Dear Edji,

Your journey and the wisdom which has blossomed forth along its unfolding and, at times, circuitous and meandering paths, have been cautionary, instructive, and inspiring. Thank you for speaking so openly about your own experiences and struggles and please continue to do so. You might have saved me years from going down dead-ends or wasting time with certain teachers who only offer lessons in feeling good rather than in freedom from all feelings - good, bad, and otherwise. 

Teachers usually give everyone their unsullied wisdom - rarely do we get the failures and struggles and years of searching and wandering. This, in truth, I find at times so much more instructive than the "do this" and "this is the right way".  We learn much more from the devastating failures of ourselves, or others, than the blissful victories. The victories seem like distant fantasies, though helpful and inspiring pointers.  The failures I can readily identify with and learn from.  Thank you again for sharing them 

I hope that I can meet you when I return home from my restless soul searching which catapulted me from the sleepy suburbs of the Valley to frozen monasteries in Japan and scorched and serene jungles in Thailand.

In deep gratitude for your teachings,
B

Robert on having many teachers, many books, much travel, little depth

You and I know many people who have been searching for many, many years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years, for the answers to life, for reality, yet they're still in the same place they started twenty years ago. They have gone through all kinds of things. They've been to many places. They met certain teacher, but they're still the same.

For they've never really investigated themselves. They say they do. They say they've been working on themselves for years, nothing has happened. But have they really been working on themselves? What they've been doing is sort of just thinking about it a little bit, reading books. But they've never dived deep enough in the Self to find the answers. And this is exactly what you have to do.

You have to dive deep, deep, deep within yourself, deeper than you can ever imagine. And the only way you can do this is by giving up the external world, mentally, not physically. In other words, by not reacting to things. To observe things, watch the world go by, leave it alone. It's neither good nor bad. It has nothing to offer you.

Yet at the same time you'll be doing what you have to do, what you came here to do. If you're supposed to work, you will work. If you're not supposed to work, you'll not work. If you're supposed to be married, you'll be married. If you're supposed not to be married, you'll not be married. Everything will happen by itself. Yet you will know within yourself, that this is not you. The situation is not you. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. You are beyond conditioning, beyond situations, beyond experience, beyond everything. Yet you are everything also.

        As you become a little more serious about this work, you will stop taking things so seriously in this world. You will begin to know how to leave things alone. You'll be more interested in diving within yourself, to find yourself, to understand yourself, who you are, what you are. But then the mind comes to play again, and the mind grabs you, makes you give this up for a while, makes you start enjoying life, so called, makes you be a part of life again, hands you things, gives you things, you go through many experiences good and bad.

Again you forget about the Self, who you are. And most people stay like this until they get old and die.

But there are a few people who will not take no for an answer. There are a few people on this earth, who are only after one thing, and that's liberation. This is foremost in their mind. This is the only thing they think about, day and night, to become free. And what you think about, thinks about you.

So first you use your mind to desire total liberation. When you have a strong desire for liberation, something will tell you the mind has to be destroyed, the mind has to go. What I mean when I say, "The mind has to be destroyed, the mind has to go", I'm referring to the mind has to be left alone, without interference, to observe the mind, to watch the mind, without watching, without observing.

This can be done. For when you say, I am observing the mind, I am watching the mind, the 'I' that you're speaking of is the mind also. So what you're really saying is the mind watching the mind and you get nowhere. Yet there's a way to watch the thoughts and to not watch the thoughts at the same time, to observe the thoughts and not to observe the thoughts at the same time. Just be.

You will find out as you keep doing this, everything begins to change all around you. Yet everything is the same all around you. You see things that other people do not see. You become things that other people can never become. For instance, you become all-pervading. You begin to feel your presence, your essence in the leaves, in the trees, in the sky, in the animals, in the insects. You begin to see that all this is the Self, and I am that. This is when you have total reverence for all of life. Everything becomes God.
Everything becomes consciousness. You're no longer saying, "I, I, me, me, I need this, I want that, I feel this way, I feel that way". You have grown out of this. When you use the term 'I', only speak with the people. They do not understand what you are talking about, so you use the term I with them. But you yourself know that I does not exist. There is no longer an I to keep you in bondage. The 'I' has given way to omnipresence.

The good thing about all this, is that anybody can become liberated, at any moment. But this is because you are already liberated. If you were not liberated, you would never be able to become liberated. But because you're already liberated, all you're really doing is taking off the stuff that makes you think you're not liberated, dark clouds, the layers and layers of nonsense, garbage, that you covered yourself with all of these years. The thought, "I am important, I am somebody". This is what keeps you in bondage.

Robert Adams: Who Are You? - 15th November, 1992

Our California non-profit, We Are Sentience, has two missions: spiritual outreach through satsangs and websites, and feeding and maintaining feral cat colonies in LA.

During 2011, WAS supplied the following for feeding and maintaining approximately 300 cats:

291 16 to 20 lb. bags of dry food, for a total weight of over 4,700 lbs.

8,200 cans of cat food, mostly Friskies.

$2,100 worth of vet fees to spay/neuter and other vet bills

Total expenses on feral cat maintenance and placement $9,007.  This is likely a substantial  underestimate, as many times I’d pick up small and unrecorded amounts on a daily basis from a supermarket.

The balance of donations went to support spiritual outreach which includes website costs, software, etc.

The Evolution of the Guru

A year ago I posted the below interview between Andrew Cohen, my friend Shankarananda, Chetananda and Brother Charles.  At this time we were in the midst of looking for an LA Ashram location.  I thought these guys were utterly arrogant.


A year later, I have learned so much.  Listen especially to Chetananda.  He is the guy on the left.  Shankaranada is next, then Andrew Cohen, then Brother Charles, who I thought was certifiable.  Yet, even he had something to say that was true.


The guru just wants to share his or her joy and to play, but the people who come have little joy and little playfulness.  They come with expectations which the teacher and others are always failing.


As one of my students said, they think you know everything, including what you want, and they want you to drop that in their lap immediately instead of spending 40 years like I did.


You see, there is a lot of expectations about what a guru is and how they are supposed to act, but students hardly ever put any boundaries on themselves.  They usually don't ask, "What is expected of me?  What is my part and my burden?"


Really, watch it twice and watch it again tomorrow.

Self-Inquiry with affection and love

I have become convinced over the past year that self-inquiry, practiced only by itself, basically as described by Ramana Maharshi and my own teacher, Robert Adams, is far less effective than simply going within looking for the I-sense, the feeling that I exist, as opposed to looking for the I-thought, or for the place that the I-thought comes and goes to, and then loving that I-sense when it is found. Become devoted to it.


Both Robert and Ramana became self-realized without a method, they never had to struggle blindly as do most of us through a quagmire of differing concepts.  And, through self-realization, they became full of love for the self, and though they taught the need to love the self, it was not made an essential part of self inquiry.

The essence of the I-sense is the experience of the Turiya state of Sat, Chit, and Ananda, existence, knowledge, bliss.

Self-inquiry, self realization is all about finding the source of the I-sense, which is Turiya, Satchitananda.

When Turiya is found, meaning when it is isolated from all the other distracting experiences of appearances, mood, emotion, the body experiences, etc., one rests in bliss.  Bliss and ecstasy permeate all. One rests in oneself, happy and complete.

Then one begins to understand something further: there is nothing other than Turiya, the Self.  The Self, Turiya, interpenetrates and pervades all the other mental and physical states.  There is nothing outside of the Self—YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE OF YOU AT THE DEEPEST LEVEL.

The proof is the bliss that penetrates every fiber of you beingness, your body, your mind, your sense of presence; all are enveloped in bliss, and you see that there is nothing but YOU.  It is all your show, your emotions and moods, your body and mind, your self-created world with your reaction to apparently external events and beings.  It is all you!

Then religious and secular mores vanish, prescriptions and proscriptions vanish. Concepts vanish as they are only the ravings within the mind which can know billions of concepts, billions of theories of life and love, science and magic.  All disappear in the experience of your bliss. All concepts are eaten by your ecstasies.  The heart then knows no boundaries, no limits, no shoulds or should nots.

This is the real beginning of the spiritual adventure, not its culmination or end. Self-realization is the beginning of living in mystery, completely happy, and as Robert and Nisargadatta both said, living absent the sting of misfortunes in the world.  The bite is gone.  Yes, suffering remains everywhere, it is so clear, you see it so clearly, but the bite is gone, mitigated by your own happiness.

One other thing I discovered as perhaps the biggest aid to self-realization, and that is loving and surrendering to a self-realized being, because the identification can sweep you into your own sense of Self.  You recognize the Self-of-All in the “other,” the guru, and absent that, in a passionate other person, for Self is at both ends of the perceiving; the self is both the lover and the beloved.  When you feel deep love, surrender, wanting, and a sense of servitude with and for another, if it persists long enough, you begin to recognize that the love is YOUR love, experienced within you towards the apparent “other.”

The identification caused by loving the apparent other allows the Self to arise in you because that Self, the Turiya state, is attracted to love and worship, and the Self reveals itself to you.

Then comes the magic moment when you realize that the Self you sought so long outwardly and inwardly is you and only you.  You were both the seeker and the sought, now enveloped in bliss. There never was an “other,” there always has been only you.

You see, it is so strange.  Everyone, all over the world seeks love, the love of another or of God.  This is the way the human race is set up, seeking love for and from another.  This is what makes the human race persist.  This is why we want money and possessions and power: to get love.

This is the way the game is set up, so I say, why not use that “fact” to facilitate self-realization?

The terrible, burning, desirous mad love for “another” also summons the Self to show itself to you, to yourself, once you realize that that mad love is really the self, loving itself through fixation on the Self in another. For many people, this is the way to Self-realization and Self-love, by first feeling it by perceiving the Self in another.

So very many people write to me saying they have read Robert Adams or Ramana and having been practicing one year, two years, or ten years and sometimes much longer and they feel stuck.  I tell them to add the bliss of chanting along with sacred music, and sometimes that helps for a while, but often they still complain about being stuck.

So, I tell them to go out for a while and see if they can fall in love with another, a guru, a man or a woman, hopefully of spiritual bent. Love them totally, worship them, surrender to them, but all the while keep one inner eye always open to your own heart and inner sense of presence.  Then you will discover that the love you feel is totally within you.  

It is not that you have created it, but you perceive it as being part of your own nature, always there if you know how and where to look in profound silence.

The “other” is only apparently the “other.”  The other has a separate body, a separate mind, a phenomenally separate life, but their essence, that which is at the heart of their existence is the same Self, the I-Am, that is you. You and the other are one in this ultimate state. The Self is discovered at both ends of the seeking, loving, devotion, surrender.

At this point love of the other serves as a constant reminder of who and what you really are.  The devotion to the other even while aware of the Self within, is one’s constant reminder of one’s own bliss-nature, and what Siddharameshwar called post-realization devotion as a forever-practice of Self-remembrance.

Dog Math

I am sorry I have not been available to you recently.  I have tried my best to answer emails and Skype contacts, but off and on for several weeks I have been experiencing almost constant ecstatic bliss that is so powerful it just captivates my full attention.  There is such happiness and love that fills my beingness completely.  I thought I had "transcended" these ecstatic states many years ago in order to abide in "ordinary mind," but with the knowledge that 'I' am the witnessing absolute entirely beyond this world of void and form.


However, the so called "Self" has revisited me in a most powerful way, filling "me" with peaceful, resting energy, love and bliss. Like Robert, I just sit hour after hour experiencing the joy within.


Perhaps it is time to start online satsangs again and share this joy and the way to it. 

FAITH

I have seen this so many times. It is a watershed in one's spiritual development, when one grows tired of the unending search in various spiritual biographies,  differing teachers and traditions. One feels fed up tasting a little Middle Eastern religion, New Age energy work, Zen koans, Tibetan Mudras  and mantras, healing affirmations and positive thinking, I-am meditations and meditation on the breath, reading about Ramana Maharshi, then Ramakrishna, then Nietzsche and Kant, transcendental meditation, noumena and phenomena. One feels so polluted by 1000 different judgments and concepts about spirituality, gurus, spiritual teachers, spiritual friends, etc., so that one feels utterly poisoned, and one dare not take another bite.

One sees that one has been following a dozen different teachers for five or 10 years, with no real progress. One has been treading the offshore shallows and not gone deep at all into anything, especially into oneself.

You see our path is about Self-Realization, even though that even the Self is eventually transcended.  The Self is the juice of the universe, the potentating agent that makes the universe appear. Objects change; the Self is always the same in one sense as the subject, the knower, even though there is an even higher Knower behind it.

Those whose awakenings have not included self-knowing, self-realization, in my mind lack the richness of love, devotion and surrender, which ultimately is power.  When the Self operates consciously through you, each action carries far more weight than actions by a body/mind who is not self-realized.

There are many paths where the Self is not a goal, and to me, they lack energy, charisma, and true happiness.  For example, most forms of Buddhism emphasize No-Self, which usually is interpreted to mean a personal self just letting “impersonal” activities pour through one’s life, while for the self-realized, all activities are accepted, owned and loved as one’s own.

Therefore spiritual efforts made along some other path than self-realization can only make self-realization more difficult.

So, at some point, somewhere along the line you recognize that your spirituality is really about self discovery, and you also realize this is entirely personal; no one can discover yourself for you; you have to do it yourself.

All the biographies of the great saints, both self-realized or not, as well as all the methods they teach, are their path, not yours.  You may find some sense of commonality reading their biographies, like that of Ramana, but you need to realize you are not Ramana, his way may not suit you at all.

Eventually you need to have faith in yourself, or faith in a guide. All the teachings, concepts about God, surrender, but especially about what the guru is and how are he or she functions, all this must go out the door.  You need to become simple, not complex, focused on the self, not distracted in a dozen different directions.

One must become utterly sick of wasting one's time digging shallow holes in other’s spiritual real estate. One screws up one’s courage and says to oneself, "I have had it. I'm sick of the spiritual marketplace. I know that what I seek is me, the "I am. How do I find that."

You ask yourself, “Does it matter how Ramana or Nisargadatta found themselves? Does it matter what method they recommend?” You say to yourself, I have tried dozens of methods and have read hundreds of books. I am more confused than before I started my search for spiritual knowledge and awakening. I have concepts bouncing around my mind and they all seem equally valid. What am I to do?"

It is this point of maturity that Krishnamurti talks about: The awakening of intelligence, spiritual discrimination. One really stops listening to others about their path of purification, their path of knowledge, their path of meditation, their methodology, their conclusions, their insights. You see for yourself that you have to reject all spiritual concepts and empty your mind. You have to become self-confident and bold, and you say to yourself, "I am through with all of these ideas, concepts, books, and random teachers. No more! I'm done with all of this. From now on I find out only from myself.”

At this point you  are still filled with concepts that you have to discard. Whenever an idea comes up, you need to ask yourself, "Why did I ever believe this? What evidence did I have other than someone said this as their truth in some book or lecture?"

This is like Buddha. For seven years Buddha wandered all over northern India following teachers, reading the Scriptures, practicing different disciplines, Raji yoga, hatha yoga, learning thousands of different spiritual insights learned from others. He became a teacher and had many disciples. Yet he was unhappy. He still was not satisfied. He still did not know which direction to go. He still did not know he was looking for himself.

So he began a long fast to weaken the body so that his mind and spirit could become stronger. He had this concept that if the body was weakened,  the mind and will would be stronger, and he could realize whatever is needed to be realized. He fasted so long and hard that he was very near death. All of his disciples worried about him and beseeched him to eat. Pretty soon he was starving to death. And at one point he realized that his fasting was helping nothing, that his weakened body had also weakened his mind and spirit, and that his life force was leaving his body. So he relented and ate some rice.

After he recovered briefly, he finally came to his senses. He admitted to himself that he had been an utter failure in following everybody else's precepts, methods, understanding, and Scriptures. He realized all this was borrowed knowledge, not his own truth. He realized that only he can discover himself. He couldn't follow someone else's prescription for finding truth.

So, with great determination he sat underneath the Bo tree and vowed  to himself, that if he did not discover the meaning of life, “Why am what I am,” while meditating under the tree, “I will kill myself.”

For three days and three nights he sat underneath the Bo tree meditating. Scriptures do not say what he meditated on. It really is not important. What is important is there was a maturity of intelligence that blossomed in him. He was no longer gullible following any teacher that came along hoping that he had an answer that would satisfy his hunger, or that  The next teacher would have an answer. He saw that that all the methods he had practiced, all the thinking and pondering, all the various meditation types, all the scriptures and hatha yoga postures, had resulted only in confusion and not clarity. He recognized the clarity can only come by stop looking around in the shallows of spiritual knowledge, and instead to go deep within himself relying only on himself. No more purification, only now, immediately, here and now, he had to look into his own soul and find his own truth without books, without guides, without method.

And just before dawn of the fourth day he had his great awakening. Fortunately or unfortunately, his experience is not described, leaving it to the reader to have his or her own experience.

You see, it is also not important what his realization was—for you.  It was his realization.  It was the realization that he needed to come to rest in himself, to find peace, just as Krishnamurti had his own realization, Nisargadatta his, Robert Adams his, and Osho, his.  All were different in a sense, because they were the realizations they needed to come to rest. 

In other words, they didn’t all recognize that the I-thought had no referent, nothing that the word ‘I’ pointed to which is the currently accepted criteria of awakening offered by the neo-Advaitins and some other New Age groups.

However, part of his realization was that any communication that passed between people based on words, was unreal, not truth. All the Scriptures only point vaguely in the direction of the self.  You have to dissolve yourself of any connection with anybody else, any teacher, Ramana, Nisargadatta, Robert, Muzika, and find your own truth.

You have to be ready to dive deep into yourself, no longer tread water in the shallows, but sink to the bottom, go away beneath the mind, shut the mind often go deep inside yourself. Reading does not help you here. Purification does not help you here. Most meditations do not help you here. Just look within at yourself.

YOU MUST HAVE FAITH IN YOURSELF!

On the other hand, there is one other way, and that is to have faith in One Teaching, One Guru whose teachings focus on realizing the Self.  But this is a different story for a different post.  But after wandering aimlessly in various disciplines for over 20 years, I found my one and only teacher, Robert Adams, and awakened by surrendering to him, following him, being close to him,  have constant Darshan with him and his tradition.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.226896610655357.69600.226839817327703&type=3  

Transcend all teachings and just be without mind


Nisargadatta, the antithesis of a polite Ramana.  Jees, angry, blunt, irritable.





This is exactly what I say, only I call it living from the heart.  As Nisargadatta says, when you do that, whatever knowing or action is needed at that moment comes to you.

Self-Inquiry, Ramana-style, and the householder

An excellent discussion of Ramana/Robert's method of self-inquiry, of going backwards into the self, by David Godman,


Notice this is almost exactly Nisargadatta's method of attending to the I Am-sensation.  Ramana emphasizes attending to the I-"thought" as a person normally associates the thought I with an attribute or action in everyday life, while Maharaj focuses on the feeling of I Am, and the affect of love associated with the self.  This opens a broader highway for the self to investigate itself, because you bring in the power of emotion into the going back process.


He then discusses the self-inquiry process for the householder with children, a job and home as not different.  You do what you have to and practice self-inquiry when you remember, and if possible, sitting secluded from time to time.

Below are photos of some of the 16 feral cats I feed each night.  I work with a few trappers to get new cats spayed or neutered, but some of these guys are hard to trap.


The photos below are in the order I feed them each night. I prepare the plates at home before going out.  The less neighbors see you, the better, because there are always people close by who dislike cats, or cats in their yards.


In an alley behind Vons in Northridge are three, unrelated brown tabbies.  The two large males eat in one location, and the very fat and very friendly female eats in another.

This third location has six cats.  Six months ago there was only the old, large black and white male cat.  Then kittens of various ages began showing up.  One, the Tortie-colored female (black/brown and orange) came up to me out of nowhere six months ago, and in the loudest voice I have ever heard in such a small cat, yelled at me with the loudest "Meow" possible, demanding I feed her too. Two of the males and at least one of the females has not been fixed yet.  This is in a Spanish neighborhood near the Vallarta market near Roscoe in Northridge.

Then, on a postage stamp sized open ground area in front of a donut shop on Reseda, there is this pretty, but fairly old Tuxedo-colored male.  He is getting close to letting me pet him. The shop owners when they are there have never complained.

The cat below is fed on a slab supporting a large transformer for a small shopping center.  The slab is in front of a 99 Cent store.  I was not able to photograph a black and white cat who often dines here.

Below is a huge and affectionate Persian cat, who I have to feed when he or she shows up, otherwise he will eat food I leave out for a true feral.  This cat is likely an indoor/outdoor cat of some neighbor.  The feral I feed here will not make an appearance when this large one is present.  This last cat (not shown) was Jimmy's favorite, and is a female who is not very friendly.  She tends to bite her feeder on the ankle if she dawdles in feeding. She has been in the neighborhood according to one colony manager, for over ten years.

Last is a photo of Marie.  What a remarkable saint.  She feeds between 140-150 cats a night in 27 different locations.  Three locations have 20 or more cats.  I'll post those photos some day when I can get someone to ride with her to take photos and a video for our wearesentience website.  She does not want anyone to see her face.  She believes she could get into trouble in Animal Services if she were ever recognized.  Apparently she thinks Animal Services peruses everything I write.

Our wearesentience organization  usually gives Marie 15-20 bags of hard food a month and maybe 15 cases of canned food.  Another feeder, Rosa, gets maybe six bags and six cases a month. Rosa feeds about 100 cats, and helps trapping and spay/neuter a lot.


Yet another colony manager, who, like Rosa, does a lot of trapping, has recently been diagnosed with stage four intestinal cancer.  She also fed over 100 cats a night and we are trying to figure out how to spread the load.


I think if I were to make snap judgements, the Tuxedos (black and white) cats are the most affectionate. Gopi, Charlie, and Dustin were or are my lap cats.  The Calico females all tended to be shy and greatly overweight.  The Torties have the most extraordinary personalities, far bigger than their bodies.

A normal rain year in Los Angeles has about 14" of rain. It snowed once for about 90 seconds during the 30 years I lived here.  This year we have had only 6" of rain, and the rainy season is just about over.


BUT TODAY IT POURED.  THE PHOTOS BELOW ARE FROM MY FRONT AND BACK YARDS. IS IT THIS GREEN BACK EAST?

‎"Animals help patients keep their mind off their problems," says Jean S. Uehl, the director of nurses. "The love the patients get from the animals is unconditional." One particular stroke patient was withdrawn and rarely smiled, until she began to play with the resident cat. The patient and the cat became closely bonded to each other, and when the cat had kittens, "they became like the patient’s babies," according to Uehl. The kittens played and slept on a tray on the resident’s wheelchair and slept in a chair near her bed whenever they could. The kittens brought the resident out of her shell and she began to talk and smile. "The kittens in particular get all the residents’ attention," says Uehl. "Everyone always wants to know where they’re at and what they’re doing." When there are kittens in the building, a number of residents stay busy all day, following them, playing with them, and keeping an eye on them. ~ From HealthyPet.com

This is what Robert Adams said on the subject of running from one teacher to another, endless reading of spiritual books, discussion in forums such as Facebook and emails, travel to exotic places seeking perfect meditation venues, etc.:


In Advaita Vedanta, the knower is the last to go. What comes after the knower? Silence! There is nothing else.


Just think how much knowledge you've gathered all these years. Reading so many books. Seeing so many teachers. Having so many discussions, debates, arguments. Can't you see now this is what's been holding you back? This is what has been holding you back. You have believed that you're the knower and that you have to become a knower to become free.


Yet no one has to know anything for there is absolutely nothing to know. Why is there nothing to know? Because there is only omnipresence, infinity, absolute reality and there is no name for this. (Here Robert is talking about what comes after Self-Realzation, knowing Turya, Brahman. He is talking about the final condition.)


In other words, you cannot know absolute reality. You cannot know pure awareness. As long as there is someone who knows about it, it doesn't exist. It's only when you put an end to knowing that you become the Self. The Self has no shape, no form, no identity. It is no thing. Yet you are that. What are you going to do about it?


(Instead of abiding in it…), when most of you walk out this door you'll start discussions, arguments. You'll start thinking about your outside world. You'll start thinking about your body, your material happiness, or your material suffering. And you'll be back where you started.


What I'm saying to you is if you could only learn to be quiet, in your mind. If your mind learns to keep quiet, it will become weaker and weaker and you will notice that all the actions you are doing, and all the concepts you are talking have absolutely nothing to do with you.


Yet you will continue to do things, go places, experience this so-called life, but you are doing absolutely nothing. For there's no one left to do anything. There's no one left to get sick, there's no one left to be healthy. There's no one left to be poor, there's no one left to be rich. There's no one left to possess anything and there's no one left not to possess anything.


There's just no one left, and this is what gives you freedom. And the only way you can get to that place is to keep quiet. To be silent.


(Again, Robert is talking about the final state, going beyond Turya. According to the quotes from Siddharameshwar that I have been posting, the I Am, Turya, Brahman, is the pure knowing state, and eventually even knowledge has to go.
This is even after self-inquiry is finished. But, he even says that his practice of silence, not traveling, not reading, not discussing, can take you all the way. In a sense, by remaining silent, just by looking within, you are emulating the final state. You have to remember Robert here is not talking to advanced students, but is really just talking like this to have them turn their attention away from books, gurus and travel, and turn inwardly towards the Self of all.)


The Knower is the last to go! - 9th January, 1992

I just got an email from a friend and student saying he is going to Nepal for 6 months to spend time in a monastery in order to go “deep.”  He plans on doing this even now that his practice  at home got better. Part of his desire to travel was a breakup with his fiance.  He wrote:

“I am glad to tell you that my mediation sittings are deepen itself again. This morning I was clearly aware of a changing in the body awareness. My body felt like a thing, a living subtle vibrating energy. It didn't feel like me. It was subtle, spacey and objective. I was only in wonder looking at this phenomena. Thoughts are there but the mind did feel strong and like a rock. And in the background there was a continuum sense of beingness. This all passing by in less then half a hour. I tell you this only to express my joy of feeling connected again with something deeper in myself.“

He wanted me to bless his journey.

Another student wrote from India, writing of an experience of love with a woman that happened there and the sense of I Am that arose from it:

“Then she left and I was utterly amazed how devastated I actually felt. It really was painful and I wondered what to do with that. I started to feel the grief and sadness, really sit with it. Then it transformed into this immense beauty and devotion to existence itself. It was like nothing I ever experienced and I still get chills of bliss right now just writing about it. There was a clearer view, a more FELT view of the "I am". And instead of grief now came a warm gratitude to her for blessing me with this.”

He does not realize that this ingoing he is experiencing is partially due to his breakup, and the ingoing of the love energy previously directed outwards to another.


R. left for Thailand from his home after being a student devoted to self-inquiry, “In order to experience life and grow.”  He has been going in and out of happiness since, but then abruptley left our satsang because of a personal crisis and his desire to find a woman and more experiences before enlightenment.

Another student is teaching English in Vietnam and visiting Buddhist temples.

Another dear student abruptly decided to go the the jungles of Peru to take some psychedelic plant with a shaman for a number of complex reasons.

Yet another student just spent a month in India and thinks to go back two more times during the next year.

I just don’t get it.

What you all are seeking is YOU.  YOU are always there. Being with your Sadguru—the human guru who knows who he or she is—can help YOU and you recognize and be YOU, but all the traveling to monasteries, shamans, monks, foreign retreats, jungle visits, etc., all occur on the level of the body and mind, and experiences of the body and mind.


Much of the seeking above is really seeking the love of another human in a romantic relationship, or the result of a breakup of a romantic relationship with all the loving energy of the I Am, now no longer having an external object, and the love turns inward on its own self, but the mind tells the person that can only be found in some exotic land in some exotic spiritual institution. 

You can explore your inner world of visions, energies, archetypes, emotions, “guided finds” also known as impulses, listening to talks, having new teachers, new experiences, etc., and what will you have found?  ONLY MORE OF THE SAME! Anything that happens on the level of the body, or the mind, such as knowledge, experiences such as love, sex, psychedelics, drugs, and meditation experiences, are just on the level of the body and mind.

There is no freedom here.  There is only endless, empty exploration which may seem exciting while you are doing it, but after a dozen years of such seeking, what will you do?

It is only by going deep into yourself that you will find what you seek.  Go deeper than the body, deeper than the mind and thoughts, books, lectures and the next guru.  Deeper into the Void and emptiness, and deeper still into the I Am experience.  Go deeper into YOU.  You can do it alone, but it tends to get boring because everyone wants to go too quickly without exhausting the teachings of each level of the Void and of the I Am.

Being in the presence of someone who knows the Self is the best practice. All of the other seeking is bullshit.

All of my in-print, collected satsangs and blog entries are now available at the below link thanks to Matthew Brown:


http://www.wearesentience.com/index.html 

Finding that which is beyond even Brahman

The quote below is from page 73 and 74 of me "Master of Self-Realization." The way it is translated, it is he sort of ambiguous. It talks both about clarifying the causal body state in order to discover Turya, or the (King of knowledge state), the Supra Causal Body, but it also talks about going beyond knowledge altogether to find the ultimate cognizer, which will be known once the pursuit of knowledge ceases. As long as one looks from a place of lacking, and attempting to fill that lacking by means of the mind, one can never rest in Turya, or beyond even that, in the para-Brahman state, the absolute, the witness of all. When one ceases all mental activity, all seeking, all Samadhis, one is already in that para-Brahman state, the witness, but unable to witness oneself or even realize there is a witness to be witnessed. One just IS; the pure subject.

This section warns against searching within the world of objects, ideas, spiritual teachings, and going into the forest and jungle (meaning in modern terms, special retreats, workshops, guru shopping, but in classical terms was actually going to the jungle and forest in profound individual retreat) in searching for this IS, because the searching will drag you back to the subtle body, the intellect, the impulses, the imagination and images, and the self (Turya), will never be found, just as that which is beyond Turya, will never be found.

You see, it is all within YOU, and is not going to be found ultimately even with the guru. You cannot search from without. You cannot find it in books, workshops, dream analysis, psychoanalysis, the collective unconsciousness or drugs. It is already within you, just as you are in ordinary mind.

From the Master of Self-Realization:

This is the condition of the one that is himself Brahman and yet is in search of Brahman. Where and how can He find Himself? His exact position is such that he is the one who knows everyone but is not known by anyone. The one who tries to know Him does not know that His own true nature is "pure consciousness" so He wanders about in the forest and jungle (searching for that which has never been lost). How amazing this is. How can He, the one who is known only after "the capacity for knowing" has been transcended, be known? Unless one becomes steady within oneself, leaving behind having the desire to know, one cannot have the "knowledge of Brahman." (Comment: this is a new way of knowing, not by knowledge of the intellect her mind, but the more sure knowledge of just being.)

When the Subtle Body gets destroyed and one comes to the Causal Body, the one who is trying to know Brahman with the subtle intellect does not become steadied in the causal body. Instead He gets pushed back to the Subtle Body by force from the Causal Body and once again comes under the sway of imaginings, concepts, impulses, desires, and doubts. If an aspirant dreams, employing the use of words or the mind, he will never progress to (the place or state) where speech and mind cannot enter. Instead, he will go to a lower plane. The aspirant cannot remain as an aspirant, but has to become a Siddha (One Who Is Accomplished). For this, one has to cross over the steps of all four bodies. By constant study, one has to enter on the platforms of the four bodies, and clean and clarify them through investigation. Only then can the "Truth of the Self" be invoked and become fully established.

-------------------------------------------------

I am making emphasis on this point for one very important reason.

When I first started my spiritual quest in 1968, I did so with the pure mind and very clear direction of doing self-inquiry. I knew this was my path, and I took with me Ramana’s short book "Who Am I?,” As well as Philip Kapleau’s book the "Three pillars of Zen" that contained the story of Bassui, who only practiced self inquiry, the “Who am I?” koan. Those two books were my guide, and that is all that I did. I had in enormous numbers of kundalini experiences, seeing clearly the void, having many physical body transformation experiences, as well as daily seeing the brilliant bright light of consciousness itself, which every afternoon constantly sucked me down into itself; but out of fear I ran away.

Eventually I was to go to the Mt Baldy Zen center to study with Zen master Sasaki who forbade his students from using that koan.  He stated it was far too difficult.

Thereafter I lost my way for many, many, years. Many years of useless pursuits, wanderings, seeking different teachers, different Zen Masters, Muktananda, chanting, bhakti yoga, and then psychotherapy for seven years, until I met Robert, 18 years after I lost my single-minded pursuit of Self by means of the "Who am I?" Question. I was lost and drifted for 18 years of wasted effort. Even after I met Robert, it took another six years of the practice of self-inquiry to have my awakening experiences.

However, the form self inquiry took for me after meeting Robert was different from the form that I practiced in the 1960s, which was more focused on peering into and watching the light of consciousness, the emptiness form of the void, and filling that voidness with the bliss chanting. Had I known what I know now, I would've added loving another, whether God worship or human worship, to better fill out the sense of I Am with its own energy of self loving.

Thus I implore you, do not get distracted from the straight and narrow, and short but difficult path of just watching yourself, being with yourself, loving yourself, and trying to catch hold of the sight of the I Am, then loving it and worshiping it.

This is why I always emphasize just having one guru, one teaching, and that teaching being reflecting on one's own self, loving oneself, seeing the I Am, and loving the I Am. Please do not waste two decades of your life in fruitless searching in the jungles of the spiritual marketplace, because it will only suck you back from the void, and more deeply fixate you in your mind, impulses, emotions, imaginations and searchings of the intellect for decades. This is what happens to most people, the search goes on, and on, and on with no clear direction or purpose, just following books and impulses, and decades pass with nothing happening, and most give up entirely unless they are rescued in the last half of their life by a true Sadguru, or by consciousness itself. But one can never count on such grace.

Below is an incredibly important article and link regarding the results of a long term study on the deleterious effect of eating red meat on mortality.  Eating just 3 ounces of red meat a day, cow, pig, lamb, increased mortality rates above the base level by 20%.  Eating nuts and legumes instead for protein, actually decreased mortality by amounts from 10 to 20% below that base rate, meaning a vegetarian has a 40% less chance of dying during the same period of time than a red meat eater.


For any compassionate person interested in ending the barbarism of meat eating, this information needs to be broadcast loud and far.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313,0,565423.story

• ALSO
• Graphic: Effect of red meat on mortality risk
• 'Pink slime': Revolting beef additive or absolutely edible?
• Test-tube meat burger is in the works
• PETA goes nearly nude in Vernon meat protest

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times

March 12, 2012, 4:28 p.m.

Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one's daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.

Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

"Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk," said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published onlineMonday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Crunching data from thousands of questionnaires that asked people how frequently they ate a variety of foods, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with other foods seemed to reduce mortality risk for study participants.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study. The team said choosing poultry or whole grains as a substitute was linked with a 14% reduction in mortality risk; low-fat dairy or legumes, 10%; and fish, 7%.

Previous studies had associated red meat consumption with diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all of which can be fatal. Scientists aren't sure exactly what makes red meat so dangerous, but the suspects include the iron and saturated fat in beef, pork and lamb, the nitrates used to preserve them, and the chemicals created by high-temperature cooking.

The Harvard researchers hypothesized that eating red meat would also be linked to an overall risk of death from any cause, Pan said. And the results suggest they were right: Among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as meat consumption increased, so did mortality risk.

In separate analyses of processed and unprocessed meats, the group found that both types appear to hasten death. Pan said that at the outset, he and his colleagues had thought it likely that only processed meat posed a health danger.

Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that's good for you.

"If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week," he said. "That would have a huge impact on public health."

A majority of people in the study reported that they ate an average of at least one serving of meat per day.

Pan said that he eats one or two servings of red meat per week, and that he doesn't eat bacon or other processed meats.

Cancer researcher Lawrence H. Kushi of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland said that groups putting together dietary guidelines were likely to pay attention to the findings in the study.

"There's a pretty strong supposition that eating red meat is important — that it should be part of a healthful diet," said Kushi, who was not involved in the study. "These data basically demonstrate that the less you eat, the better."

UC San Francisco researcher and vegetarian diet advocate Dr. Dean Ornish said he gleaned a hopeful message from the study.

"Something as simple as a meatless Monday can help," he said. "Even small changes can make a difference."

Additionally, Ornish said, "What's good for you is also good for the planet."

In an editorial that accompanied Savedthe study, Ornish wrote that a plant-based diet could help cut annual healthcare costs from chronic diseases in the U.S., which exceed $1 trillion. Shrinking the livestock industry could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of forests to create pastures, he wrote.

eryn.brown@latimes.com