EATING MEAT CAUSES CANCER--PROCESSED MEAT WORSE

World Health Organization: Processed Meats Cause Cancer

The average American consumes about 18 pounds of bacon each year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/world-health-organization-processed-meats-cause-cancer_562e1144e4b0aac0b8fd51b2

Kate BratskeirFood and Health Editor, The Huffington Post

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I sit writing this testimony in utter bliss and joy. From head to toe I am washed by bliss with the light of Consciousness burning brightly. I have just finished Swami Shakarananda’s book Consciousness is Everything available at Amazon.

I have always hated eastern philosophy even from my early, pre-Zen days exploring Buddhist Sutras and major schools and how they critiqued each other. Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita Vedanta were just too complex and boring to me in comparison to finding all that I wanted to read in reading me, my Self, the I Am, the Void, the presence, the light of Consciousness. When I read philosophical texts my mind began to pop up and try to hold together the myriad of concepts and states found within those books, including especially, Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Maharaj’s books are filled with what Shankarananda calls G or Guru statements that shock you, but Nisargadatta’s talks are so chaotic, unstructured, and immediate, it is very difficult to find the underlying structure of his teachings. I persisted because I was watching a brilliant lightning storm of wisdom from this character, but never was able to catch him. Until now.

Swamiji’s book provides the overall structure that includes explaining all the concepts found in Nisargadatta, Ramana, and Robert Adams within a comprehensive overview, that in the largest sense explains all Hindu and Buddhist views within a living expression of otherwise lifeless scholastic philosophy.

There is so much light and love in this book; it is an expression of sheer joy in the exposition of our manifest and transcendent nature.

I would never have suspected such a book coming out of Swamiji. When I knew him from 1979 to whenever he left for Australia, when it came to teachings he was utterly silent. When it came to a description of his own attainment and states, e was utterly silent. Yet I felt the Shakti radiating from him, and in this book see a fruition of a level of alive teaching that is quite extraordinary.

This book may have the ostensible subject matter of Kashmir Shaivism, but it is really about Shankarananda, who really knows who he is. He has lived these teachings and evolved in them. Such a teacher is rare, as rare as this book, one I could never wrote because I hate scholastic detail and myriads of concepts and methods.

I wish to thank my spiritual brother Swami Shankarananda for his presence in this world and his manifestation through this book.

ONCE AGAIN I AM EXPLODING IN BLISS. A CONSTANT STREAM OF ENERGY AND LIGHT FLOWS FROM MY GUT THROUGH MY HEART AND UPWARD AND OUTWARD INTO THE WORLD. IT MOVES AS A SLOW BUT VERY BROAD RIVER OF PURE CONSCIOUSNESS, LIGHT, LIGHT, LIGHT!

The finding of Kashmir Shaivism opened me to a richer understanding of Nisargadatta, Robert, and Ramana. In KS, the Witness is Shiva, unmoving, still, observing, surrounded by the Manifest, the entirety of the Manifest Self and world, and is called Shakti. They are One, not two, just as I used to say that the Unmanifest and Manifest Selves were one.

After living in Shakti for many years, Nisargadatta decided to just live in Shiva and rejected the rest of Consciousness. Shiva is prior to Consciounsess only in the sense of being the ultimate witness aspect of Consciousness.

Shakti is exploding in me now, flowing, moving, enlivening, filling me with bliss and I am bliss itself.

Kashmir Shaivism puts Nisargadatta's disjointed aphorisms into a complete context that opened something up in me. A month ago I was in complete stillness as the totality of Consciousness, still, complete, self-sufficient, and incredibly peaceful.

Today I am exploding in bliss-energy, shouting in great joy my existence,

When I escaped academia during the third year of an Economics Ph.D. program at Wayne State University in 1968, I never look backwards.  I hated all approaches based on sutras, words, concepts, ontology, and adapted spiritual approaches with minimal teachings, such as the transmission outside of scripture approach of Zen, and then the very simple teachings of Robert, Ramana, and Nisargadatta, where you just find the I-Thought and follow it with your attention, or to find the I-sensation and evermore fixate there.

I remember attending to several classes on various scriptures of Kashmir Shaivism at the Santa Monica Siddha Yoga ashram on Broadway around 1980 or 1981, and felt so put off by the verbal approach.

I read Jan Essman’s books with great difficulty, also of a Shaivite bent, I don't remember if he considered himself a Kashmir Shaivite, because they were so scholarly and obsessed with Shaivite concepts and terminology versus other schools.

Since the early 80s, I have never been interested in anything but understanding the I Am directly, Consciousness, the Void, the light of Consciousness pervading all, and later, Self-Realization both of the Unmanifest and of the Manifest Self.

I was very popular as a teacher when I only reflected Robert’s teachings, but once I realized God within me, with her constant presence within my heart, Her energy, her restless movements, the constant bliss states, flowing energies and flow of circulating light within, my expanding sense of presence, and far increased clarity of the entirety of the spiritual spectrum, students just began to slip or even run away.  What I was teaching now was outside of the spectrum and umbrella of Robert, Ramana’s or Nisargadatta’s simplistic teachings of transcendence.

Students told me they could not understand what I was teaching anymore, or they refused to go where I was leading because of my maturing vision.

Had Shankarananda spoke in any academic way when I first knew him in 1979, I would not have stayed around. I was anti-scholastic hten, even more than now.  However, now, 35 years later I have experienced so much, so many states, experiences, teachings that fall outside of Advaita, that although Nisargadatta and Ramana stand at the center of my guru-honoring, my present experience of Kashmir Shaivism through the very personal and joyous expression of my old friend, has allowed me to cast my current understanding and experiences in a new light of expansive spirituality, of great width, and life-affirming spirituality so very different from Robert’s and Nisargadatta’s disconfirmation of the human condition.

In my experience, the true Advaita Vedantists were a sour bunch, denying the personal, relationships, even Consciousness itself by Nisargadatta.  And, they tended to be inactive, like Ramana, withdrawn, like Lahksmanan, and all took Ramana’s sayings as the only truth.

On the other hand, Muktananda and Shankarananda, as well as Swami Chetanananda, throw the doors open and allow everyone into their tent, allowing them access to a level of teachings within that big tent that they can adopt as their own.  Shankarananda on a personal level really never offered any teachings 35-40 years ago, and because of that, I only felt his warmth and the warmth of the various Siddha ashrams, which of course disappeared once Chidvilasananda took over and she turned it into a personal cult.

Shankarananda told me back then that Muktananda told him never to offer teachings unless a student were nearly beating you up for them.  I understand this approach now. If the teachings are hard to come by, people can’t fault you; if you are open about teachings, they will conflict with those students already have, which will drive many away.  

This has been my experience.

Most students need very simple teachings, easy to understand, very little confrontations about their wrong beliefs, like some who hold that a “true teacher” does not smoke, eat meat, swear, have sex, or lose their temper.  Teachers are thus placed in strait jackets or the expectations of naïve students who are always judging based on what they think you should be and how “an enlightened being” should act.

The meditations and exercises that Shankarananda offers in his book are precisely those I have also taught over the years including his Shiva Process, which I do more directly by plunging into negative thoughts and emotions, abiding there, accepting them, even loving them, absorbing them and their energies into me.  I am sure Shankarananda would accept this too as a method as the result is the same, but I don’t use the idea that I am breaking up a contraction or sticking point.  I accept them as a form of Consciousnes that need sto be explored and loved.

I am very proud of my old friend for his genius as a teacher.  I could never have written such an academic book, nor expressed it with such love.

One more thing, all the talk has been about swamiji.  Let me make quite clear the Ma Devi has always been part of what their ashrams so sweet.  Her presence during chanting and on the harmonium was transfixitive.

More on my way versus Kashmir Shaivism, but the joy I feel reading about it.

Regarding Shankarananda’s book, some people have contacted me saying it is too wordy, too many concepts, too many distinctions, and a constant emphasis of avoiding negative thoughts and emotions.

I agree totally with this criticism.  First of all, I have very little to do with the mind at all.  It does not get in my way or between me and the ‘external world’.  I do not avoid thoughts at all; they come and visit very briefly and leave because I more or less have nothing to do with them.

The same with emotions. Emotions come and go, and I don’t much entertain them, positive or negative. But an emphasis on avoiding “impure” thoughts or emotions just escapes me.  There is a great amount of energy and bliss encased within ALL strong emotions from anger, love, jealousy, fear, to negative moods such as depression, anxiety, euthymia, and elation.  With and below each is a river of bliss, and within that bliss, is pure Consciousness and light.  This has been my own experience.  By diving deep into depression, jealousy, fear, humiliation, one encounters energy and bliss. 

One learns how to “eat” emotions, abide in them, accept them, even love them.  Love your depression, lust, jealousy, fear.  Play with those feelings, own them, absorb them.  When you do they leave an aftertaate of bliss and energy, which eventually blows away leaving peace, rest, and alive Consciousness.

The same with great love. Own it, dive into it.  Accept it, brimng it into your inner heart of identification however short a period of time and you become love itself, which transforms into visions and states of divine intoxication.

As to all the myriad concepts found in Kashmir Shaivism, it is just a joy to dwell for a while in a completely different take on the same subject matter, especially given Shankarananda’s light, joyful touch.

I am grasping this different perspective and can better grasp the Tantric approach which I discovered for myself in isolation the lone rebel in a sea of Advaita teachers and students always complaining about my many deviations from their concepts of the teachings of Robert, Ramana, or Nisargadatta, who so many worship as the embodiments of absolute truth and spirituality.

But all the distinction, concepts, and levels in Swamiji’s book?  In a month I will not remember much other than “Everything is Consciousness” and how that is expressed in so many ways in that book.

The strange thing is I entirely dwelled in that state a few weeks ago for four or five days after Michael came and took over my physical chores, and two months before reading Everything is Consciousness, and being shot down by Vedantists that thought I was being blasphemous. Doing nothing, with no movement of mind or body, the I Am sensation of my union with the divine disappeared and all that there was. Was Consciousness. All had dissolved into Consciousness.  There was no inside or outside, no divine versus personal, no I Am, no God within or world without, no joy, no sorrow, just infinite immersion in absolute peace of being at rest in Consciousness as Consciousness.

However, more than anything, I felt the joy in the way this book was written, even more than Shaivism’s broad sweep and poetic expression.

As an undergraduate, I majored in western philosophy, and was most interested in ontology (the structures of the existing), and epistemology (How do we know about those structures).  My favorite philosophers were Kant and Hume on the ontological end and Carnap, Quine, and Wittgenstein as to the nature of language, logic, and the mind.

However, sometime during my sophomore or junior year I knew without a shadow of doubt that there was no ultimate truth to be found there and left philosophy to study subjects closer to everyday life—economics.  But after three years of advanced study of macro economics, market theory, and money and banking, I saw again that theory was just a map, not the terrain itself, and most all the maps did more to confuse than make clear.

I found Eastern philosophy just as boring and off the point as Western philosophy, lost in concepts about the nature of reality and God.  Boring, boring, and so far from my direct experience such that I got into Zen, a transmission of Buddha’s enlightenment outside of the scriptures, except maybe for the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and the Lankanavatara Sutra, none of which meant anything to me then.

Unfortunately, not only did Zen toss out verbal and written teachings, it also got rid of Subtle Body energies, emotions, and the personal.  It is very one-sided and impersonal, even though quite brilliant and clear.

I remember taking Swami Shankarananda to see Seung Sahn Soen Sa some time after 1980, and noting how put off he was by Zen’s formality and lack of warmth.

Later I encountered Nisargadatta through Ramesh Balsekar, and then spent some weeks with Balsekar himself and found Nisargadatta’s Advaita as expounded by Ramesh extremely fascinating.  Indeed, one of my Zen Master’s, Song Ryong Hearn, also attended a few of Ramesh’s talks, turned to me during a break, and said that Ramesh’s exposition was as close as one can come to Zen’s truth in words.

Then I found Robert Adams, the history of which I have written about many, many times over the last 15 years.

Robert’s single teaching was that all that there is, is Consciousness, although at times, saying Consciousness itself was illusory.  You, as a human, do not exist.  The world is illusion, ignore it.  Follow the I-thought to its root, and through these teachings, had basic awakening to unbounded consciousness, the disappearance of all divisions within awareness and rest in the totality of Consciousness.

Since then I have had a very hard time reading, as I always had my own awareness to read by going within, observing my own awareness and the objects within Consciousness, such as my body experienced from inside, my emotions, my desires, thoughts, and imagination.

Nisargadatta’s world view is basically yogic, speaking of the four bodies, and beyond that, the Absolute, which he called Parabrahman.  He is terrible as a teacher of the fundamental Advaita he teaches because he speaks in aphorisms as opposed toa linear description. His expositions always lead to shutting down of the mind in stunned silence creating mindless states in his listeners, much like a Zen master with Koans or direct, physical blows.

Now, Rinzai Zen too has this brazen and somewhat violent approach to teaching, silencing the mind through physical blows or conundrums, but is heavily criticized by the Soto school of Zen, that does accept scripture study and sitting in silence, or just sitting, as proper meditation.  They regard Rinzai teachers and students almost as common thugs or retards, without subtlety or sophistication.  Rinzai masters on the other hand, regard Soto teachers as effete academics entirely lost in their minds or in quietism.

I guess my attitude towards scriptures has long had a Rinzai flavoring, and scriptural study was to be avoided at all costs for fear of getting stuck in words and concepts, drying out and becoming an old fart without juice.

However, to my great joy, now reading Shankarananda’s book, ‘Consciousness is Everything’ gives me a new appreciation for the scriptural approach.

I know that with Swami Chetanananda, I made myself a pest by criticizing his constant consort with academics to build a base or foundation for the future of Kashmir Shaivism in America.

But Shankarananda’s book is different.  It is not written in a boring, academic style, but from a personal point of view, filled with the delight and joy he experiences in the teachings and his own life.

The Kashmir Shaivism presented by Swamiji is very broad and rich, as well as deep, compared to the very linear verticality of Zen and Robert’s and Nisargadatta’s Advaita.

Shnakarananda’s Kashmir Shaivism is broad, rich, and great fun.  I feel a great happiness to experience all that I have experienced in terms of yogic bodies, altered states, unity consciousness within a broad context of teachings that is very rich, very personal, very much alive, and expressed with great joy.

I think Advaita and Kashmir Shavism are experiential antidotes to each other; one provides context, the other focuses entirely on the end state, the final goal.  I guess I will have to read one or two of Chetanananda’s books now to better “feel” the Shaivite approach.

Shankarananda Shaivism and Nisargadatta

I like many things about Shankarananda’s book ‘Consciousness is Everything’, among them is the emphasis on being a person.   Advaita is really, really remote, and in a way, is very Zen like and very abstract.  There is no love in Advaita or in Zen.  Love is replaced by either indifference or compassion.

I am from a Zen and Advaita background. I got out of Zen because there was no warmth or love there, but I found a lot of that in Shankarananda’s Los Angeles ashram. Basically I left Siddha Yoga with when the LA Sangha was destroyed by Chidvilasanda, and I gradually found my way back into Advaita through Nisargadatta and Jean Dunn, and Robert Adams and Ramana.

What Shankarananda’s book does is give an entirely different perspective on Consciousness, the Absolute and the human condition than Advaita.  It makes many things clearer, like having stereo vision.  Some things pop out. The human condition is not to be ignored as per Nisargadatta and Robert, but recognized as aspects of Consciousness.  Shaivism is more open, Advaita more absolutist and elitist.

Shankarananda’s emphasis on the phrase “Consciousness is Everything” is quite different than Nisargadatta’s resting in the Absolute (Shiva state), yet is a phrase that Nisagadatta also uses to describe the what I call the Manifest level of Self or personal awareness and within that, the awareness of God within us, the divine spark of sentience, bliss, and life.

I think a true dialogue between Shankarananda and I would be very valuable.  We would shed light on each other.

I would very specifically note that neither Shaivism, nor Zen, nor Advaita has anything like the moralism or judgmentalism of Christianity or New Age spirituality.  Recently there has been a movement in Zen to come together in a Council and create a list of ethics for Zen Buddhism, which is an encroachment of the old Theravadin emphasis on ethics with its 513 moral precepts.

In Zen there is no pure or impure, good or evil. In Advaita there certainly is no moral considerations at all; it is all about Self-Realization, whether of the Manifest Self or of the Absolute (Shiva).  Shaivism seems much the closest to accepting “impurities” (as opposed to pure Consciousness), or “contractions,’ and using them to expand and grown by observing them, loving them, incorporating them, and then watching them disappear through absorption. This is also what I teach, I just did not know that Shankarananda beat me to it.

Anyone engaged in a lot of judgementalism or casting of stones, really has not a clue about what Shaivism is, or any form of spirituality above Fundamentalist Christianity or Sharia Law.

Those who say Nisargadatta is hard or easy to understand, because he does not have a systematic knowledge, a structure for his teachings, but is God speaking from his mouth are really mistaken.

We can easily see Nisargadatta’s teachings as a system if we read the book Master of Self-Realization, which has two sections: Master Key to Self-Realization by Siddharameshwar, which is 80 pages long, and then Part II, Master of Self Realization which is Nisargadatta’s notes on 130 of Siidharameshwar’s satsangs.  Nisargadatta also wrote an introduction to this part of the book on pages 85-87, wherein he states these teachings came to him because of his faith in his guru, loyalty to his guru, and by constantly pondering these talks.

Siddharameshwar’s teachings is a very clear exploration and exposition of the Nath school of Advaita Vedanta’s understanding of the nature of Consciousness and levels of Self from the physical, to the Subtle Body/energy level, to the Causal Body level, then Turiya, than the Absolute Witness beyond Consciousness.

I spend a lot of time explaining Nusargadatta and Siddharameshwar in my book Self-Realization and Other Awakenings on my website, http://wearesentience.com.

Nowhere does Siddharameshwar or Nisargadatta say that the ultimate truths, or one’s ultimate being is ineffable.  You can talk about it and even talk from that experience as does Siddharameshwar, Nisargadatta, and Ranjit Maharaj.

However, both Nisargadatta and Ranjit say you have to get totally beyond the body identification before any true spiritual path begins.  Robert also says this, and so does Ramana who utterly abandons his body from the age of 16.

But part of what these critics of my exposition state is true: you cannot read or understand Nisargadatta from a mind-level.  Your mind has to be supple, open, attentive, and quiet, and just feel the words in your heart and gut, and let them sit there.

Other schools like Kashmir Shaivism take a more round about walk through what Siddharameshwar refers to as the Subtle, Causal, and Turiya levels of Self, but really never let go of the body, bliss, or energies to dwell only as the absolute Witness.

They enjoy all levels combined into Self, from observing the world, the body, the Subtle Body, and Absolute as Shiva all conjoined as One, but with a different ontology than Siddharameshwar and Nisargadatta and do not talk of a Subtle or Causal body, but do of Turiya.

But these critics cannot just abandon the effort to ponder and understand the teachings of a master saying they are ineffable. They are merely admitting they do not understand and think it is because words cannot show the way.  If this were true, why would masters speak in words?

Even Robert and Ramana who talk about the highest teachings are in silence, themselves spoke millions of words, talking from the end state which they have achieved.  But you out there reading these words are not there.  Robert spent 17 years in India deepening his understanding before his curiosity left him.  In fact, he was with Nisargadatta for six months in the late 197s, when he was 50 years old, and even then had curiosity about alternative spiritual paths, by his own admission.  Those who choose to be silent without doing any spiritual work are doomed to never find any awakening.

I just finished reading two new books of Nisargadatta's latter books.

Let me put it this way: It is almost impossible to understand what he is saying.

Never does he place the entire range of his teachings into an overall context. He speaks in aphorisms, pithy answers to questions asked to him by students, with answers only for them, according to his own admission. He tells readers not to read "I Am That" because those are not his current teachings, which have changed.

Also, the teachings in I Am That are very, very different from those in his first book written 25 years earlier, Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization.

Part of the "problem" in his own words, is that he does not think about any of his answers, they spill spontaneously from his mouth as Consciousness addressing Consciousness in the questioner, in an effort to get the questioner into a statee entirely prior to all concepts.

In this way he teaches much like me: helping students get entirely into a don't know state where mind is mostly ignored.

So many teachers, especially the neo-advaitins, have almost no spiritual experiences, but only a simplistic denial of the existence of an inner Self of any sort, from which a whole simplistic philosophy follows.

Nisargadatta wanders hither and yan, using undefined terms, or term s defined with other under-defined terms. It is as if he makes it absolutely impossible to follow or understand him.

For example, it is not clear what he means by Prior to Consciousness. It was not even clear to Ramesh Balsekar who spent years with him. Is he referring to an Unmanifest Self entirely outside of Consciousness, a noumenal Self, or is he talking about Robert's "gap," the experience of existence prior to the arising of the I-sense and self-consciousness, and ccalling that the unchanging and Absolute. If the latter, his entire philosophy is rather trivial.

He also talks about your existence 100 years ago and insists that not knowing what you were at that time, proves that you must have been there in order to be the unchanging constant background that is currently expressing you are unaware of your existence then. he says you are that knowing principle who is unaware of what you were then. This is really crappy logic, unless he is is referring just to the state of Consciousness before the arising of the I Am, the pre-I Am experience of awareness without thought or self-recognition.

And so it goes. There are so many cracks in his model that make an understanding of Maharaj's "wisdom," nearly impossible unless you are very nimble on your feet, accept what he says at that moment, and are not able to hold his multiple inconsistencies in your mind at once.

It is as if he says, "A, not B, not A, C, not A, not C, and B."

Ramesh held steadfastly, the Maharaj's absolute referred to the awareness state that existed before thought. To me, this is rather trivial, barely a beginning of spiritual discovery to me.

THINK ON THIS:

If you agree with modern science and medicine, we do not directly know either our bodies or our world. The world of objects is external to our bodies, and we only know of it through our senses.

Hearing, taste, touch, sound, smell, and sight are received data through the sensors of tongue, skin, ears, nose, and eyes, which fire neurons which the brain then turns into recognized patterns, objects, people, music, etc., which we call experience.

In this way, we do not know the world, we know of the world, through our senses and how our brains interpret it. The sense world is not the world.

In this way we can say our world is illusory, but convenient for functioning, and also, all that there is is Consciousness, or experience, because we cannot directly know those things outside of us as they are in themselves. It does not even make much sense to say how the world is in itself, as it can only be known through our Consciousness.

Even our bodies are such, the inner senses too are but representations by way of electrical neural patterns interpreted, of what are bodies are from the inside. We only know of it through our Consciousness.

Thus all that we know, from inside to outside directly, is experience, or Consciousness. The universe we inhabit, and even our bodies, are created by it.

All else depends on our prior existence, for its existence IN OUR WORLD.

At this point we have to make an assumption that the other people we experience in our world, are they "real" and separate, or do they just exist as our creation? In either case, we are speculating.

Even the scientific notion that there is a world external to our bodies is a speculation. It is also an assumption to say, Everything is Consciousness.

On the other hand, I cannot say, "I created the world," for I, Ed Muzika, had nothing to do with its creation. Impersonal processes, chemical and neurological, created Consciousness, and in it our representations of the world and our bodies are created (or found) through a further developmental process. It is those same developmental processes within Consciousness that results in the creation of the I sensation and later, the I-thought. Up until then, everything is just impersonal processing, and out of it finally comes the person, the I Am as a feeling localized in Consciousness, when if followed, accepted, and loved, merges back into Consciousness, until we realize, consciously, that Everything is Consciousness, as a spiritual revelation.

All is philosophy, and philosophies are theoretic knowledge that have emotional consequences: they make us feel one way or another, give us peace or give us doubts. Kashmir Shaivism has one philosophy about all this, Advaita Vedanta entirely different, Christianity and Sufism entirely different. They have entirely different "feels," and far different emphases, amd much has do do with their philosophical underpinnings.

A Zen master would ask you a question, such as, "Is the cup real?," and whatever answer you give, he'd cuff you in the head for thinking, fill the cup with tea, and hand it to you, as he has no time for confusion or useless speculation.

What appears as plain as the nose on my face appears to be as clear as a deeply buried vein of lead to others.

In order to understand what I say, you need to have so deeply experienced the emptiness of the body and world so that the Void is part of your constant experience.

In addition, the Void itself is self-illumined.  It is permeated by Consciousness, beingness, which has its own inner light.

The body is permeated by this lighted consciousness/emptiness, making it like a hologram, like an entity within the starship Enterprises Hollowdeck.

In addition, if instead of just “observing” you mind, body, and emotions, you also FEEL them deeply, you become aware of complex energy streams inside your body, including Kundalini movements, healing energies, muscle tension and vibrations, inner quivering bliss states, and internal organ movements and states.

Next you become aware of your energy body, your sense of presence which extends outwards as a seeming electrical body permeating and extending beyond the body.

Lastly, after a lot of time exploring one’s sense of I, the I Am sensation, as well as all the emotions, images, ideas, and energies that arise from being embedded in this phenomenal soup, the Self arises in you as the “other,” the divine entity within, whether called God, Christ, or Krishna Consciousness, which becomes the center from which you live, living from the heart.

By now your mind is long dead.  It exists, but you pay it no mind. From here on, it is not the mind that speaks, but Consciousness through you. You hate reading spiritual stuff because you know the Self, at least the Manifest Self of the union of you, as human, with God, the divine within, called Atman by the Hindus.

Lastly, dwelling for a long time within and knowing/exploring this total soup, the boundaries disappear, you disappear.  You become nothing.  You no longer exist as a separate entity within this soup, nor do you become one with the soup itself because you no longer identify with any phenomena.

That is, all that exists is Consciousness, and you don’t identify with it. Identification disappears revealing the final truth that you are beyond Consciousness, Turiyatita, which can never be known.  It is the knower so to speak, except that is a simplistic explanation.  Actually, you are beyond all knowing, all phenomena, even the totality of Consciousness.

How many can understand all this? Only someone who has spent a lifetime of looking and feeling within. Nisargadatta clearly states in this last talks that he no longer has anything to do with his body or even Consciousness itself.  It took him 40 years from the time he realized his Manifest Self, Krishna Consciousness, which he talks about extensively in his first book, “Self Knowledge and Self Realization,” to his final books, the Jean Dunn trilogy, where he only teaches about the Absolute, going beyond Consciousness and the human condition.

He only speaks from this viewpoint and readers think they can go from where they are, totally clueless, to his absolute state without realizing Krishna Consciousness, the energy body, the sense of presence, the I Am, emotions, etc., before realizing that only Consciousness exists, and finally, you do not exist, you are entirely beyond existence, even as your human life and its problems continue.

Not one in a 100,000 can realize all this. Maybe not one in a million or even ten million because so few spend their entire lives in self-inquiry, going ever deeper into the soup of one’s phenomenal life.  This is why Robert said you can count the number of enlightened beings on the fingers of two hands.

The rareness of true enlightenment has been entirely destroyed by the neo-Advaitin phenomenon that equates enlightenment with believing you are already an enlightened and divine being.  For them, the message of spiritual practice, going deeper within, attaining awakening after awakening until arriving in the absolute, is destroyed.  

Going deeper into one's inner self, one's subjectivity, the inner light and emptiness, is not personal in any way. But stating the Nisargadatta and Ramana, and all sages, rejected personal wisdom, is just an understanding you have taken from others.

You need to escape verbal truth, words, concepts altogether and find out who you are. Such is not an understanding but a being from a not-understanding place.

Going deeper into one's inner self, one's subjectivity, the inner light and emptiness, is not personal in any way. But stating the Nisargadatta and Ramana, and all sages, rejected personal wisdom, is just an understanding you have taken from others.

You need to escape verbal truth, words, concepts altogether and find out who you are. Such is not an understanding but a being from a not-understanding place.

The real teacher is free of mind. It is there, but holds no sway. he or she acts spontaneously from within and from the core of his Self as a manifestation of God, the life force, Shakti, whatever you want to call it, not from mind.

No mind, no words. no mentation, no beliefs. he acts spontaneously and hates all teachings because he knows how they trap you into a viewpoint, convention, the false, the past, group speak, political correctness, and not directly from a silent heart.

Escape from the mind. Live from your Self.

The real teacher is free of mind. It is there, but holds no sway. he or she acts spontaneously from within and from the core of his Self as a manifestation of God, the life force, Shakti, whatever you want to call it, not from mind.

No mind, no words. no mentation, no beliefs. he acts spontaneously and hates all teachings because he knows how they trap you into a viewpoint, convention, the false, the past, group speak, political correctness, and not directly from a silent heart.

Escape from the mind. Live from your Self.

SOME PEOPLE JUST DON’T GET WHAT I AM TRYING TO TEACH.

Some say what I teach is “All over the place,” and not some simple and progressive method or teaching.

But if you want simplicity and unchanging teachings, you will create and be trapped in a box.

Five years ago I mostly taught from a viewpoint similar to Nisargadatta’s, juxtaposing finding the I Am or manifest Self, and the absolute witness.

Then I began reading from a Zen book called the Tiger’s Cave.  At this time Jo Anne felt upset and anxious, and eventually quit, because Nisargadatta was slowly become clear to her, and the new ground I was covering made absolutely no sense.

The same with Lila.  As long as I just taught opening and realizing the Manifest Self, she was good with it, and even the Zen teachings.  But once I began talking about the Subtle Body, energies, Chi, healing energies, she said she was unwilling to follow, and abandoned this path for a straight Kundalini teacher.

They didn’t want to abandon the spiritual box of secure and safe teachers of a Nisargadatta way, a Zen way, or a Tantric Kundalini way.  They clung to one model that gave the comfort of apparent understanding as opposed to letting go of the all matrices.

Advaita Vedanta is a matrix—a way of understanding yourself and the world, Consciousness.

This matrix is different from a Tantric Kundalini matix where the body and world are real, the Self is real, God is real, and the internal energies arenot only real, but vital for Self-Realization.

Zen too is a way of understanding, basically the impersonal interplay of all forms and the Void, from which they come and to which they return.  The emphasis is entirely away from intellectual knowledge of any philosophy of existence or the Self,to getting rid of thinking altogether, and learning how to respond spontaneously without the intervention of mind.

You see, I shift from world of discourse, to another world very easily because I hold onto none.  All worlds are just rooms in the mansion of the entirety of my inner and outer experience.

This is why I criticize other teachers when students start quoting them, or say, “So and so says X, Y, Z.”  Those students are trapped in that model, those teachings and have not even begun to lose all their concepts and directly intuit life from their core, non-mental experience, versus from their spiritual ideas.

I try to shift around fast enough so that no one gets too involved in one way or gets too comfortable. In a sense this is a very Zen-like way to leave the brain and operate from your heart, by not thinking too much, interpreting, or judging.  All this keeps you imprisoned in alternative sets of ideas, or matrices, a matrix, and you need the Red Pill of unknowing to escape, not just the first matrix, but each as they arise to take the escaped matrix’s place.

You always need to keep moving, keep exploring, go deeper and deeper into your inner Self until inner and outer distinctions disappear, the Manifest Self is experienced, as you yourself having Christ or God living in you, and going even beyond that to Cosmic Consciousness, where everything is Consciousness or Shakti, or God, and you no longer exist.

I weave and destroy worlds, how few want to or can follow.  Osho taught in a similar way; he spoke of many traditions from Zen, to Advaita, to Lao Tzu, to Christ, to Sufi teachings.

SOMETIMES ALL THAT IT TAKES IS A SMALL SHIFT IN UNDERSTANDING WHO AND WHAT YOU ARE OR WHAT THE WORLD IS, THAT LEADS TO A THUNDEROUS EXPLOSION INSIDE, AND INCREDIBLE INTERNAL REORIENTATIONS TOWARDS SELF AND WORLD.

After many years of seeking self one day while taking a shower I saw there was no self-entity inside, and with that I saw there was no outside either. There was only emptiness and form interpenetrating.

15 years later, I fell in love, and the love grew so strong that I became Love itself. Quickly thereafter, God showed Himself to me as the divine within, which also was I, and I identified with this Christ Consciousness.

Five years later the Christ Consciousness became transparent, and reabsorbed into the totality of Consciousness, and I recognized that Consciousness was all that there was, and did not exist as an entity. If anything, I was everything, along with profound peace.

With each realization I became ever more aware that the world you live in is entirely your creation; it depends on your understanding of who and what you are vis-a-vis the world: are you the same or different?

Just the phrase "Everything is Consciousness" when fully realized, can bring the experience of that totality, that self-containment to you along with profound peace and rest. On the other hand, just pondering phrases like "You are love itself," or "God lives within you," can lead you to experience those states which profoundly change your reality.

Just small shifts in your understanding can completely change who and what you feel/see/understand who you are, or small shifts in experience can also change your understanding about you, God, and the world.

Unmanifest Versus Manifest Self

Robert, Ramana, and Nisargdatta are all correct: Self-Realization of the Manifest Self is NOT the final truth.

It is just that my own experience on my own path and well as arose from being a teacher, is that the personal self, the energetic self, one’s sense of presence, and the divine within, which I call the Manifest Self, should all be realized and fully explored before moving on to the Absolute, before “realizing” the final witness prior to Consciousness.

I have seen seekers caught time after time, in emptiness, boredom, depression, and even suicidal ideation because of trying to bypass the human self, the personality quirks, negative emotions, emotional pain such as guilt, shame, and rage, and thereby miss the aliveness of the Manifest Self and one's own divinity altogether.

Many seekers seek the ultimate understanding, the ultimate states, etc., prior to working through buried, repressed, and denied emotional pain, and therefore never taste of states of grace, surrender, identity with love itself, nor experience internal energies, let alone bliss and the great joy of complete surrender.

In spirituality you have to do your homework.

Recently, because Michael is staying with me and doing many of the chores I usually do, and recently I have had fewer medical reviews to do, I have been able to be quieter and go deeper into myself and thereby experience once again the pure Robert states of complete peace and rest far more satisfying than any of the bliss states ever encountered before. I did not exist, and everything, EVERYTHING, was experienced to be Consciousness; the external world, my body, my Manifest Self, were all experienced as Consciousness with no sense of separation.

Only the experience of my body was somewhat different because I could experience it as “feeling” from the inside, which is different from my experience of the rest of the world through the five senses; yet even the body was just Consciousness too.

The sense of peace, rest, and relaxation was unsurpassed, far deeper than the Manifest Self that I discovered after being lost in emptiness for a dozen years. The Manifest Self was seen as separate only in an illusory way. It too was just Consciousness, like the walls, table, or my body.

I remember having had such peace before and it was when I visited Korea and Zen students and Zen monks did everything for me. When you don’t have to attend to details of day to day living with the constant decisions and activities required, it is much, much easier to reside in bliss or in a state where everything is recognized as Consciousness alone.

All that there is, is Consciousness.  This body is consciousness, the computer is Consciousness, the walls and TV are Consciousness, and I-too is an illusion in Consciousness.

I appear to be; the I Am appears to be, but all that there is, is Consciousness. I Am Unborn because I do not exist; only Consciousness exists.

I have no purpose, no end, no work to do; there is just ever-flowing Consciousness.

The Mountain Top Of Wisdom

Robert used to say "Everything is Consciousness, Consciousness is all that there is."  He opposed that by saying, "You don't exist," or "You are Nothing, No-Thing," meaning you (and me) are not entities or identities.

You need to understand that this is a belief, but as close to truth as you can get in words.

That is, you get rid of the concept that the universe is filled with objects, like our bodies, trees, chairs, and emotions, and accept an alternative truth that all that there is, all that exists are appearances, or apparent objects that objectively exist, and instead we presume there is only Consciousness, an infinite stream of experiences with no attachments to the concept of an underlying reality.  Thus Robert would say that what everyone considered the "real world" was actually like an "optical illusion."

One comes to ths oint of view when one looks into one's own inner experience and one finds no inner identity, no inner  entity that one can call self.  Only emptiness, the Void, is found and it is sentience.

So what we are is that which knows Consciousness, and we are not within Consciousness itself.  All that exists is just an ever changing flow of appearances, experiences, but no self of any sort, so we are not a thing, an entity within Consciousness. 

Instead, we are no thing, not Consciousness, who is aware of Consciousness.

I changed Robert's formula a bit by adding that there is an identity within to be found after one finds that the I-thought does not refer to any entity, and after we look deeper into the emptiness we have discovered to be ourselves,
and instead of "looking" within, we start "feeling" within, and then discovered the I-Am sensation, the core of feeling life and aliveness, the life force and core of our energetic body and sense of presence.

Yes, this I-ness, which I call the divine within, is not an entity, but it "feels" like one, like a coherent core of energy, love, awareness, and vulnerability within, which when concentrated upon, reveals a whole new inner world of "spiritual" experiences of awe, grace, light, power, and love.  It is a whole new world of inner experiences, which again are not entities, but ever changing feelings which connect our "heart-core" to the appearances of the external world.

In a sense, all that we have done is add a new dimension of humanity and divinity to the ever changing flow of appearances that causes our world to take on a new glow of love, humility, acceptance, and love because we now also live in feeling rather than just observation.  All of existence becomes not just "optical illusion," but feeling/illusion which embraces and encases all experience with a feel of love, acceptance, and grace.

More than this I cannot put into words.

FROM NOT-KNOWING TO SELF-REALIZATION

To me, spirituality is all about knowing your self, from the human personal level including emotions, desires, fears, and hurts, to the energy body level, Chi, Kundalini and bliss, to emptiness and the Void, the the Self/God nexis. You have to know yourself experientially, not as an object of knowledge.  That is, you learn to identify with everything that arises during the process of self-investigation and self-abidance, accept it, and love it, thereby bringing it into yourself.

The first step is to adapt a position of humility.  Forget everything you have learned about who you are from reading spiritual teachers, from Ramana to Tolle, Nisargadatta to Almaas, and just look and feel inot who and what you are.  Do not seek at first to understand, but just to be and look and feel into that beingness and accept all that arises as a result of turning within.  Accept that you know nothing about who and what you are except what you know from others as taught by spiritual teachers, society, scientists, society.  You are none of these things, for these are only words and concepts others have devised.  Don't borrow your self-knowledge from them.

You certainly can share what you find with others or with a teacher to get their feedback, but don't rush to get an understanding handle or framework for your experience.  Be accepting of a not-knowing state as long as it takes in order to create and open, simple-hearted, mind and heart, an innocent heart.  This is much more than half of the spiritual journey: becoming open to yourself at all layers, and feeling open to share what you find with others for the sake of feedback.

This is the preparatory stage for the seeker.  Before this, you are a pre-seeker, a soaker-upper of other people's knowledge and experience, and have nothing of your own.

Following a path of receptive not-knowing, you eventually will find your Self, both the Manifest Self of finding God/Self within, or the transcendent, non-Manifest, Noumenal Self.  Finding both is the true beginning of your spiritual life.  Once the Self is found, the light of intelligence burns brightly illuminating every step of your future path.

MY FATHER'S CHILD

My father died when I was 14. It was the biggest calamity in my life. He died in the arms of his mistress while supposedly on vacation with the "guys" in New Jersey.

He was an angry though not a physically violent man, reserving his violence to the emotional variety of being cold, critical, and extremely conventional in many ways, such as his idea of what "manliness" was. He equated manhood with being a warrior, physically strong, athletic, not with being a boy, sensitive, wanting closeness.

He and my mom argued a lot, and she even wrote a letter asking if he wanted a divorce on the day after he left on his "vacation." He died of a massive heart attack a day or two later at the age of 38. To this day, 59 years later, my mom still feels the sting of his infidelity and talks about it often to me.

Why I am telling you this, is that today I felt what it was like being around him once again, waiting for his cutting sarcasm and put downs, or just feeling the menace of his silent and cold presence. I felt weak inside with a little sickness in my gut, and trembling throughout my body.These feelings and images came unannounced,without apparent trigger, while sitting and watching the news.

I felt today small and frightened, but feeling these feelings was like a tremendous victory, for feeling that weakness, fear, sickness and trembling and images of him, brought those long-buried feelings and images to the surface to be fully experienced and re-owned, and I realized that though the feelings were normally out of the range of my conscious awareness, in retrospect they were always present in my body, lived by my body and undermining the integrity of my heart.

That shaking and smallness feeling, not-in-control feeling, was something my brother Ron suffered from far more than I did. Ron died in 1978 from a combination of drinking and Desert Fever at age 32, a victim of my father's coldness and of my inability to be supportive as a child myself to my younger brother. It all came back today to be lived again, and I am so happy, for as a human, today I am more complete.. I love that feeling; in it I feel so vulnerable and open as I was as a child.

MY TEACHINGS

The Self is very deep, encompassing all four bodies and including the phenomenon of mind and emotions.

The mind, our minds, are always an incomplete representation of the world and of who and what we are.  That representation of who we are, I, or self, is the form the I-thought took from the time we first experienced any sense of I, until the present time of your existence. The sense of I usually arises between the ages of 2 and 3-1/2.

This I-thought is the central idea or concept of your personal representation of the world and who you are, and it ties into all your maps, your concepts, regarding the world you live in: that you are a separate observer of the world, that you are an embodied human being, that you were born and will die.  It also encompasses all the ideas of science, politics, economics, religion, money, society, fashion, etc., which is the totality of your conceptual mapping of your world.

You live in this matrix of thoughts which you use as your guide to how to respond to external and internal stimulii and to plan paths to get what you think you need based on these maps.

Now there are whole classes os spiritual people from Jiddhu Krishnamurti, to various Zen masters, to classic Advaita teachers, to various forms of Buddhism that hold that this world that you perceive is not real in the sense it is mostly a learned matrix of thought.  They then state you have to learn how to investigate the totality of the world that lies "under" the matrix.

Unfortunately, most of the exploration of the world with a deliberately blank mind does little to counter the hold of the matrix on you.  What it usually does is add the experience of emptiness or the Void onto both your experience of the world through your matrix, along with a direct perception of the world without the matrix.

You can only become free of the matrix once you discover it in its totality by untying or disconnecting it from your I-thought.  Once you see the folly of the I-thought, that it is only a conceptual mapping of who you are, and with that insight, "see" and understand that the entire conceptual matrix that you have considered yourself to be, was fake, a construct of learning and immersion in the universal conceptual matrix of mankind.

This is the First Freedom: freeing yourself from the matrix.  But this is just the first step.

From here you enter a life of not-knowing, of being "dumb as a rock," with words seemingly unable to enter your mind and make any sense at all.  You are like a baby, immersed once again in raw data that makes no sense.  You may feel lost, or afraid by not having your matrix of knowledge to make sense of your world from day to day, or even decade to decade.

But, letting go of the matrix has freed you from the tyranny of mind.  The filter of concepts is rejected as something unreal that you have borrowed from mother, father, and even Buddha--ways of understanding the world that give you certainty and a sense of safety.

Entering this new world of no-understanding, no-concepts, no-sense has the huge reward of allowing access to a new reality and access to raw data regarding your self and the external world, allowing you over decades to find your real Self centered around the sensation of 'I Am'.  

When this 'I AM' sensation becomes totally yours you are reborn as a spokesperson for truth.  No one in the world may ever recognize it, because 99.99% of those who surround you have never really freed themselves from the matrix of mind; they have just added new worlds of artificial spiritual knowledge to their own maps of their mundane world. 

The hardest thing to do in existence is to free yourself by your own efforts from the matrix, because in the largest sense, before that release, you are the matrix.  You identity is with your ideas of who you are. Almost no one breaks free from the matix by their own efforts alone.

It is relatively easy to fool someone still caught in their own matrix into believing in the reality or truth of some teachers because they reveal inner experiences that fall outside of your pre-guru matrix of reality.  They may reveal to you an inner world of energies, or Kundalini, of a sense of Presence, the Subtle and Causal bodies, astral projection, and using intentionality to change your world, or to heal yourself or others.

But revealing new experiences that you can find within yourself is not the same as unraveling the entirety of the matrix that keeps you within a dream of an artificial reality, and, in fact, usually the teacher merely adds a new sub-matrix of his or her understanding which you incorporate into your matrix of the mundane world, your interal picture or model, and thus a cult is created, elevating that teacher and his or her followers to a status of a shared special understanding placing you above all others.

You know, if you spend any time with either a real teacher of freedom from the matrix, or a false teacher that merely adds rooms to your matrix, you would be hard put to see any difference from any other person, much to your surprise.  Most seekers have ideas of what enlightenment is like or what behaviors can be expected from enlightened beings, because this is part of your acquired matrix of spiritual knowledge gotten from reading spiritual books, and also from your unmet needs of an idealized parenting that you never experienced but still search for. 

So my way of teaching is different from the sequence of my own awakening, which was a sequence of realization of the unreality of the I-thought, and the consequent dissolution of my thought-matrix, living then in complete unknowing ignorance and rejection of the matrix, and finally realizing my Manifest Self, my center of sentience, aliveness, existence, and true knowledge of Self, the divine principle of sentience within.

I urge students to find the I-sensation, not the I-thought, and abide there are much as possible.  Abiding there one finds a sense of complete rest, or being home.  But the abiding must be accompanied by a sense of acceptance of all inner phenomena that arise as a result of turning within, otherwise it is not brought into your sense of identity.  Further, this acceptance has to be a loving acceptance which gradually becomes steady and then by its permanence is recognized as an aspect the the divine Self within.  

With time, that divine Self becomes the center of your being, your heart of hearts, the feeling measure of who and what you are.

The hardest thing for any student to do is to stay with a teacher that keeps exposing the unreality of your inner matrix, because it feels like an attack on you because you identify with your matrix rather than with your Manifest Self which he or she is constantly redirecting your attention towards, but which you are not yet ready to feel or see.

A true teacher is always pointing you away from your naive spiritual concepts towards your inner heart of hearts, towards your Manifest Self, and during that process of recognizing that true self within the divine sentience, you will also experience an implosion of the mundane Matrix of Thought that keeps you imprisoned in the universal dream.