Henri

@Consept You are right. The genuine teaching from a Guru is in silence, while meditating. That`s astonishing and an experience I would wish to everybody to experience.

@Philip The great thing about Wilber is that his work is always `work in progress`. That`s why all his books are still on the market place. To get a proper understanding I would recommend to read some of his books and not just a resource. Just a warning; it`s addictive.

In Hinduism they call it all `The Divine Play`, Consciousness playing with itself, being Sat, Chit, and Ananda (existence, consciousness and bliss).

Just wondering why he calls himself Sadhguru, that`s not common in his tradition. A Satguru is considered to be the highest Guru, the one that takes you by the hand to enlightenment, even during different lives. A profound yogi I can acknowledge, but a Satguru, I don`t know...

Without relationship, sex, career, and purpose there is still life?! @ThomasT So may be these are not the pillars?

This question is nothing less than The question about the mystery of life. It goes to the root of everything. Even the wise don`t give an answer to this question. The only answer I am aware of; Life is a mystery. You have to live it. @Jay S

So now it`s the time for us to consider what advice we have to give to Leo. To my opinion it is a logical evolutionary step that after the start up of this website slowly on the participants take over. It`s the divine law so to speak. I would suggest that the poor guy gets all the support he needs to finally fulfill his dream and goes living in the woods to become a genuine yogi. After twenty years he can come back and teach us about his found wisdom, while we can educate him about the latest social developments. What do you say? @Emerald Wilkins @Philip @abrakamowse @Socrates

@Philip @abrakamowse I totally agree with you both!

When you sleep the consciousness withdraws in the Anandamaya Kosha, which is the causal body, which is the same body one is experiencing samadhi.

You all need an amount of self-knowledge, a proper set of spiritual exercises and a lot of discipline. You all do not. You`ll probably scream for your mothers, jerk yourself off all the time and making plans to go fucking kill the responsible Leo. Right now you are all not even grown up, you are not even adults. Psychologically spoken you are just half way. I would recommend to join a monastery or ashram first. That`s already hard enough at your age.

To my opinion you`ll first have to find a better balance in life. To arrive at a certain attitude where there is a bit more peace and relaxation. Now it`s like you are assuming you have two options, but that`s not the case. In life there are always countless options. A better balance is always about training body, mind, heart and soul. Pick up some physical training, for example hatha-yoga, some mind stuff you are passionate about and choose a meditation practice you like. The heart stuff is always the most difficult, particularly when you are a guy who can become stuck in the head (as I am). So do you have a preferable school of thought or belief or passion to answer this last one?@The_spanish_guy

@David1 And about your top 5 of spiritual experiences; any idiot would name his first joint a spiritual experience!

@David1 Hahaha, yeah salvation (!), that`s a joke! I had my experiences in the past with psychedelics and considered it to be great, weird, fantastic and whatever. For sure experiences that had nothing to do with the ego, they were outside the ego. The only lesson; there`s more than the ego. Later in life I had experiences because of spiritual exercises and discipline, they were outside the ego and of a total other category then the ones I mentioned before. They were truly spiritual. Imagine you open up your eyes for the first time in a locked room with a tiny candle to light it. Or imagine you open up your eyes for the first time on top of Everest with the sun shining above you. That`s the difference. Any genuine spiritual teacher will tell you the same. And if you think some guy in the Amazon is a true teacher you are fooled, stupid or just ignorant. Whatever you do is up to you. Just spare me the stories about spiritual experiences, because it`s not. You just wander around in the psychic realms without any fucking control about it and with the danger to sabotage your nervous system, your pranic system and to ruin your chakra`s. Go for truth and go for profound experience and wisdom mate!

@Infinite @Socrates With consciousness I follow Ken Wilbers model as written in his `Spectrum of consciousness`. There he describes 5 different types of subconsciousness. I have it in dutch and it`s quite a job to translate it. You may check it out on google.

This is very common in the beginning of your development-process. It has always been like that, the only thing changed is your awareness. YOU are aware of it now. This awareness attracts a lot of people and yes they eat your energy. This experience teaches you how important it is to be with mindfully people and skip a lot of insignificant situations. @IVONNE

@Toby I have studied and traveled for years in South- Asia and decided to pick up a study when I was back home again. I failed. Not because it was hard, but because I did not agree with everything I had to learn. In this case it was psychology and I found out it was all random bull shit. I had created already my own opinion based on mainly experience. The study way too late...

@Samuel A good question. Where is life about? It`s about developing yourself. But that construction needs a good foundation, you can`t start with the rooftop. This process is called life. It is there to experience, to wonder about, to love, to laugh, to live. And... never underestimate your life. It is most precious. You never now what talents are hidden in you and what you have to offer to the world. Existence is a fact, living is an art... Live it fully!

@ite Good mate, I wish you an even bigger office in an even more perfect life.

Yeah guys, your salvation in the hand of a plant! Imagine, how weird... And you my Belgian neighbour, reading your experiences; my advice to you is to reconsider your plan. I have met too many ruined people in my life because of actions like these. Ask yourself why you want to do this... and find another way.

Yes! Karma is a bitch!

@Lorcan Quote underneath

@Parki Real truth is impossible to grasp by just merely words. Can you describe exactly experiences like love and happiness? You cannot. With words you can try to reach truth from different directions and different starting points and because of that they can look like a contradiction. Imagine all the different approaches from different schools of thought, different cultures and different ages about something like enlightenment only? They are full with contradictions.

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj That`s a great young age. I went on my first travel when I was 18, searching for knowledge as I called it that time. Studied all religions. Started with christian mysticism, went to Buddhism where I ended up with the Tibetan version of it. Traveled the world around and found finally my teacher in my own country! He was Hindu and I really ended up there and took a deep dive into it. I am 48 by the way. Life in an ashram is in a way totally integral. You look at all aspects of life and deal with them. You are not `out of the world` but in a way in the middle of it. There is attention to the body (hatha-yoga), the mind with knowledge (jnana-yoga), the heart with devotion (bhakti-yoga), selfless service (karma-yoga), many different kinds of meditation (which suites you best), ayurvedic food, Satsang (combination of knowledge, meditation and bhajans). You can take several kinds of retreats where the silent retreat is the most popular one and most powerful one. The insight is that everybody is on his own special and individual journey which makes it profound in my eyes.

The discipline in for example the Navy Seals is a paid holiday in compare with the discipline in Zen. It`s so interwoven with Japanese culture that the general opinion about it is a bit romantic and starry-eyed in western eyes. But there is such a difference in the way a Japanese develops his ego or a westerner does. In the west it`s all about developing to the full potential where in Japan it is not. That`s why the way and manners the Zen doctrines uses is a real torture for us. To me that`s the reason Zen never became really popular in Europe, though the literature is very interesting and impressing. So in my opinion and with what you have told me about your laziness and work ethics I would suggest to forget about it. It shall spare you lots of frustrations and time. You have to remember that whatever discipline, school, spirituality, religion or whatever has it`s base in a cultural context. When a teacher tells a Japanese student that he`ll be enlightened when he goes staring at a wall for the next twenty years, he`ll do it. That`s not how it works for a westerner. Where are you from anyway and how old? @Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj Being a zen-monk is extremely hard, especially for western people. It`s full of ritualistic stuff, a mountain of rules, all generated for slowly extinguish the ego patterns in a hard and boring way. Why zen mate? I`m interested. When I was living in an ashram my teacher was invited to come and visit a zen-monastery in France. We went there with a small delegation and experienced some daily routines up there. It was quite opposite of our daily routines. Hundreds of people without expressing themselves. Later that day we invited them for a satsang and they so enjoyed it. A monk told me he had his first laughs in ten months that evening!