27 February 2014

Bentinho Massaro Versus Unshakable Self-Realization




Only about 1/3 of this video offers a critique of Massaro's teachings and methods. The rest of the Satsang is about going deeper into one's inner world, following the I Am sensation with love, acceptance, and invitation, arriving finally at the Bliss/Body, the Source of I Am, AKA Turiya, or Atman, or Krishna Consciousness.

This is so far from the material and relationship successes that Bentinho touts as the goal of life: continued successful actualizing one's desires for continual happiness in this world.  It just does not work that way.

You have to go far deeper than the 5 second inwardness he preaches will allow you to go.  It requires dedication, but also a softness, an acceptance of yourself all the way down to your roots.

Some say there is no Self, and this is the big thing now in spirituality, but there is, and you can find it.  You, the searching Self can find your own Self, and thereby discover that it is grounded in the divine.  Just as Christ was both Jesus and God, so are you.

This discovery requires more than 3 to 5 seconds.

Our way is that of devotional Advaita, using love to accelerate Self-Realization, love of another, of God, of a child or an animal.  It can be turned within to love one's own Self, and thereby entice it to reveal itself to you.

26 February 2014

The Alpha and Omega of Self-Realization



Self-Realization in the tradition of Devotional Advaita, which is using love,acceptance of everything human inside, devotion to others or oneself, to find out for sure who you are, which is a Self that is both human and divine. 

This is a complete video explaining the difference between Self-Realization and other paths, what the experience of Self-Realization is like, how to get it via Self-Investigation with love, wonder, flirtatiousness with the Self. The awakening of Shakti, first as Subtle Body energies, then deeper energies of love and bliss of Turiya, the Atman.

This could be my best video.

Is there a "Real" Self, or does the Self have many aspects and dimensions?



What is Self? Some say there is a "real Self" apparently different from a false one, an ego. But after Self-Realization comes the KNOWLEDGE that all is Self. The sense of I Am, of identity, appears to deepen and broaden and gradually includes everything, including transcendent aspects of Self Like the Subtle, Causal, and Love/Bliss (Turiya) bodies of classical Advaita, and even beyond that, parabrahman, the Absolute, the Witness.

But Robert used to say these were just words. What is your experience of your Self? Do you have one? Have you investigated the I Am sense and found bliss, ecstasies, joy, incredible energies that seem to liberate the body as well as one's sense of presence? The technique of loving and following the I Am sensation to the root of one's being opens a new world of knowledge, and of Knowing, even without an object to be known, as well as pure Love, without an object to love. All of these things are within you if you look for them, as well as a sense of completion, joy, and groundedness.

Link: http://youtu.be/Q2ZmGoYvqyM

25 February 2014

VIDEO: There is a fine line between madness and enlightenment--Robert Adams



It is not all bliss and divine energies that are encountered by those who seek the Self.  Consciousness has many "layers" such that inner exploration is much like exploring new lands were for 18th Century explorers. 

One encounters Subtle Body energies, Kundalini phenomena, porous boundaries of unitary Consciousness, No-self emptiness, the Void, the Void filled by the light of Consciousness, and for many, experiences of the world of shamans, astral projection, and awareness of a hidden world underneath the conventional world.

Some of these experiences can be frightening or even terrifying and may require medications to solidify boundaries and abate anxiety, and are not unlike hallucinatory experiences of a mental disorder.  That is, there is a fine line between madness and enlightenment.

24 February 2014

Introduction to Devotional Advaita

Self-Realization in the tradition of Devotional Advaita, which is using love,acceptance of everything human inside, devotion to others or oneself, to find out for sure who you are, which is a Self that is both human and divine.

This is a complete video explaining the difference between Self-Realization and other paths, what the experience of Self-Realization is like, how to get it via Self-Investigation with love, wonder, flirtatiousness with the Self.  The awakening of Shakti, first as Subtle Body energies, then deeper energies of love and bliss of Turiya, the Atman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOwSqPrL4R0&feature=youtu.be


23 February 2014

ONLINE SATSANG SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23, 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23 SATSANG, 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME

COMPLETE GUIDE TO SELF-INQUIRY, SELF-ABIDANCE AND THE SELF.

First we'll talk about what the Self is experientially, energetically,and emotionally. The physical basis for the magic of Consciousness and of the Self through following the I Am sense.

Then we will explore techniques and cite a couple of guiding books. Then there will be a guided meditation.
Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly. com.  Sign in on two different screens with the password "edji."  Mute your microphone above the video box to prevent noise until asked to talk.

Thank you!

22 February 2014

Self-Realization through devotional self-inquiry

Forget what you have read about enlightenment and self-realization,  There are many spiritual paths and many endpoints that have nothing in common.  There is no one"enlightenment."  Even Self-Realization is of two kinds: Absolute or ultimate Witness that is unseeable, unknowable, and unmanifest, and the manifest Self, aka Atman, Shakti, Sentience, I, or me.

Zen, most Buddhism, neo Advaita and other paths have nothing to do with the manifest Self.  It does not exist for them.  They talk about beingness, the Now, the Witness, emptiness, nothingness, etc., but are adamant that a Self does not exist, at least a manifest Self, either of the human variety, or of Atman, God embodied in the flesh, which is also us.

Traditional Advaita, Sufism, Chrisitanity, Hinduism, and a few others, talk about a Self, or Atman, that is both human and divine.

This video is about devotional advaita leading to realization of oneself as both human and divine shared Consciousness or Self-awareness by use of loving and devotional self-acceptance through self-abiding.




SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23 SATSANG, 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME

COMPLETE GUIDE TO SELF-INQUIRY, SELF-ABIDANCE AND THE SELF.

First we'll talk about what the Self is experientially, energetically,and emotionally. The physical basis for the magic of Consciousness and of the Self through following the I Am sense.

Go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly. com.  Sign in on two different screens with the password "edji."  Mute your microphone above the video box to prevent noise until asked to talk.

Thank you!

18 February 2014

Ramana’s Self-Realization Experience in his own words with commentary:


It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that a great change in my life took place . It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent,  fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt, ‘I am going to die,’ and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then and there.

The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’ And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ or any other word could be uttered.


‘Well then,’  I said to myself, ‘this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. 


So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit.’ All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I’. 


From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued like the fundamental sruti note  that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it.


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

     Those who follow conventional spirituality talk about purifying the ego until it disappears, or about destroying or sublimating the mind or ego in order for this kind of awakening to happen.  They use terms of various kinds of Samadhis and purified states.

Here Ramana talks about his own I sense to be something actual and real. Further, his self-awareness of I from then on was constant: “Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued like the fundamental sruti note  that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’.”

     Those neo Advaitins that talk about no I thought, No-I sensation, no object I at all, no-self, or no separate self, are completely contradicted by Ramana’s experience and my own.  Or the Zen monks who experience emptiness or the Void all the time, and also say there is no I or no Self are also contradicted. Both talk about the I-thought being imaginary, a fiction, but the sense of I-Am is real, and can be found in that emptiness.

     Instead of trying to get rid of the I, or the I-sense, we need to find its origin deep within us in our heart of hearts. The I is not to be purified out of existence.  It is the same I he always had but had never paid much attention to it before.

     Here, because of his fear, his energy, his mind and awareness was focused on just one thing, he was dying and what to do about it.

     Here is where he utterly agrees with Nisargadatta, who practiced abiding in the I-Am for three years and realized his Self by him self.

     Both recognized that the body, alone, was insentient.  Without the inner I that felt fear, love, had thoughts, experienced his body and the world through the body, the body was no different than a rock. Without me, this body is the same as a rock.  I bring the dead alive sheerly by the force of my own sentience.

     Ramana made a great discovery:

"But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality."

    From the body Consciousness arose, but they are not the same material. He now believed he was Consciousness with the sense of I in the center.  From then on he was always fixated on his own Self, the full force of his personality, as a single constant note pervading all his activities.

     The problem with Ramana’s technique of self-inquiry is that the Self can be entirely missed by the investigating mind because the body is so tamped down, as is the Self within, draped in conventional thinking about one’s Self, about one’s role, job, family, politics, etc., that few ever experience the “Full force of my personality,” which means my aliveness, my life force, my me.

     This is why so many traditions emphasize practices to build meditation power (Joriki), or the opposite power of Grace (Koriki) developed through love and surrender.

     But they miss the point because repetitious practices leave you sort of dead unless they have immediate results.  Beginners often make spectacular progress because of their initial eagerness and intensity, but then the intensity wanes and the mind becomes dull through repetitious dwelling in emptiness, the Void, or endlessly asking “Who am I?”

     The self-realization requires aliveness, intensity, and focus that half-hearted meditations never come to.  You need that intensity of a beginner not constrained by ideas of what he should find within, such as no I.

     However, the act of intense love can generate that same kind of intensity and focus Ramana had, where “The full force of my personality” really means something.  Intense love creates intense energies and ratchets up one’s inner force and energies 10-fold or more, and when continued, creates an internal power possible only to the greatest yogis, but does so for people sensitive enough to love completely.  Love generates ecstatic experiences as well as the experience of oneself as intense energy, as Shakti, as pure sentience, pure knowingness, and pure love.

     Even if you are not capable or lucky enough to experience over-the-hill-insane love, you can practice loving your own self by finding it within, and abiding in it, combining self-abidance with self-love.  As almost all of our Sangha experience, you begin to experience ecstatic states that focus your attention deeply inwards, which allows you to dive deep within, rather than with merely dry self-inquiry, or dry pranayama and visualization exercizes.  It is a “natural way,” using what humans naturally do to find one’s Self as I, or as me.  None of this purifying the ego nonsense.  You see your inner self as it is, pure sentience, pure power and light.

Another letter from "Sex with a bull"

If you want me to ghost write your next book, just say so. I may start copyrighting my various missives to you. Some day I might be able live on the royalties. I'll have my people call your people, we'll take a meeting at the Ivy. I want the paparazzi to see me with the infamous love guru.

We'll end it there, leaving lots of material for a sequel, perhaps a trilogy. Who do you want to play you in the movie? There will absolutely be a film or two in this. I'm seeing Alicia Keyes as Janet. Now Deeya is crucial to get right, hum. Not easy, she may have to play herself. Which leaves you. I would have gone with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but now...I know the British actor Michael Gambon.

See its all coming together....soon you'll have enough money to buy the Michael Jackson Wonderland property for the ashram. Just don't start wearing all white clothes everyday or dressing in ocher colored silk with oiled hair like the very likable Swami Ji. The True Love Guru!

Alright I'm sure you've already posted my first royalty check, the one for the infamous " I feel like I just had sex with a bull, a great big bull." line. I should have had my agent demand double for the use of that line. Well, I'm feeling charitable, I might throw in the ISIT or is it ISIP line free this time., or donate the royalties to the Ramana Ashraman. No to Nisargadatta historic house fund., that would really irk Rajiv.

Oh well, this will send me to self inquiry hell already. God, what if hell is doing Implosive self inquiry for ever????

I'm sunk then. Think I'll go eat some ice cream right out of the carton.
Good night, Oh Great Cooker!


Ed: Dear Bull,

How about Jeff Bridges?

Love your growing freedom and reanimating your body. May the Force be with you!

Another new student writes.....

Dear Edji,

   I hope you are doing well. I would really like to share with you what has been happening to me and would deeply appreciate it if i could get your guidance. Last night i was laying in bed abiding in the I AM and so many things were happening I feel i need you to tell me what i should do.
 
    I feel i am the space/emptiness that pervades all and the more the I concept gets relinquished the more bliss arises in the heart. Normally I see a void interspersed with various deep blue hues but today I saw the lights starting to go red and as i penetrated deeper into the I sense as formlessness, again very strong 'sacred' smell arose within my being. I often feel the right side of the heart and the energy descending there from the brain. These fragrances arose 3 times and I was very startled by this phenomena as I felt dragged down into this smell. It feels like as i go into a 'blackness' the smell arises and then I come out of it again because its so startling. Also the energies of the body were continuously being activated becoming very hot and the heart chakra was very active. There was a vision of a woman which made bliss arise also. However then suddenly there was a great fear, not of anything, it just arose and i almost became identified with it, but then i knew it was just consciousness and it transformed into bliss again which made me cry out.
 
    I feel your grace strongly after coming to satsang, the spiritual transmission is very powerful. Just by hearing your voice, watching your videos activates blissful feelings and heats up my belly, heart and brain. Also I notice how after coming to your satsang for 4 weeks now, thoughts automatically are becoming distant from me. Before coming to satsang i wash't aware of this spacious emptiness that pervades all but now I am aware of the 'space' very clearly and its like I'm not doing anything but the relinquishing of the egoic I concept and abiding as the space is happening on its own accord. Its like just being with you is rewiring energetic and spiritual connections for realization of Self.

What is also crazy is reading Nisargadattas Self Knowledge and Self Realization activates the energies too A LOT, is that His transmission or Yours because it feels the same! Or the lineage! WOW!

       Should i just continue abiding as the space? I notice that I'm still witnessing this space but I cannot turn around to see who it is since if i 'do' anything it'll just be another occurrence in the space. What about these fragrances?
 
    I really hope to be able to come to LA in April, I hope the college will let me off. But that doesn't matter anyway, since I don't even exist! So ill probably come! Seriously, coming to your satsang gets rid of concepts automatically has made me lack motivation and ambition to do anything (i am in music school, violinist/composer), I but I feel more and more free by the day! Also I notice a great compassion for others, and a great reluctance to eat meat. Prior to coming to satsang I was non vegetarian but now I cannot eat meat at all. There is just  a bad feeling in the body/mind even thinking about eating it.

With so much gratitude

Love A

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

Dear Beautiful A

Thank you for your beautiful letter.

More than just observing the space, try to best locate the I-sense in you wherever it is located, and play with the I-sense, love it.

Nisargadatta’s self-knowledge and self-realization describes his own awakening as a Bhakta in the 1930s.  Later he changed into being more of a Jnani and other books followed. Reading Apte’s Nisargadatta Gita is always helpful.

Do not try to turn around and look for the Witness, the Looker.  Leave that for later.  I want you to know your Self as the manifest divine who is always in and with you. Later you can go beyond that.

So focus on the I-sense, that inner awareness in you of being you alive.

Love,

Ed

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

Dear Edji,

Your reply has given me so much joy! I read it out loud and my heart expands and the energies activate. The words of the Sage are all powerful and sacred!

I feel the I sense in the heart, and as i penetrate deeper into the feeling of I, like the big 'I' (not the I egoic entity that manifests), the feeling moves distinctly into right side of the heart. Its amazing to dis-identify with the body/mind and just be with the sense of presence, when interacting with others  the energetic presence automatically extends across the 'space' and touches them. 

Those divine fragrances caused so much happiness, yet they come out of the emptiness. Consciousness is full of mystery and wonder and meditating really feels like going back to who I AM, definitely not this Ausar persona as an individual, what a joke!

I will attend to the I sense more now rather than just the space. Its like centered within the totality of space, is the happiness feeling in the heart and a energetic locus. Loving it increases the peace and happiness also loving the I amness emptiness thats within and without also increases the blissful feelings. I have the Nisargadatta Gita and i'll read it again.

17 February 2014

A STUDENT WRITES TO ME ABOUT PURIFICATION AND EMBODIMENT


I've only been half way in my body for my whole life. I'd like to be a fully embodied human being, woman even, before I die. No time any more for self pity. I want to get dirtier, not be purified.

When I was married, at a very young age, my husband, a naturopathic doctor, nearly purified me to death with colonics, kelation therapy, sex therapy, carbigen therapy....this one was particularly gruesome, breathing in carbon monoxide until you start to suffocate which then throws your consciousness out of the body. That was supposed to solve my problems with dissociation. Surprising to him, I dissociated into catatonia instead.

Spare me from any more communal cults, Kundalini practice, fasting, wheat grass and generally everything for cleansing one's soul or colon! Especially the "Implosive Self Inquiry Technique" that Rajiv has created. Just shoot me instead, it would be more merciful!

OK diatribe is over. Wow I feel better, lighter. No special uniforms, robes, kasas, crowns or bejeweled Tiaras either.

HOW MARVELOUS AM I

Until now I did not know how marvelous I am.

Until now I thought I was my body making my way in life interacting with other bodies.

Then I saw a dead body.  It had no life and was no different than a rock.

If it were not for me my body would be as dead as a rock!

I am that which brings my body and all bodies alive; I am sentience; I am awareness; I am that which feels, sees, hears, tastes and touches.  I alone give life to these bodies of food.  I am the Self.

And after bringing sentience to this body, my awareness lights up the world, filling it with sounds, light, objects, thinking, and the vast emptiness that contains everything.

I alone am, for I am Life, Sentience, and the most marvelous thing, I am also aware of myself being aware of the universe that I create out of nothingness.  This is the discovery of all great sages: out of them flows awareness of Self as well as awareness of the world that appears external to me.  

In fact, it is all contained in me: awareness, the Life-Force, Sentience.

15 February 2014

FROM A FORMER STUDENT AND ALSO A FORMER DETRACTOR:


Ed, that was one of the best talks you've ever given. i've listened to many of your talks, and trust me, you rocked it today. Such insight about the closeness between insanity and enlightenment. I had a friend in high school who was locked up in a mental hospital because he displayed psychic ability.

And a lovely bow to the feminine principal in Deeya and Imra. I think maybe the Mother will bless you if you continue to bow to her publicly.

Great work Ed, really. You shined as a teacher today. Real authority and humility balanced.

John

09 February 2014

SATSANG TODAY, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2PM CALIFORNIA TIME

TOPICS: A FINE LINE BETWEEN SELF-REALIZATION AND INSANITY...AND...GO SLOWLY; GO GENTLY; GO LOVINGLY.

Go to satsangwithedji.weebly.com. Sign in with the pasword "edji" on two different screens.

turn off your mike to prevent excess noise.

Love,  Ed

04 February 2014

To understand Nisargadatta, you need to understand his teacher, Siddharameshwar such as found in Nisargadatta's book about his teachings called Master of Self-Realization.
Seeing the 'I' is just a concept is a Kintergarden awa
kening and not self-realization at all. Siddharameshwar and Nisargadatta (Consciousness and the Absolute) both put Self-Realization as the attaining and immersion in Turiya, also called by some the Love/bliss Body, or Krishna Consciousness (Nisargadatta Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization).

One gets there by following the sensation of "I Am," the "feeling" I Am down through the Subtle Body, the Causal Body of forgetfulness, down into the subtle essence of Consciousness itself in Turiya.

The is the dwelling place of Shakti and the manifest Self of bliss, knowledge and existence that Ramana talks about. This is where Ramana dwelled as did Nisargadatta most of his life.

But Siddharameshwar posited one further step: the Witness; the Absolute; the Unmanifest who was apart from Consciousness and which could never be known because it was beyond Consciousness. You could only be It, the Witness. During the last two years of his life Nisargadatta dwelt here. He was in pain, he was dying, and he identified more with the Witness, ParaBrahman.

Ramana did not posit a witness beyond Consciousness. If one were not aware of something, it did not exist. Consciousness was everything.

One can look at it this way: There are two Selves which are really one. The one Self of the Manifest universe was immersion in Turiya; on the other hand, there was the final Self of Nisargadatta and Siddharameshwar, identification with the Witness, being a witness. But you can say they are two sides of the same thing: the Self as Manifest and the Self as the Unmanifest.

But in neither case is Self the same as the conceptual self, the mind, the ego. That is left far behind during the first stages of either's path.

However, in a practical sense, they both shared the same Consciousness which is a primary identification with Turiya, but which also allowed them to identify with their bodies, emotions, pain, etc., as real life situations demanded.

My own teacher, Robert Adams, was ALWAYS in Turiya, and like Ramana, denied the need to create a Witness beyond Turiya. For him, Consciousness was self-contained, complete.

03 February 2014

RAMANA VIDEO

Be aware that the Self Realization that Ramana talks about is not the same as that Nisargadatta talks about.  Ramana talks about the One Self, the source, but also the manifest.  The same as when I mention the unity of the divine and personal self.  The One manifests through the body/mind, but one's attention is always of that magnificent sentience within.

Maharaj talks about that which is beyond Consciousness, the witness, the unborn unmanifest.  That is why Robert Adams disagreed with Nisargadatta, saying "He added stuff" to Robert's more pure Advaita.

But anyway, watch the film and feel Ramana.  You can feel yourself.



01 February 2014

ONLINE SATSANG SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2 PM CALIFORNIA

GO TO http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com. Two entrance screens require the password "edji."  Then enter a username.  Please pause audio.

Tomorrow's satsang subject will be Love and Devotion.

Arunachala Live Image

From Deeya's wonderful http://kindlemyheartsflame.org website, I came across this gem of a website--an almost live view of Ramana's and Robert Adams' Mt. Arunachala accompanied by extraordinary chanting.

IF YOU WANT AN OBJECT FOR DEVOTION OTHER THAN A HUMAN, ANIMAL, OR GOD, USE THIS ONE:


http://www.arunachala-live.com/

You can check Deeya's website as well as this blog for our future retreats and Los Angeles Satsangs beginning in March 2014.

Thank you Deeya for the light of love you bring us all.