attend to the “looker,” the “searcher,” which leads to the Absolute beyond Consciousness.

I chose the Siddharameswar model as it can be used to explain almost any type of spiritual experience and awakening, does not use terms like God, goddess, the feminine or masculine, Shiva or Shakti, Mother, etc., which is a model valuable for worshiping abstract elements like Kali or Shakti, love and devotion, but also adds a whole pantheon of Hindu beliefs and concepts that can bind you.

The Siddharameshwar model seems more clean, yet preserves love and devotion, and is broader in explaining a wider range of experiences.  Also, eventually all models are shunned and the student learns to address experiences as they arise without interpretation, assigning meaning, or judging it as a lesson to be learned.

Also, the standard progression as assigned by Siddharameshwar is a progressive “deepening” or better, becoming more subtle in one’s discriminating awareness, able to grasp ever more refined emotional and energetic experiences, meaning ideally, the student becomes a Bhakta when exploring the Turiya level of Consciousness, then a Jnani when he/she realizes and identifies as the witness separate from Consciousness.  Of course the opposite is true if instead of concentrating on I Am, one concentrates on finding the looker, the subject, the witness.

I chose the latter approach from the beginning of my practice over 40 years ago and entirely missed Turiya, the existence/knowledge/bliss body, but found it in explosive upheaval when I fell in love.  It was as if my internal emptiness exploded in love.  The love exploded into the Voids and filled them with a nectar of sweet and ecstatic love.

Because my own experience of realizing Self was as a result of a personal love that grew and grew until it became explosively “divine,” and felt like the arising of God in me, from my “innards,” attended by huge and explosive energies, a total white-light absorption of all visual phenomena, an explosive ecstasy that wiped away mind and small self, along with feeling enormous gratitude, a total surrender to God and grace. When the experiences cleared a few hours later, I was aware of myself as Self, and also as Ed Muzika, a mind/body/energetic field entity intimately tied to my divine Self as a union. This experience was repeated many times leaving a residual bonding between God and I, my Self and self.

From this position I now see that the driving force was not lovebliss, not Shakti, but love, devotion and surrender to the other, whether lover or God, or cat or idol, or mother. The driving force is not the energies, but sheer love, devotion, surrender, becoming nothing oneself, and the other becomes everything.  In losing myself in the Other, whether the divine Self within, or another human, I am powering my own transformation through surrender to ever more subtle nothingness. I am nothing, only the other and God is great.

Transformation does not come from the energies, from Shakti, from Chi, these are all set alight by love.

In fact, concentration on just the Subtle body energies is a distraction.  Though the body and mind can get increasingly electrified and occupied with these internal energies, it is the love that transforms.  The blisses and ecstasies are not the goal, but are the icing on the cake so to speak, or as David Spiro says, are the body’s reward for practice.

Those who concentrate solely on energies, bliss, ecstasies, can become trapped in the Subtle body according to the Siddharameshwar model.  

Also, it is a mistake to say the principle of identification disappears upon awakening or enlightenment, after which one no longer identifies with the body/mind.  The identification with body/mind must disappear way before Self-Realization, it is a pre-condition.  

What happens in Self-Realization is that identification is freed so that it is free flowing, sometimes identified with love/bliss, sometimes identified with the body/mind, sometimes identified with a vision, sometimes identified with inner lights, sometimes identified with the Other, whether self, or a cat, or a lover, sometimes identified with one’s own energy body which I call my (little) self or presence, sometimes identified with the energies or Shakti, sometimes identified with the Voids. 

Then sometimes one identifies with the divine body one feels,the Self, and which permeates everything.

That is, I can identify with whatever I want, or I can let the identification process choose itself by free-flowing to be what I am at any moment.  Sometimes I am Self, sometimes God, sometimes Ed Muzika, with emotional experiences ranging from great love to rage and jealousy, sometimes with other powerful emotions, sometimes with a summer sunset, sometimes with ecstasy, sometimes nothingness, and often with another, whether lover, a student, a teacher, a stranger.  I am open and flowing everywhere and also nowhere in particular. This is true freedom: witnessing oneself and the world as free flowing, not fixed, objectless except the object may be permeated by the divine essence.  It all mixes together in a flowing whole.

Matti Finds Inner Light and Love

Dear Edji,

What a strange obsession I had. Trying to find some ultimate method. Searching and searching. Hypnosis, self-help, psychology, self-remembering... 

This search wasn't something I did in addition to my normal life. My normal life was what I did in addition to my search. Not a single thing I tried was what I searched. Truth is, I didn't even know exactly what it was that I sought. There was hunger and need and dissatisfaction.

The most amazing thing is that I found something that satisfied my thirst. Love the sense of 'I am'. So simple. So amazing. So fitting.

I have read this advice several times on your blog. Then I tried it. It worked like nothing before. It is easy, simple, enjoyable and it gives me peace. I can just love the beingness and somehow that is enough. That is all I need.

I am happy. No matter what happens, I can be proud that I succeeded in my mission. It was worth it. All the hours and days and month, it was all worth it.

You helped. You were necessary. I couldn't have done it without you. You were essential. So thank you that you have done what you have done.

My internal vision used to be full of darkness. Now it is white light everywhere. There is huge "beingness" of white light. When I love it, it radiates through me. Loving it is enough, because accepting it fills me up. 

The key was loving the sense of 'I am' and behind the door was bright beingness.

I am content, because I just won the game. I found something that is enough. Every meditation and method has been full of effort. Nothing has ever been fulfilling. This is. I feel complete. 

It is done. It is finally done. The mystery has been solved, the quest finished and the payment received.

Sincerely yours,

Matti

Ed’s response:

Matti, you have come so very far over the past eight months.  Congratulations!

Things now will only get better and better.  You are entering an area of direct contact with your own root of Consciousness.  The more time there, the larger your vision and heart will grow, grown beyond anything that most humans can conceive of. And with it, increasing happiness, bliss, energies and light until you feel the root of the universe itself, not just of your own existence as a body/mind/presence, but of an infinite presence found within only by a few people.

Satsang Today, Saturday at 6 pm

Satsang today, Saturday, May 11, 6 pm California time.

TOPIC: Using emotions and impulses to fuel your efforts

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

sign on with password "edji" two times.

Listening now to Namah Shivaya by Krishna Das. Splendiferous!  Ecstatic!

All day I have been hearing from current and past students about the remarkable “progress” some have been making. I feel so freaking happy! It just feels so right.

One I had thought lost to a secular orientation has found a renewal of spiritual practice through initiation by a long dead guru. Don't laugh.  Robert talked about this sort of thing all the time.  This student was bathed in the light of the guru, who descended within, and this student felt the movement of truth as holy.

Another student has become once again a famous healer and is almost always in ecstatic states. Miraculous healings happen weekly.

Another sees the world differently, as it is as energy and as a manifestation of the divine.  He is infused with Shakti, bringing great joy to his life.

This is just three of maybe 20-30 emails I get a week about people feeling great new movement in their lives in and around our Sangha, especially since I have taught to embrace the personal, the emotional, the body/mind embedded in the energetic Presence of that body and of the divine whether called Christ, Kali, or Krishna Consciousness.

And today I too am filled with a light ecstasy. Bliss and love when they stop moving inside, fill me like a large balloon with bliss and love so difficult to contain; it feels like I am going to explode at any moment and become infinite nothingness.  Energies pore through my body causing pleasurable tingling throughout.  Sometimes a quaking and shaking, sometimes a burning. Love seems boundless, endless. Also, my constant companion, the Self, who is also me, but whom I choose to worship as other, is always with me, suffusing me with a growing, spreading, liquefying sense of human happiness, acceptance of being a person, perishable, limited, emotional, embedded in flesh and doomed to die.  Yet today I live in joy, mindful of me with my divine other, enjoying the joy of my friends and students.

Such a change in our Sangha during the past six months.

Those who cannot take a life of surrender, service, and devotion are dropping away, replaced by those who feel the new movement, and there are many, many: yoga teachers, healers, hermits, teachers from other traditions.

While many still follow superficial neo-Advaita be-here-now or no-separate-self ideologies, others here are throwing themselves into deep practice.

With Stuart Savotsky pounding home the truth that there is far more to Buddhism and Hinduism than the West has ever encountered, and that even famous American gurus are/were on pop culture gurus, I feel a big change is happening, a deepening.

Letter to me from a long time student

I feel my connection to the divine daily, through your grace, and Robert, Ramana and Nisargadatta's. 

Yesterday a wall suddenly sang to me of all its molecules. Sometimes I almost disappear while walking down the sidewalk, into bliss. 

A lot of things happen in terms of sudden understandings of lessons taught by yourself and the other teachers in our lineage. 

I feel gratitude, humility, love, forgiveness, wonder, awe, wisdom, compasssion, humour, and sometimes see a grand pattern of causality that is completely impersonal. 

Sometimes the words "God, I surrender everything to you" just come out of my lips. I feel surrender and devotion welling up in me at times throughout the day, completely non-personal to "M" or who I am as a small self or even a self-aware individual. THanks Edji, Thanks. OM NAMAH SHIVAYA. OM JAI SRI KALI. Love, M.

After spending several weeks with Deeya, I really, really get this joke:

Self-Realization book quickening lives

To Me:

Ed, I'm REALLY feeling your book. I love the fluidity and the insights. I feel really connected to what you say and that is rare for me. I think only Nissargadatta before has made me feel that.  What you say is true. I feel it. I know it. I'm now reading what you say abut feelings and it's exactly what I have experienced myself. I totally agree that it's a neglected area (p 79-81). I also feel that it's extremely important, key even. I find it bizarre how little we know about the world of emotion in this time and age. I wrote a blog post about suffering a few months ago and it was my most popular post so far. That and about being human. 

Feelings originate from a place deeper than we can imagine and understand.  It's not just cause and effect. I can't say I understand, only intuitively.

Please forgive me if I'm writing too much and too long. This is so interesting and it's putting things in motion. I thank you with all my heart for your book. Of course it's not a coincidence.

C.

Ed:

I'd say let loose the Shakti.  Allow and encourage it to take you over.  Become its servant.  Yet continue at the same time to go deeper by following the I-Am sense.

Continue to read my book. 

I take a different way than many towards awakening.  Use bliss, energies and miracles to take you deeper.  Emptiness is boring.

Look at my quote of Aurobindo on my blog: 

http://itisnotreal.blogspot.com re awakening to Atman, or Nirvana, as opposed to SELF and the "Mother," what I call the divine or God in partnership.

Do this and your control over your unfoldment will be lost.  

Shakti will take you on a wild ride and people by the thousands will follow you.

This is what I am doing with my students, turning them into gurus and healers, world-changers.

Please consider yourself part of our family.  We are working on creating a world-wide organization of healers and changers.  Some of our members are making miraculous changes and healings because they are infused with Shakti.  

Awakening becomes a small thing within the context of a 

developed ability to move from room to room of spiritual experience with great ease, including several different kinds of awakenings that most people consider as final goals.

Bliss is a reward for your efforts, and a carrot to make you take it deeper.

From C:

Before I saw this e-mail I felt: I'm losing all control. (It felt great!)

Then I read and see you encourage me to do just that!

I feel a lot of energy from reading your book. Almost uncomfortable, impossible to contain. I have to read it slowly (unusual for being me who can devour and digest quickly). This is different and I'm loving it.

Thank you thank you thank you for everything.

With Love

C.

Link to book:  http://www.amazon.com/Self-Realization-Other-Awakenings-Ed-Muzika/dp/0984776737/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368122633&sr=8-1&keywords=muzika

Aurobindo on small self, Self and the Divine

If one realizes the silent Atman above, there is no danger, but there is also no transformation, only Moksha, Nirvana. If one realizes the cosmic self, dynamic and active, then one realizes all as the Self, all as myself, that self as the Divine, etc. This is all true; but the danger is of the ego catching hold of the “my” in that conception of all as “myself”. For this “myself” is not my personal self but everybody’s self as well as mine. The way to get rid of any such danger is to remember that this Divine is also the Mother (God), that the personal “I” is a child of the Mother with whom I am one, yet different, her child, servant, instrument. I have said that you should not stop realizing the Self or the cosmic consciousness, but should at the same time remember that all this is the Mother.


I saw this on Janet Beier's FB page.  This is exactly what I have been saying for some time.

Message to me:

 I would thank you for the marvellous gift you give ; before to meet you i was for many years with a great void in my heart , feeling nothing to stop suffering . and i could'nt love peoplle who loved me , i was feeling nothing , it was so sad , so terrible ...and now with you love has came back , so ggod !!!i feel how it is so good to love , no matter what you love and i am seeing now i can also have love for people who dont love me ! But also it is so good to connect with your love ... i bow to you Edj , you are a gift from heavens !!!And if it is the only thing i will know of spiritual way , it will be enough because it makes me so alive and so loving with others that it is like a treasure i can share ! sorry to dare writting you that .... The Love from Deeya is as magical as yours! You are both so lovely, so loving !!!

      

Heloïse St-Flaceau

Satsang Today, Saturday, May 4, 6 PM California time, and every Saturday at the same time.

SUBJECT: Devotion, service, surrender.

Go to satsangwithedji.weebly.com

Sign in two times with password: "edji"

Deepening Awareness

Zen Master Joshu stated that over a 60 year period of self-study that he had 17 great Satori, or realizations/awakenings and thousands of little ones.  Osho evolved from being a professor of spirituality to being a very ideosyncratic guru who had a profound impact through his evolving teachings.  Ditto Da Free John. 

The whole concept that there is a final state, a final realization, and ultimate truth is just crazy.  It comes from reading too much Ramana or Nisargadatta and others. And, these supposed Mukta's really never talk much about their experiences or final states.

Ramana never spoke about his own states first hand for over 20 years.  People gave him Advaita books like the Ribhu Gita and others, and he said, "Yes, this is my experience."  As such he never spoke firsthand using his own language, but borrowed his related experience from the scriptures.  Therefore, Ramana's teachings seem dry and dead in comparison with an Osho or Da Free John, or many current teachers.

Now I have a kind of different take on "liberation" and "awakening," if these cursed words are ever used at all, because they carry so much baggage depending on the tradition and teacher.

I don't think freedom or liberation come from attaining or discovering inside oneself the witness or any unchanging awareness. These are relatively easily experienced after a few months or a few years of introspection. After a while, you can be aware of awareness, or the still center, or the background of the void all the time, continuously, and can run there when the world gets too much.

I think the key to freedom comes through freeing one's identification so that one can identify with all kinds of experience or non-experience, including powerful emotions, pain, loss, joy, and the more mystical experiences of Shakti, Kundalini, lights, bliss, ecstatic states.

This freedom comes from "seeing through" all concepts, all creations of thinking and the mind, getting to a place before all thinking. One is simple then, not complex. Reality is not divided into name and form. Objects are no longer objects, but can become subjects, and in any event, are always changing, changing, flowing.

But the center of attention needs to drop into the heart. From there, thoughts do not grab you, and you establish a "feeling" and "energetic" relationship both with the world, and all levels of yourself.

You live in a multidimensionality of changing forms, emotions, thoughts, love, acceptance of everything. This world is so rich, so entertaining, so loving and loved, that there is no need to be anywhere than where you are sans thoughts creating a conventional world.

Ed and Radha