AWAKENING LOVE

A friend of mine who believes herself awakened by an “Awakened Kundalini,” often questions my emphasis on loving another person or other entity as a way of awakening.  She says that if it just took love, everyone would be awakened. She says both of her daughters and their husbands are deeply in love, yet none of them ever talk about the Self, and none are “awake.”  Instead she talks about awakened Kundalini as her path, which arrived by grace.  She did nothing to awaken it, she claims.

She claims everyone experiences Kundalini phenomena, such as flushes, body and presence energies, the Kundalini snake, vibrations, visions, bliss, etc., but says in most people, it is not awakened and transporting the individual towards enlightenment as is her awakened Kundalini.  She also declares nothing she ever did, in any way, caused the awakening of her Kundalini—it was pure grace.

She discounts two years of listening to Robert’s Satsangs 10 hours a day, listening to endless chanting, and being with a Jnani/Bhakti guru for a couple of years as instrumental in her awakened Kundalini, even though she was deeply in love with someone for two years during this time and she constantly practiced self-inquiry.

From my viewpoint, what happened to her “feels” like grace because her practices opened her awareness to deeper levels of her own psyche and consciousness, including what I call the Subtle Body level and also Turiya itself where the primal life-energies of sentience reside.

At this deeper level—identifying with this deeper level of Consciousness—makes one feel like an entirely different kind of being than before: an ordinary human occupying what Nisargadatta calls a “food body,” and what Harding calls a “Sentient Meatball.”

This deeper level, in a way, has nothing to do with the more superficial level of mind, thought, image and emotions left behind which function on the gross body/world level.

Her identity shifted to Consciousness itself and she feels that anything she did on her previous gross body identification level could in any way, have caused her life now to focus on Shakti, which she felt was now alive and serving her.

But, you see, from my viewpoint she has merely changed her primary focus and identification to a deeper level of Consciousness, one that leaves her old world and life behind.

In no way is it possible that this spontaneous awakening came just by grace; it came by long effort of gradual surrendering, self-inquiry, ecstatic chanting, and pondering deep issues.  It feels like grace alone because that is what that level of Consciousness feels like when you identify with it: great humility, great gratitude, great love and wisdom, far beyond anything ever encountered when identified only with the body, emotions and thinking.  Grace is that level which has a completely different feel than the conditioned world and mind left behind.

In one way though she is correct.  Everyone experiences Kundalini.  Everyone experiences love.  And a few spontaneously look inwardly, contemplating the levels of inner awareness, what I call their spiritual mansion of many rooms and splendors.

But her insights created some new understanding in me.  I had been advising students just to love as completely and deeply as possible as a method of getting into the deepest part of one’s Self: Turiya, or the love/bliss body, also known by its existential qualities of existence- knowledge- and bliss.  But the love that awakened me to the Existential, Manifest Self was not an ordinary love; it was an extraordinary love that grew day by day to an unimaginable intensity accompanied by huge streams of inner energies, love, the descent of Grace and seeing God in a manifest form within me, powering me.

So, I have to use the term “Awakened Love,” or better “Awakening Love”: Love for another that permanently kindles one’s heart flame revealing ever deeper levels of self-awareness, love, bliss, energies, and an enormous self-confidence of knowing for the first time who and what you are.

But this does not mean that all pre-awakening loves are useless to causing Self-Realization, for that would also be discounting all efforts to cultivate an awakening of the Kundalini as espoused by energy gurus, such as breathing and visualization practices to guide the Kundalini into the spine.

Just so self-inquiry.  One does not fail to practice self-inquiry because when awakening comes, you shift identity from the practitioner to Turiya or Shakti.

In all these cases of awakened love, awakened Kundalini, awakened self-inquiry, the common element is turning within, investigating the body from the inside, and gradually recognizing that the body is not you: You are that which both pervades and transcends the body—Consciousness, and Consciousness has different levels and objects depending on the spiritual path traversed.

For example, Buddhism in general places great emphasis on emptiness, the inner space one experiences after much silent meditation, and how all of the manifest world arises from emptiness and subsides therein.  Besides emptiness, there is also the experience of Nothingess, where nothing manifest is experienced yet you know you existed during those periods of non-experience.  This is called the Causal Body and also happens in deep sleep.

Generally all who awaken experience first either emptiness or the blissful energies.  This is a complicated subject involving the interplay of two aspects of the self: the witness or Absolute, and the manifest world, the activity within the presence.  In the awakened Self both are present.  One becomes both the containing emptiness, and also the alive, blissful sentience that fills emptiness with alive, energetic presence.

So the overall principal is developing an inner awareness through introspection, self-inquiry, becoming aware of the Self through focusing and abiding in the I-Am.  Or, by focusing on the inner energies and how they travel through the body, and then developing awareness of the Self and Kundalini currents.

Or, by falling deeply in love, more deeply than ever before with someone  who is alive to their own depths, or comes alive through mutual introspection and communications of inner experiences.  The love grows and becomes the Self as first perceived.  You have seen the awesome-ness of the Self in another, and that awakens one’s self to the Self within.  Thus though love at first appears to be a focus on someone or something in the outer gross world, in Awakening Love, your Own Self owns the love and arises to display Him or Herself to you in the great awesome-ness.  Such internalized focused love happens when at least one of the lovers is, or can be quickly made aware of the Infinite Self within.

That is why guru worship is so heavily emphasized in Hindu religious lore:  By loving an awakened soul, one becomes entrained to both the emptiness and Shakti in the other to each other’s mutual “enwonderment.”  Devotion to another, for a realized person, is devotion to the Other, which is a manifestation of your own Universal Self.

Such devotion soon generates those feelings of humility, gratitude to serve, bliss/love/surrender, and grace that combined is how the Self at the deepest level is experienced. 

EMAIL TO ME RE HIS ENCOUNTERING SHAKTI AND BLISS

Email to me: 

Thank you my dearest Father for you guiding light.

When feeling the Self and abiding there my mind is quiet and body is quiet but the bliss/pleasure is like a soft-ball on fire slowly rolling from my butt to head stopping at the solar plexus. While at the solar plexus it starts stretching the membrane holding it and gets ready to explode.

The full interior of this body is empty of everything except energy that is vibrating... peaceful and blissful

Is this what you mean by resting there my Guru?

Love Always, S.


Ed’s Response:

YES!!  ABSOLUTELY!!

Done long enough, Shakti takes over and does everything for you.

Love,

Ed


Email to me:

OH, My Dearest Father!  Your right!  I am losing the battle with this fair maiden. Your gal Shakti is winning the game.  She is enthralling, entertaining and very mysterious. She shows up at all times of the day and night, calling me, beckoning and promising to devour this mind and body and doing it with bliss and pleasure. I am slowly turning into her servant and willingly too.  

The World calls too but its voice is losing its power over me. I think maybe next week you and her will band together and pull a Ecstasy of Saint Teresa on me.  This world means nothing, it is turning to ash, I bow to the Peace and Quiet of Shakti. Take me in your arms I am a willing servant.

To Swamiji Sri Edji my home and my life. 

Yours, S.


Ed's Response:

At this point your sadhana becomes effortless. Your only job is to hang on and enjoy.

NO SATSANG TODAY OR NEXT SATURDAY

I am busy preparing for the three day retreat at Follow Your Heart next week.

The venue has no Internet access, therefore there cannot be any online Satsang from there.

Self-Realization Satsang/Retreat

I have seen the venue for our retreat today.  I think there is adequate room for up to 50 people with mixed chairs or sitting on the floor. So there is no concern about enough room.

The studio is located 2 doors West (towards Topanga Blvd) of the restaurant, Follow Your Heart,

There is free parking in the rear of the building and another free parking lot across the alley behind the buildings. 

There are also lots of hard rubber blocks that can be used to sit on for meditation, and perhaps a dozen or so mats for those wanting to sit on the floor or lie on the floor, which is a desired posture for several of our exercises.

For those who want to meet at Robert's park, Warner Park, at Topanga and Marilee (one long block North of Burbank Blvd.), we'll meet at 10:45 AM.  Satsang begins at the studio at 12:30 PM two miles away.

Friday Satsang starts at 10:30 AM and goes to 6:30; Saturday and Sunday, it starts at 12:30 PM and goes to 8:30.

The first 2 days at least will be dedicated to taking you deep into Consciousness with Self focused on Self through chanting, meditation, and talks.  We will also do guided meditation exploring your body awareness and awareness of your energy presence, or Subtle Body. Then you can directly see what you are without the mind's interference. It will be intense--maybe.

I don't know what Deeya has in mind for you yet, but I am sure it will be spectacular, as well as heart and mind melting.  

SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY OCTOBER 5

6 PM, California time.

Go to satsangwithedji.weebly.com. 

Sign in with the passord "edji" on two sign on pages.

Go to broadcast if you want to be on screen, and select your camera and microphone.

Please mute your mike to prevent feedback.

Let your center of awareness fall...

Let your center of awareness fall from your eyes and head down into your heart and lower.

There is a whole new world available that is not perceivable when you are thinking or day dreaming.

If you start pinching yourself and massaging your thighs and buttocks muscles while lying in bed in the morning, the center of your awareness will sink even deeper.

At this point, look at your body from within with eyes closed.  Feel it.  Feel the pinching and massage "Look" at it with your mind's eye.

Now look at it wondering, "Am I this body? If I am the body, am I also something else?

If you do this long enough you will come to the understanding first, that you are not your body, but YOU are an awareness of that body.  The body is not you because you identify more with the awareness.  Then you can proclaim you are partially, your awareness of your body.

From here you cannot go further unless you are lucky enough to become aware of the Subtle Body energies that permeate your awareness when you are open to them.

Often it takes some act to awaken awareness of these energies, such as Shaktipat of experiencing deep love, or else the transmission of energies from a teacher who allows you access to them in their presence, which later becomes permanent.

At this point though, you can again wonder, "Am I these energies, this Kundalini, this bliss, or am I merely awareness of them?"

Again you will see that though these energies are specifically related to your body/mind and sense of presence, they are still being witnessed, observed, looked at.

At this point, meditation can deepen and you can go into a state like sleep where you are aware of nothing, not even awareness itself.  This may be called the Causal Body, or given no name at all, but just a term that describes an experience that comes and goes.

Then you can understand "Sometimes I am aware of "the" body; sometimes I am aware of energies and bliss; sometimes I am aware that I am aware, and sometimes I am aware that I Am now not aware, or I was not aware for a period of time."

Nisargadatta calls this awareness "knowledge," and says "What you really are is not the knowledge or the absence of knowledge, but you are the principle that knows both."  In other words, you are the functioning of knowingness and non-knowingness which is beyond the world, beyond phenomenality, and as such, entirely non-human.  You are a principle, a functioning, not the perceived story of body/mind/subtle body/causal body.  This is all a story, an interpretation, which is not real, because it does not have its own intrinsic nature, and is merely perceived and is temporary, while what you are is beyond that temporary phenomenal world.

YET, you also realize at some point that all of that temporary world of the known, the body, subtle body, causal body, bliss, mind, thoughts, emotions, etc., are ALSO YOU, because without YOU as the principle of knowing, none of it would exist for YOU, who is beyond all these phenomena.

I will stop at this point and not go further into a discussion of Turiya and the Absolute becuase the discussion becomes more difficult to follow.  It is here we find an essential difference between the Advaita of Nisargadatta and of Ramana Maharshi regarding the primacy of the I-sense.  For Ramana everything is I; for Nisargadatta, nothing is I and posits your primary nature as that which cannot be known. For Ramana, this would be considered a mistake and nothing exists beyond the I-I feeling, the ultimate knower and source, and the human feeling of I Am. 

Ramana would say that Nisargadatta added the unnecessary concept of an unknowable subject, Witness or Absolute to what is experienced.  For Ramana, if something is unknowable, it does not exist, for all that exists is Satchitananda--existence/knowledge and bliss.

However, if you have made it this deep into self awareness and self-analysis, you have gone entirely beyond the world most people dwell in, and beyond that mind state of chaos, fear, instability, and doubt.

NOTICE--OCTOBER 18-20 SELF-REALIZATION RETREAT

At this point we do not know how many people are coming. So many have said they will come, and many of those then said they cannot.

Since there is no charge, no one has paid anything to secure a place, therefore there are no confirmed reservations.

I am visiting soon to check out the studio.  I have been told it seats 25 people on chairs and up to 45 if all are on the floor.

Anyone who is flying in will have priority.

So far we have received requests for reservations from a bit over 25 people, but I would be surprised if many more than half that number showed up, because there is no monetary forfeiture for not showing up.

You have to regard this more as an open Satsang than a conventional new age retreat.

THEREFORE I SUGGEST PEOPLE BRING A MEDITATION CUSHION OR A YOGA MAT TO LIE ON IN CASE IT GETS CROWDED.

This is a Self-Realization Satsang, not some other enlightenment retreat.  In order to become self-realized you have to escape the prison of your mind and concepts and become aware of the primacy of awareness itself and what can be found in that awareness that the mind never could experience or understand.

To this end considerable time will be spent on unlearning concepts to gain an empty mind.

To this end will be considerable chanting, both to raise the divine energies within, but more importantly, to quiet the mind so that you can directly perceive yourself in all your colors, energies and forms.

There will be considerable time spent learning "proper" self-inquiry, of finding and abiding in the sense of I Am, through loving, accepting introspection and guided energy work.

If necessary we will explain how Self-Realization differs from the Nisargadatta model of becoming the witness, to instead, becoming the love/bliss body level of Consciousness called Turiya, or the Fourth State.

Also, there will be a lot of attention directed at attending to and dealing with emotions, as much of spirituality is aimed at transcending the "chaos" of emotions, rather than embracing them and incorporating them into our Self.

Also, and of course, we will do a lot of energy "work" sharing love and blissful energies.

This will be mostly a silent retreat as conversation outside of the content of the class is discouraged in order to hold onto the "samadhi" power generated by chanting, self-inquiry meditation, and the energy work we will do to awaken the Shakti within each attendee.

Of course talking and conversations will be allowed during the late dinners at 8:30.  Lunch will be silent and very light in order to preserve the energy gained during Satsang.

IT IS SUGGESTED YOU MIGHT WANT TO BRING YOUR OWN FOOD, AS OUR OFFERINGS WILL BE LIGHT, SUCH AS BAGELS, FRUIT AND VEGGIES. ANY HEAVY MEAL WOULD BE DETRIMENTAL TO CONTINUED FOCUS. IF YOU WANT, WINE CAN BE BROUGHT TO FOLLOW YOUR HEART FOR EVENING DINNER FOR RELAXATION AND UNWINDING.  THERE IS NO CORKAGE FEE.

Saturday and Sunday mornings before the Satsang begins at 12:30 PM, will consist in spending time in Robert's Park a few miles from the Satsang location.

BODHI-My 2nd Guru

I call Bodhi my second guru because he always seems as gentle and empty as Robert Adams.  He was born a couple of months after Robert died in early 1997, so he is 16-1/2 years old now.

The photo below was taken in 1999 when he was two years old. Bodhi was huge, a good 16 lbs or more, and affectionate, and very gentle.

Here he is next to Robert's photo. Notice the intense stare in both.

About a year ago I took him to our Vet, Dan Reimer at Adler Vet Hospital for eating problems and losing weight.

Blood and urine testing revealed mild but progressive kidney failure. I have had five cats die of kidney failure during the past 20 years, and all but one died within six months of diagnosis.  The other lived 2-1/2 years.

Two weeks ago I took Bodhi for followup testing, as it had been about a year.  Bodhi seemed stable during this year, and I had been giving him SQ fluids (fluids under the skin), and more recently aluminum hydroxide in case he had elevated phosphorous in his blood.

During the past year, Bodhi has taken to lying on my chest, and I had started "running energy" through him, both in a positive fashion of pushing, but also in a passive, yin way, inviting him to harmonize with me. Techniques I knew instinctively, but which were validated by Deeya who is perhaps Quantum Touch's leading instructor.

This is Bodhi 2 months ago

I saw the lab results today: There was absolutely no signs of kidney failure either in the blood test results or in the urinanalysis!!!

These are extraordinary results as kidney failure is progressive and always fatal unless something else kills the cat first.

Of the 41 blood items measured, only two were elevated: amalase and neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that can be caused by inflammtion, stress, and a few other problems.  The elevated amalase is indicative of some level of pancreatitis.  The elevations on each of these items was only about 5% above normal, and no treatment was suggested.

Now Bodhi also has stomatitis, an inflammtion of the gums, for which his teeth were extracted five years ago as part of a standard treatment protocol, and this could explain the neutrophil elevation.  This condition too is now under control also, and no additional treatment was suggested because treatment involves steroids, which Dr. Reimer wanted to reserve as a last resort measure for the future. 

The kidney specific tests for BUN and Creatinine were both slightly elevated mid-range normal.

Cats with kidney disease drink a lot of water because the kidneys are failing to detoxify the blood and more water helps  the weakened  kidneys to flush better.

Yet every one of Bodhi's ten urine functions fell in the normal range.

All in all, the results are extraordinary and makes one wonder whether energy work on animals can really work, or Bodhi just spontaneously compensated for his lost kidney function that had been seriously manifest eleven months ago.

Also, energy work had failed with Lakshmi, my cancer kitty about seven months ago.

Who knows?

Recent Darshan With Bodhi

NO SATSANG TODAY

NO SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 28.

FEELING A BIT OF THE FLU TODAY.

CLARITY OF PURPOSE IN SPIRITUALITY

More than anything else, clarity of purpose is the most important possession of the sincere spiritual seeker.  What is it that you are seeking?

Are you seeking knowledge of something or another, of Self or of God? Or, are you seeking some sort of experience, an imagined “awakening” experience, an imagined enlightenment?

Have you any idea of what “awakening” or “enlightenment” are?  Are you seeking something about which you know nothing?

Or, are you seeking love, and if love, love of what?  Are you seeking to experience yourself as love, or are you seeking an object to love, whether of an abstraction such as God or guru, or love of a specific other?

If you seek knowledge or love, you are in for a tough ride because you can find knowledge and love everywhere, but unless it is the correct type of knowledge, or the correct object of love, you will suffer from the proverbial 10,000 cuts torture.

Ultimately there is only one kind of knowledge that will satisfy the spiritual seeker: knowledge of who and what you are, knowledge of the Self.

But even knowing this does not help much because there are 100,000 books and scriptures all describing Self from one viewpoint or another, and several thousands of teachers selling knowledge of the Self or of the manifest or unmanifest worlds.

But this kind of knowledge will never satisfy you because it is borrowed knowledge learned from someone else.  It is not your own knowledge arrived at by your own efforts and of your own devices.  Such borrowed knowledge, whether it is of Christ, Buddha, Nisargadatta, or Ramana will never, ever satisfy you as long as it is a belief, even a strong belief, so strong we call it conviction.

Worse than that, there is a great divide through all of spirituality between those who say there is no self or no separate self, and those who not only claim there is a Self, but that they experience that sense of self at all times.

I admit, for most of my adult life I struggled to understand not only what others meant by the word “self,” but whether I could detect any Self within my subjective experience.  I almost always fell into the no-self, no-I camp for half a century.  For half a century I struggled to understand not only the many various concepts of self and no-self, but the experience of Self as a state or an event.  For almost 50 years I had no knowledge of Self or self even after seven years of analytic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, decades of meditation, self-inquiry, Kundalini experiences, study under six Zen masters, Muktananda, and Robert Adams.  For decades I was lost, clueless about Self and no self.

In Zen, which was my beginning point, there is no Self, there is no I, no I Am.  The I and I Am are seen to be just words and when looking within, no thing, no I can be found.  There is no inner entity of Self anywhere to be found.  The only Truth is that there is no Truth, and the closest to truth one can come in words is expressed in the Heart Sutra: form is emptiness, emptiness is form; feeling, thought, and Consciousness itself are also like this.  That is, there is no self-caused enduring substance or entity, for all such ultimately disappear into emptiness, and beyond that into nothingness—no Consciousness.

This is a very insecure place.  There is no certainty except of continually unfolding uncertainty, no self, no truth.

On the other side of the spirituality universe we have the vast majority of seekers who are utterly confused because of the incredible diversity of spiritual teachings, most of which contradict other teachings.  Many teachings are self-contradictory even within themselves, so the seeker franticly reads even more spiritual works to gain certainty rather than to endure the heavy and oppressive uncertainty of the confused. 

What are these people to do?  Read more books or to stop reading and read the only book that is important: themselves.

In 1995 I had two “awakening” experiences regarding who I was and which are described on my website: (http://www.wearesentience.com/my-experiences.html). 

The first was that there is no self, there is no I. Subjectively, in my inner world, the word “I” did not point to anything.  There was no I, no Self.  There was only a vast emptiness within, no self, and everything happened spontaneously without an agent.

The second experience and understanding, was to see that “I” (even though there was no I) was not touched by anything in Consciousness, which meant anything in the manifest world or activity and form.  “I” was beyond all, untouched by Consciousness. Consciousness was illusory, a dream that came to me like a thief in the night, unbidden.

Well, let me tell you, this knowledge of no self, or no separate self was not at all satisfying.  I as a manifest entity did not exist in any substantial way.  I was emptiness and form only.  The sense of I was illusory, for no I existed as object to be found.

Thus I lived in this emptiness for 15 years with the profound knowledge there was no I, no Self.  The profound truth here too is that there is no love.  In fact, all human emotion is empty as are all relationships.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened to me: Love came to me, uninvited, unbidden, and in a way and to an extent I had never experienced it before, and with it came an explosion of life-energy that filled and awakened the self-knowledge of sentience within me.  I became aware of of the continual presence of love, bliss and energy that ran through my body and which flowered as a continuous sense of presence within and around me, that most assuredly was “me,” “I,” “I Am.”

From emptiness a bomb of love, energy and bliss exploded in me with incredible intensity that over time revealed who I was with the utter conviction, not of a true believer, but of someone who had not believed he had a self because he found only emptiness inside, or the nothingness of sleep and death, and then to him was revealed the Self of Ramana, as ‘I-I’ where one I is that of the small self, the human we always took ourself to be, a piece of sentience entombed in a bit of flesh, filled with dreams, wants, opinions, etc., but who also was the Self-of-All, which appeared so huge as to be totally beyond being human; it had to be divine, the other half of the I-I.

What had been missing all along, for all those decades and especially in the 15 years after my first awakenings with Robert Adams, was LOVE!  Feeling an unbelievably powerful sense of love ignited my sentience, filled the inner energies with an unbelievable life-force, bliss, energies and a continuous sense of presence of me as being not body, not mind, but as sentience itself.  As knowing.  As self-knowing and self-knowledge.

The key was investigating the inner world with total love so that the inner emptiness is quickened with the life-bliss energies of the deepest level of sentience.

So, you need to see that there are on this path, two self-realizations: realization of the Self as the Witness, the Absolute, unmanifest “beyond” which can never be directly known, and realization of the Self as the manifest, as energy, presence, love, bliss, and the divine.

This kind of realization is never final, because the forms, the manifest world, our manifest selves are constantly unfolding, changing, manifesting.  Only the Absolute who witnesses all this is untouched, and after 15 years of being untouched, the sweetness and energies of the manifest Self elicit such thankfulness for life, gratitude, humility and grace.

So I urge you, become clear about what you seek. What is it that motivates your seeking?  Is it just curiosity that there may be something beyond the world you live in?  Or is there a burning desire to grasp the real?  Or is there a burning desire for love, or have you found all human love relationships wanting from repeated failures?

Assuming you understand what forces are driving you, what do you do then? Read more books?  Seek a guru?  Try to find whatever you are looking for without any guidance except your own?

If you decide to accept the help of a guru, the most important thing to discover is what he or she actually experiences within themselves on a day to day, minute to minute basis.  Ask them what their inner experience is.  Ask them what they offer you. Do just listen to their abstract talks about Consciousness, Self, no-self, or methods.  Find out whether they can give you what you seek.  Whatever you do, don’t just go to a teacher and begin immersing yourself into their books, classes and retreats without finding out what they are offering you and how they plan on helping you find whatever you want.

You know, I was never intelligent enough or self-confident enough to ask any of my teachers to discuss their continuous self-experience, and what they had to offer me as a consequence of spending time with them.  In retrospect, I was so naïve and truly unquestioning.  In fact, it is incredibly difficult to extract such self-revelations from a teacher, as they tend to hide behind whatever expectations or projections you have of them, which brought you to them in the first place.  You imagine that he or she has something in their conscious experience that you want and they can give it to you.  But they do not want to talk about their own experience or what they have to offer because in such clarity, they will lose many students who want what they cannot offer.

Do you want bliss and energies?  Do you want love beyond anything you have ever experienced before?  Do you want to know who or what you are?  Do you want to escape from life and emotional intensity by abiding in the Absolute, the Witness?  Or do you hunger to know and experience everything?  This is the highest aspiration: to hunger to know both God, yourself as a human, and That which lies beyond everything.

         

If you plan on doing everything yourself, you have a fool as a client, because it is almost impossible to see through the filters and blinders you have been raised with.  You will continually go around in circles, never able to leave your box.

Recent photo taken at SRF Lake Shrine in Los Angeles

Beward of the Mind: It is Blind--Osho

To Osho: Do I have to know and understand the roots of my old patterns in order to be able to drop them or is awareness enough?

Osho: Deva Suparni, this is the dividing line between Western psychology and Eastern mysticism. Western psychology is an effort to understand the roots of your old patterns, but it does not help anybody to get rid of them.

You become more understanding; you become more sober, you become more normal; your mind is no longer a great mess. Things are settled a little better than they ever have been before, but every problem remains the same – it simply goes dormant. You can understand your jealousy, you can understand your anger, your hate, your greed, your ambitions, but all this understanding will remain intellectual. So even the greatest psychologists of the West are far away from the Eastern mystics.

The man who founded Western psychology, Sigmund Freud, was so much afraid of death that even the mention of the word ‘death’ was enough to throw him into a coma; he would become unconscious, the paranoia of death was so great. It happened three times. He was so much afraid of ghosts that he would not pass by the side of a cemetery. Now, a man like Sigmund Freud who has tremendous intellectual acumen, who knows every root of the mind, who knows every subtle functioning of the mind, still remains confined in the mind.

Awareness leads you beyond the mind. It does not bother to understand the problems of the mind, their roots, it simply leaves the mind aside, it simply gets out of it. That is the reason why in the East there has been no development of psychology.

It is strange that for ten thousand years at least, the East has been consistently and one-pointedly working in the field of human consciousness, but it has not developed any psychology, any psychoanalysis or psychosynthesis. It is a great surprise that for ten thousand years nobody even touched the matter. Rather than understanding the mind, the East developed a totally different approach, and their approach was disidentifying with the mind: “I am not the mind.” Once this awareness becomes crystallized in you, the mind becomes impotent.

The whole power of the mind is in your identification with it. So it was found to be useless to go unnecessarily digging for roots, finding causes behind causes, working out through dreams, analyzing dreams, interpreting dreams. And every psychologist finds a different root, finds a different interpretation, finds a different cause. Psychology is not yet a science; it is still fictitious.

If you go to Sigmund Freud, your dream will be interpreted in sexual terms. His mind is obsessed with sex. Bring anything and immediately he will find an interpretation that it is sexual.

Go to Alfred Adler, the man who founded another school of psychology – analytical psychology … He is obsessed with another idea: will to power. So whatever you dream will be interpreted according to that idea – it is will to power. Go to Carl Gustav Jung, he interprets every dream as a faraway echo from your past lives. His interpretation is mythological. And there are many other schools.

Te East simply bypassed the mind. Rather than finding out the causes and roots and reasons, they found out one thing: from where does the mind get its power? From where does the energy come to feed it? The energy to feed the mind comes from your identification that “I am it.” They broke that bridge. That’s what awareness is: being aware that “I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am not even the heart; I am simply pure awareness, a sakshi.”

As this awareness deepens, becomes crystallized, the mind has more and more a shadow existence. Its impact on you loses all force. And when the awareness is a hundred percent settled, mind simply evaporates.

I will not tell you, Suparni, to make an effort to understand the roots of your mind and its patterns; it is simply a useless wastage of time. Just awareness is enough, more than enough. As you become aware, you come out of the grip of the mind, and the mind remains almost a dead fossil. There is no need to bother from where the greed came, the real question is how to get out of it. The question is not from where the ego arose – these are intellectual questions which are not significant for a seeker.

Link below is to all the chanting files used for online satsang

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=825d2cf346821ecd&id=825D2CF346821ECD%21314&authkey=!AMh5k9dvnnCepe0

Satsang Today, Saturday, September 21

At 6 pm California Time

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

Use the password "edji" for two different entry screens.

Put audio on pause.

TOPIC: Self-Realization 

Who Am I?

I ask my students to practice loving, accepting “abidance” into one’s sense of I Am, often first grasped as energy in one’s chest, in the area of the heart.  Finding it, concentrating on it, wondering about its nature and how it arose, then lovingly abiding in the I Am sense will lead eventually to Self-Realization.

Self-Realization is a discovery outside of the mind and thinking about who you are.

It is not a transcendental experience outside of Consciousness, but a recognition by Consciousness of its own nature within the confines of an embodied being—you.

Self-Realization is simultaneously an experience and an understanding, both of which are difficult to describe because any words used are words of the world and worldly experience, and thus when heard, will convey different meanings to the Self-Realized, and to the non-Realized.

Yet, somehow I am required to point towards that state/knowledge of Realization even if just to give the seeker encouragement that there is more to an awakened Consciousness than to one that has not awakened.

One of the first realizations that flow from Self-Realization is that you are not your physical body.  Instead, you are no thing, you are Consciousness itself which contains everything but is not a thing itself.

Your first identification after rejecting your body as the totality of you, is recognizing yourself as a Subtle Body, an envelope of energetic presence that arises from long-term meditation on the I-Am sensation. This subtle body is the energetic “presence” through which all of the individual’s energies flow as healing energies, bliss, ecstasies, heat phenomena, vibrations and internal sensations of all sorts. It permeates the entire physical body and extends into the physical world as an “energetic body.”

The Subtle Body is the home of all imaginations and imaging, thoughts and mind, memories and all emotions.  The Subtle Body can affect the physical body and vice-versa, but really is a whole different level of existence. It is also home to the experience of emptiness or the various Voids of the Buddhists.

I will not say much about the next level, the Causal Body, except that it is the place of awareness without self-awareness.  You are aware, but not aware of the world, or even aware that you are aware.  There is no self-awareness, and no world-awareness.  It is pure awareness with no object or self-awareness of being aware.

The deepest level of Consciousness is a “state” wherein you are aware that you exist, that you are consciousness, and you rest in light and bliss.  Your “nature” at this level of experience is of being light, energy, and bliss.  This state is always present permeating the gross and Subtle bodies, in the waking state, in dream and in deep sleep.  It is always here, but you need to experience it in exclusivity of other states in order to recognize and hold onto it while in the gross, Subtle, or Causal bodies.

Not everyone will experience these four bodies or any such progression.  There are other paths to several different sorts of Self-Realization.  This is a guide to the kind of Self-Realization of which I speak, as sentience embodied in an individual existence with divine roots.

Many people complain that by providing such a model, I doom students to a fixed path. I have not found this to be the case.  I have found that those not suited for this path, drift away to someone else teaching experiences and a path they better understand.  This is a very subtle path not given much to simplification.  Everything I say, everything, is not Truth, but a pointer to different kinds of spiritual experiences and interpretations.

As another pointer, I’ll state what I experience now, which is more or less my prevailing experience.

I do not NEED to look within, because always part of my attention is fixed inwards towards the Subtle, Causal and Turiya “bodies,” which are really just aspects of an embodied Consciousness.  But if I do, when I look “within,” I “see” and “feel” a vast emptiness, an illuminated inner world of vast spaciousness that extends inwards and backwards into a background of ecstatic bliss.  When I feel this bliss, I find it extends everywhere inside and outside, but “vibrates” and deeply affects the area near my physical heart, but it is not in the physical heart, but the sense of presence that penetrates my physical heart.

The more I fix on that bliss, the more it grabs me and the more powerful it feels.  That bliss then flows outwards through my hands and head into the world, and downwards into my legs and feet into the ground.

In the background, as I “feel” and “see” deep inside, I see a wall of light, bright white light, which when I focus on it becomes pure ecstasy.  My presence and body becomes gripped in an ecstatic embrace and I can hardly move for fear of ending that state.

Washing through me during all of this is the knowledge that I am home.  This is me, ecstatic Consciousness as a localized sentient being. This is what I am: Consciousness, existence, bliss.  Everything else is secondary to this primary experience and recognition.  There is complete delight in one’s own self experience.

There is much more than this, but I thought it enough to describe this base state without going into more nuances, such as the interplay between the “divine” and the individual, the descent of grace, and love as the key to Self-Realization.

JU;Y 22, 2013 SATSANG VIDEO

Edji Online Satsang July 20, 2013 from Edji Sangha on Vimeo.

Will you come to a live Satsang In Northridge on Saturday?

If enough are interested, we will have a live Satsang at my house again next Saturday at 6 PM alongside online Satsang.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, STAY YOUR INTEREST IN A COMMENT BELOW OR EMAIL ME.

LIVE AND ONLINE SATSANG TODAY, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2013, 6 PM

Satsang is live from Los Angeles and online.

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

Sign in with the password "edji" used twice.

TOPIC: There is more to self-realization and being a good teacher, than just spiritual experiences of awakening. There is experience, character, compassion, and methods to be taken into consideration.

3 Day Self-Realization Retreat in October=Los Angeles

THREE-DAY 

SELF-REALIZATION RETREAT

IN LOS ANGELES

IN HONOR OF ROBERT ADAMS

OCTOBER 18-20, 2013

AT: FOLLOW YOUR HEART

WITH ED MUZIKA AND DEEYA

     Deeya has generously donated her teaching space for a three-day retreat at Follow Your Heart, the yoga studio annex to the restaurant used by Robert Adams and his students from 1989-1995 in Canoga Park, Los Angeles.

     The retreat is dedicated to learning methods for Self-Realization, from Ramana's abiding in the Self to Nisargadatta's loving focusing on the I Am, to exploring Subtle Body energies as an antechamber of Self. We will explore levels of the Self and the nature of Consciousness and why these techniques work.

      There will be intensive chanting to still the mind and open the heart, meditation, both silent and guided, talks, and question and answer. 

     We will walk in Robert’s park as he walked with his students, to feel his lingering presence.  

     The EVENT IS FREE, BUT A DONATION TO COVER COSTS  IS APPRECIATED.

     Each evening we will have a late dinner at Follow Your Heart.

     email: satsang(dot)online(at)gmail(dot)com

                   devoteddeeya(at)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk

Address: 21825 Sherman Way, Canoga Park, CA 91303, United States

Friday 18th 10.30am-6.30pm; Saturday 19th 12.30pm-8.30pm; Sunday 20th 12.30pm-8.30pm

VIDEO OF JUNE 22, 2013 SATSANG NOW AVAILABLE

Edji Online Satsang June 22, 2013 from Edji Sangha on Vimeo.

The Guru

There is far more to a guru than the spiritual experiences he or she has had and the interpretations given to them.

There are so many spiritual experiences that everyone has during a lifetime of seeking, ranging from the spectacular, but meaningless, to the usual crowd of experiences that most everyone has over many years of training: various sorts of inner emptinesses or Voids in one’s inner, subjective world, bliss experiences, awareness of one’s sense of presence as being separate from the body, various kinds of love experiences of Consciousness itself as well as of objects, experiences of God, awareness of flowing energies within, sometimes with attending colors and emotions, devotional experiences, surrender experiences, initiation and Shaktipat experiences, etc.

In my traditions, Self-Realization experiences of two sorts, of the manifest self of an embodied, energetic being with a full range of affect and humanity, associated with a divine aspect of witnessing the dynamic power core of the universe which is the divine.

Then there is the realization of the Self as beyond Consciousness, the Absolute, the Witness, ParaBrahman, untouched by anything in Consciousness, beyond even immortality.

Then there is the Self-Realization of Zen, as a human being immersed in the world as an energetic being in existence, but also being a “man of no rank,” untouched by the world, untouched even by love or death, totally at home with his or her life, no matter how mundane or outwardly grand.

                               

THERE ARE ALL THESE KINDS OF EXPEIENCES A GURU OR TEACHER MAY HAVE, BUT THERE IS MUCH MORE TO THEM THAN JUST THEIR SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES. THERE ARE THE INTERPRETATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS THEY GIVE THESE EXPERIENCES. THIS IS THE ATTENDING PHILOSOPHY THAT EXPLAINS WHAT THEY MEAN.

There also are the methods he or she uses to bring their students to realization of their realization, ranging from an infinite number of meditations and techniques, from the Just Sitting of Soto Zen, to the Koans of Rinzai Zen, to Vipassana of the Theravadins, to the meditations on the various kinds of emptiness of some Tibetan schools.

Other teachers focus on the energy body, or Subtle Body awakening the internal flows of energy and visualizations, Kundalini, the use of love of the Guru or another as an awakening device.

The more experienced teachers use “cooking,” to help awakening students by frustrating them, or acting in ways contrary to their deep beliefs as to how awakened being should act, or by exposing their inner conflicts, rage, anger, jealousy, and pride that prevent their free-flowing manifestation.  There are so MANY people posing as teachers or healers that have not been cooked enough.  They remain fragilely self-defended, and ill at ease with themselves.

Lastly, the Guru is much more than any and all of these.  He or she brings 30, 40 and even 60 years of training to the table in his role as spiritual teacher with students.

There are so many current “teachers”  who have had a couple of awakening experiences and immediately become teachers, traveling the world with tip of the iceberg awakening experiences, and extremely shallow understandings of various spiritual states, the human mind, and of human emotions.  I am talking about the entire current crop of spiritual teachers who have had five or ten years of self-inquiry, or have had a few experiences, and set themselves up as teachers.

You see, a real guru is someone who has actively explored his or her beingness for 30 years or more and who has studied under one teacher for many years, and who has met and studied under many other teachers.

This person has seen it all, so to speak, and embraces spirituality as a life-style, not just one or more awakening experience.

This person has lived with and seen Gurus, great and not so great, famous and not so famous, and has no illusions about how a Guru will or should act.

The teacher has been cooked by many gurus and has penetrated at least one tradition very deeply as a devotee, a student open to learning, and who has interacted with hundreds or thousands of other seekers through the years, practiced decades of meditation, chanting and Mantras, Kriya Yoga, pranayama and other yogic practices.  He or she is not stuck in the after effects of a single awakening experience, but has had many large awakenings, and maybe dozens or hundreds of small awakenings.

This teacher is recognized by a teacher by masters because of his or her stability, seasoning, ability to tolerate disasters and munificence equally. He or she may be legendary of outbreaks of rage, such as Muktananda, and to a degree, Seung Sahn Soen Sah, or a paradigm of calm acceptance of whatever arises, like Thich Thien-An.

What they have that is different from lesser teachers is a long lifetime of experience dealing with other teachers, other traditions, and with hundreds if not thousands of students.

It is rare to be able to study under someone like this, like Robert Adams with 55 years of post-awakening experiences and 17 years of traveling in India studying under dozens of other masters.

It is rare to be able to study under a Maezumi with 40 or 50 years of study and practice as a sixth generation Zen master in his own family.

It is rare to get close to a great teacher like Muktananda who was a master of cooking thousands of students and awakening them with Shaktipat and other methods.

Being with a master is not only with a person who can help you “awakening” to aspects of who and what you are, but who can provide exposure to an entire lifestyle of living.  A Guru is not only someone who can help you discover yourself, but also gives you a way of living and being with others that is entirely different form a conventional life: a Guru also gives a lifestyle model, whether you totally accept it or not, a lifestyle of self-assured, grounded, manifestations of the power of a realized, embodied living truth of a tradition.

So many of the new teachers never had a teacher, they just read books and “realized” who they were from books or a chance exposure to one or two teachers. They have not been cooked or tested.  They have not been stressed by a teacher to their limits and beyond.  They have not had their “realizations” matured by adding decades of life and teaching experiences.  Some of these older teachers never trained under teachers, feel their life experiences along with their own, solipsistic cogitations, make them a guru, although they avoid that label like the plague.

If I were to choose a teacher though, and just beginning, I would pick someone at least 50 years old who has had at least 30 years on the path, and who is well-received by other mature teachers.  Then stay with that teacher a long while.  Imbibe everything.  Soak up what he or she has to offer before moving away.  Don’t waste your time with immature and self-proclaimed teachers unless you accept them only like you would a college instructor, as someone just a step or two ahead of you.

Real teachers may be very hard to live with because they constantly expose things in you that you are terrified to see: rage, fear of annihilation and death of self, jealousy, vulnerability, feeling clumsy and inept.  All these things you will feel around a good teacher, one who presses you, tests you, fries you in your own arrogance and self-proclaimed specialness.

Do you have the courage?  Good luck!