The below long quote is from I Am That, chapter 36.  Maharaj later repudiated much of what he says here in Prior to Consciousness.  However, in many ways this earlier work is easier to understand, and his utterances even more bold than in Prior to Consciousness.  In the later book, 'I Am' was no longer considered the ultimate.  He called Parabrahman as the ultimate witness, but also referred to I Am as the witness of the other states of consciousness, waking, dream and deep sleep. This 'I Am' he speaks of is Turiya, but later he calls parabrahman the absolute, that witnesses the entire production of consciousness, the I Am and derivitive states.


Siddharameshwar, his guru, called the absolute the Supracausal body, beyond Turiya.  This cannot be known, you can only rest "as" That.  It is a knowingness  that begins to pervade your entire presence as a gradual consequence of abiding in the I Am.


Here Maharaj covers many topics, slashing away at his questioners concepts and assumptions about who Maharaj is.  Nisargadatta refuses to accept any of the clothes that his questioner tries to capture him with.


Notice he supports vegetarianism here, even though he ate meat at the time. He also said there was no need to first become self-realized before helping the world.  He said you grown from the effort even if you don't help much.


This is my position too.  Even if the world is a play, as Maharaj said, you can join in and make it better, or go inwards and become one--or both!!!


On exactly this note, notice that Maharaj says that he is dead to the world.  He takes that as no mean achievement and asks the questioner to emulate that state.  The questioner seems to want to go there too.  To me, this is escapism, using either knowledge or meditation on Self to escape first into the bliss of the Self, and later into the peacefulness of being pure witness without anything to witness.


Personally, I had been done with the world but I was brought back.  I prefer to be of this world even while I know it is totally a mental phenomena created by mind, interacting with other minds creating similar illusions.  Maharaj should have met some of the women I have met.


Killing Hurts the Killer, not the Killed

Questioner: A thousand years ago a man lived and died. His identity (antahkarana) re-appeared in a new body. Why does he not remember his previous life? And if he does, can the memory be brought into the conscious?

Maharaj: How do you know that the same person re-appeared in the new body? A new body may mean a new person altogether.

Q: Imagine a pot of ghee. (Indian clarified butter). When the pot breaks, the Ghee remains and can be transferred to another pot. The old pot had its own scent, the new -- its own. The Ghee will carry the scents from pot to pot. In the same way the personal identity is transferred from body to body.

M: It is all right. When there is the body, its peculiarities affect the person. Without the body we have the pure identity in the sense of 'I am'. But when you are reborn in a new body, where is the world formerly experienced?

Q: Every body experiences its own world.

M: In the present body the old body -- is it merely an idea, or is it a memory?

Q: An idea, of course. How can a brain remember what it has not experienced?

M: You have answered your own question. Why play with ideas? Be content with what you are sure of. And the only thing you can be sure of is 'I am'. Stay with it, and reject everything else. This is Yoga.

Q: I can reject only verbally. At best I remember to repeat the formula: 'This is not me, this is not mine. I am beyond all this'.

M: Good enough. First verbally, then mentally and emotionally, then in action. Give attention to the reality within you and it will come to light. It is like churning the cream for butter. Do it correctly and assiduously and the result is sure to come.

Q: How can the absolute be the result of a process?

M: You are right, the relative cannot result in the absolute. But the relative can block the absolute, just as the non-churning of the cream may prevent the butter from separating. It is the real that creates the urge; the inner prompts the outer and the outer responds in interest and effort. But ultimately there is no inner, nor outer; the light of consciousness is both the creator and the creature, the experiencer and the experience, the body and the embodied. Take care of the power that projects all this and your problems will come to an end.

Q: Which is the projecting power?

M: It is imagination prompted by desire.

Q: What is wrong with purposeful action?

M: It does not apply. In these matters there is no question of purpose, nor of action. All you need is to listen, remember, ponder. It is like taking food. All you can do is to bite off, chew and swallow. All else is unconscious and automatic. Listen, remember and understand -- the mind is both the actor and the stage. All is of the mind and you are not the mind. The mind is born and reborn, not you. The mind creates the world and all the wonderful variety of it. Just like in a good play you have all sorts of characters and situations, so you need a little of everything to make a world. 

Q: Nobody suffers in a play.

M: Unless one identifies himself with it. Don't identify yourself with the world and you will not suffer. 

Q: Others will.

M: Then make your world perfect, by all means. If you believe in God, work with Him. It you do not, become one. Either see the world as a play or work at it with all your might. Or both.

Q: What about the identify of the dying man? What happens to it when he is dead? Do you agree that it continues in another body.

M: It continues and yet it does not. All depends how you look at it. What is identity, after all? Continuity in memory? Can you talk of identity without memory?

Q: Yes, I can. The child may not know its parents, yet the hereditary characteristics will be there.

M: Who identifies them? Somebody with a memory to register and compare. Don't you see that memory is the warp of your mental life. And identity is merely a pattern of events in time and space. Change the pattern and you have changed the man.

Q: The pattern is significant and important. It has its own value. By saying that a woven design is merely coloured threads you miss the most important -- the beauty of it. Or by describing a book as paper with ink stains on it, you miss the meaning. Identity is valuable because it is the basis of individuality; that which makes us unique and irreplaceable. 'I am', is the intuition of uniqueness.

M: Yes and no. Identity, individuality, uniqueness -- they are the most valuable aspects of the mind, yet of the mind only. 'I am all there is' too is an experience equally valid. The particular and the universal are inseparable. They are the two aspects of the nameless, as seen from without and from within. Unfortunately, words only mention, but don't convey. Try to go beyond the words.

Q: What dies with death?

M: The idea 'I am this body' dies; the witness does not.

Q: The Jains believe in a multiplicity of witnesses, forever separate.

M: That is their tradition based on the experience of some great people. The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as 'I am'. As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the 'I am' appears as many. Beyond the body there is only the One.

Q: God?

M: The Creator is a person whose body is the world. The Nameless one is beyond all gods.

Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi died. What difference did it make to him? 

M: None. What he was, he is -- the Absolute Reality.

Q: But to the common man death makes a difference.

M: What he thinks himself to be before death he continues to be after death. His self-image survives.

Q: The other day there was a talk about the use by the jnani of animal skins for meditation etc. I was not convinced. It is easy to justify everything by referring to custom and tradition. Customs may be cruel and tradition corrupt. They explain, but do not justify.

M: I never meant to say that lawlessness follows self-realisation. A liberated man is extremely law-abiding. But his laws are the laws of his real self, not of his society. These he observes, or breaks according to circumstances and necessity. But he will never be fanciful and disorderly.

Q: What I cannot accept is justification by custom and habit.

M: The difficulty lies in our differing points of view. You speak from the body-mind's. Mine is of the witness. The difference is basic.

Q: Still, cruelty is cruelty

M: None compels you to be cruel.

Q: Taking advantage of other people's cruelty is cruelty by proxy.

M: If you look into living process closely, you will find cruelty everywhere, for life feeds on life. This is a fact, but it does not make you feel guilty of being alive. You began a life of cruelty by giving your mother endless trouble. To the last day of your life you will compete for food, clothing, shelter, holding on to your body, fighting for its needs, wanting it to be secure, in a world of insecurity and death. From the animal's point of view being killed is not the worst form of dying; surely preferable

to sickness and senile decay. The cruelty lies in the motive, not in the fact. Killing hurts the killer, not the killed.

Q: Agreed; then one must not accept the services of hunters and butchers. 

M: Who wants you to accept?

Q: You accept.

M: That is how you see me! How quickly you accuse, condemn, sentence and execute! Why begin with me and not with yourself?

Q: A man like you should set an example.

M: Are you ready to follow my example? I am dead to the world, I want nothing, not even to live. Be as I am, do as I do. You are judging me by my clothes and food; while I only look at your motives; if you believe to be the body and the mind and act on it you are guilty of the greatest cruelty -- cruelty to your own real being. Compared to it all other cruelties do not count.

Q; You are taking refuge in the claim that you are not the body. But you are in control of the body and responsible for all it does. To allow the body full autonomy would be imbecility, madness!

M: Cool down. I am also against all killing of animals for flesh or fur, but I refuse to give it first place. Vegetarianism is a worthy cause, but not the most urgent; all causes are served best by the man who has returned to his source.

Q: Can you touch the inner life of other people? 

M: I am the people.

Q: I do not mean identity of essence or substance, nor similarity of form. I mean the actual entering into the minds and hearts of others and participating in their personal experiences. Can you suffer and rejoice with me, or you only infer what I feel from observation and analogy?

M: All beings are in me. But bringing down into the brain the content of another brain requires special training. There is nothing that cannot be achieved by training.

Q: I am not your projection, nor are you mine. I am on my own right, not merely as your creation. This crude philosophy of imagination and projection does not appeal to me. You are depriving me of all reality. Who is the image of whom? You are my image or am I yours. Or am I an image in my own image! No, something is wrong somewhere.

M: Words betray their hollowness. The real cannot be described, it must be experienced. I cannot find better words for what I am now. What I say may sound ridiculous. But what the words try to convey is the highest truth. All is one, however much we quibble. And all is done to please the one source and goal of every desire. whom we all know as the 'I am'.

Q: It is pain that is at the root of desire. The basic urge is to escape from pain.

M: What is the root of pain? Ignorance of yourself. What is the root of desire? The urge to find yourself. All creation toils for its self and will not rest until it returns to it.

Q: When will it return?

M: It can return whenever you want it.

Q: And the world?

M: You can take it with you.

Q: Must I wait with helping the world until I reach perfection?

M: By all means help the world. You will not help much, but the effort will make you grow. There is nothing wrong in trying to help the world.

Q: Surely there were people, common people, who helped greatly.

M: When the time comes for the world to be helped, some people are given the will, the wisdom and the power to cause great changes.

The following is the preface from the book Prior to Consciousness by one of my two main teachers, Jean Dunn, describing Nisargadatta’s teaching style.  It makes abundantly clear that Maharaj did not teach a systematic philosophy, for example, as found in traditional Advaita scriptures, such as the Tripura Rahasa or the Ribu Gita.  He taught freedom.  He taught freedom from concepts and beliefs, including attacking the fundamental misconception that most everyone has, that we, consciousness, are the body that consciousness acts through. 


Actually, it is quite easy to reach the understanding that we are not the body, and instead the consciousness that witnesses the body and the world.  As a concept is understood, it is so easy to accept the concept that we are consciousness itself and not the witnessed body or mind.


However, self-investigation carefully done continuously reveals that we have literally hundreds of interrelated concepts that support that primary concept that we are our bodies. Until these concepts are uprooted and transcended, we really do not have any freedom, only a new concept that we are not the body.  That old network of thought stills keeps the identity alive that we are the body, and when the body dies, we die.


This is why Maharaj’s teacher, Siddharameshwar, used a different method than Maharaj.  He told a story, a fairy tale, of different levels of consciousness in a systematic philosophy, to wean his students slowly of all identification with the body by having them investigate their various experiences to find out that identification too was a story, an older story than his, which was not a story of freedom, but of death.


Robert Adams did similarly. Once in a while he would give a long lecture, entitled variously, the Four Principles, the Three Freedoms, or something like that, and talk for 30 minutes on these concepts. At the end, he’d pause and say forget all he just said.  He just made it up!  Everyone would laugh but really few got the point that he was trying to have us unlearn everything and just dwell within ourselves.


Still, both Siddharameshwar and Nisargadatta told stories, just as Robert told stories, stories of freedom through liberation from concepts, and a final disidentification with the body.


Yet, they still were stories of existence and knowledge, of phenomena and noumena, of knowing and unknowing which themselves, at some point had to be dropped so that one could rest in one’s own flowing beingness, without knowledge or certainty, free from the web of knowing, even knowing of the absolute. This Is why Nisargadatta would often attack or contradict even the concepts he had espoused a day or a week ago. He wanted to tear us from attachment to ideas and all identifications of the mind so that we could live from the heart directly feeling the apparent environment.


Thus even all of the wonderful samadhis, voids, bliss states, ecstasies, love, etc., encountered in the inward search as seen to be no more than transient experiences on the way to freedom, which, like concepts, even concepts about parabrahman and the non-identification with the body, need to be forgotten.


The only purpose of all these lofty concepts was to free us from more mundane concepts and identifications. All spiritual experiences served the same purpose, to destroy our old worldview of being human beings encased in bodies.  All the bliss states, the ecstatic love, the energies and movements felt around the guru and through self-inquiry, were only part of the awakening process of reinvigorating the mind and body, thus sweeping away lethargy and depression, and to drive our self-inquiry with a revitalized energy.


What is left is who we are in the most primitive way.  Daily we operate not from principles and knowledge, but spontaneously from whatever is left of our beingness.  The mind no longer checks to see what is the right thing to do.  No longer hounded by concepts of right living, we thoughtlessly, guiltlessly live from freedom and an unconscious morality grounded in love and caring.


PREFACE TO PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS, BY JEAN DUNN:


In one way the core of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's teaching is easy to grasp, and extremely difficult in another. It is easy if we are willing to be completely honest with ourselves, to look at the concepts of others with which we have built our own prisons. To investigate for one's self can be extremely difficult because we are very attached to our concepts - we don't want to give them up. But if the desire to KNOW is a burning desire, then we will set forth on our course. We can only know who or what we are by personal experience, not from books or others.

Maharaj urged us to find out what this "I" is. He was like a surgeon with a sharp scalpel, cutting away all inessential things. His questions often left one out in "left field," not knowing what to say. His answers, were never what was expected. He would not allow any quoting of scrip­tures - only personal experience - and he could get quite angry about this. Once when someone quoted Dakshinamurti, a Hindu deity, Maharaj responded: "Hang Dakshinamurti! What about you? What is your experience?"

Most of us identify ourself with the body-mind and so he insisted that we find out what this body-mind is. Did it not come from the sperm of the father and the ovum of the mother? The body then is a product of the food consumed and is sustained by food, which is the essence of the five elements. Can we be this? Without consciousness the body is dead material. When consciousness leaves the body there is no individual, no world, and no God. Consciousness can only be conscious of itself when it has manifested in a physical form. Consciousness is latent in every grain of food, in all the five elements - it is universal, non-personal, all-pervading. Everything is consciousness, and that is what we are, presently. Consciousness acts through the forms according to the com­bination of the gunas, satwa (being-light-purity), tamas (inertia­ passivity-darkness), rajas (activity-passion-energy), and to the condi­tioning received. What happens when one of these forms "dies?" The form again becomes part of the five elements and the consciousness merges with the universal consciousness. This is all a process happen­ing, the play of consciousness.

Before this form came - what was I? That is what one truly is. That Absolute Parabrahman - these are only words which we have invented to name the Unmanifest, Unnameable. The eternal "I," absolutely un­conditioned, timeless, spaceless Being, not aware of being (because there is no other). I am as I Am, as I always was, as I ever will be, eter­nally.

During the last two years of his life Maharaj did not entertain any questions pertaining to this worldly life and its improvement. He taught only the highest truth, and due to the weakened condition of his body, on some days there was very little discussion. But even one sentence of his was like an Upanishad. He was very blunt and sharp in his answers and did not cater to anyone's ego - in fact, his stated purpose was to destroy this "psuedo-entity." To be in his presence was to feel the vibrant truth, impossible to describe. He was amazing to watch: that "personality" could be happy, angry, sad, gay, sarcastic, or gentle, and a variety of emotion played through that "bundle" like sunlight on water. There was never any attempt to change any of it ... let it do its thing, it was not him. Suffering there was in abundance, due to the cancer, but in this human picture I have never seen anyone braver. Never did a whimper leave his lips. That body carried on when it seemed impossible that it could do so. One could only gaze at him in total love and awe. Although there was no doubt that the form of Sri Maharaj was suffering from cancer, he carried on just as usual with the daily routine of bhajans four times a day, question and answer periods twice daily, although as the body grew weaker these periods were often cut short. It was enough to be in his presence. It was only toward the end that he rarely spoke.

The repetitions in the text are necessary, as Maharaj hammered continuously at our concepts, each time bringing us back to the root when we tried to stray to the leaves and branches. When we tried to hang on to words, even words which he had used, he shot them right out from under us. As someone once said, "I am tremendously grateful to Maharaj. What is most different is that, regardless of anything, he answers what is most helpful and right, but people want to make the teachings into a system, which ultimately ruins them. But Maharaj doesn't worry. He just says on Wednesday that red is black, and on Fri­day that red is white, but the answer is correct at the time, because it changes the orientation of the questioner. It is tremendously valuable and unique." The reader should take only a few pages at a time and ponder and meditate over them.

If you read this book it is assumed that you have, as Maharaj said, "Done your homework." If you are ready to give up your identity with this pseudo-entity, read on and happy journey.

A very close student of mine who meets me with her fiance every three or four weeks speaks of her "psychological deconstruction," worldly dysfunction and the blissful ecstasies that accompany the process.


I have found those who make the most rapid "progress," usually become "dysfunctional" because the internal processes are for more compelling and exciting than anything that happens in the external world.  Imagine, coming home to your true Self of unalloyed joy and happiness, and all you want to do is be alone in the bliss of Self?


Such was the case with Ramana, and Robert, and many who followed them.  But some people want to hold onto both worlds of remaining optimally functioning in the world and also going deep into the Self.  There is a fear that if they do not remain in control, everything will be lost. Actually, the opposite is the case.   The Self, God, grace will take care of everything once "you" lose control.


To Me:

 Posting what I am going through....I realize even using the phrase "what I am going through" isn't quite correct. Nothing is quite correct anymore, just shades and variances to observe. Being in the energetic arms of Edji, and as I move forward with him, the subtleties of any-thing, any concept or belief that my hand looks to attach, Ed removes. The more I release these concepts, beliefs, and attachments, the larger space Awareness has to live through my heart without filter, and in doing so, there is an allowance for something so indescribable to have its way with and through me.

The undoing is both painful and freeing. I feel that any attachments, any need to control, so much stronger than before so that I feel the insanity of it...the insanity driven by fear protecting its precious identity and all the meanings it has invested into that production. I find one belief (or Edji shows me) and see through it to only find another more subtle and nuanced version arises later.  It is quite the flailing.  No rainbows and moonbeams in the deconstruction process.

Bliss, ecstasies, shakti, drunkenness, uncontrollable laughter and sometimes going out altogether, being pulled out of mind-consciousness deeper into heart consciousness, barely able to function, or taken into deep sleep,  I feel almost instantly while in Ed's presence. These also happen now without his physical presence. It is spontaneous, sometimes all consuming and without regard to what I am doing...driving, working...trying to grocery shop. Doing my normal routine, if it were not happening to me, it would be amusing to watch. I am unable to remember the most simple of things, and even the most important work deadlines go into the ethers.

But by Grace itself, all things that truly need to be taken care of are done. And....there is also a growing indifference to those things that fall away.

In reading all that I am writing above, I could sit back here and rip it all to shreds because it is a paradox to write about. It is all a lot of paragraphs that could be summed up with two of Edji's basics: "Become dumb like a rock." "Go into your heart....Now say something."


Samanatha

From Salzman and Caraway:

Once you have been around the Advaita scene for a while, you start to learn the rules. Here are a few of them:

1. Never refer to yourself when speaking, always speak from the 3rd person, absolute viewpoint. If you do say “I” or “me”, you will be questioned with “Who?”

2. Never show any feeling about anything. Being numb is a sign that you’ve really “got it”. When your mother or wife or child or husband dies, just realize that that was only a form and nothing real and move on with your day.

3. Never react to anything. If you react to anything in life, like a brick falling on and crushing your foot, it shows that you are identified with the physical body and not the absolute awareness as you should be. If you react to someone calling you a “baboon faced imbecile”, it shows that either you are identified with a self image that is hurt by that statement or, that you do indeed have a baboon face…

4. Know that everything is OK just as it is. When you see a forest being chopped down to make place for a condo, smile and take it in stride. When the nuclear reactor that you are downwind from melts down, leave your windows open and know that breathing the radioactive fallout is the way things were supposed to happen. Know that coal power is just Brahman’s way of spreading his beloved mercury to all of his beloved subjects.

5. The guru/teacher is the one on the high chair with a special footrest so you can kiss his feet in gratitude for being SOOO AWESOME! He/she will also generally seem like they are on downers because they are SO CHILLED OUT. They exude peace and perhaps a floral scent or maybe the smell of a bacon cheeseburger with extra onions if they just ate one. They might have a really cool, light colored robe or something that looks like a post-modern, Bauhaus priest outfit (Tolle!). Remember—THEY have the answers and YOU don’t! Doesn’t it seem like a good idea to put a picture of them on your wall or around your neck so you can remember, at all times that they are SOOO AWESOME?!

6. Call life an “illusion” as often as possible—it will help you sleep at night. Tell people they aren’t real every chance you get and then savor the bewildered look on their face—if they only knew what you knew! Bask in the knowledge that you are part of an elite vanguard of universal oneness and look haughtily down on seekers who haven’t “let go of themselves” yet. Remember: “We’re all one, some of us are just more one than others…”

Live Satsangs to begin in July in San Fernando Valley.  They will still be on Saturday, still be potluck, still be fantastic.  Keep watching this blog for upcoming dates.


Also, our sangha has several wonderful students who are progressing nicely into freedom, but they never post here so others can relate.  I have asked them to post about what they are going through.  I mean Samantha, Marcus, Joan, Deeya, Ruby, Janet and any others.


I have talked before how many put on a veneer of freedom in spirituality by having unusual experiences, blissful or ecstatic states, moments of self-realization that subside, but whose everyday life does not change at all.


Others among us are moving towards freedom in terms of freeing themselves from conventionality in various ways, and feel the blissful energies in a lesser way.  I am working with them to develop modalities to facilitate change, even using DVDs of genius comedians such as Lewis Black to poke fun at conventional behaviors and attitudes.


I see so many people who consider themselves moving greatly into freedom, but who collapse and go silent when they hear a comedian, or me, use the words "fuck," or "cunt."  Two tiny words and they shrivel in a seizure of political correctness.


One of my students is married to a born-again Christian, who told his son not to use the word "heck."  "Don't use that word, he said."  The eight year old child went to his mom and said, "Dad is such an asshole!"  The mother was both pleased and shocked by this expression.  Instantly she felt a failure as a mother not protecting her children from such language, but she also felt pride that he felt free enough to use that language, which the child had enough sense not to use in front of his father, who would likely have a heart attack.


Where is your freedom if you can't even use the word "fuck?"


You see, society enforces conformity on one in so many different ways, from the use of profanity, to the images we have of being a proper parent, to the incredibly nicey-nice monitoring found on Facebook where everyone is so virtually loving.


This is just the tip of the conventionality iceberg.  What we wear, the shoes, the pants, the shirt. That same father used to require that all the females wore dresses no shorter than a certain distance above the knee, no low neacklines, etc.


Robert always wore sweat pants, a sweat shirt or T-shirt, running shoes and a baseball cap. He never wore anything else.  That's what I wear, and I get criticized about not caring about my appearance, saying I need to dress up to look good so people are not embarrassed to appear with me in public.


As Nisargadatta said, "All your problems are body-mind problems. Even so, you cling to that body. Since you identify with the body-mind, you follow certain polite modes of expression when you talk. I do not. I might embarrass you; you may not be able to take what I say. I have no sense of propriety."


At his last Satsang, Robert could barely talk, but those who were close enough to hear his soft voice, all that he said, over and over, was, "Freedom!  Freedom!  Freedom," which does not only mean feeling silence, bliss or ecstasies, but not to be constrained in the world from coming or going, or participating or not in the illusion.


Rajneesh on the word "Fuck":

I know by the comments I get when I talk about the ecstasies, bliss, or sexual feelings that SOME people begin to feel as their practice deepens, that there still is so much negative conditioning wrapped around spirituality, God, meditation, Guru and sex. Sex and ecstatic feelings are frowned on is so many ways by all societies because they break barriers and breach boundaries of propriety and conditioning.


You see, the more you get out of your mind and obsessive holding on to the outer world, the more your attention descends into your body, the more sensitive you get to inner phenomena that were always there but you were not ever aware of.  A whole new world of inner energies, bliss, ecstasies, sexuality, love, and inner flowing of emotions suddenly present themselves center stage.


Along with opening one's inner awareness, especially of the rich life of the Subtle Body, one becomes aware so much more deeply of the energetic and beingness aspects of others.  One--not everyone, but for many--begins feeling the inner states and emotions of others around you, such that when you touch an emotion in them, you also touch it in yourself.  Sometimes you discover new phenomena within others which leads you to finding them within oneself. This is true empathy.  After a while all ability to hurt others disappears.  You will not be able to hurt a fly.  This does not mean others won't feel pain around you because of what you say or do, but it will be their's, due to their conditioning and needs, not because of ill-intent on your part.


It happened to me and it is happening to many of my students.  I have many empathic students open deeply to their own inner worlds, energy phenomena, love that flows like a river upwards from their feet, into their guts, then to the heart, through the throat into the head, which fills them with flowing bliss which transmutes into static ecstatic states followed by varying forms of Samadhi and emptiness.  I have six such students that I know about, and probably many I am not aware of. A large percentage of students who attend Satsang feel these energies and love, or the Void during and immediately after Satsang before the experiences fade away. The more frequently you have these experiences, the easier it becomes to have them.


I can feel each of these people within my own sense of presence once I turn my attention to them, and they, I.  When we get together, we can feel the ecstatic embrace of the others, and it is sort of amplified.  True, these are only experiences, but as the experiences mature, one recognizes that these experiences are signs of the arising dominance of our own SELF emerging from the depths of Turiya and deeper "states," coming up into ordinary, everyday consciousness.


As you can see, the neo Advaitins know nothing of this. They mostly talk just of "Beingness" without distinguishing its various colors and guises.


During Satsang I feel these energies pass through me very strongly and many people at Satsang say they go unconscious or experience something else. As a matter of fact, I really was not aware of most of these energy phenomena until Satsang attendees told me about their experiences, or in direct conversations with students about how they felt me during various times of the day. It is only during the past two years that I have learned to be aware of and to a degree, control these inner phenomena.  All this stuff was going on before that, the Shakti of Robert and Ramana's lineage was playing through me, but I was not aware of it until 2002 or 2003.


These sorts of experiences happened around Robert also; people went into "trances" of varying sorts, and went "away" into the Causal Body of forgetfullness, or deeper into the Self itself. This happened with some people when they went to lunch with him.  They just froze and went into trances for hours. One such person was Michi, who moved with him to Sedona.  Probably another woman named Samantha.  Whenever I was with Robert, I was useless the rest of the day, and just had to sleep off the tremendous energies that moved through me.


So, those who have not yet experienced all the love, ecstatic and sexualized experiences may laugh at them, it is only because you have not experienced them YET.  Ditto with emptiness and the profound peace of silence, whether is is the Background Void that one deliberately falls back into when falling into the  Witness, or the visual Void, that is illuminated by its own light from withion and which encompasses everything, or the dark Void of the Causal Body, of unknowing, unknowledge.


While these experiences can become a distraction and an indulgence, they also tend to spur on further effort, attachment to the unfolding process, and to increasing feelings of love and well being that are markers of the Big I emerging and swallowing the small I. Yet even after self-realization, there is a long way to go.


There is so much that is new in your inner world once the attention begins to sink below the mind.

      There often is an ecstatic resonance between some gurus and some students. The Shakti takes different forms with each. Each guru/student coupling is unique. For some it is constant ecstasies. For some, an always abiding Love. For some, constant orgasms in the heart or genitals. For some it is felt as deep peace. For some it is forgetfulness. For some, emptiness. For some it is grace, forgiveness, or energetic beingness. But when you get near YOUR teacher, something flows in you so that you know you are at home. 

     The manifestations of the Shakti are always changing. No one can tell you how it will be for you, even the teacher.  Each day God, Guru and Self are experienced in different ways by That which lies beyond experience and non-experience. Those who would deny the Guru/Chela relationship as stupid or quaint or outdated religiosity do so because they have not yet found their teacher, and maybe never will.  Nisargadatta said there are many who resist teachers, and for them it is best for all not to have any.

Good News!  Lakshmi's "growth" was not a tumor, but an abcessed tooth that needs to be removed.  The abcess had bulged through the bone on her face, and that was the "growth" I saw.  She gets so upset when the vets try to look into her mouth that they cannot unless she is anesthetized. This may be a primary cause of her current mouth pain.


I just hope she survives the dentistry.  She has a grade 3 heart murmur, and of course cancer and stomatitis.  

Such sadness.  I discovered a new tumor on Lakshmi, emerging from under her left eye. I am pretty sure it is a metastasized tumor from her sinus or from the inflamed gums.  It was not there a few days ago, nor when I took her to the vet last week, nor when she went to her oncologist in late April. This is a sign of a very aggressive tumor.  I had two cats that died from cancers in their sinuses.  Very little can be done but palliative surgery and radiation. She appears weaker too.  I first noticed a change about 6-7 days ago. She did not want to spend as much time on my stomach, but lay more at my feet. I am waiting to hear from her oncologist to set up an appointment. 


Lakshmi had been doing well.  She gained more than 10% of her weight back after the feeding tube had been put in, and all her hair grew back, thick and black.

NEWEST BOOKS OF ED'S WRITINGS

(Thanks to Matthew Brown)

June 1, 2012 - New!  Latest Edji Blog collection:

More and More Unspecial - Edji's Advaita Teaching blog, November 26, 2011 - May 30, 2012
Click on the title above to view and download the pdf directly, or click here to view the pdf on the Edji's Blog Posts page of this site

March 18, 2012 - 525-page pdf - FOLLOW YOUR HEART - EDJI SATSANGS VOL. 1: The Collected Satsang Transcripts of Edward 'Edji' Muzika (Nov. 4, 2010 - Dec 31, 2011)
Click on the title above to view and download the pdf directly, or click here to view the pdf on the Edji Satsang Transcripts and Audio Files page of this site