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@Javfly33 you're not getting it. One who has already awakened from the dream chooses to believe it! See the difference? And that makes it not so horrible. You can say they are still attached to the ego - and this would be true. But you are too - despite your enlightenment. You are, otherwise you would not be in human form right now.

Shadow work is somewhat helpful if you have many small traumas along with the big ones. If you work on the small traumas, you will be able to break free from them easily. Well, it's easy to say that one can be blissful and have high energy but it's not easy to embody this bliss. Also, it's not easy to let go of all traumas or some physical ailments or pain you may have. If you can do that, then you are probably enlightened or highly awakened which most of us are not.

You were always the coolest member of the forum - regardless of your level of consciousness. Your humor is unmatched - making you the coolest! The rest of us are just enlightened dorks. But alas - as any awakened master must admit - that makes me the funniest - since you are indeed a projection of my own mind as God.

So I guess it's an intention to do those things. You can argue that awakening leads to the ego being healed in a spontaneous and intuitive way, rather than an intentional way. But that is just one way to heal your ego, and I don't see it replacing the role of shadow work. You can still do shadow work while being awakened, and you will probably be more inclined to do so (or at least be better at it, as @SeaMonster pointed out in the other thread). You'll still be able to form intentions, plan things and set goals, despite being awakened. Awakening is not a lobotomy of your higher mental functions. It only frees them from certain constraints. So I don't see shadow work being "bullshit", just "different shit" than awakening.

@Someone here dude. Again my message to you just like couple of months ago is: Please learn to be more humble. You change your basic epistemology here once every couple of months and you claim to be 90% awakened. And you acuse one of the most experienced users such as @Breakingthewall of not being even 1%. You are not fooling anyone.

I understand your confusion. I was confused too until I recognized that I'm not who I thought I was. I still don't know how I'm imagining you and vice versa because that's how tricky this shit is. I can try my best. Reality is a shared dream. There is only the present moment and creation is finished. What you are experiencing is yourself as God. What I'm experiencing is myself as God. God is a fractal that broke itself off to experience itself as itself. It became you and me simultaneously also everyone and everything. Because you can only experience one thing at a time, you as God is experiencing itself from different perspectives. What you're experiencing right now is what God is experiencing, and that goes for me too. But because creation is already finished, all these experiences have already happened and you are just catching up to it linearly because that's how the mind interprets reality. I'm imagining you and vice versa because it already happened and now you're just having the experience of what already happened, which really never happened only imagined....lol...im laughing cause I'm probably just talking out my ass and im sure someone here will correct me who has done psychedelics or have awakened. There are certain truths that I'm aware of and that is i'm aware that I'm aware, and nothing exists outside my awareness or consciousness. I'm creating my reality based on my state of consciousness and the frequency I'm vibrating at. The Universe is mental and all is mental and nothing exists outside of you and you, as God, are the operant power. You are a sovereign being and source energy, which is God, is flowing through you and that's how you came into being because God is imagining itself to be human and is doing that by being you. I can go on but i'll stop here because my hand is just typing this shit and my ego just came into play and I don't want to delude you or myself by starting to think too hard about this shit....just be and you'll be ok.

Don’t get distracted. Statues are FOS. Buddhism is FOS. Buddhism and statues are about idolizing others who have awakened instead of awakening yourself. You cannot awaken without ambition and focus on your goals. Nice pictures though. For a religion who is about detachment, followers of Buddhism put a lot of attention into statues, authority, and the idea of meditation and enlightenment. But nobody really wants to do the inner work. They just wanna buy statues and meditation pillows and go into lotus pose without realizing that none of those activities get you any closer to the goal.

I've been following this discussion of you two and I think you both have a point, which is that there is no single path. There is also an important difference between Advaita and Neo-Advaita. It is as big as between High Street Yoga and Yoga - simply. The following is an excerpt from James Swartz's Neo-Advaita critique: "Mystics have proclaimed the oneness of all things for thousands of years. The science of self inquiry that culminated in the teachings of Adi Shankara in the eighth century has had a profound effect on Eastern religion and spirituality. Although we see the idea of non-duality popping up in Western thought from the time of Christ until the present day, it did not develop into a systematic means of self realization and has virtually no impact on Christianity, Islam and Judaism, unlike self inquiry, which deeply conditioned Indian culture. Until the colonial era, contact between the East and West was limited, but slowly the West became aware of the social, political and religious philosophies of the once powerful Oriental nations. During the last half of the nineteenth century, the New Thought movement sprang up in America. The founders of Christian Science, Unity, and Science of Mind and the transcendental poets were certainly familiar with non-dual thought. Around the turn of the last century, a few Indian mahatmas visited the West and more or less formally introduced us to the idea of non-duality. The powerful speech given by Swami Vivekananda at the Congress of World Religions in Chicago in 1893 was a milestone in the East-West spiritual relationship, proclaiming as it did the oneness of all religions. For some reason, Vivekananda put his own spin on the traditional teachings, emphasizing Yoga at the expense of Vedanta. It is possible that he felt that the West was not properly prepared. Whatever the reason, the Vedanta he introduced to the West was not strictly traditional and became known as New Vedanta or Modern Vedanta, a contradiction in terms, if ever there was one. Multi-Path Confusion New Vedanta introduced the idea of four paths or yogas—action, devotion, knowledge and meditation—which were supposedly suitable for different personality types, whereas the Vedas only sanction two: action and knowledge. The path of karma is intended for extroverts with a heavy vasana load, and the path of knowledge is for contemplative types whose vasanas are predominately sattvic. How the multi-path idea was meant to be an improvement is difficult to discern. Traditionally Yoga is considered to be a subset of the science of self knowledge, not a separate path to enlightenment. The practices of Yoga are not inferior to self inquiry but, as laboriously pointed out so far, are not suitable as a means of liberation. They are, however, extremely valuable to prepare the mind for liberation because without a pure mind, liberation is not possible. So with the ascendancy of the Yoga teachings, enlightenment came to be considered a permanent experience of samadhi, in contrast with the mundane experiences of everyday life, which it obviously cannot be if reality is non-dual. In any case, the experiential notion of enlightenment has been the dominant view for the last one hundred years in the West, although it dates back to a few centuries BC, where it is given voice in the Yoga scriptures of Patanjali. It has obviously been around for a very long time because we can trace the Yoga Sutra’s origins to the Upanishads, which are records of mankind’s earliest spiritual thinking. Air travel increased the East-West dialogue. By and large, the tsunami of export gurus that inundated the West in the 1960s peddled Modern Vedanta. The emphasis on Yoga was necessary because materialism had corrupted the Western mind. Although there was a strong spiritual hunger in the West, it was not really prepared to assimilate the essence of self inquiry. Materialists are doers and enjoyers and the idea of experiencing enlightenment is good enough for them. As the world became increasingly interconnected and spiri­tuality gained respectability, the bond between East and West deepened. Ramana Maharshi, Osho, Papaji and the Rise of Neo-Advaita In the eighties, the Western spiritual world became reacquainted with Ramana Maharshi, a great Indian sage, who had achieved a certain degree of international recognition around the middle of the last century, but who had been all but forgotten since his death. Ramana realized the non-dual nature of the self and taught self inquiry and Yoga. Neo-Advaita, sometimes called Pseudo-Advaita, the West’s latest idea of the wisdom of the East, came about mainly through a disciple of Ramana, HWL Poonjaji, commonly known as Papaji, although J. Krishnamurti, Jean Klein, Ramesh Balsekar and others contributed to it. Papaji, who was virtually unknown in India during his life, came to the at­tention of the Western spiritual world shortly after Bhagawan Shree Rajneesh, the notorious ninety-three-Rolls-Royce guru died. Rajneesh, the horse’s mouth concerning the topic of enlightenment for Westerners for many years, was a particularly clever man who created a very large following by wedding two largely incompatible concepts, sense enjoyment and enlightenment. His “Zorba the Buddha” idea gave a whole generation of rebellious, disaffected, community-seeking Westerners good reason to party hearty on their way to God. When Rajneesh, who rechristened himself Osho to avoid the bad karma his notoriety produced, died, his devotees, ever on the lookout for the next master, “discovered” Papaji, by this time an old man languishing in Lucknow, a hot, dirty, noisy city on the banks of the Gomati river, a tributary of the Ganges. Papaji, like Osho, was a clever man with an outsized personality. He was a shaktipat guru with a super abundance of “spiritual” energy, which some people claim he transmitted to his disciples. A shaktipat guru transmits shakti, spiritual energy, which causes an epiphany. After the transmission, Papaji informed them that they were enlightened. He should have known better—and perhaps he did—because there is only one self and it has always been enlightened. But this distinction was definitely lost on his followers. As it so happened, many got high on “the energy” and imagined themselves to be enlightened, a condi­tion known in yogic culture as manolaya, a temporary cessation of thought, or if you prefer an English term, an epiphany. It so happens that Osho’s followers, in spite of the fact that most of them spent long periods in India, had virtually no knowledge of self inquiry, even though they called themselves “neo-sannyasins” which translates as “new re­nunciates.” Renunciation is a tried and true Vedic spiritual idea, but in their case it is not clear what they actually renounced. Buddha was certainly a renunciate, but it would be a stretch to expect Zorba to renounce anything that interfered with his enthusiastic celebration of life. On the upside, his followers busied themselves developing sometimes ef­fective therapies to deal with their manifold neuroses. Osho was a Jain, not a Hindu, and seems to have more or less ignored the great spiritual tradition that surrounded him, at least after he became famous. His role models, whom he was not above criticizing, were Christ and the Buddha. Papaji, on the other hand, was a died-in-the-wool Hindu from a Brahmin family of Krishna devo­tees. His contribution to the spiritual education of this group was two-fold. He introduced them to Ramana Maharshi, whom he claimed was his guru, thus giving himself a golden, nay platinum, credential. And he familiarized them with the word advaita, which means non-duality. Hence, the advaita movement, which has attracted many thousands of Westerners. Although Ra­mana was Papaji’s guru, their ideas of spiritual practice, self inquiry, were quite different. Ramana’s involved persistent and intense effort on a moment to moment basis to dispel the mind/ego’s idea of duality, while Papaji’s involved only asking the question “Who am I?” and “keeping quiet” until the answer appeared, the absurdity of which was lost on them. Neo-Advaita Versus Traditional Vedanta On the surface Neo-Advaita, which has no worthwhile methodology, seems fairly reasonable. By and large it teaches that you are not the body-mind-ego entity and that you are non-dual awareness, both of which are in harmony with tradition. If reality is non-dual, then there is no one that is ignorant of his or her self because knowledge and ignorance are duality. If there is no ig­norance of who we are, there is no need for a teaching, a teacher or a student. In non-dual reality there is no body and mind to be something other than the self—awareness—so there is no bondage and no liberation, no suffering and enjoying, no joy and no sorrow. If you are non-dual awareness you cannot do anything, so there are no right and wrong actions. You were never born and you never die and experience does not exist. This teaching causes a problem because it does not take experience into ac­count. So you either have to deny the existence of experience, which can only take place in duality, or modify the teaching. You cannot deny the existence of experience—although Neo-Advaita does its level best—because it exists. So to tell someone caught in the experiential world that he or she does not exist, or that nothing can be done to attain enlightenment, is not helpful. The sages who gave us self inquiry were considerably more sophisticated and worked out an intelligent solution. They assigned a provisional reality to duality that is in harmony with the experience of everyone and then proceeded to destroy it, using teachings that correspond with the common sense logic of the seeker’s own experience. Without the notion of a provisional or apparent reality, which experience confirms, you are forced to superimpose the idea that all is consciousness on empirical reality. Needless to say, it does not apply to this level of reality. A verse in the scriptures on Yoga says,“a yogi in samadhi sees no difference between a lump of gold and the excreta of a crow.” Presumably, an enlightened Neo-Advaitin, in dire financial straits, might attempt to pawn a handful of crow poop and sweep his lump of gold into the garbage can. Non-duality, non-difference, does not mean sameness. It means that from the self ’s perspective there is no difference, but from the level of the body and mind there are only differences. This discrimination between what is real and what is apparent is the signature of an enlightened person. In fact, one of the definitions of enlightenment found in the scriptures of self inquiry is “the discrimination between what is real and what is apparent.” When you superimpose the notion of non-duality on multiplicity, you add a belief that will eventually have to be discarded at some point. This kind of spiritual belief, which is just ignorance, is exceedingly hard to investigate if it is taken to be the truth. No Teacher, Seeker, Path, Knowledge or Ignorance If reality is non-dual and a special experience of consciousness or a dead mind is not enlightenment, only self knowledge could be enlightenment. But Neo-Advaita does not accept the view that ignorance, which shows up as a lack of discrimination, is the problem, because it says that ignorance does not exist. This is a convenient teaching that plays to the strong anti-intellectual bias of modern seekers. It is true that it does not exist from the self ’s point of view, but a seeker does not know that he or she is the self or he or she would not be seeking, so this teaching is not a teaching at all. It leaves the seeker with no avenue to actualize the desire for freedom that attracts him or her to the idea of enlightenment, and is tailor made to produce frustration. That enlighten­ment is a blank mind or the absence of ego is an equally ill-considered notion that inevitably produces suffering when it is pursued. Both of these ideas are the result of level confusion, assigning the same degree of reality to pure consciousness and reflected consciousness—the experiential world. Of course, if there is no knowledge and no ignorance, there is no seeker either. And if there is no seeker, there necessarily cannot be a path. How Neo-Advaita squares this idea with its very existence is difficult to determine. If there is no knowledge and no ignorance, there is no teacher to pass on the knowledge that there is no path, seeker, knowledge, ignorance, or doer, etc. This is not to say that negation is not useful. Traditional self inquiry employs negation liberally. But it is half the loaf. The other half is the teachings that reveal the self, using the positive methods described throughout this book. The self is not a big empty void. Because Neo-Advaita is a nihilistic denial of the obvious, it has no methodology apart from its mindless negations. Being Present, Dropping Suffering Another popular teaching, “being present,” is unskillful because it does not take the vasanas into account. It is the vasanas that keep the mind worrying about the future and obsessing about the past. Desire needs to be addressed, not repressed with the technique of “being present.” The absurdity of such a teaching is evident when we look at it from the self ’s point of view too. When are you not present? For you to know that you are not present, you would have to be present. If you were absent, how would you know? The karma yoga view is a simple and obvious solution to this problem, but Neo-Advaita has not discovered it, even though it is as old as the hills. A further teaching, an injunction actually, informs the non-existent seeker to “drop”his or her suffering. How a non-existent ego would drop non-existent suffering is beyond comprehension, but let us assume that there is an ego, and that suffering is undesirable. Suffering is a powerful tendency brought on by ignorance of the nature of the self. It is subtler than the ego and not under its control. It can be removed by inquiry, but it cannot be dropped at will like a hot potato. Another glaring contradiction found in Neo-Advaita is the claim by the teachers that their statements stem from their own experience. It seems almost gratuitous to point out that from the self ’s point of view, which seems to be the only point of view Neo-Advaita espouses, there is no experiencer either. It is not the intention of the author to question the enlightenment or lack thereof of any Neo-Advaita teacher, although it is always wise for seekers to do so. It is my intention, however, to point out that enlightenment does not in any way qualify one to teach enlightenment. Furthermore, satsang, as it is conceived by Neo-Advaita, is completely insufficient as a means of self realization. To avoid the sticky question of a teaching and a teaching methodology, with its abysmal ignorance of the tradition of self inquiry Neo-Advaita uses the argument that their titular inspiration, Ramana Maharshi, gained enlightenment without a teaching and a teacher. Aside from the fact that it is, in very rare cases, possible to realize the self without help, the odds are about the same as winning the lottery, perhaps less. Additionally, this idea does not take into account Ramana’s extreme dispassion and the fact that after his enlightenment, he became a dedicated student of the science of self inquiry and actually wrote a scripture, The Essence of the Teaching, (Upadesa Saram) that has been accepted by the traditional Vedanta community as having the status of an Upanishad. Qualifications for Enlightenment Perhaps the best way to approach Neo-Advaita is not by what it teaches as by what it does not. Probably the most obvious omission is the notion of qualifications necessary for enlightenment. Neo-Advaita is burdened with an understandably democratic ethos, the idea being that anyone who walks into one of its meetings off the street can gain instant enlightenment, which is possible if you define enlightenment as an epiphany. But then again, you can also fall down a non-dual flight of stairs and have an epiphany. Because self inquiry defines enlightenment differently however, it insists that a person be discriminating, dispassionate, calm of mind and endowed with a burning desire for liberation along with secondary qualifications like devotion, faith and perseverance. In other words, it requires a mature adult with a one-pointed desire to know the self. The reason for these qualifications, which were discussed in chapter four, is the fact that enlightenment is a hard and fast recognition by the mind of its non-separation from everything; only a very rare individual will let go of his or her sense of individuality to gain another, albeit greater, identity. The mind must be capable of inquiring into, grasping and retaining the knowledge “I am limitless Awareness and not this body-mind.” To accomplish this, its extroverted tendency must be checked and attention directed to the self. To put forth the required effort, the individual needs to have the settled conviction that nothing in the world can bring lasting satisfaction. This conviction is what self inquiry calls maturity. To my knowl­edge, no Neo-Advaita teacher espouses this view. The reason is obvious: he or she would have no one to teach. I Am Not the Doer Perhaps the centerpiece of Neo-Advaita teachings is the idea that there is no doer. It has achieved considerable popularity in the Neo-Advaita world because it appeals to the something-for-nothing mentality. “You mean I can get enlightened without doing anything? Where do I sign up?” It also dovetails nicely with the idea of enlightenment as the absence of ego. If I do any spiritual work, I am strengthening my ego, or so the logic goes. It is true that the ego can co-opt the practice, but only if practice is done without the right understanding. This teaching, as is the case with all dogmatic statements from the self ’s point of view, contradicts experience. Everyone sees himself or herself as a doer and identifies to some degree with the actions done by the body and mind at the behest of the vasanas. If a teaching denies my existence, it condemns me to remain as the doer I think I am. Traditional Vedanta agrees that you cannot do anything to be what you are, but it suggests that you allow the science of self inquiry to help you remove your ignorance of who you are because enlightenment is a matter of understanding, not action. Importance of Karma Yoga for Self Inquiry It would be impossible to underestimate the importance of karma yoga for self inquiry. Karma yoga is not taught in the Neo-Advaita world because it is for the doer. Furthermore, it requires discipline and considerable patience, qualities not in evidence in people seeking instant enlightenment. It also requires continuous monitoring of one’s motivations and reactions to events. Additionally, it requires a willingness to change one’s attitudes. Finally, it demands a pure lifestyle because the vasanas continually divert attention away from the self. None of this is possible if I do not exist. And if I do exist, it is hard work. Not doing will not create karma—good or bad. But, because it is impos­sible not to do, the idea that there is nothing to do means that the entry-level seekers will just continue to do what they have always done. No blame, but the idea that there is nothing to do will not result in enlightenment or growth. To fill the non-doing void, Neo-Advaita, thanks to Rajneesh’s Zorba the Buddha idea, keeps the seeker hooked with an apparently positive injunction, “celebrate life.” How celebrating is not a doing is difficult to understand, but intellectual contradictions rarely stand in the way of an immature seeker’s desire to have fun. In contrast, self inquiry encourages sacrifice, the idea being that the ego cannot have its cake and eat it too. The desires that extrovert the mind need to be sacrificed for the sake of a quiet mind, one capable of meditating on the self, reflecting on the non-dual teachings, and assimilating the knowledge. When actions conform to dharma, binding vasanas are neutralized. Dharma means that I do what has to be done, irrespective of how I personally feel about it. I do not want to pay my taxes, but I pay my taxes. I may not get a vasana for paying taxes, but I will certainly eliminate any agitation associated with noncompliance. But when my desires are all that matter, is it any wonder that whatever non-dual experience happens in the satsang, when the mind is temporarily arrested by the group energy, quickly vanishes with the appearance of the next binding desire? This is why the Neo-Advaita world is little more than thousands of people, including the teachers, who have had scores of non-dual experiences, but who at the end of the day are still prisoners of their desires. Enlightenment is freedom from dependence on desired and feared objects. Ramana Maharshi, who had an experience of the self at the tender age of seventeen, understood the wisdom of practice. He sat in meditation on the self in caves for about twenty years and studied the texts of both Yoga and self inquiry after he was awakened, although this is not the party line of Ramana devotees. Had he been a Neo-Advaitin, he would have immediately advertised himself as an Avatar, started up a satsang and begun instantly enlightening the world. But he had the wisdom to understand that while the epiphany was the end of his seeking, it was not the end of his work. Had it been, he could have returned home, eaten this mother’s iddlies and played cricket like any normal seventeen year old Tamil boy. Is it unreasonable to assume that he applied the knowledge he gained during his experience, until the mind’s dualistic orientation was reduced to ash in the fire of self knowledge? The notion that his epiphany destroyed his sense of duality once and for all does not jibe with common sense. Devotion to God Another essential component of any valid spiritual path is devotion to God, as explained in chapter nine. Ramana gave devotion to God, meaning glad acceptance of the fruits of action, equal status with self inquiry as a spiritual path because devotion to God exhausts vasanas and breaks down the concept of doership. “Not my will, but Thine.” It also teaches that God, not the ego, is the dispenser of the fruits of one’s actions. But Neo-Advaita sees devotion as “duality” and has nothing to do with it. In fact, devotion works just as well as the idea of non-duality to prepare the mind for self realization because the self functions through the chosen symbol or practice to bring the necessary qualities for self inquiry into full flower. One view that needs to be examined in this context is the notion that enlightenment can be transmitted in some subtle experiential way via the physical proximity of a “master.”Traditional Advaita disagrees with this view for the reason that ignorance is deeply entrenched in the aspirant’s thinking and that it is only by deep reflection on the teachings that the ultimate assimilation of the knowledge is achieved. This assimilation is often called full or complete enlightenment. On the other hand, the transmission fantasy fits nicely into the Neo-Adviatic conception of easy enlightenment, as it does away with the need for serious practice. One need do nothing more than sit in the presence of a master and presto-chango!—I wake up for good. If this were true, however, the thousands who sit at the feet of enlightened masters everywhere would be enlightened. Another half-baked idea that has gained currency in the Neo-Advaita world is the notion of “awakening.” While sleep and waking are reasonable metaphors to describe the states of self ignorance and self knowledge, Neo-Advaita assigns to them an experiential meaning that is not justified. Just as anything that lives dies, anything that wakes sleeps. The self never slept nor does it awaken. The mind does. This waking up and going back to sleep—all of which takes place in the waking state incidentally—is a consequence of the play of the gunas in the mind. When the mind is sattvic, the reflection of the awareness shining on it causes the individual to “wake up,” i.e., to experience the self, but when rajas or tamas reappear, as they inevitably do, the mind is clouded over, the experience is lost, and the mind “sleeps.” Until the extroverting and dulling vasanas are purified, the seeker is condemned to a frustrating cycle of waking and sleeping. Where’s the Methodology? Finally, self inquiry has survived as a viable means of knowledge because it employs a refined methodology to remove ignorance and reveal the truth. Many realize non-duality within and outside the tradition but are incapable of teaching non-duality because they are either unsuited to teach or lack a viable method—or both. Neo­Advaita’s statements to “be the space for the thoughts” or “be as you are” are not skillful teachings, because they deliver a non-dual teaching of identity in experiential language. Such teachings give the impression that something can be done to achieve awareness and that self realization can come about through an act of will. In traditional Advaita, not only should the teacher have realized his or her identity as the self in such a way that he or she never re-identifies with the belief that the “I” is limited, but he or she should be able to wield the means of knowledge skillfully. Many Neo-Advaita satsang teachers use a picture of Ramana to lend legitimacy and gravitas to their satsangs, while they promote one of the most famous Ramana myths, that silence is somehow the ultimate teaching. While understanding the nature of the self in silence apparently finishes seeking for a very few highly qualified individuals, silence is certainly not superior to the skillful use of words in bringing about enlightenment. This is so because silence is in harmony, not in conflict, with self ignorance, as it is with everything. One can sit in silence without instruction for lifetimes and never realize that one is the silence, meaning limitless awareness. Knowledge, however, which is a legitimate means of knowledge, destroys self ignorance like light destroys darkness. Additionally no experience, including the experience of silence, can change thinking patterns. An experience of non-duality may temporarily suspend thought or increase one’s resolve to see oneself as limitless awareness, but the notion that the “I” is limited, inadequate, incomplete and separate is hard wired. It is only by diligent practice of the knowledge “I am limitless, ordinary awareness and not this body-mind” that the mind’s understanding of reality gets in line with the nature of the self. Why are binding desires such a major problem for anyone seeking enlightenment? Because they disturb the mind to such a degree that contact with the self as it reflects in the mind is broken, making self inquiry impossible. It is contemplation on the reflection of the self in the mind that allows the intellect to investigate the self in line with the teachings of self inquiry and gain the knowledge “I am the self.” Neo-Advaita characteristically wiggles out of the sticky trap of desire by claiming that the self is free of desire, which it is, but if I take myself to be a human being, it is definitely an impediment. If you swallow Neo-Advaita’s idea—and what experience-hungry ego would not?— it can lead to an unhealthy moral indifference. You can pursue your desires without reference to dharma and justify your behavior with the knowledge that you are not the desirer. You are “just playing in consciousness.” Seeking Emotional Fulfillment There is no way to know for certain, but Neo-Advaita seems to be more about emotionally unfulfilled individuals looking for an alternative to a hectic modern lifestyle, one that offers a sense of community, than a proper spiritual path. Far from the idea of relying on the self to supply emotional needs from within, most believe that enlightenment will help them gain the worldly things that have so far eluded them, particularly love. The attenuated hugs that the followers of Osho made famous and are favored by devotees of the famous Hugging Saint are much in evidence in the meetings of popular Neo-Advaita teachers. And it is clear from the behavior of many of the teachers of Neo-Advaita who have supposedly “got it,” that their enlightenment has not significantly diminished their lust for fame, wealth, power and pleasure. Keeping in mind the fact that everything in empirical reality is actually consciousness seeking its way back to itself, it would be unfair to suggest that there is anything sinister about Neo-Advaita. However its teachings, as I have tried to show by contrasting them with self inquiry, suffer from a lack of understanding of the nature of reality. To pass off ignorance as knowledge is not a crime; it does, however, have unfortunate effects on the unsuspecting. Although the truth is eternal and has been known forever, the comprehensive, systematic and refined teachings that crystallized into the science of self inquiry over twelve hundred years ago are obviously the last word in the enlightenment business. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, nor is an adaptation for the benefit of modern world necessary. Yes, self inquiry can always benefit from a linguistic update, but that is all. The teachings stand on their own. I was informed recently by a friend who has considerable knowledge of the Neo-Advaita satsang world that we have now entered the “Post-Neo Advaita” period. Not surprisingly, Neo-Advaita has not lived up to its promise as a quick and easy means of liberation and people are now looking for the next most incredible path to enlightenment. It seems their prayers have been an­swered with the appearance of the yang-yin duo, Kalki Avatar and his Mother God wife, founders of the illustrious Oneness University. This compassionate team will—for the modest fee of $11,500 for a two week enlightenment course—direct special energy from a golden ball into your poor confused human cranium and rewire your brain for enlightenment. As an added benefit, you will miraculously survive the global calamity about to befall the earth in 2012, which is slated to wipe out a significant fraction of humanity. Evidently this promise of personal and global enlightenment is thinning the ranks of the Neo-Advaitans who, in typically Western fashion, are always looking for the most efficient shortcut to limitless bliss. Does Neo-Advaita have any redeeming virtues? Just as high school is a prerequisite for university, seekers need to start somewhere and Neo-Advaita, imperfect as it is as a vehicle for spiritual practice or self realization, provides entry-level access to the idea of non-duality. Finally, because Neo-Advaita is probably more of a support group for like-minded spiritually inclined individuals than a rigorous investigation into the truth, it will continue in some form or other for the foreseeable future. But it will probably remain a lifestyle fad unless it investigates its roots and discovers the teachings of self inquiry."

you have to transcend the relative and really open yourself to existence. in a real way, go further. If not, you're in hell. human life is crazy, everyone is locked in their capsule using thousands of avoidance micro-tactics to function day by day, living in complete stupidity, waiting for old age and death. If they did not use avoidance, the vital depression would be complete. what we have to do is truly open ourselves to the now, to reality, to what we are. this is real. right now you are, and what you are is pure existence. trying to mentally grasp this doesn't work, you have to open up. In my case, what has worked (to the extent that it has worked, I'm still working on it) is, first of all, complete will to do it, without reservations. I want to open myself totally, give myself totally. and then, the means you use: deconstruction of mental patterns, meditating for hours every day, even if it's dirty meditation, it's getting better, and psychedelics, a lot, especially 5 meo, and also mushrooms and thc. it is a blind path. nothing Leo sad, or I read, or any guru is nothing, no one has ever awakened as far as I am concerned, I am alone in this, there is nothing and no one to lean on. it is total openness, total surrender. you dare? you better, because there is no other way

@Enlightement Hello there, The ego is the entire "web of self construct. It can't be destroyed because it's actually not anything real. It's more of an assumed identity of past present future memories & experiences.......it's very sticky and clings to everything in order to keep inflated....it's the experience of lack or separation....like something is always missing or incomplete This illusory self (me) never gets satisfied. Whatever the current experience happens to be, it will always attempt to find a better one in the apparent future including spiritual practices and such which is another form of seeking/spiritual materialism (to become awakened) Sometimes the unreality of this character is clearly seen through and there can seem to be a shift away from the energetic catering or upholding of this illusory self construct and it's relentless quest for permanent satisfaction. This is what's often referred to as enlightenment; awakening; nirvana; samadhi; liberation etc... But it's not a better state or experience of reality & it's not a something that's gained attained or acquired contrary to popular belief. It's the end of the opinionated and judgmental character always placing things into the good bad right or wrong categories...... it's the end of the knower It's the freedom that's longed for and sequentially was always the case. ♥

Fellas, typing this in a hurry, doing some errands on the side so please bear with the typos and shit. They say when the kundalini has pierced the last chakra, a person enters into a state of bliss, also known as samadhi. I read a poem by Rumi a while ago and it seems to allude to these states of bliss (tell me if you already feeling the tingling). In Intoxicated by love, Rumi writes Because of your love I have lost my sobriety I am intoxicated by the madness of love In this fog I have become a stranger to myself I'm so drunk I've lost the way to my house In the garden I see only your face From trees and blossoms I inhale only your fragrance Drunk with the ecstasy of love I can no longer tell the difference between drunkard and drink Between Lover and Beloved I've been exhaustively exploring eastern spiritual tradition and concept these past couple days. According to Eastern spiritual traditions originating the kundalini resides in the last bone of the vertebral column. These days I'm studying kundalini yoga guys.. And yes it's kinda insane. I really don't know the effectiveness of it, just exploring as much as I can. That state of pure union is what the mystics of every spiritual path reference, a rose is a rose by any name. There are different names to these but I think it all comes down to that one specific experience shared by all. It’s what Buddhists refer to as Enlightenment, what others call a spiritual awakening, or what Teresa of Avila, the Spanish Carmelite nun, refers to in her text on the seven mansions. As seen by its appearance across spiritual disciplines, a kundalini awakening can happen to anybody at any time on any spiritual path. Have you felt it too? I'm just beginning to gather bits of it in my regular practice, still not fully incorporated it. You don’t have to practice Kundalini Yoga, for instance, or recite a particular mantra to have your kundalini rise. The only commonality among kundalini experiences is the feeling of intense devotion or love for a Higher Power. Hopefully that made sense. When you have a deep longing for the divine, when you want to feel a sense of union with something greater than yourself, that’s when it’s said your kundalini has awakened. That can happen from walking in nature, reading a book, attending a lecture, learning meditation, having a dream – the list goes on. However, the kundalini doesn’t have to stay at the base of the spine – it can travel up your spine to pierce seven energy centers or chakras. At each chakra, the spiritual feeling is different and graduates from, “One day I will be one with Source energy,” to “I already am one. There is no difference between me and the creative energy that powers the universe.” Have you ever experienced something familiar? Just wanna know if someone here felt that intense boost of energy in the spine. I've even heard that kundalini can be dangerous but I really don't know yet. This is just my foray into these subcultures whereby I'm learning strange tantryc practices As I was meditating through space, and feeling the collision of energy and time, I began writing my thoughts in the form of a poem. I titled this poem as — A TRIBUTE TO KUNDALINI. A tribute to kundalini Both joy and love bring the world closer. No beginning and no end. Just a ray of light. The journey is long, the battle isn't over Glistening and wet, deep in the distance We look at this world with curiousity and myth Kundalini arises, it's never relinquished. Rises like a tsunami, it will always flicker in hope And come to you when you need it the most. Sometimes I imagine the kundalini might peirce through the different chkkras on the spine but sometimes I wonder if the kumdalme Let's see. I believe kundalini is the fusion of masculine and feminine energes. The Kundalini process moves dormant kundalini energy along the spine. It is waking up the divine feminine spiritual energy, known as the Kundalini serpent, that lies coiled and locked at the base of the spine, also known as the root chakra, one of the seven chakras that run along the spine to the crown chakra (seventh chakra). Kundalini chakras covers the in´s and out´s of kundalini and chakras. My symptoms included feeling like reptiles crawling over my lower back (spinal cord)and then ascending towards the neck where they meet at a center point right at the back of the neck. I even looked up some advice from Sadhguru regarding these practices. What kundalini did for me? It made me more creative. It does bring intense energy. Also my emotions are more charged when I'm feeling the energy coursing up my spine.

You have awakened to what you are, now integrate it until there is no within or without. I'm happy for you, man...you've come a long way in the last couple of years⚡

Very true. A good conceptual framework leads to practicing a path that drops one in an empty and impersonal awakened nondual state at the Gateless Gate. For passing the Gateless Gate, the framework and its framework-holder-identity must be transcended/thrown-away completely/cut-off Trekchö-style and let go. And crossing over is grace. It can't be forced. ("Nonmeditation Yoga"). But dropping the framework/path before being in a "compatible" empty ("impersonal") awakened state at the Gateless Gate also doesn't work. Selling Water by the River

Thank you very much for posting that video. I can confirm from long time experience (10 years+) of walking this path (Mahamudra, especially the system outlined in Pointing out the Great Way, but also Dzogchen) is very effective. It is orders of magnitude more effective in taking meditation and Awakening off the pillow into daily life than any other meditation system I am aware of, and I read about & tried quite some. I am convinced that with any other system it would have taken me at least 2-3 times longer at least, probably more. Getting meditation off the pillow and into daily life, not as mindfulness but more as Trekchö, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekchö#:~:text=In Dzogchen%2C trekchö (khregs chod,with its admonition against practice. , is in my experience essential to get the momentum of Awakened States going that is necessary for further insights - at least if one is not (geneticall or karmically) prodigy-like-gifted. Here Daniel Brown talks about the beginnings of Awakened-States, starting to get nondual: One thing to keep in mind: He already had Parkinson at that time of the shooting of that video, it was 3-4 years before his passing away last year. But besides that impacting him already, one can clearly feel his awakened state and presence. Water by the River PS: A brief summary of my experiences with the Mahamudra-System:

People would believe others without question if it sounds deep. Guy had 80+ awakenings, better take his word for true, whos got time for his own 80 awakenings? People will parrot what others say and false spreads as wildfire. If you are AWAKE you will drill "truths" like that and anyone who claims to have awakened to the truth. No time for zen devilry, it confuses the seeds (you and me)

Probably a few trainwrecks, clusterf*****, maybe even a few voluntary early returns to the source ahead. And bad Karma for many involved. Maybe some experienced and integrated and hopefully quite awakened ones will benefit. Lets see and hope the best. I just hope it won't be too much show. I personally wouldn't dare rolling out something like that to customers/course-recipients that have not been personally qualified on an individual basis for personal readiness, maturity and wisdom. Over a long time of screening. And rolling out a paid course to an audiance which in large parts gets picked up via the google drag-net fishing in many cases those with serious psychological problems... If we all agree that the Reality is Infinite Intelligence, this Reality has zero problems with handing out Karma for such an endeavour if it fails and has got negative (or very negative) impact on weighted average. And Reality is not fair & straight in rolling out Karma. One essential ingridient of Lila/Maya is the illusion-element of the trickster. The seductress Maya. Looks good in the beginning as attractive choice, and then later one gets served ones Karma. But in either way the outcome will be, probably literally the hell of a show ahead... Bon voyage Water by the River

Don’t dismiss logic so easily. If you say that your POV is Absolute Truth, then how are you rejecting Solipsism? If you rely on direct experience, there are no other POVs. It is only your logic that tells you that others exist. Notice that. That is why you can’t trust your perceptions. Even though all logic is based on your perceptions, it is a higher mode of perception that can think and analyze perception. But how do you know you have awakened other than you feeling like you have and being convinced? How do you know your awakening isn’t a self-deception? In my awakening, I realized there is no difference between the two. Don’t dismiss the camera analogy too easily. The videos you record on your camera are taking place in your camera, which takes place in reality. A camera just like your brain is a filtering process of consciousness. If your camera or brain gets damaged, you lose connection to reality. When your camera breaks, it “dies.” You can’t experience reality without a body/brain. Please notice that strange loop. When you are dismissing solipsism, you are trusting logic more than your experience lol. You ain’t gonna find another experience in your experience. Logic is gonna be an inference at best that there are others who experience like you do. There is no inference in direct experience. Inference is a conceptual/logical faculty lol.

Consider first that an infinite mind can have distinctly different wills, perhaps even direct opposite ones. Consider also that perfect Love gives you absolute freewill to do/be what you wish. The God that I "carry in me" that I have awakened to wills heaven here and/or in "spirit world". But what is meant by "heaven"? Something like a state of oneness and perfect Love, maximal consciousness. That doesn't mean I immediately accepted my awakenings, because like you I have been living in a different kind of state, it took me some time to more fully accept. But like I said, consider the first two possibilities then you might be open to considering the third assertion as "will of God".

Only when you have been through some hard shit, will this scene make sense to you. Survival, Law of the Jungle, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Deception/Lies/Trickery is what is being taught here. If you haven't awakened don't pretend to know what Death is. Because for you at that moment, it will feel real to you.

When You Fully Awaken You Literally Become The Instrument of God. I am a super conductor, I have a discerning eye that can clear through all lies. To do this you must speak the language of feeling, humans like to call it insight and intuition. Judge every teaching on Self-Love. What is Self-Love....the absence of all bias. I love Leo, but Leo teaches self-hatred in this video. People don't make you stupid, that is a denial of your authority. Take your authority back and realize that your own self-bias is the only thing holding you back. Want to understand the genius of people? Learn how to connect to feeling, because the feelings of what you call others is just your feelings. Spirituality is Therapy, and the number one rule of therapy is tell the truth about your feelings. If you cannot connect to people it is because you have not healed all your emotional pain. This is why the path is so tricky. First you must deny your humanity and walk alone to awaken. Then you must reclaim your humanity not through the prison of identity, but through the freedom of cooperation and understanding. THIS IS LOVE. To face your greatest fear!!! You fear to fall back into delusion once fully awakened not realizing....that IS THE FINAL TRAP!!!!! If you want to fully awaken....the last step...is to go back!!! Stay Frosty Out There!!!

There is no personal will, only absolute will. You are the absolute, you just need to directly realize it. Of course it feels like you have no freedom, because you are ensnared in a conceptual trap. Find your way out of the trap, and learn to be free. It is a gradual process of disidentifying from the human mind. The idea that you have of you is an illusion. You are not thoughts, feelings, or experiences. You are the awareness in which these phenomena arise. The more you distance your attention from thoughts, and focus awareness within, the more free you will realize that you are. It's the purpose of spiritual practice. Meditate. Contemplate. Renounce. Above all, Directly Inquire. All of this is within your ability to do, and will contribute to your realization of freedom. The absolute has awakened itself countless times, and it will awaken within you when you put in the spiritual practice to set yourself free.

It isn't productive when I do the work for you. But you were lucky to catch me in a bad mood, so I'll unpack it. But only this once. You claim that YOU have "awakened" (man, this word really should be banned or reserved for Leo exclusively) to the fact that all apparent characters are mere automatons with no free will and a "Chinese Room" inside their skulls - including your own character, the human who goes by Holykael. From this, I conclude that YOU (whatever/whoever you think of when I address you) do not identify with the human character Holykael. How could you? He is a mindless robot - he cannot possibly "awaken" because he isn't the subject of perception, he is an object. But YOU, on the other hand, DID "awaken" - so you must identify as the subject, right? So, WHO is that entity that "awakened" to the fact that "everybody is a mindless drone"? I will have to guess here, because you didn't say it explicitly - but I'm assuming that GOD did? If so, then you must identify as God. And, in your own words, God (which is you) actively imagined and handcrafted everything, including the life of Holykael. So, you are God, God has free will, which means you do; and Holykael's automaticity is not your problem, since he has nothing to do with you. Problem solved. Alternatively, you might have constructed something like this in your mind: you have "awakened" to the fact that "Holykael and the rest of us are robots" - however, that "you" who "awakened" is not the God himself, but some other "in-between" entity - who has the power to awaken, but still no free will, since it is reserved only for God, which isn't you. But, man, this is schizo, and I really hope you see it and didn't go this far. But lemme know if you did; I mean, I don't judge, and I'm sure we can unpack this as well. There is, of course, the third option: that YOU "awakened" to the fact that you are GOD - but also realized that even God himself is so total that it's invariant. In which case, no free will for us robots - but also no free will for God as well, whoopsie. Wouldn't that be a bummer?.. But, since you used phrases like "my life was handcrafted", I'll assume that you didn't go this way. Anywhoo, as Moksha so precisely pointed out, your main problem seems to be that of self-misidentification.

I like that. All three levels of the ego are transcended by direct realization. Appearances still come and go, but you no longer identify with them. You can still navigate from a distance through the dream, but there is absolute awareness that you are doing nothing, thinking nothing, and identifying as nothing. That is the true flow state. The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all.

Hello all I am a healthy, happy, professional, semi-contemplative, spiritual person. I have taken up to 8 grams of dried penis envy from time to time. 3.5 grams seems to be plenty. Does everyone have suicidal-like thoughts, fears, or panics on psychedelics from time to time when taking heroic doses? I feel very healthy, well, and not suicidal at all. These thoughts seem reasonable when one is tripping and the veil of reality is peeled back. It seems normal for the mind to wander to deep profound thoughts. The cosmos seems so meaningful on some trips and so meaningless on other trips in a beautiful yin yang way. Sometimes we get disassociated from our bodies or surroundings. The ego death. All boundaries and barriers and the mind itself seem to dissolve. Or do psychedelics amplify or expose our internal issues? Is there a suicidal impulse buried deep inside me? My hunch is everyone encounters these thoughts or philosophical musings in bad trips or panic attacks or when losing touch with reality while tripping. But why don't Joe Rogen, Terrance McKenna, or Graham Hancock ever mention the dangers of suicidal thoughts? Many media people seem to promote psychedelics but I never see any warnings of suicidal thoughts or almost assured encounters with this thought. But in my opinion that does seem to be the big trick of psychedelics and maybe the Eleusinian mysteries. It is the sudden confrontation with death/suicide which gives insight and new meaning to life. It is the joy at returning to sobriety and reality which is a huge relief. Surviving the trip is the fun part. "There is no such thing as a bad trip." Is everyone recommending psychedelics with a wink and a nod almost hoping you bump into the suicide skeleton lurking in your closet? Are suicidal thoughts the secret gimmick of psychedelics? Is suicide a taboo and no one wants to talk about it, or is everyone embarrassed they had this thought and keep it secret or at least do not connect it to psychedelic usage? Switching gears, have any of you had what you consider to be the ultimate revelation of reality or just a horrifying idea which you keep to yourself? I have. It reminds me of the Radiohead video for "Just" or the movie "Birdbox." PM me if you had the revelation and want to hear my revelation, but I beg all of you not to ask me for it. Watch the Radiohead video and the movie "Birdbox" before contacting me. We can share revelations, but I feel it is best if you come to this revelation on your own. If I tell it to you, it will only delay your enlightenment or transcendence. It is a paradox. You cannot be awakened. You must awaken on your own. I am happy with my revelation, but it is a very unpleasant horrifying paradoxical thought and you may regret hearing it. I feel too guilty simply posting it or writing it down or telling anyone about it. I don't want to put bad vibes out there. Thank you all for reading. Thanks for any replies. I feel I am posting in the correct forum and topic. Please send me links to alternate forums where I can re-post for more views or discussion about my post. I am a rookie at online psychedelic forums.

Sure, fully agree. Thanks for highlighting that. ( : A functioning healthy working character floating around in oneself it not a bad thing. I generally like the model of Ken Wilber on these topics (below). Any kind of healthy realization/transcendence should make one more loving and productive. If it kills the functioning character, makes one disfunctional, insane or mean, it is not the healthy version of realization/transcendence, but the sick one. If at all. differentiate, transcend and integrate (the healthy model of growth and transcendence), but disassociate/split off, don't transcend, and of course don't integrate (the sick version of failed growth and transcendence), and, uuum, mucho problemas. Daniel Brown once said: How can one spot deep and mature Realization? With the conduct with which one lives ones life. Yours truly believes that this is the ultimate compass, beyond blabla-bravado, conceptual castles in the sky, the lastest new awakened state of the day, claims of superiority of whatever-kind. Anybody who claims otherwise: Why not? Too difficult? For whom? Selling Water by the River The Meaning of Egolessness – Ken Wilber Ken Wilber: Precisely because the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of egolessness, Egolessness-awaken - a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion. But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that’s a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with that self. One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of egoless is that people want their egoless sages to fulfill all their fantasies of saintly or spiritual, which usually means dead from the neck down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time. All of the things that people typically have trouble with money, food, sex, relationships, desire they want their saints to be without. Egoless sages who are above all that is what people want. Talking heads is what they want. Religion, they believe, will simply get rid of all baser instincts, drives and relationships, and hence they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it. In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be less than a person, somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex, pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings. We expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us! All the things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us: we want our sages to be untouched by them altogether. And that absence, that vacancy, that less than personal, is what we often mean by egoless. But egoless does not mean less than personal, it means more than personal. Not personal minus, but personal plus all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints and sages from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years. And they did so not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) the ultimate source of their power but they expressed that power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all. These great movers and shakers were not small egos; they were, in the very best sense of the term, big egos, precisely because the ego (the functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (vehicle of the causal). To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm, they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle of that realm. They were not, however, identified merely with their egos (that’s a narcissist), they simply found their egos plugged into a radiant Kosmic source. The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure atman (the pure I–I) that is one with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God. Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes, and Saint Teresa is the only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic tradition (think about it). Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi, Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Bal Shem Tov these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, something neither Marx nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper psychic, which was plugged straight into God. There is certainly a type of truth to the notion of transcending ego : it doesn’t mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger. (As Nagarjuna put it, in the relative world, atman is real; in the absolute, neither atman nor anatman is real. Thus, in neither case is anatta a correct description of reality.) The small ego does not evaporate; it remains as the functional center of activity in the conventional realm. As I said, to lose that ego is to become a psychotic, not a sage. Transcending the ego thus actually means to transcend but include the ego in a deeper and higher embrace, first in the soul or deeper psychic, then with the Witness or primordial Self, then with each previous stage taken up, enfolded, included and embraced in the radiance of One Taste. And that means we do not get rid of the small ego, but rather, we inhabit it fully, live it with verve, use it as the necessary vehicle through which higher truths are communicated. Soul and Spirit include body, emotions and mind; they do not erase them. Put bluntly, the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant manifestation of Spirit. All Forms are not other than Emptiness, including the form of the ego. It is not necessary to get rid of the ego, but simply to live it with a certain exuberance. When identification spills out of the ego and into the Kosmos at large, the ego discovers that the individual atman is in fact all of a piece with Brahman. The big Self is indeed no small ego, and thus, to the extent you are stuck in your small ego, a death and transcendence is required. Narcissists are simply people whose egos are not yet big enough to embrace the entire Kosmos, and so they try to be central to the Kosmos instead. But we do not want our sages to have big egos; we do not even want them to display a manifest dimension at all. Anytime a sage displays humanness in regard to money, food, sex, relationships we are shocked, shocked, because we are planning to escape life altogether, not live it, and the sage who lives life offends us. We want out, we want to ascend, we want to escape, and the sage who engages life with gusto, lives it to the hilt, grabs each wave of life and surfs it to the end this deeply, profoundly disturbs us, frightens us, because it means that we, too, might have to engage life, with gusto, on all levels, and not merely escape it in a cloud of luminous ether. We do not want our sages to have bodies, egos, drives, vitality, sex, money, relationships, or life, because those are what habitually torture us, and we want out. We do not want to surf the waves of life, we want the waves to go away. We want vaporware spirituality. The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as tantric, these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. They enter with awareness the nine rings of hell, for nowhere else are the nine heavens found. Nothing is alien to them, for there is nothing that is not One Taste. Indeed, the whole point is to be fully at home in the body and its desires, the mind and its ideas, the spirit and its light. To embrace them fully, evenly, simultaneously, since all are equally gestures of the One and Only Taste. To inhabit lust and watch it play; to enter ideas and follow their brilliance; to be swallowed by Spirit and awaken to a glory that time forgot to name. Body and mind and spirit, all contained, equally contained, in the ever-present awareness that grounds the entire display. In the stillness of the night, the Goddess whispers. In the brightness of the day, dear God roars. Life pulses, mind imagines, emotions wave, thoughts wander. What are all these but the endless movements of One Taste, forever at play with its own gestures, whispering quietly to all who would listen: is this not you yourself? When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?