31 August 2014

Steve's Experience at Satsang Today

Oh God Edji, Satsang today killed me and also sent me into high bliss, what tears.   Your presence and voice were right inside me-oh how powerful. I am you and you are me....the Deep love in your Heart just explodes with our Sanga and also in my Heart Center.    

Edji,   wave after wave after wave after wave.......bliss and tears and healing.


A dome of light formed over our sangha.  Like rain coming down but it was all drops of light coming down....such beauty. Love, Steve

30 August 2014

JOHN HANNA:

Edji, I am still working on this idea, but it's big. Many people want spirituality to leave the earth, to fly away, to get away from their pain. We've all done it.

When a teacher like you talks about feelings and depression and going into them, it's a threat.

They're like “no, don't you get it? We come to you so you can help us go to a happy place, far, far away.”

And that's what the majority of the teachers are selling. It's basically spiritual drugs: techniques to go to a happy land.

Of course your methods DO lead to happiness, But its THROUGH feelings, by staying with them, and that leads to the TRUE happiness.

Just transcending everything is a disease. I am convinced. It is a lopsided development. Those seed emotions are going to come back in one form or another, sooner or later.

But what if you stay with depression? Anger? Humiliation? What if you go right into the Heart of them?

I think that's a question you've been asking recently.

This is real development. This is the heart and soul; any takers?

Oh no, they want their drugs... They want to go bye-bye.

Ed's Reply:

Exactly right.  The difference is the I Am.  

Freud said the value of psychoanalysis was to turn neurotic suffering into "ordinary human unhappiness."

But using meditation on the sense of I Am, along with accepting, loving, and identify the arising hidden stuff from the unconsciousness, we are increasingly able to tolerate increasing amounts of emotional suffering, and along with it, an ability to experience the suffering of others.  That is, most of us are walled off from the suffering of others, because if we feel it, we feel it in ourselves.

With increasing empathy towards others comes an equal toleration for anything that arises in us.

Along with this, we find we are dropping more and more out of thinking into feeling and our body's functioning.  We recognize the body is only an instrument, and not us in the deepest sense, but that it has sensors and abilities that could be considered magic: healing, bliss, ecstasies, paranormal powers that exists in those deeper parts of ourselves, the Subtle Body and other bodies, bliss and Self.

Everyday life, socialization, social education, and inertia lock us early into shallow and relatively pointless lives of education, family raising and 45 years of employment/business. 

Then we make the remarkable realization that we are feeling more and more blissful, happy, and joyous by being in the I Am sense, but at the same time we feel sadness, pain, fear, as well as love and compassion ever more deeply, until a time comes when we can experience death and loss far deeper than ever before, and yet feel existentially more balanced and integrated than ever before.  We have become a complete person.  We can even come to the point where we are experiencing great pain and even greater joy simultaneously mixed with bliss so deep we don't want to move.

At this point we are so deep into the experiential that words like "self," "other," "awakening," etc., are meaningless because words and mind cannot touch the exquisite complexity of our experience which we feel through a highly sensitized and tuned heart.

There are many who suffer because their emotions are too strong and they are whipped about by them and failed attempts to control them. The difference is a constant focus on the I Am sensation which leads both to bliss and the various energy states, but also to Self-Realization and then back downwards into grounding oneself in energies, emotions, love, and the body through continuing meditation on the I Am, and loving all that arises.

Of course listening to sacred music also awakens the heart as well as helping others.  If you read make sure you read Nisargadatta, especially his earliest work, Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization, which he wrote before he became a Jnani.

Go to Satsang with teachers who teach the incarnate as well as the transcendent. Stay away from the deniers of Self, body, and world, and find teachers who are also healers and promote compassionate actions.

26 August 2014

I frequently post emails of Sangha members with permission, to give onlookers different points of view on the teachings and their effects. Here is another from Steve:
Sri Edji, Hope your days of fighting a cold are coming to an end. I think I see what you mean when you said its all like electronics. Last night I could see little lines of electricity ( coming out of nowhere). They are neutral and have no feeling or substance tied to them. But when they hit my preceptors that is when I (through past experience) place a value on them and then react accordingly as if the original event is occurring all over again.
All these 'bodies' on earth are not skin and bones at all but electrical pulses. Then when something happens in the world, these sensor systems react however they were programmed to act or respond. If this isn't the Matrix the movie I don't know what is.
The 'I AM' has trapped us here with the belief that we are 'real' but nothing could be further from the truth.
The only sanity is dropping all the veils, all the nonsense, all the thoughts and the mind so the True Witness is exposed. The Witness has no substance it is the Absolute which I am already.
My Third eye is vibrating so much that now my entire forehead is like a powerful magnet rotating and rotating throwing pulsating light into me.
I am much happier now spending a very large part of the day meditating on the I AM and taking it (like you said Edji) to the ROOT.
I am in Gratitude to you Swami Sri Edji - Love steve

Ed's Response:
Steve, from the point of view of the Absolute, the body and mind are not real--just the play of Consciousness. This is Nisargadatta's final teaching.
But, from the point of view of love, the Manifest Self, sentience and Shakti made aware by sentience, certainly is real, it is the Atman, man and God together.
The point I was making about electricity is that "we" do not experience the external world directly, but only construct a world from the input of our senses that are converted into electrical nerve impulses that are interpreted in the brain. If we had different sensors, the world would look and feel very different.  And these interpretations are used by Consciousness in the form of the Manifest Self to interact with and explore the world.
Part of what I am teachings is to open to wider sets of sense data and remove the blinders to other ways of seeing the world, for example, seeing auras and feel flowing magnetic and electrical energies.
When we do this we are opening a whole new world of potential for effecting change, self-protection, and healing others. The Manifest Self just loves to play with energies as they flow from and too the Self.  Those who like rest and Absolutes are not much interested in this world of bliss/energies/joy and exploration, and seek only peace and quiet.

24 August 2014

NO SATSANG TODAY, SUNDAY AUGUST 24

I have been fighting a cold for 4 days:  coughing, sneezing, headache, and stomach cramps.

In addition, I need a little ore time with Charley.

Sorry.  See you next week.

21 August 2014

Levels of false and "real" Self-Realizations

     There are so many people that claim to be awakened. So many.  But for most there has been no awakening at all, just an understanding they got from someone else, like Tony Parsons, Sailor Bob, Pundaji, Ben Massaro, Lisa Cairns, Balsekar, or many others.  

     The message of no self, no separate self, emptiness, presence or newness can be a message that you hear from someone else, or it can be an achievement earned after years of meditation and inward investigation.

       The former talk about no separate self and how that insight has changed them, but it is only book knowledge for them.

     When you receive the message of No-Self, or no separate self, because you have dwelled in the inner emptiness, the Void, for some years, and that Void has come alive with light, all objects in your reality appear hollow and unreal, and one day you have a Satori realizing Unity Consciousness without a separation into inner and outer awareness.  

     That is a real awakening because your awareness has expanded, and by expansion, has realized that Consciousness is not just a present awareness of external and internal objects embedded within an inner and outer emptiness, but that Form and Emptiness interpenetrate, and neither is real or unreal without the other.

     As a helpful aide, I recommend reading “Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness” by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rimpche.  This text could help you quicken your mediation depth.

     You see, the bevy of 20 and 30 year old teachers really have nothing but an insight into Non-Self and not its constant experience as a reality that is like a hologram. They are just ordinary people with a one-trick insight:  Just realize there is no Self, nothing is real. There is no Self to be realized or awakened, just dwell in your present experience.

    But this level of understanding has to be transcended. You have to realize yourself as the knower of both the known and unknown, the world, and the Unmanifest within which the world is created and destroyed.

       In this realization, you know that you are altogether beyond Consciousness.  Consciousness just comes to you and covers you, and thus creates the world until you have the Emptiness to see the hollowness of the world and Consciousness.

      You, who experiences Consciousness, recognizes that it is made from a different "material" than you.  You lie in a different dimension, so to speak, entirely separate from Consciousness which is only an illusion.

     These real awakenings are experiential first, and then become insight or knowledge.  The first stage of awakening outlined initially above, is not a real awakening, it is only grasped and internalized second-hand knowledge of  what the first awakening is really like.

     Lastly, there is a return to the body and world. One becomes awakened to one’s own inner energies experienced with one’s own body as a separate energy body, called the Subtle Body or Energy Body.  Within that body is the felt sense of ‘I Am’.  But you cannot become deeply aware of the  I Am until you have returned enough to the body to become a complete master of emotions and the Energy Body’s energies.

       This is called the path of the Saints.  This is the path Nisargadatta treaded before he became a Jnani and denied the reality of I Am.  This is the path of Tantra, Kashmir Shaivism, of bliss, joy, aliveness and overflowing energies.

      One cannot be called spiritually advanced unless they have walked both paths: Emptiness and the Absolute, and Love, Bliss, and Shakti.

      The only other teachers that I have read that explicitly suggests this is Jan Essman, who states one can have walked the path of the Saint first, or of Emptiness first, and Bernadette Roberts who was a saint first then a Jnani.  But one has to walk both to be truly advanced.

       Nisargadatta walked both: first the path of the Saint which he describes in his first book, “Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization,” and then the path of the Unmanifest of his later talks, crystalized in "Consciousness and the Absolute."  In his first book he talks of energies and the need to master them, attaining Krishna Consciousness, along with devotion to Krishna and his guru.  Later he talks about going beyond the manifest self which he considered an illusion.

        Bernadette Roberts too walked first the path of joy, bliss and the saint, and then of the disappearing of herself into emptiness, the Void without love and bliss.

       If a teacher only talks about everyday life, and not of inner things, like the vast inner emptiness, or the Light of Consciousness, or of a holographic universe, or of unending bliss and joy, of internal healing energies, and streams of colored prana within their bodies, they really are just teaching you about the first step towards Unity Consciousness through the disappearance of boundaries by seeing through concepts and stories.  But they cannot give that experience of awakening to you because they do not live it.  They are teachers of that which they do not know.

      You just have received second hand knowledge of your true inner life, which is no more than philosophy.

      I recommend you go with teachers who have spent a long, long time in one tradition and mastered it, like a confirmed Zen master, or Tibetan Lama, or a Shaivite master like Sw. Chetanananda, or Shinzen Young, a fellow monk from IBMC.  Otherwise you are just kind of foolish, falling for instant enlightenment teachings.

      The youngsters are popular because they are shallow, and tell people there is no need to struggle for years for awakening, because you are already awakened.

      Once, during one of Robert’s Satsangs, a fellow asked Robert, “Why should I follow you and meditate and practice Self-inquiry, if I don’t exist and everything is an illusion?”

      Robert responded, “Then wake yourself up now! Realize it now!”  The guy was still with Robert three years later when Robert left for Sedona.

    There are no ancient traditions that promise instant enlightenment, or 3-5 second enlightenment.  This is the disease of current Neo-Advaita, secondary to the massive number of people Papaji said were enlightened.  Ramesh Balsekar too fostered this misunderstanding by placing a very low bar of merely understanding Nisargadatta's Jnana teachings, and not focusing at all on self-inquiry, meditation, working with energies, love, surrender, and bliss.

      If you think the Self is an illusion, all practices are moot. And, if you think the Self is an illusion, you will never, ever, find it.

17 August 2014

ONLINE SATSANG TODAY, SUNDAY AUGUST 17, 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME

LIVE ONLINE SATSANG TODAY, AUGUST 17, 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME:

Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com.

Sing in with the password:  edji

It will be asked for on two different screens

Please mute your audio.

SUBJECT:  The Self, Your Self, My Self.

When you first discover who you are, the experience blows your sox off.  Finally, after a lifetime of knowing nothing for certain, you suddenly know who and what you are, and it is not your body.  You are  that "electricity," that "energy," that "Life Force" and pure sentience at the center of your universe.

You are flowing energy and the Center of all.  You are pure knowledge, pure cognition, knowingness, bliss and ecstatic energies; the universe is lighted and experienced through you.

AFTER SELF-REALIZATION, ALL THAT YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IS THE SELF.  LIKE RAMANA, YOUR ATTENTION BECOMES FIXATED ON THIS INNER SELF, SHAKTI ALIVE.

12 August 2014

Selflessness as Pathology

The inability to perceive a self within, either of the psychological or spiritual sort, is pathology, a severe limitation to understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Those who hold there is no separate self, or worse, No-Self at all, are caught in an ideology that extols the experience of emptiness or of total fieldness, unicity,  over human emotionality, morality, and empathy.  Without access to a total range of emotions, especially of loss, attached love, anger, jealousy, and fear, also miss the ability to feel complete, whole, actualized, and deeply empathic contact with other peoples' problems and pain.

The two most powerful men I have ever met, most influential on me, were Robert Adams and Carl Rogers.  Robert held that self was Consciousness.  He did not identify with anything human as self.  Robert was mostly  beyond the world, apparently untouched by it, and thus dwelling in the peacefulness of no-identification with it.

I only met Carl Rogers once while taking a workshop on person-centered psychotherapy in 1981 or 1982.  He was 80 years old at the time and had just lost his wife a half year before.

When he entered the room, it went instantly silent.  His presence was heavy, like a body/mind weighted down by 10,000 years of emotional experiences.   I felt that I was in the presence of the most powerful human being I had ever met.

His words were slow, measured, and each carried immense ‘weight’. I can’t really explain what  mean by that except his presence was so powerful  that is forced our attention to his every movement and word.

His words were always about the practicality of functioning as a human and psychotherapist within a context of human limitation.  

When he spoke of losing his wife, he very gently cried a few tears, and the entire room cried with him.  His groundedness in being human was so powerful that empathically he involved everyone in the room; he dragged us  all into the feeling of loss and perhaps a bit of despair at losing the love of his life.  There was a feel of sacredness in being in the presence of his depth.

While Robert was a giant in his own way of being a being that was no longer of this world, Rogers was equally a giant by being completely embedded in the world and centered in the fragility of humanity. What courage to be so deeply vulnerable some thought, but we knew he was not being courageous at all; this was his natural state.

This is what is needed for this period in Western human development: the ability to be emotionally vulnerable, completely open  to what the heart is speaking to us from moment to moment in the languages of emotional subtlety and complete empathy to the other.

If you follow those who claim there is no self, either of the human sort, or the divine sentience within, you will largely be lost without a compassionate compass, adrift in a world you cannot comprehend because you cannot feel the totality of truth being offered to you by emotions, intuition, love and empathy.

This is why I say the neo-Advaitins have entirely missed the point by claiming no Self of any kind, human or transcendental.  I strongly feel they never have felt a true sense of self, and find the no-self philosophies much agree with their experience which attracts multitudes of others who also do not feel a self within.

They really don’t feel the symphony of emotions playing so elegantly moment to moment that inform us about ourselves and the world, and establish an empathic bond with others so necessary to create a world (or family, or neighborhood) of peaceful cooperation.

Many complain to me how I have abandoned Advaita, have become myself broken, neurotic, or a cult leader who has lost his way by abandoning the goal of identification with the Absolute.  But I have been there.  From 1995 onward Robert acknowledged his type of awakening in me when I perceived that Consciousness itself was an illusion, and I, as the ultimate witness was entirely beyond Consciousness, experience, the phenomenal.

But years passed until I found myself to be human again in a most wonderous experience of Self-Realization, both as a human being, but also as the divinity within me of basic sentience aligned with the Life Force, Shakti.  This is what I teach now.

Don’t try to sublimate, process, or change emotions within, no matter how painful they are. Emotions are the heart’s way of perceiving the world along with the development of a non-verbal intelligence that directly perceives the world and our own depths within: God, Love, Joy, bliss, as well as sorrow, and loss. 

10 August 2014

Email about finding the sense of I Am

Hi Ed,

Thank you once again for a peaceful Satsang . The chanting brought a very good and upbeat energy.

About where I'm at right now.I have had glimpses of the Self over the last years, including an experience a few weeks ago when I was full of a throbbing energy during sleep and felt as though the Self itself had come to take a look at this soul i am... I ( almost involuntarily) started chanting Om Namah Shivayah..and though I was scared ..yet felt i wanted to give in to the Source..but it didn't happen, something held me back.

Another time , probably last year, I was sitting in my living room and everything dissolved and there wasn't even time- just Nothing . A couple of years ago I woke up one morning and was one with everything- including my electric blanket..this Bliss lasted a couple of days.

I have a question and hope you can give me some advice
When I try to meditate and look inside for the source of " I AM" there seems to be nothing, and the mind comes rushing back in. What would you suggest I can do to hold on to this " I AM " and trace it back to the Heart?

Love
You have to find it first before you can hold onto it.

Look inside for the slightest sense that you exist.  See it as a spark or bit of electricity.

Read my new book and download for free from my website, http://wearesentience.com.

You have to do homework, and a lot of inner search.  Read my Hunting the I, also on that website.

Read also the Nisargadatta Gita and use it as a meditation manual. Read two paragraphs in the morning, ponder the meaning, then meditate on finding the I Am inside.  It is a feeling, not a thought or visual object. Then do the same in the evening, at least 2 hours before you go to sleep.

And realize this Self-Realization effort is a marathon and not a sprint.

Be patient and persistent.

Ed




ONLINE SATSANG TODAY, SUNDAY AUGUST 10, AT 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME.

Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com/

Sign in with the password "edji" whenever asked. (On two screens). Then start broadcasting.

SUBJECT: MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

08 August 2014

The Ghost in the machine (body) is God

    There is an identity that has nothing to do with thought, beliefs, or concepts. That is the Self within that many believe does not exist because they have not found it by "looking" within.
But who said they Self can be found by looking, with an imaginary inner vision?
    
    There are no eyes inside, so who said the self could be "seen"?
It is felt, first as a sense that I exist. The more and more curious you get about that feeling, the more it grows, expands, and unfolds in various colors, energies and emotions. Then it tempts you and you learn to play with it.

    The Self is totally non-verbal, non-conceptual, non-belief, and it flows as light and energy from deep within when you get to know it.
It has power, it has non-verbal intelligence that reveals secrets of the Self.

    It has always been there, but if you have not searched for it, or believe it could exist so that you persist in searching, you will not find it.  You have to become increasingly sensitive to all aspects of your inner world, especially emotions, because emotions are closest in "feeling" to that of feeling the Self.  It is beyond the senses and only an inner sense of observational awareness that is attuned to energy, love, and emotional states will be able to find and experience the Self.

    If you do not believe such a Self can be found because others direct you to that conclusion, or you can't find it by looking within "imaginally," then you will never find that Self, your connection with divinity.

     Nisargadatta called it Bal-Krishna (Baby Krishna), or Krishna Consciousness which he found after three years of following the I Am sense. Ramana found it in a few minutes after he ignored his body and focused on the outpouring of his individuated consciousness from within, which he describes in his awakening experience.

    AND, listen to this, he said after he recognized the Self, the true 'I', he could never take his attention off of it. That is his small self became mesmerized and glued to his Self, Atman, God, in Krishna Consciousness.

    The experience of feeling/seeing that I Am come alive and be with you as a constant companion as a larger Self (Atman) is beyond anything else phenomenally.

     I know few believe this, but this has been my constant experience for years and is the gradually becoming the constant experience of some of my students who trust the Life energies within.

03 August 2014

Satsang today, Sunday, August 3, at 2PM California Time.

Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com.

Use the password  "edji" whenever asked.

If early, go to bottom of screen and listen to chants.


Mute you microphone to decrease bandwidth.

Love you!!!

02 August 2014