Nisargadatta Blaming His Students Thickness and My Response

"You people come here wanting something. What you want may be knowledge with a capital 'K' - the highest Truth - but nonetheless you do want something. Most of you have been coming here for quite some time. Why? If there had been apperception of what I have been saying, you should have stopped coming here long ago! But what actually has been happening is that you have been coming here day after day, identified as individual beings, male or female, with several persons and things you call 'mine'. Also, you think you have been coming here, of your own volition, to see another individual - a Guru - who, you expect, will give you 'liberation' from your 'bondage'.

Do you not see how ridiculous all this is ? Your coming here day after day only shows that you are not prepared to accept my word that there is no such thing as an 'individual'; that the 'individual' is nothing but an appearance; that an appearance cannot have any 'bondage' and, therefore, there is no question of any 'liberation' for an appearance.

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Like Krishnamurti he blames his students for not getting what he offers. It just takes a long time, perseverance, and earnestness on a path of self-exploration.

He was far too much stuck in theory and Hindu spiritual terms which caused confusion.

He needed to emphasize that there is no truth in words, including his, because words cannot convey his state. All words cause problems until and even after one has entered emptiness, but gradual identification with emptiness removes the importance of words and their deluding capacity.

Second, he needed to emphasize even more the necessity of finding the I Am sensation and dwell their for a long, long time. Not searching for the I-thought or where it arising, but feeling the I-sensation, the I Am.

But he talked too much about too many things, which made him an entertainer instead of the greatest guru ever.

Fortunately Pradeep Apte combed through all of Nisargadatta's book and abstracted the 100+ paragraphs dedicated to the I Am and self-inquiry.

The exact same criticism can be leveled at Ramana.

Some people feel confused by changes in my teaching.

Six years ago I spope of the Absolute versus the manifest including the world, body, and mind, and spoke of the path of self-inquiry through inner observation, and all that there is ultimately is emptiness. All objects, all the world and our bodies are permeated by a lighted emptiness.

Then I spoke of realizing the Manifest Self, divine sentience itself living thrhough the body. I spoke of finding God within, first perceived as Other, then seen as your own deeper Self. The manifest Self is found through devotion, love of other, and feelinh the explosion of light, energy, and bliss welling up from the dark depths of your Self.

For six years I taught this, how to realize that life fore, that inner light, that Shakti within through inner, feeling exploration of emotions, light the energy body, one's sense of presence. I taught self-inquiry through feeling, not looking, through love, not meditation, and self-inquiry, by focusing on the I-sensation, letting it grow into one's sense of presence ravealing the energy or Subtle body.

I truly believe that pursuit of an awakening the Manifest Self, actually of becoming aware of the Manifest Self within, and then is brought forth into the human world to bring love, light, compassion and service is the best teachings for our time, our era of a dying world filled with death, war, terrorism, mass shootings, and politics of corruption.

But, all that arises from within in terms of feeling relates to the body, which narrows down one's focus, contracts one's being into a body and relationships, and I am so much more than this.

By focusing on the I Am sensation, the energy body, love, sadness, depression, anger, and body sensations, I have found they all evaporate again, and there is only space, lighted emptiness, vast without border, wherein everything is seen/felt to be empty, and all concepts left behind. The yearning and burning, the big emotions, awakening gthe energy body, the heart and gut, realizing the divine within were necessary before stepping back into the Void, leaving nothing undone.

Without concepts there is no self, no Self, no inner, outer, manifest or unmanifest. There is just total freedom, and I cannot say I am any of this. There is no longer anything to identify with, even emptiness. Emptiness itself is empty, and exists only in the mind.

When thus I rest, I am everywhere and nowhere, coextensive with emptiness, yet not emptiness. I am not a witness anymore of emptiness, because there is no witness, nor is there identification with emptiness or the body. Identification is gone.

I only know there is nothing to be known calmly and equally resting in the unchanging Void and ever changing world. Like Almaas, like Nisargadatta, like Robert, I keep unfolding, changing, expanding.

Kashmir Shaivism emphasizes a truth, a repeated experience, that one can remain idetified wiuth the day to day experiences of your body, or open up your field of experience through meditation and other spiritual practices, until you primarily dwell in the expanded, then universal Void, the totality of empty space, self-illuminated by the light of Consciousness itself. This is not a cold dry place, but one of a very calm joy and continuous background bliss, subtley pervading ...everything.

Then all objects, including your body, are apprehended as illumined Void, empty space itself, and your identification passes to that void rather than your body or possessions. 

You have broadened and expanded who and what you are.
This is exactly the same teaching as Advaita Vedanta in the end. Shaivites call if becoming Shiva. Vedantists call it residing in the Absolute. So few ever reach this. let alone going beyond it.

The paths are different in the beginning with Advaita emphasizing self-inquiry and abiding in the I-sensation, while the Shaivites emphasize energies and Tantric practices.  Practicing both is a miracle!

FROM STEVE

FROM STEVE WHO IS DOING NICELY. He is passing through the overt bliss states of the bliss body to find a deeper bliss and peace.

Good Morning Sri Edji, Thank you for being here Master.

I seem to be losing interest in listening and feeling music all night long (for about 2 years now) and.don't need the blissful states, as there seems to be a deep underlying bliss that is always present anyway.

I am seeing the Earth and all the objects, things, experiences as predetermined stage plays. The play is always changing, coming and going people, places, events.

I am losing everything/belief systems.

Its weird and scary sitting back somewhere and watching all the mechanical people, cars, buildings, sky...everything just move to some invisible force.

And even this body is doing that shit too! This body is just a damn robot.

This is 'my' normal state a lot of the time now. Feel like I broke through a barrier.

I see my wife's emotions and mouth moving but it is just meaningless.

Right now the pets and beautiful little bugs, gnats, little worms, fish are most interesting but nothing else is.

The Way of the Falling Leaf

There are people who totally misunderstand my message on spiritual seeking, thinking I am siding with the Neo-Advaita do-nothings and know-nothings in their denial of spiritual paths and effort. Just because their are many spiritual paths with differing goals and experiences, yet everyone ends up where they started as ordinary humans confronting problems of everyday life, does not negate seeking and spiritual effort. Every moment of effort is transformative.

Anyone of integrity and honesty to self, who sincerely seeks truth, God, Self, or to understand Consciousness over a lifetime, and who comes to a position of rest, reaches rest because he has found what he did not know he was looking for, whatever that is for him. That path has transformed him into a different kind of ordinary man. The ordinary man who started at 0 degrees, is not t ordinary man of 360 degrees.

At the end of his path he has seen and experienced things 99% of the human race regards as pure fantasy, such as directly experiencing emptiness or the Void, the inner light of Consciousness, periods of great bliss, internal energies and healing, and has lost his primary identification with his body, identifying now more with different aspects of Consciousness, and different spiritual stations such as one of being totally surrendered to life in the moment, the relative disappearance of mind, yet living day to day with appropriate actions and attitudes, as well as recognizing that all life is precious.

He has truly been transformed with nothing special to do except to live out his life, letting it live through him rather than attempting to master or control anything. He is a renunciate who renounces nothing, a veritable vagabond with no path, no sustained desires, just touching earth in the gentlest way, and living in peace. He has been transformed into a cloudlike form, with continuous change totally embraced, forged by 20, 30, 40, 50 years of spiritual effort, and thereby transcending all teachings and all practices.

Therefore do not despair that your path is long and difficult. Do not despair that you know nothing, because all teachings and all spiritual states are eventually experienced as empty.

Do not fear that you will never find your way, nor chafe at the drive to endless spiritual practice. Not one minute of effort goes to waste and every obstacle is a blessing, forging, transforming. The key is perseverance and constant movement and growth until your specific spiritual path flowers through you.

Robert Adams clearest espression of his teachings and path

Sadhana is like going to school. You have to start in kindergarten, go to the first grade, the fifth grade, junior high school, senior high school, college to university. This is true of sadhana. You practice one form of sadhana for years perhaps and then you may grow out of it to other forms, to higher forms. Until you come to the realization that there is no sadhana. All these years I've been spending standing on one foot with my arm in the air, chanting mantras, doing pranayamas has been unnecessary. Now you can only say this when you've arrived a certain place in life. The stronger you're attached to this earth the more sadhanas you have to do. But as you begin to lose attachment to this earth your form of sadhana changes. Your spiritual practices change. They become less and less. Since you're beginning to realize that you are the pure awareness. Does the pure awareness have to do sadhana? Or does God have to do spiritual practices?

You begin to feel your reality. The more you feel the reality of who you are the more the body keeps dropping away. Until again that day comes when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have no body. Yet the body appears. This part becomes a paradox when you try to use words to explain it. You have no body and at the same time you have a body. You appear to be demonstrating a body. Others see you as a body but you realize that this is a cosmic joke. For there is no body, there is no world, there is no universe, there is only consciousness, effortless, choiceless, pure awareness, boundless space.

Prior to total enlightenment you feel this about yourself. That you are consciousness, that you are not the body, you're absolute reality. As you go deeper into that, you become like boundless space. You no longer are confined to a place. There is no longer confinement. Now the body appears like a jail for you. You appear confined to your body. It's like you're in prison. There is no freedom. As you come closer to enlightenment, you begin to realize you are not the body but you still feel confined without a body. Then the final stage you become the Self of everything.You realize that you are in the trees, the ocean, the planets, the stars you are everything.You have become all-pervading, omnipresence. Yet when people look at you, you seem to be a body. So you keep silent. You do not try to explain yourself or prove anything.There is no longer anything you have to do. You are completely out of it.

Now why would you want to become like this? What is the purpose of being this way? If you've heard about bliss, the peace beyond understanding, you have become that, total happiness.The substratum behind all existence is total joy, total happiness, total peace, bliss consciousness. This is your real nature this is what you are.

Robert Adams

This too is my experience.  I had a five year adventure into the worlds of the Subtle or energy Body, healing energies, long periods of great bliss and energies, the astral worlds, etc.  But now, only expanse, space, totality, pervasiveness.  There is bliss too, but one far more subtle than before.  But I do get irritated when the world tries to drag me back into a focus on it with its endless problems, thinking, noise, discussion, and non-harmony.

If you want peace, be quiet and go within.  Feel the I Am, let it grow, let the energies blossom, feel the ecstasies and love, and then let it all go; let them all evaporate into non-differentiated spaciousness and the peace of being at rest in unbounded, undifferentiated awareness. 

BE VERY CLEAR

BE VERY CLEAR: Religion and spirituality are all about 1. Belief and 2. Experience.

Belief encompasses ideas about God, the Absolute, Consciousness, the divine, all is Consciousness, all is Brahman, all is Shakti, the Subtle, Causal, and Turiya Bodies, prophets, son-of-God, effectiveness of prayer, existence of heaven and hell.

Experience is all about everyday experiences of the world, sex, eating, seeing, hearing, etc., dreams, consciousness without an object.  It also encompasses all the meditative and pranayama experiences of light, the Void, emptiness, visions, subjectivity versus objectivity, experiencing the divine, God, Shakti, sense of presence, energy body, Kundalini.

Experiences also include experiencing the gray area of astral projection, shadow entities such as demons or angels, other worlds where there is an overlapping of individual internal experiences and the “outer objective” world.

But, experiences mean absolutely nothing until you talk about them and give them meaning, which supports or becomes a belief, which then guides your thinking, behaviors, and eventually your teachings if you become a teacher.

It is very, very difficult for people who experience various spiritual and meditative experiences, NOT to interpret them in terms of existing belief systems, whether of Christianity, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, of God, the divine, the devil, demons, angels, or theories of Consciousness, beingness, the absolute, the witness/witnessed.

After you have seen through the apparent truth of thoughts, beliefs, ideology, religions, etc., you see and understand it is all just talk, entertainment, artificially generating “special” or spiritual experiences through meditation, chanting, and conversion experiences.

All of this happens within an apparent external world of belief systems of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and increasing impacr of Mohammedism.  Then there is the pervasiveness of the ideas and ethics of capitalism. Socialism, Keynsian economics versus monetarism, New Age concepts, Shammanism, feminism, racism, authoritarianism versus democracy, etc.

We are lost in multiple seas of concepts and ever changing experiences.

What to do; what to do?

In the end it all comes down to living your life in a way that when you look back at your life in retrospect, you can do so without too much pain or regret, and when you look forward within the perspective of not experiencing too much regret or guilt in the future, how do I act?  Do I act with integrity, kindness, compassion and loyalty, or do I act in ways to maximize my own happiness in every moment?  Are we giving or greedy?  Are we patient or impulsive?  Do we strive or rest in ourselves?

Then spirituality becomes not a matter of belief or experiences, but of ethics, of becoming the good shepherd, or a wolf, a peacemaker or war monger, a helper or a taker.  Then by our example we affect others rather than by creating or repeating belief systems and spiritual practices.

However, none of this is possible until you have read about belief systems, experienced all kinds of meditations, spiritual experiences, and teachers, to realize all of this is just stimulation, distraction from living life, and just plain old entertainment.

MY NEW POLITICAL BLOG

A BLOG DEMONSTRATING THAT BERNIE SANDERS IS THE ONLY TRUE ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT CHOICE, NOT TRUMP, CRUZ, CARSON, AND CERTAINLY NOT HILLARY.

http://bernies-sanders.blogspot.com/

IS THERE ANY REASON TO TRUST GOVERNMENT?

I started working in government during graduate school, and even got an M.A. in Public Management. I was an urban planner working for multiple state and municipal agencies over decades. I was heavily inevolved in politics in Cleveland, Detroit, national unions, th cities of Los Angelesanta Monica, the state of California, and as operations anager of Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign. That is, I have been involved in government for nearly five decades.

My conclusion: The is no reason to trust government on any level, muniucipal, county, state, federal. There is no reason to trust the legal system on any level.

Corruption, lying, nepotism, cronyism, favoritism exists on all levels of government at least as severe as in private industry.

Just take a look at Chris Critie's New Jersey, NY politics, Chicago's mayor, the criminal justice system's war on blacks, 1,200 cop killings a year, Obama's dismal failure to control Wall Street, etc. Anyone who "trusts" that governments actually are there for the people, has not actually worked in government.

Local, state, and federal employees almost always are motivated to keep their jobs by shifting blame for failures, lying, pushing for larger public pensions, lying to the public just about everything.

The legal system is pervaded by cronyism, corruption, favoritism, bribery, extortion, lying cops and prosecutors, etc.

There is no reason to trust Obama, the Democrats, or the Republicans about anything. I don't trust them about guns, taxes, welfare, fair law enforcement, and never trust them about what they really think as opposed to expressed programs and policy.

Government are the minions of the wealthy, and of their own corruption.

In such a world, one has to be self-protective and self-sufficient, hopefully by creating communities where people create mutual support systems of legal aid, self-defense, and alternatives supply of food and infrastructure maintenance, such as some religious comunities are doing with hydroponics, and internal self-regulation. No sinle man or woman, even well-armed, can stand against the state.

Cooper was obviously talking about an almost universal fear and anger against the state that has failed America by not providing a fair deal for all, and Obama and this author sweeps aside these fears as just craziness.

Spirituality can consist of stories told to us by people who claim to know. Stories such as “All is God; all is Brahman; the life force is God who lives through you; everything is Consciousness; everything is energy; the world is not real; you don’t exist; I don’t exist; the world does not exist; everything is Kali Ma; everything is Shakti; the Self contains everything; the ultimate witness is eternal; the world is temporary.”

I can assure you there are thousands of more such stories, and one man’s truth is another’s blasphemy. As Seung Sahn would say, “You make a mistake as soon as you open your mouth,” and as Huang Po, the Sixth Patriarch said, “The Only truth is that there is no truth, and beware even of this truth.”

Stories, when taken as truth or the real, divide us from other story holders and defenders.

Spirituality can also consist of spiritual experiences or visions, lights, energies, Kundalini, the Void, the Light of Consciousness, Third Eye experiences, the Subtle Body, the Causal Body, Turiya, the Witness, Love, surrender, grace, astral planes, demons, ghosts, and angels, the emptiness or the Void, the life force, the energy body, the sense of presence.   All of these can be experienced.  What is important is what you make of these experiences.

Do you connect them to a story, an idea of  what exists and how Consciousness or God works?  Do you use these experiences to support the stories of Kashmir Shaivism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, or mystical Christianity, or do you use it to create your own story?

Or do you reject all stories, all beliefs, all systems, and also let all states and experiences come and go without attachment, interpretation, or explanation?

100% of traditional spirituality, known as the world’s great religions, encompasses 95% of all spirituality, an consists almost totally of stories, with a bit of prayer, services, and chanting/singing thrown in.

I would say that 75% of all non-traditional spirituality exists in the area of seekers, seeking the best story they can grasp, or which “resonates” with what they already believe or think they know. It is basically confirmatory with their existing knowledge and intuition.

The other 25% of seekers are those who seek states, love, surrender, devotion, knowledge, self-realization, energies, and who practice meditation, self-inquiry, Kundalini Yoga, Jnana Yoga, and who will actually go to teachers  and try to learn from them.

It is from this 25% of the 5% non-traditional group that new teachings, new masters, new stories are born.  But even of this 25%, only 20% practice and seek even for a decade, and a rare one will seek for two or three decades, exhaustively exploring different paths and teachers, wandering to and fro until they settle on some story, some practices, some teachers. Most of this 15% burn out at some point and just leave the spiritual arena. Many of these will proclaim they have awakened based on one of their experiences, or a belief that enlightenment is just a knowing, an idea of the ultimate.

Only 5% of the 25% non-traditional ever attains a place where which can be called awakening  in any way.

All of these people know that all stories are just that and are not truth.  They also know that almost all “spiritual experiences” are themselves brief or last but a few months, and from which they spin their stories, write their books, and make a living selling workshops, retreats, and ashrams.

But the wise man knows peace because he or she has thoroughly explored himself experientially.  He or she has heard all the stories, and they no longer touch him.  He or she have experienced all the experiences common to those who self-explore, from energies, presence, the energy body, the sense of the divine, they feel the life-force directly, they have had visions, constantly experience the Void as well as the light and energies that permeate the Void, and ar also aware that they witness all of these things in Consciousness.
There is no where else to go, nothing more to be experienced.

There is no I, but he is at peace everywhere, for all places are equal, all chores the same.

No more seeking love, no more seeking security, no more seeking God, energies, enlightenment, or knowledge, he is at rest. All passes as entertainment for him.  He rests in his own emptiness, his own light, his own being and presence.  Sometimes, to others, magic seems to happen around him; but to him, everything is magic, everything is moving even though nothing moves.  But he does not add stories such as everything is consciousness, or Brahman, or Void, or no-self, or Ma Shakti.  These he knows as children’s stories or as the stories teachers tell to snare followers, and this act almost always works because so few have escaped the mind and stories.

       Propaganda, advertising, TV, newspapers, are all stories trapping people into a common world of mundane ignorance. The rest of the non-spiritual world is lost in entertainment, football, basketball, America has talent, Dancing with the Stars, poker, bridge, board games, and music.  All the while, those engaged in traditional spirituality are busy backbiting, arguing, or killing each other.

SATSANG?

I am toying with the idea of holding Satsang again on Sundays at noon Arizona time.  I stopped about 10 months ago because so few were coming, and the effort to record Satsang, edit them, and post them to youtube was quite extensive.  If something does not grow, it dies.

If the feedback is very positive, we can start again.  But if it is as tepid as it was a year ago, I’ll do as I do now, and pay attention to those who come to Arizona to visit with me in person.

"O Man, What Are You Looking For?"

When it comes to “spirituality” and spiritual experiences, one man’s  experience of God may be another’s experience of Chi energies, a pineal gland orgasm, complete emotional openness, or many other types of experience.

For example, Muktananda speaks of the Self as witness consciousness.  But he also speaks of it as being a Blue Pearl (Turiya), within the other bodies seen as different colored lights (Physical, Subtle, Causal Bodies).  He was obsessed with spiritual experiences, visions, demons, kriya’s, Kundalini experiences, Samadhis, etc.  It is great entertainment, and those who follow Kashmir Shaivism  with its guru-fixation, mantra meditation will have years of spiritual visions, astral projections, various energy movements, bliss, etc.

But to what avail?  When all is said and done, what did he get out of his 50 years of practice except self-satisfaction that he understood the ontology of Consciousness of Kashmir Shaivism along with years of unusual experiences and interpretations of these experiences along philosophical lines?   I understand in the end he died of severe hypotension brought on by an abrupt withdrawal from Valium.

Rajneesh with all of his behavioral tomfoolery and hundred written books with hundreds of thousands of worshipping followers, himself was a drug addict which caused failing health and finally death.

Krishnamurti complained about his life in that he got cancer, which he felt he should have been sheltered from because he led such a “pure” life.  He also had a 30 year affair with his friend’s wife, and complained at the end of his life no one had gotten what he was speaking of.

Maezumi Roshi, a man I most admired, lost his credibility because of serial adultery with students through two marriages, and who got drunk one night, entered a Jacuzzi, fell asleep, and drowned.

Adi Da, Da Free John, a drug addict and sex-addicted narcissist, died of sudden cardiac arrest after a decade of Viagra abuse used to sustain his relentless sexual appetite.

Chogyam Trungpa drank himself to death, dying of liver failure before he was 50.

And on and on it goes from the Hari Krishna sect, to Ragneeshpuram, to the TM cult, dozens of suicidal, drug and sex addicted gurus with hundreds of thousands worshipping followers, not unlike groupies around musicians, sports celebrities, or movie stars, wanting to get something from the people they worshipped, whether love, sex, self-knowledge, energies, or maybe even happiness.

What are you looking for?

God? Sex? Love?  Self-Realization? Emptiness? The Void?  Bliss? Samadhi? A spiritual family?  Energies? Kundalini awakening? A Hindu or Buddhist, or Christian belief system?  A Muslim belief system?

All the human race is lost and seeking because they are locked into conventional belief systems, and political correctness, and enforced consumerism, such that 80% of their intellectual, physical, and spiritual potential is forever lost to them, denied by conventional belief and knowledge.

Yet, all is within you and far more than even these gurus attained, but can only be known if you earnestly explore your own Self, your own experience in your own way.  But so few have the courage to go it alone.

But, it is really important to break out of your present entrapment in the conventional, and that usually entails a few years of inner searching through reading the words of previous spiritual teachers.  I especially recommend self-inquiry, searching for the sense of I Am and abiding there, abiding in your sense of presence in your heart. At the same time, live in the conventional world as best you can.

What if there were no path?

What if there were no path? What if there were so many paths and none of them led to a “final” state or ultimate understanding?  What if thousands of lost souls had not followed Buddha seeking an end to suffering?  What if Buddha at 25 had seen death, disease, starvation in the world, and instead of seeking a way to end the anxiety in himself caused by such scenes, he sought instead ways to alleviate starvation, disease, and suffering in the world by direct action?

You see, all wisdom schools, all paths, all spiritual experiences already exist in you in a nascent state just waiting to be experienced depending on how you direct you attention.  Kundalini resides in you whether you are aware or not.  Emptiness, the Void, resides in all of your experiences whether you are aware or not.  Great love resides in you whether you are aware of it or not.  Peace resides in you whether you are aware of it or not. Each has its roots in you waiting the be sprouted by attention.

You can deliberately seek to awaken your Kundalini.  You can deliberately seek love, or to be aware of the love in you.  You can meditate on emptiness or sit in Shikantaza to become aware of states of being aware of awareness itself, the Void, the container of all experience.  You can walk down all these paths of energy, love, meditation, chanting, Shaktipat, Voidness, healing, crystals, koans, pranayama, or…..   You can just be aware of your own self in the world in a balanced inner-outer awareness welcoming whatever arises.

Instead of a directed awareness aimed at awakening in you an awareness of experiences others have said they have had by practicing certain pranayamas, chakra meditations, mudras, herb ingestion, yoga poses, emptiness meditations, worship the guru, Christ, or God, what about just be completely open to everything occurring within you and without you?

If the desire to find ultimate states arises within you (the Absolute, Parabrahman), instead of seeking such through reading Nisargadatta, Ramana, or Robert Adams, and then practicing self-inquiry, what if instead, we open to that within us that is propelling us to seek the Absolute?  What if we can be open to that which propels us to seek?  What is that within us that drives us to seek a Kundalini awakening, to seek the Absolute, to seek love, to seek God, to seek Turiya, or emptiness?

What is that within you that drives you to seek, which prevents you from just being in yourself as you are in the world?  What is its form?  How does that feeling actually feel like?  Feel it!  Own it!  Be it!  Bring whatever it is entirely into your sense of self.

What is it that drives you and makes you seek something you think you want but which you have not yet experienced? What drives you down one spiritual path after another, from one teacher to another?  What makes you a seeker?  What drives your seeking?

Buddha did not question his own seeking, and he went down one path after another to extreme degree before he found his solution, which was to end desire.  Nisargadatta followed his teacher’s words, looked within, found his sense of I Am, an attended to it until he experienced both the manifest and unmanifest selves.  He did not question his path.

J. Krishnamurti, so far as I know, is the only famous teacher that asks you to explore that which makes you seek, but really offered no way, no path, to explore one’s own self.

You do not find your inner world merely by looking within, because looking implies separation, a witness and an object.  It separates.

Instead, feel within, be aware of all tactile and emotional sensations within your body.  Accept those sensations.  Feel them, absorb them.  Feel the impetus to seek.  What is it for you?

As an aid, read Eugene Gendlin’s book entitled ‘Focusing’.

HELP GETTING OFF OPIOID ADDICTIONS

Over the years I have been contacted hundreds of time by people with addictions asking for help. I have not been of much help, because I didn't know much about opioid addiction to pills and heroin.

But here is it, a long, 78-page article on Huffington Post that explains why abstinence, or willpower-based self-attempts, or those found in 12-step programs of abstinence, fail 90% of the time, and cause tons of overdose deaths by addicts that are clean, but return to heroin at there former dose level, a dose level they can no longer tolerate.

The new paradigm is medical assistance using opioid partial agonist medication such as Suboxone, Naloxone, or Buprenorphine used alone. the relapse rate of programs using medical assistance is only 10% compared to 90% in programs based on abstinence, along with a very, very low rate of overdose death.

For the last few months I have been doing some research in this area, and found almost unanimous agreement about the success of medically assisted recovery and without the need for painful withdrawal. However, there is still much bias against medical assistance since recovery in the U.S. has always been associated with faith based, 12-step, or institutionalization of enforced abstinance, and the political clout backing this $12 billion dollar industry.

http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free-heroin-treatment

PLEASE SHARE THIS POST FAR AND WIDE FOR ANY FRIENDS YOU KNOW WHO MAY BE RESISTING TREATMENT, OR HAVE RELAPSED AFTER UNDERGOING THE USUAL ABSTINENCE BASED RECOVERY PROGRAMS.

Buddy Died Today

Buddy died this morning at his vet's clinic.

When I awoke this morning he was crying out in pain. He crawled up onto my lap and cried out.  Then he ran away and cried some more. Then he laid on the floor on his side, motionless, with rough breathing.  He had been getting fluids daily at the vet's office because of severe dehydration, but began to retain fluids about a six days ago ago.

Dr. St. Clair long suspected cancer, because his blood tests had been normal except for severe anemia, for which he was treating, and Buddy was too fragile to survive exploratory surgery.  His blood vessels just kept collapsing and he was retaining fluids. X-rays showed nothing of a tumor, but lots of gas and retained fluids. Buddy's decline was very rapid.

Buddy spent the last three weeks glued to me, on my lap, on my chest, following me around the house when he could manage it, and following me with his eyes when he couldn't.

But today the pain was just too much for him, so I gave him a large dose of Buprenorphine to calm him down because he looked panicked, and to ease his pain.  The unusual breathing made me know it was time.

All the staff at Grand Paws were very sympathetic and kind.  They all knew Buddy well as he came almost daily for fluids.  They were all very kind and several came in to say goodbye to him before he passed. I offer special thanks to Shannon, Joe, and Jeff, and the many, many, techs who gave Buddy fluids, enemas, pills, and who endured blood-lettings in the process, and also Dr. St. Clair who performed a perfect euthanasia.

Buddy's death for me is heartbreaking. I have not had anyone's death hit me so hard except for my father's, and another cat named Satchitananda (Satchi) who died in 1987.

It is so great to be able to feel this deeply again, to fully feel the sorrow, the emptiness, the loss, and to be able to cry freely.  I know after Satchi died the same year Robert died, I went into a three year depression, and finally came out after medication. But antidepressants also can blunt all feeling, so I stopped it after a few years.

Don't let anyone tell you that awakening means you are immune from attachments, loss, mourning, even fear, because if you are immune from them, you are also immune to love, bliss, and happiness.

Spiritual practice can leave you without feelings and detached as are so many spiritual teachers.  Be glad you can still feel.

Richard Wolff explains why life as we have known it in the United States is over. The economic collapse of 2007 marks the beginning of the great decline, of a self-destructing economy abandoned by capitalism to make more money in rapidly growing Third World Economies.

It is over for us. Richard explains in painful and very clear detail, why we are slipping into oblivion.

I saw his 2 hour video on Link TV called Alternatives to Capitalism which was breath-taking in its clarity of explaining the decline of the U.S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZU3wfjtIJY

His website: http://www.rdwolff.com/

When it comes to Self-Realization and enlightenment, for all intents and purposes, your mind is the enemy.  The mind replaces “realization” with knowing, which is head centered rather than heart centered.  Heart-centered should not be romanticized and transformed into the idea that it means love-oriented.  Actually, heart-centered awareness means that it “feels” like your center of gravity has moved a foot downwards from the middle of your brain into the region inside your body around where the physical heart resides.

The center of your beingness, your existence moves downward into your chest, or with Zen, even lower into your gut.  You “live” rom those areas as opposed from your thinking brain.  Thinking can go on and on, but it becomes just background noise unless you need it for some functioning.

People who come into spirituality inevitably begin by reading books and later going to teachers, but all of this head-learning has to be let go of in order for your center of gravity to drop into your heart.  This is the first step into enlightenment, realization of deeper bodies than the one created by your brain, including the energy body, bliss body, emotional body, one’s sense of the divine, the knot between the divine and the personal known as the Atman, or the I Am sensation.

To dwell here you need to let go of ALL understanding, realizing that accumulated knowledge keeps you in your head, locked into various concepts, spiritual ideologies, and the known, not spontaneous, but studied., and instead “FEEL” within your chest for the I-Am sensation. 

When found, dwell there, abide there is the I-Am feeling, the core of your awareness.  Listen to sacred music, chanting, as often as possible.  Practice loving-kindness to all beings, human and animal.  

Using this base, start loving your sense of Self.

What causes this strategy or method to fail, is reading too much, taking ideas and sayings from Osho, Nisargadatta, Krishna Menon, Ramana, Jean Klein, etc., then thinking about these ideas, criticizing and judging others too much, keeping yourself in your brain and mind.

“Experts” on terrorism, especially Jihadist-style terrorism, are now stating that somehow we have to create an anti-Jihadist ideology to counter ISIS and other such organizations.  They say ISIS recruits by bringing in youth who have no identity and feel rootless and lost, and give them an identity of being part of a religious crusade or world-wide stretch.

These experts say the problem is a lack of identity among the young who feel lost, confused, and see the utter inequity and injustice of life, and see ISIS as bring the world to justice under the one God, one faith, and one flag of ISIS.

I see one “correct” anti-ISIS “ideology” being one not of an opposing philosophy so to speak, but a turning away from thinking and identification in a conceptual way, with using a “feeling” introspection of our inner worlds in order to discover God within, Christ Consciousness, which is no more than an awareness centered in our spiritual hearts.

I call this realization of the Manifest Self, one’s own heart-center, which changes everything.  No longer caught in mind, concepts, ideas, one lives from the heart in total, open acceptance of everything that arises from within and without.

The problem is that there are so many conflicting spiritual paths with so many contradictory ends, definitions of enlightenment or self-realization, that this simple path and end, without the garnishment of complex spiritual philosophies and definitions of inner states such as Turiya, Samadhi, Sahaj Smadhi, Nirvakalpa Samadhi, Causal Body, Parabrahaman, etc.

If an ideology is to be grafted onto this style of self-realization, it can be simply described as realizing one’s divine self, Christ Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness, or one’s true self, deeper than mind, and within which mind is submerged.

That is, we replace an ideology of war, a religious war/crusade to fight injustice, with one directed towards self-understanding, self-realization as an affective-feeling-awareness rather than a murderous “thinking” identification with radicalism.

TWO NEW EMAILS FROM MY FAVORITE FAN Swami Chetanananda once said when you become a spiritual teacher you walk around with a target on your back for receipt of all kinds of projections of hate, insanity, despair, and disappointment. MESSAGE #1

“Back to your self degrading ARROGANT SELF BEHAVIOR. Attacking other teachers, judging the neo's as if your an authority on everything. Whose on Facebook you are ,your addicted to it, you cannot exist without your arrogant, demented view of those that don't agree with you. Your no doubt are bipolar and should see a psychiatrist for some help. I don't buy a word you say.Hate just emanates from your ARROGANT SPIRITUAL EGOTISTICAL MINDSET.You only know how to attack.DESTROY and manipulate. The women 's groups also attest to this with your attitude toward your remarks IN PRINT THAT THEY ARE TO BLAME. ALL NEARBY WOMEN ORGANIZATIONS WILL BE NOTIFIED. YOUR A ARROGANT CON ARTIST. YOU PUT YOUR NAME WITH OTHER TEACHERS THAT YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO, TAPING NICOLE 'S phone call.breaking up marriages. Your so so HATEFUL WITH NO REMORSE, A PIG, I TAKE THAT BACK A PIG IS BETTER THAN YOU.you have no idea ,only expirence,s and how to destroy, consciousness will NOT GO AWAY IT WILL KEEP ITS DILIGENT AND WATCHFUL EYE ON YOU. TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT PEOPLE YOU HAVE DESTROYED WITH YOUR HEARTFELT ARROGANT. BEHAVIOR.” MESSAGE #2

"That was spontaneous, consciousness at play.you ed the snake oil salesman of the century. The most ARROGANT SELF RIGHTEOUS, WOMEN GET WHAT THEY DESERVE PSEUDO GURU .NAH YOU GIVE GURU A BAD NAME.GO TO A DOCTOR AND GET HELP LET THE WORLD ALONE, BELIEVE ME IT WILL DO JUST FINE WITHOUT your ARROGANCE" bo szendel Email: jerrypesh@aol.com

Even worse from my point of view are former students who previously confided in me their deep and abiding love and devotion. Then one day they feel disappointment, or maybe feel ignored or even demeaned, and suddenly they flip, and to them, you have become the worst person in the world, maybe that has ever lived. Then they share their hatred to other students who are friends of their with exaggerated stories of how they were wronged, and a whole bunch of people respond believing the accusations.

FIRST STEPS

It is always interesting to read books of talks of great spiritual teachers like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Robert Adams, Ramakrishna, the Platform Sutra of Hui Neng, etc.  But you have to realize that what you are reading is usually their final teachings at the end of their lives.  You strain and strain to understand what they are talking about when they talk about the Witness, Parabrahman, Consciousness, awareness, Turiya, the Causal Body etc.  Finally, maybe after five or ten years you understand their teachings and you become a Facebook teacher, or start your own Sangha.

You don’t realize that true spirituality is not a matter of understanding, but of being, resting in an area of your awareness “deeper” than the thinking mind.

The absolute first step in any deep exploration of your Consciousness, your first step towards self-realization, is to discover the emptiness within your self, the so called Void nature of the mind and of the world.  You do that by cultivating the light of Consciousness, and also by “looking” with your mind’s inner vision, inwards, into the darkness you find within.  That inner vision coupled with cultivating the light of Consciousness is the essential first step towards enlightenment, especially towards understanding any aspect of Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta.

The easiest way inwards is to look inwards for the sense of I or I Am, usually eventually located in the heart area of your body.  Just do it twice a day for 30 minutes at a time in a formal sitting position with a straight back.

The other practice is to look within for any source of inner light, often first found in the area of the Third eye, behind and slightly above your two physical eyes.  This too is an “inner vision,” part of turning your attention inwards rather than outwards towards the world.

Now rest your attention in that spot of light and daily it will get larger. In your imagination you can begin to “push” the boundaries of that inner light and expand it into your inner Void, so that the emptiness of your inner world becomes visible.  Gradually expand the light everywhere within until you can “see” the entirety of the Void.

Going inwards is the essential step towards a real spirituality prior to and beyond any understanding of the mind. No effort to look within, even without a method, is ever wasted.

Going inwards reveals the complexity of your inner world, the Void, the Light of Consciousness, and later inner energies, Kundalini, one’s sense of presence or the energy body, the Causal Body of Consciousness without an object, Turiya, where the sense of I originates, and then the place beyond the I, beyond Consciousness, beyond, or better, “prior to” the Manifest Self.

These are also the areas within which you find experiences of the divine within you, of God within, the Atman, of your sense of Self being equivalent to the experience of God.

Here to you acquire the experience of the totality of Consciousness without a sense of I, having no identification of anything, without a sense of separation, of witness versus the world and one’s own body.

It is also the area where you can find bliss washing your body and sense of Self for day after day, month after month performing a kind of inner purification.

Read the stories of the great spiritual figures and their practices and experiences.  They tread a long path, but any meaningful path begins with uncovering and becoming aware of both the Void within and the emptiness of phenomena, and also discovering and cultivating the Light of Consciousness which illuminates that Void.

With this step completed you will be able to understand the most essential Suta of Zen Buddhism, the Heart Sutra, which is chanted at least twice a day in all Zen temples and monasteries. 

This is why a true teacher is dto discover, because they speak of experiences and understandings entirely beyond the world most people know, an inner world of joy, light, expansion, bliss, and the divine.

You really won’t discover these worlds by reading Robert Adams, Ramana, or Nisargadatta because they spoke from one end state, from a position of having experienced a 50 year path of inner exploration which will be entirely opaque unless you experience similar states in baby steps  by looking within.

Almost all that read Ramana, Robert, etc., never discover the necessity of meditation.  They do not emphasize it, or  may refer to self-inquiry of following or finding the I-thought, from where it comes, and where it goes.  But this is just one way of practicing self-inquiry.

Instead, you need to read the books and learn of the experiences pf those who write or speak of their paths and their experiences along the path, such as Muktananda’s book, the Play of Consciousness, and learn about the astral worlds within through Autobiography of a Yogi, and read my book on discovering the Manifest Self of inner energies, bliss, and discovering the divine within in my book, Self-Realization and Other Awakenings.

Do not listen to anyone who says there is nothing to do and nowhere to go; you are already divine and perfect.  This understanding will mean nothing to you until you have spent a long time in self-discovery.  This is a kind of end-teaching that really is misleading until you better know yourself.  But it is this sort of end teaching of doing nothing that is so popular in spirituality, because it frees you supposedly of a life-long path of inner investigation.  You find so many of these kinds of teachers on Facebook, or giving Satsang throughout the western world. Beware of these teachings because they are only of the mind, and not even an “inch” deep in terms of your inner world.

                    ****ADDENDUM****

RESPONSE TO SOMEONE WHO CLAIMS THE VOID IS THE ABSOLUTE AND IS PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS

There are inner senses and outer senses. When it comes to the inner senses most people are only aware of the usual internal objects such a thoughts, memories, images, and feeling the muscles and organs when they hurt, from the inside.

But the inner light and the Void it exposes is an internal visual sense that all long-term meditators are aware of.

Later, one develops a deeper and more refined "feeling" of one's own subjective world and Void, which reveals a more refined awareness or emotions, moods, internal energies, one's energy body or sense of presence.

These are preliminary to going even deeper. There is a spectrum of one's inner awareness that coexists with one's experience of the world.