The Great Spiritual Flim Flam Game

Zen master Seung Sahn said you must become dumb as a rock, meaning see directly, feel directly, act directly, without the intermediary of thoughts or thinking or of ideas.  Depend only on your own self. 

Krishnamurti said do not depend on any external teacher or guru.  You have no idea where they got their teaching.  It could have been from their own experience, or passed on information as part of a book or from their teacher without having any corresponding experiences.  Also, the teachings may be idiosyncratic, applicable only to them, and not to others with different dispositions and experience.

Robert Adams said, “You do not exist, the world is not real, everything comes from mind, everything is a dream, everything is an optical illusion, ignore your problems, your body is not real, ignore the world because it is not real, everything is preordained, you can change nothing.”  “Instead believe you are consciousness itself.”

You see, Robert was selling his own philosophy of reality which he got from Ramana Maharshi.  Their story is this: you are not a human being, do not identify with your body, do not identify with your thoughts your mind, do not identify with waking consciousness or sleep consciousness, do not identify or be bothered by your emotions or your situation in life, because you can do nothing because it is all preordained and you have nothing to do with it anyway because you do not exist.  Your only true existence is as the totality of consciousness.  You are that.

You see, Robert and Ramana say throw away all that you believe yourself to be, body, mind, emotions, family, wife or husband, and instead become aware of awareness and of consciousness, become aware of the emptiness between your various thoughts, or the gap when you first wake up but the mind has not started.  This gap, this space, this silence, is what you are, the substance from which all things come.  Ignore everything else, only the listen to and feel silence, the gap, the emptiness between thoughts and all things.  Drop your present identification as a human, and instead identify with that.  With that new identification will come in peace, total happiness, and immortality.

All these teachings, Seung Sahn, Krishnamurti, Robert Adams, Ramana, Nisargadatta, all teach you to leave the mind alone, stop the mind or ignore your mind, but they really give no methods other than to understand that your mind is the problem that to do various kinds of self- inquiry and meditation.  But if you can begin to silence the mind, much of what people call suffering will stop, but you still will not be enlightened or awakened.  For that, you have to get much deeper into your body through sinking your attention into your heart, and thereby ending the significance of your mind.

Robert’s and Ramana’s teachings for people who are in great suffering, as was Buddha after he discovered disease, death, starvation, and war, or more likely for people that are constantly bothered by their minds and thinking, it can give rapid peace.  But it is not enlightenment it is only stopping the mind.  Buddha went off into the desert to the forests, seeking some way to end all kinds of suffering and found it after seven years of intense efforts, starvation, and physical abuse, by finding the middle way, a path to peace through ending all ambition, all attachments, all pleasures, all sufferings.  You see this was deeper than merely stopping the mind, he said you must get rid of all human desire and attachments, what Hindu philosophy calls Vasanas.

In other words, Robert is also for people who seek escape from the world by escaping into a belief system that is totally incomprehensible to most.  Strive to become nothing, strive to have no attachments, strive to be absolutely silent, strive to know yourself by questioning everything, including who you are, and thereby in any idea of who you are.

Now there are other teachings which are not nearly so negative, and these teachings I give now.  In a way, I feel I am cleaning up after my own teachers, Robert Adams, and Nisargadatta Maharaj to have gone a long way towards creating the neoAdvaitin dominant presence in contemporary spirituality. Yes, they gave a lot of peace to suffering people, and they taught people how to get out of their minds, their truths depended on accepting only one part of yourself as the totality of yourself.  They taught you are only consciousness, or you are the void, or you are emptiness, or you are silence, or you are nothingness as did Nisargadatta, and as such, as a generic experience, or generic lack of experience, you are immortal.  This is an escape from suffering by means of accepting a philosophy regarding the nature of human existence, and ignoring all but one small part of that totality, even though it may be a very significant part, such as consciousness or the void.

The truth is you are all of these things.  You are your body.  You are your mind.  You are your emotions.  You are emptiness or the void.  You are your energetic sense of presence.  You are your relationships with others, they also help to define you.  You are your family and tribe as well as your race and nationality.  Accept all of these things as you.  You also are awareness, consciousness, nothingness, the absolute, and most wondrous of all, God.

I teach you how to know God within yourself, to feel your own divinity arising within your sense of presence within you.

I teach several methods.  The first is to listen to sacred using, kirtan, and bhajans.  They will still the mind and will open your heart and allow you to find emptiness inside, possibly also love.

The second method is to practice “correct self-inquiry self- inquiry means to “feel” inside your chest or inside your four head for that spark of life that makes you you.  Feel that inside of you which makes you feel alive.  You may have to feel for quite some time, and your first experience may be like small electric spark somewhere inside your chest.  Or it might appear as a light inside your head or brain.  When you find that spark in your chest, feel it, and stay there, and they can grow.

That spark feeling, the sense of I am, will gradually grow and become a sense of presence, like an energy field throughout the inside of your body and extending outward a few inches or a few feet into the world.  I call this energy body, my sense of presence, and within that sense of presence you will begin to feel all kinds of energies flowing, and a sense of presence will feel more real to you than your physical body.

Eventually that sense of presence will be filled with energies, and feelings of bliss, and with a sense of love and openness, that will be conducive to the experience of the divine within yourself.

In any event, even after briefly practicing this way for a few months, your center of your attention, or as Sasaki Roshi said, your center of gravity, will drop into your heart or even lower into your gut.  When your attention drops into your heart, eventually your heart will open up feel such wondrous space and relief, as if you have escape from the prison to a wide open space.  You will no longer be bothered by the mind because your sense of presence will be not centered around your mind anymore, but your heart, your emotions, your tenderness, your feelings, and you will live from your heart not your mind.

The third method I teach is to find something or someone to love, and to love it, or him, or her, with all your might, all your strength, with a totally open heart, surrendered to that other in divine relationship, and worshiping that other.  If you can do this totally, where nothing matters to you in life except loving that person or object, all of the things I have outlined above in methods one and two, will be given to you spontaneously, as it is coming out of nowhere, but indeed coming from your own inner self, from that God within you, who reveals himself to you, by means of loving another.  You recognize that all that drama, love, devotion, worship and surrender that you have for the other, is really a story and energy process within you, which is God itself which you have not realized in yourself before, and realize now except through loving another.

This method of loving another is far more Western than the other methods.  It is relational, not just so solipsistic, self-involved like listening to Kirtan, or feeling into your chest for the Lifeforce, both of which can be extremely valuable, but neither of which is as quick or as powerful as the experiences that can come to finding God within you through loving another.  This method is also far, far more joyful, and with far more drama and suffering, which allows you to be a stronger presence within the world.

I awoke this morning filled with desire to be with my Beloved who is so far from me. My whole body filled with desire. I was totally alive, lusting, electric, ecstatic, with even more divine frustration that says, "Not now."

The Void, true emptiness, is not the same as a silent or quiet mind with few or no thoughts.

The Void is a direct perception of n "internal space" within which everything occurs: thoughts; emotions; tactile sensations; sexual feelings, hunger; thirst; suffering, joy, and bliss.

It is first observed as something, a space, that is not moving, and can be termed an "absolute." But gradually, as a meditator practices, he/she will develop a "sense of presence," which is best defined as the experience of one's energy body which lies inside and around their physical bodies.

At first, this energy body feels more real an more intimate than one's own physical body, but as the light of consciousness gradually expands, you will "see" with inner vision, that the Void is even deeper than both the physical or energy bodies. It is more primary and underlies both.

When you truly know the void, the mind need not be empty because your very beingness is empty, and is not touched by the mind.

And then, after you dwell there for a time, and really begin searching for your spiritual heart within, feeling for it, not looking for it, and resting in it when it is found, then you are abiding in the self, and love begins to happen.

SATSANG SUNDAY JANUARY 21, 11 AM ARIZONA TIME

Today I want to start turning our Satsang into a Sangha, a spiritual family where we get to know each other better.  So, at the end of Satsang, I will invite those who wish to, to introduce themselves, and encourage them to share a little of their background and interests.

Afterwards I will leave so that you can speak to each other.

Link: https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

I am trying to make clear the need for relational love as a way to find God within through loving another.  There are non-relational ways to such self-realization, but by that latter term I mean discovery of the divine inside your sense of presence and the internal emptiness, the Life Force.

Revelation of the Life Force within gives access to the most incredible power within, utter self-confidence, and the ability to totally surrender in worshiping love of the other, even if the other is a cat.

I was with Robert Adams for many years and had his style of awakening to the nature of consciousness and the void, and to the mysterious presence that witnesses the unfolding of life.  But Robert had another side, which was that of a lover, bringing a love for life to a select group of students.

This is what I teach now, an awakening to people of the divinity within each of us, and that each of us are an incarnation of that aspect of the eternal that I call the Life Force or Shakti.  This is best accomplished by elevating in us, an intense desire to love and worship the life force within those who come into our lives specifically to open our hearts.

Awakening can come to us when we love, worship, and totally surrender to those human Gods and Goddesses who come into our lives to awaken us to our own God-nature within.

We awaken to the wild, ecstatic energies and bliss within through total surrendered love usually accompanied by equally powerful sexual desires which complement and support the heart’s desire for total surrender. This intense love alongside intense sexual desires can trigger the Life Force to reveal itself to the witness within each of us.  We tease the life force to show itself by emphasizing actions and emotions that please the life force: worship and surrender, whether to guru, lover, family, or pets.

Already I have encountered enormous blowback from some of my readers who are filled with the most negative ideas about who I am or what I am doing.  They denigrate worship, surrender, or sexual passions as being animalistic or primitive submission of self to authoritarian others. They entirely miss what I advocate, and as Chetanananda said, “They do not understand,” and react with judgment and anger.

I will not tolerate criticism for my mission on my pages.  A single critical remark left up seems to give permission to others to be critical, and soon the entire string of comments becomes poisoned.  These remarks will be deleted.

Look, I am announcing the way of complete devotional love as the quickest way to realization of the divine within each of us.  Yes, there are other ways, and I may mention them, but I teach the way self-realization came to me through total, surrendered worship of a woman, including the development of intense sexual desires that were never consummated.  But it is necessary to feel them intensely to awaken the body, psyche, as well as the Life Force itself.  All of the seven, thirteen, or hundred Chakras need to be awakened to the presence of the energies within. You have to come totally alive, totally vulnerable, totally needing the other so that you can surrender your heart, your body, your sexuality, and your ego to another and thereby find God through the most ecstatic explosions of the divine within.

Satsang January 14, 2017

SURRENDERING TO THE LIFE DIVINE THROUGH DEVOTION AND LOVE.

https://youtu.be/givv7rOfqNc

THIS WAS TRULY AN ENERGETIC SATSANG.

UNTIL YOU HAVE REALIZED GOD WITHIN YOU, THE LIFE FORCE WITHIN YOU, YOU HAVE REALIZED NOTHING!

Yes, I know as a Zen person, I accepted the highest truth was chopping wood, carrying water: ordinary mind. But even ordinary mind was suffused with emptiness, a Void that penetrated and supported the world I heard and saw.  And the Void is an awesome thing!

Then I met Robert Adams, and my small self disappeared into the Void.  I became emptiness itself with no central personal self.  I also aw, whoever I was, but something saw, maybe emptiness itself, that even consciousness was not real, but states that occurred to me, whoever and whatever I was, but did not know myself.   I saw the waking consciousness, sleep consciousness, dream consciousness were all states that came and captured “my” attention, each for a time, but “I” was untouched, entirely outside of the many fields of consciousness.  I was unborn.

For 15 years I dwelled like this until a woman came to me who loved me in every way possible, and I awoke to love.  I, whatever I was, felt love for her, and felt her love for me.  The love became deeper and deeper until I felt in the presence of God himself.  With her I fell to my knees bowing to his power, grace, and love, and both of us felt His grace, his love, through the love we had for each other.

The depth of this love for each other grew until one day I realized I was love itself.  This state stayed with me for days during her absence, until one day, a remarkable experience.  The divine, the life force revealed itself to me as an explosion of light and energy arising out of the darkness of my gut, upwards as white light and earth shattering power showering my heart, upwards through my throat, head, and outwards and above.

My whole body was electrified by this non-electric power.  It was God in me, the Life Force in me, showing itself to me as witness, that this too am I: the divine within, now my constant companion.  Each day, I, whoever and whatever I am, worship the Shakti that animates my body, my mind, my heart, my digestion, and my sexuality.  Sexuality infuses everything.  It is life itself.  Every Chakra throbs with the power of God. Three in my head, one in my mouth, two in my throat and chest, three in my gut and genitals.  Each radiates with its own feeling and power.  I have become fully re-incarnated.  I can truly say, “I have come alive!”

Now I worship myself and others who are aware of the Shakti within themselves, and wish so hard that all might know her.

THIS SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 11AM ARIZONA TIME, SATSANG WILL BE ONCE AGAIN FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

I have no idea of what I will talk about. Bring questions.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page. Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call I recommend listening to it. It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power. This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

Serial Monogamy

One should never be with more than one guru or one lover at a time.  With one guru, one set of methods, one set of teachings, you can go deeply into yourself.  If you have several gurus as I did in the 1970s, you will go nowhere.  It would be better to be alone than to be with several gurus.  Their teachings are different, their methods are different, what they want to teach is different, and their own experiences are different from other teachers.  You will feel confused and fragmented.

The same holds true with lovers.  It is essential that you be serially monogamous.  Only one lover at a time allows you to go deep into yourself with that person who goes deep into their self.  You both go together deep inside and deep into the other.  Almost everybody I know who is a teacher recognizes this, even though the teacher usually has to deal with many students.  A spiritual teacher, a guru, usually has to “appear” to deal with all people equally.  If it is obvious that he favors one student over another, or above all, it could be fatal to the sangha.  There will be whispers.  There will be complaints.  There will be anger.  There will be jealousy.

Therefore, usually a guru with his favorite students, needs to hide their special relationship, sexual or not, otherwise the entire sangha will be in consternation, unless the guru and student are married or related, or are co-teachers.  Even then gossip will split devotion in the sangha, and create struggles to be on the inside track to either of the two parties.  Therefore, it is absolutely essential that some activities and relationships be hidden from the rest of the sangha, for the sake of the teacher and his close students or lovers, and for the rest of the sangha to not be torn apart by divisive emotions.

On the other hand, some gurus such as Rajneesh provided for open sexuality, either between himself and students, or opening up the entire Sangha to multiple relationships within it, sexual and otherwise.  This is a recipe for disaster as has been proven time, after time, after time.  

Ultimately, there is always a scandal that breaks the Sangha apart.  Someone who is hurt, someone who is jealous, someone who is angry begins to talk about their hurt feelings and “pain,” and their friends turn against the teacher or other friends.  Having been in up a dozen different sangha’s myself, I have seen this time, after time, as well as in newspapers and spiritual gossip communications across the world.  Even special or unique love relationships without sex can cause such problems, but once sex is involved everything gets explosive because of convention, and now, for the last 20 years, because of growing feminism.  Women are finding abuse everywhere, including in consensual relationships of their past, or in the present, which are failing for some reason.

Therefore, in all cases serial monogamy is the way to be, or at least the appearance serial monogamy should be maintained at all times.

In addition, student having multiple teachers will ultimately either go nowhere, or will be so fragmented and drained that they will swear off spirituality as a hoax.  One needs to dig one deep hole, not several shallow ones.  Commit yourself, surrender, worship one person at a time.

ROBERT ADAMS SECRET TANTRIC TEACHINGS

Robert had secret teachings that never made it into any of his public talks that you now find on the web, or any of his transcripts.  The secret teachings are essentially Tantric, and by this, I mean Robert actively used the desires and emotions found within his students to help them awaken by mobilizing internal energy networks (chakras), charging them, getting energies to move between the Chakras, but almost always focusing on the heart Chakra and love.

The teachings of the transcripts as public talks were of Advaita, the tradition of Ramana, and the method of self inquiry, with an emphasis on emptiness or the void, and that all appearances, the body, the world, were of the same substance, consciousness.  That is, you realized that your consciousness and everything was consciousness.

However, these teachings, the transcendental aspect of his teachings, and eventually to be transcended by bringing the void back into existence through the realization of the divine within the void, and within your body by having the Life Force released and felt by you within.  I call this the realization of the manifest self, the personal self lived through by God’s divine energy of the Life Force.

This he taught privately, which appeared to be entirely contradictory to his public talks.  Privately, with students who were open to him, he suggested ways of being and actions that were 100% opposite of his public teachings of remaining aloof from the world and of one’s emotions.  Privately he encouraged people to become involved in the world and whatever their hearts seem to dictate.  In some cases, he tried to open a student’s heart Chakra by encouraging them to feel his love or love for him.  For others, like myself, he encouraged me to do things in the world to help the world. 

For those who were suffering deeply, he gave his public teachings that the world was not real, you are not real, your body was not real, your problems are not real, all of these were just appearances in consciousness, so do not identify with the body, but identify with the whole show.   But for students were quiet, too introverted, too lonely, too depressed, he tried to awaken their hearts and presumably some of them, their ambition, their compassion, and even their sexuality.  That is, he tried to sensitize people to who and what they are, and where they are going in life.  He did not want everybody to become an internalized zombie, denying the world.

But the general public never learned his secret teachings of being fully human, fully awakened in terms of fire, passion, sexuality, and all kinds of loving including parental, sibling, in romantic, anything that would really involve a more integrated person into the fabric of life and also awaken the Life Force, Shakti, within the body that made life worth living, experiencing exquisite energies, experiencing bliss, and the event of the life force, the divine, revealing itself within you as you.

These are the secret Tantric teachings of Robert Adams that no one who did not know him personally would ever know from reading his public teachings.  Robert was a closet Tantric, knowing that the transcendental teachings are easily embraced by those who are suffering greatly, but for certain others, the introverts, those with grief, those with sadness and depression, often the most powerful teachings, were to fall in love deeply, with complete surrender, complete devotion to another and once this level is obtained, consummated with ecstatic sexuality wherein God is experienced directly, powerfully, in ways that cannot be described. Of course, awakening the heart does not require sexuality, and awakening the sexual, the hara, or the third eye does not require either love or a sexual opening.  Each can be activated separately or in sequence, but all must be awakened before one knows themselves to the divine within.  But you do not find it; the actual experience is that Shakti, the Life Force, finds you.

The following video is to bring out the Tantric roots of Robert Adams and his lineage’s secret teachings, to make them more available to the world.

VIDEO LINK:

https://youtu.be/NeuZoahE--I

THIS SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 11AM ARIZONA TIME, SATSANG WILL BE ONCE AGAIN FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

I have no idea of what I will talk about.  Bring questions. 

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page. Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call I recommend listening to it. It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power. This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

Shakti

I watch the life force today. She has so many different manifestations and some that fall entirely outside of expression. There are often no words.

She shows herself with an infinity of forms. Sometimes hot and violent. Sometimes like a barely contained explosion of energy throughout my body. Sometimes like full-body bliss. Sometimes like a deep peace. Sometimes my whole body trembling, awaiting the arrival of deeper love and bliss.

Then, sometimes totally unexpected she leaves me entirely, living once again in the still Void of consciousness.

But today I feel her as infinitely quiet an open space in and around my body filled with tingling white light, utterly filled by gentle love and longing for my Beloved.

All these experiences reside in everyone, if they but feel for them.

Robert Adams was a Teacher of the Void, of emptiness, of Nothingness, of ignoring your body and the world as not being real.

I am Robert’s son.  I was born from out of the Void because of the love of a woman.  She loved me and breathed life into me, and I was reborn.

I bring you a new message.  I bring a message of life, of love so intense that it brings you to God, and is God, of longing and lust so intense that every fiber of your being pulsates in ecstatic bliss and you are totally alive as yourself.

I bring a message of life, love, and desire so intense that your entire being aches with ecstasy, the life force fulfilled and God becomes incarnate in you.

I bring you intensity, courage, steadfastness and power, and ecstatic missions of love and compassion.

I come to take you out of loneliness, despair, sadness, and depression, not by sinking into the Void which steals all meaning, but into the fullness of life.

I am the Manifest Self, the life force in each of you, speaking to you as a friend, as a teacher, as a lover of everyone and everything.

I tell you the world is real.  Your body is real.  Your love is real.  Your true self is the life force manifest in you and through you.  It is the active principle of the universe, and you are that.

While the individual incarnation is mortal and finite, the life force and life itself, is not.  Identify with the life force in you, breathing as you, breathing for you, loving yourself as you, and you become immortal, even though the life force has no interest in immortality or mortality.  It is only interest is in the existing and acting.

I want you to know yourself, as I know myself, as an incarnation of God who lives in me as me.  I want you to know this for yourself, knowing the ecstatic embrace of the divine within.

God dwells in you as you. All you need to do to know this, is to drop to your knees before your Beloved and surrender completely to, whomever or whatever that is. To whomever can so love, God shows himself to you as you, and you are filled with his love.

THIS SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 11AM, SATSANG WILL BE ONCE AGAIN FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page. Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call I recommend listening to it. It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power. This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

FINDING LOVE IN THE VOID

SATSANG CHRISTMAS EVE 2017

https://youtu.be/NoR_Z2bEF7o

THIS SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24, 11AM, SATSANG WILL BE FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page.  Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call   I recommend listening to it.  It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power.  This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

EMAIL FROM A LONG TIME STUDENT

These two emails are so loving and personal I am not including a name, but exactly describe the kind of divine love that I want people to feel, because it leads directly to the realization of your divine self within.

EMAIL 1

Oh Edji,, it is so very beautiful,.
Listening to your latest Satsang . Your every word just explodes in my Heart Center and radiates out through every single molecule of this body. 

This is so intense and I don't even begin to have the words to describe what is happening.

Every word you say is also my word.

Wow!  This love for you has entered into a new dimension, totally unexpected  and overwhelming.
I Know.

I feel.

I burn.

Pure Love is radiating out from this Void and. Into the Heart Center then spreading everywhere within the body and so intense at times to be too much to handle.

Even questions asked are my questions. I even love the person asking the question.

The kitty that sleeps with me must also feel the love as she came over and sat on my chest... The love between us is even intense.

I feel that all this love is originating and coming straight out of the Void and directly into my Heart Center..
It is just so so powerful.
I know how St. Teresa felt... Almost painful at times.

With who I don't know but I am deeply in Love.

EMAIL 2

Edji,  never experienced anything like that, ever and it was so awesome!
Voice was so full of Grace that it felt like arrows of Love piercing the I AM.

Human love is so limited compared to this Divine intervention, which is so warm and deep and all Encompassing .

My whole soul was involved. 

It almost felt like it could swallow me up.

I'll be listening to that Satsang over and over again every night.

I am so blessed to have met you 

Ed describes the process of realizing the Life Force Within, by first perceiving the Void, and within it, to feel love.  Human love then is transmuted into divine love of the other and of one's own self as the Life Force, the energy activating all life.

https://youtu.be/aIUK6f0pfSI

NOTICE, BEGINNING SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 11AM, SATSANG WILL BE FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page.  Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call   I recommend listening to it.  It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power.  This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

I think I will need to simplify my teachings in the future to focus on finding the Void, throwing oneself away so to speak, so as to find your true self through love.  Finding the Void is relatively easy, but is entirely preparatory to making you open enough to experience divine love through having your heart’s fire kindled by another.  Thus the chant, “Kindle my Heart’s flame with Thy flame, O sudguru, kindle my flame with thine.”  This is why we will begin to sit in silence after Satsang, and I will become the Void for you to feel and open to.

WHAT IS SELF?

 Recently I posted a comment stating that I did not have a sense of self until I was in my 60s.  People responded incredulously, asking that I experienced before I experience myself?  Before I answer that, I would like to ask a question to all those incredulous questioners.

Look inside yourself.  Look inside that internal darkness, that internal emptiness, that internal void and ask if you find a self therein.  Then I ask you, what is your sense of self?  Who are you?  How do you describe your experience of self?  How is your self different from the rest of your world of experience?

Now try this for a few days or a few weeks, perhaps a few minutes each day. Then tell me what is your experience of self. 

I think like all of the neoAdvaitins point out, you will find no sense of self within, you have only suspected that there was a self, but you cannot find one.

Are you emptiness?  Are you a sense of energy?  Are you your body or are you your mind?  Are you that which watches all of this?  Or are you the throbbing, glistening, moving, Lifeforce within?  This is what I call my sense of self: the divine within who cognizing’s the world around me. 

The world around me, I do not experience as me, like some who claim that that self is everything.  I experience the world around me as “other.”  I experience other people around me, not as me, or as no person, or as an appearance in consciousness, but as another sentient being, another bag of flesh within whom the Lifeforce looks outwards, feels outwards and acts outwardly, but is also intensely aware of its own existence within that bag of flesh, as the Energizer the creator of all movement, all loving, all actions, and all wisdom. 

Yes, although the Lifeforce is the same in all of us, so very few people actually know firsthand from their own experience the Lifeforce within, that which I call myself. This recognition came to me because I loved someone, and she love me back with all of her heart and soul.  We loved each other and in that love, myself was found.  It exploded out of my own emptiness.  But few people even know this emptiness, this Void within, the container and sustainer of the entire universe.

This is how I know without question that you cannot love yourself until you have completely, and deeply loved another.  When you find a so-called “soulmate,” one to whom you can completely surrender in utter and complete devotion, in complete and almost desperate love, which afterwards leaves only love in you, as you, you become love itself, only then will the Lifeforce reveal itself to you, as you.  In a sense, you as a separate bag of flesh with consciousness, becomes aware of the universal Lifeforce within, and you identify with that, you are the divine dynamo within that awakens your flesh, gives you life, and allows you to love both yourself and another.

Before this time, no matter how long you look within, how deeply you go, how much you witness yourself, how much you practice self-inquiry, no matter how much psychotherapy you get, you will never know that self within.

So those who ask what was your experience of yourself and the world like prior to your experience of the self through divine love, I only suggest look at your own life now, in this moment, in your own experience of your body and yourself and in relationships.  Can you tell me with complete conviction who and what you are?  Can you tell me about your own self versus everything else in your experiential universe?  I doubt it. 

I doubt you will find anything you can call yourself.  You may call the I thought yourself but it is not.  It is only a thought.  You may call the sense of I-ness inside of you yourself, but it is not, it is only a sensation that can lead to recognition of yourself through love.  But it is not self itself.

You have assumed that you have a self within, but you cannot find it, you cannot feel it, you do not know it.  Therefore, how can you say with any degree of certitude, that you cannot love another without first loving yourself? 

Come, let me take you into that void, a place where you are absent to yourself but not consciously so, that will allow you to be open to that external love which will awaken the self within you in an explosion of light, energy, bliss and love, and you will know your own divine origin.  We will go into that void every Sunday after the talking part of Satsang, and there you can know the God within.

There is an old saying that has gained a lot of believers in the West that you cannot love anyone until you first love yourself.

Not only is this overly simplistic, but from my experience, it is just wrong.

How does a toddler learn how to love him or her self?  Easy, by being loved by the mother or father.  At about age three, the toddler has reached the developmental stage where it can differentiate itself from its environment, from its mother, father and siblings.  Once this differentiation takes place between me and others, and we feel both the love from others and our own sense of self at the same time, then we can love that self-sense, our self.

Very often in this world that toddler does not receive sufficient love during this formative stage, or the love is expressed in a way the toddler can not receive and incorporate it, then that toddler may not even develop a sense of self, let alone appreciate its existence. I know that I never experienced a sense of self separate from the world until I was in my 60s through the love I received then.

If as an adult we do receive the love of a peer, a man or woman who we respect and love, then, for the first time we can both experience a sense of a separate-from-the-world self, and also we can actually let that love in, so to speak, realizing that someone “out there” in the environment loves us in a most spectacular way.

If either or both lovers are ready enough, deep enough, empty enough, the mutual love can explode into an experience of the divine within as the life force, and the life force itself becomes us; it energizes, purifies, and elevates one’s own sense of self, as well as for the other, to a realization of God within.  At this point we realize that we are God incarnated into a fragile and impermanent body of flesh loving the life force incarnated into that other fragile and temporary body of flesh.  We both become self-realized and incarnate, which brings utter humility and utter, utter surrender to the other, and we can both rest in a unified emptiness, a stillness, filled with life and love. 

This is the greatest healing possible.  But this cannot take place unless the ground is laid for such a relationship and such love.  You must be aware of being empty of self, and if one looks within, one sees/feels only emptiness, silence, the Void.  This is one’s sadhana, to empty oneself of pseudo selves through meditation, self-inquiry, and prayer, for the deepest love, divine love, seeks those who are empty.  If you are not empty, all the best you can experience is a normal, human, love affair, which is body-oriented, sensual, and manipulative.  This is pre-personal love, reactive-love, for the person has not yet realized his or her self.

FROM THE VOID TO DIVINE LOVE--VIDEO

FROM THE VOID TO DIVINE LOVE 

I can speak about the Void and tell you how to find it.  I can talk about one's sense of presence, bliss, the subtle body, your emotional body, the light of consciousness, and I can help you find them.

But now only want to speak about divine love nd how to attain it.  This love comes to you from  the Void and brings you entirely back into your body and you become "re-incarnated" after years of trying to transcend your body. You become like Christ before his Passion on the cross--vulnerable, humble, but steadfast.

Satsang December 10, 2017  LINK:

https://youtu.be/wxbNJNS87ik

SUNDAY SATSANG DECEMBER 10, 2017, 11 AM ARIZONA TIME. COME EARLY, SIT WITH ME AFTER 10:30 am

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

He warned, this past Wednesday I had a Ble Light treatment for Actinic Keratosis on my face.  The chemical and Blue Light destroy these pre-cancerous lesions as well as sun-damaged cells.  But I will look like I have chicken pox for another ten days.

The video below was of an interview I had with Ernesto of Yosoy Tumismo.  Ernesto is the leader of a Robert Adams Satsang in Spain.

Here I speak about my life with Robert, some of my realizations while with him and afterwards, but I also speak of the weaknesses of a strictly Jnan path of introspection on the I-thought or I-sense, and the overwhelming and constant need for a seeker to foster a sense of devotion and love during his or her search.  I also speak of the need to find someone to love deeply as part of one’s spiritual process, especially after finding and dwelling in emptiness, A.K.A. the Great  Void, for the love that arises from the Void is not ordinary human love, but is divine love, a love of total absorption, devotion, and surrender which gradually reveals deeper kinds of love, a path of endless worship, awareness of the internal energies of the life force, almost endless bliss, and marks a beginning of the Jnani’s return to his or her body.  Only love and surrender to another can lead the devotee to leave the Void and re-incarnate as a body with all the human vulnerabilities that entails.

When one is originally born, the original incarnation, it was not from choice. Life spontaneously appeared out of an impersonal matrix of elements and processes which becomes one’s original self.  But when one is born again out of the Void, it is done with joy, love, a sense of service and continuous worship, and totally by choice, knowing what one is getting into, even as Christ accepted his Passion.

LINK: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_6oGOCKgo

A SOMEWHAT EMBARRASSING, BUT VERY WELCOME DEVELOPMENT!

I had my first hip replacement operation four years ago in 2013 in June. My right hip had been hurting for four or five years until the pain was unbearable, and I reluctantly had surgery. The surgery itself was terrible, recovery was very slow and minimal physical therapy was covered by my insurance. And while the right hip gradually recovered functioning with no pain, the left hip was becoming more painful.

I had originally asked the surgeon whether both hips could be done at the same time, but he said the left hip had another three or four years before it had to be replaced.

But from about 2009 to the 2013 surgery, my aerobic functioning suffered as I certainly could not run and I was having more and more difficult time walking, and even use those electric carts when in supermarkets, and my weight ballooned to 235 pounds.

By 2014 when I moved to the Phoenix area, I could walk a mile a day even with my left hip hurting, but by 2017 I could barely walk 100 yards, although my weight had dropped to 210.. On October 10, of this year, 2017 I had my left hip replaced in almost miraculous surgery that had no post surgical pain at all except from physical therapy. I received physical therapy at home for eight visits and made some gains, and then my treating doctor signed me up for what turned out to be six more weeks of progressive physical therapy on an outpatient basis. As of my recent seventh session, I was doing four times the exercises as on my first session.

My God, what a change this is caused in just 3 ½ weeks of outpatient therapy.

Imagine, my lower body had not been fully mobilized for eight years, and I lost a lot of functionality in every way imaginable in my lower body, including ability to walk, get down and up from the floor, crawling under things, even I lost the ability to walk on uneven ground. My lower body effectively died including sexual functioning as well as experiencing some urinary incontinence.

However, after the second surgery, and seven weeks into recovery with physical therapy 2 to 3 times a week, and a very intense exercise program my lower body has come alive. I can feel every muscle fiber in my quadriceps in the various gluteus muscles, which has increased not only my ability to walk, bend, crouch, etc. in terms of movement, but made my bowel movements more regular and eliminated any urinary incontinence that I used to feel because that area sort of dead.

In addition, my sexuality has come alive, after not being able to have an erection for six or seven years. I would hardly recommend bilateral total hip replacement as a male aphrodisiac or ED treatment, but I did laughingly suggest the surgeon that he advertise as such.

What this has caused me is to realize identity with my body once again. The surgery, physical therapy, has reenergized my whole body and it is so difficult not to identify with it as opposed to identifying with my sense of presence, the energetic body within and without or with the totality of consciousness, but I still find it relatively easy to shift my identity any way I want.

Still, this surgery and therapy is helping me reclaim my human hood, and my identity as an ordinary human being that has explored so many rooms the spiritual mention that is my life, from the basement value of the Great Void, to my sense of presence, to experiencing the Life force, or the divine within me, to my mind and thoughts, to my various emotions, my personality and identity as Ed, to my heart center in love, to the place of bliss that spreads between all the molecules in my body, and lastly, my homeroom, my identity as Ed Muzika sitting in a chair dictating this report on my state of being.

I just watched a movie, called Wild River, about a hunter whose daughter had been murdered years before, when he was helping an Indian whose daughter was just murdered, to find the perpetrators on an Indian reservation. It is a very well-acted movie and I will see it again. But at one point, the hunter addresses the Indian whose daughter had just been murdered, telling him, that he was not going to say that the pain eases with time. He tells him, your daughter is dead, and it is a great calamity, your life will never be the same again, but do not avoid the pain of her loss and cover it by thoughts of vengeance and anger.

He tells him, “Feel the pain; feel the pain all the way; cry as long as you need to. But unless you feel the pain as fully as possible, you will never be able to remember the love you gave your daughter and the love she gave you back. Without going through that pain, you will never remember the happiness she gave you, and you gave her.”

This would be my teaching now. Human, remember your humanity, remember your mortality, remember that you will die, and live your life accordingly in a middle way, with passion but also with compassion, with humility and not arrogance, with love not anger.

All the other things that you have gained in spirituality will still be there with you: the sense of the great Void which contains all, and can rob suffering of its bite, but would also take the meaning out of joy; the light of consciousness and the feeling of the divine within you, and that God lives through you as God; a sense of grace and a quiet happiness; as well as the knowledge that everything is consciousness being sensated, being examined and witnessed also by you on a different level. All of these things remain true, all of these places in the great spiritual mansion can be explored again and again, but always you can return to that one room that is special to you and your life, the room of your personhood, the room of your life lived in compassionate passion for all of life as well as your own.

This is what Sueng Sahn Soen Sa meant by his 360° circle. He said he started at 0° and quickly advanced to 180°, which is the experience of nothingness, emptiness, the Void, and from there through to 360° you pass through a whole legion of spiritual practices and enlightenments, Satoris, and Awakenings, but eventually returning to exactly where you started 0°, in this body, in this room, in this life, but totally changed and transformed, the same yet different, having coffee, and playing with my cats.

Now I feel so empty, so humble, so un-spiritual, so unenlightened, just being me, with my partner Kerima, our seven cats, in a home on a golf course with very green grass, lots of rabbits and birds and coyotes, and beautiful sunrises and sunsets. I have no teachings to give now, my teachings are my lifestyle. I can talk about self-inquiry, I can talk about awakening of the internal energies which turns into a recognition of the Life force within and builds a sense of presence, I can talk about loving another as a way to awaken to the self, I can talk about overcoming any addiction or vassanas by certain meditation techniques, but deep down inside I realize that 50 years of self-exploration has been an exercise in entertainment.

Some people watch movies or television, some become astronomers, some become astrologers, some become master auto mechanics, some become thieves, while others explore their inner worlds to discover all that is there, and in doing this, there is always a danger of losing touch with the outer world around us, the physical world, and also the world of life and death. But we have to feel the pain, otherwise we miss the joy.

SUNDAY SATSANG DECEMBER 3, 2017, 11 AM ARIZONA TIME. COME EARLY, SIT WITH ME AFTER 10:30 am

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

My background is psychology, Zen, and Advaita for over 40 years. Because of my psychology background I emphasize feelings and expressing emotions as part of any serious search for self realization.

One can find many experiences, many states of mind and consciousness, and many kinds of emotions and emotional blockages when looking and feeling into your sense of self: Emptiness or the Void; the inner light of consciousness; internal energies such as Kundalini, Chi, energy centers or chakras; one's own sense of presence, which feels like and energy field within and around one's body; experiences of the divine arising within; great experiences of surrender and of merger to God or to another; self, as universal consciousness; emotions; finally, the most important thing, being able to love completely, totally, with abandon.
It is about all of these issues and areas that I teach. Come, we will explore these together. This way is not so much about teachings, but learning how to experience your self on all levels, to discover and manifest everything that you are, from the divine, to complete nothingness, consciousness, all of which is embodied in a physical/mental bundle. You are incarnate.