Most deeply enlightened teachers

[PT89]

From Leo's last video, he points out that different teachers are at very different levels of awakening.  What teachers do you guys feel are some of the most deeply awakened (also direction this question to @Leo Gura)

[Highest]

Meher baba. Osho. Ibn Arabi.

[Leo Gura]

@PT89 It's just too hard to tell and this becomes very controversial as no one wants to admit their favorite teacher isn't fully awake.

I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it. Learn from whoever you feel is good enough for you. Learn from multiple sources to avoid blindspots. Have at least 10 different sources that you are cross-referencing or you will get blindspots.

Personally I cross-reference 50-100 sources to make sure I don't get trapped in a blindspot. That's how seriously I take this epistemic problem. It is no joke. You will get trapped, I can almost guarantee it.

[FoxFoxFox]

@PT89 Jan Esmann, Mooji, Sadhguru, Anandi Ma. That last one is in my understanding the furthers of them all.

[Leo Gura]

Rupert Spira is quite high, I think.

Peter Ralston is very high.

[Joseph Maynor]

Mooji  

Sadhguru

 

Edited March 30, 2019 by Joseph Maynor

[FoxFoxFox]

@Leo Gura I gotta say. Neither of those two ever talk about losing identification, God, Kundalini, etc. unless I am unaware. All their teaching stops at "I-I". Which really is just a step before self-realization. 

[tsuki]

Osho. 

[pluto]

The ones we don't know about

[mandyjw]

My dog.

[Joseph Maynor]

1 minute ago, mandyjw said:

My dog.

That's a great answer.  I love dogs.  Man's best friend.

Edited March 30, 2019 by Joseph Maynor

[Preetom]

Joseph Stalin

"Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem."

Can you give a more enlightening quote than that?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, FoxFoxFox said:

@Leo Gura I gotta say. Neither of those two ever talk about losing identification, God, Kundalini, etc. unless I am unaware. All their teaching stops at "I-I". Which really is just a step before self-realization. 

Ralston is a sneaky one. He's very tight-lipped and coy. He deliberately does not mention God, but he's fully aware he is God. He just won't talk about it because (I assume) he's worried it will get the ego-mind churning with religious fantasies. Kundalini he does not talk about. Not sure why. I think he might consider it a distraction, a relative experience. Losing identification is his whole teaching. He clearly has zero identification with anything. You have to really study his work closely to understand his depth. He might be one the most enlightened human beings on the planet. But his teachings are very advanced. He does not over-explain things for newbs like I do AT ALL. You have to really struggle through his teachings to understand their depth. The only way to appreciate Ralston is to study with him face to face. It's quite an experience. He is deeper than a Zen master. He teaches some very advanced things but they all sound so simple you can easily miss it and he don't give a fuck if you do. It's like an advanced graduate college class where the professor just expects you to do all the work. He doesn't even bother to give you homework or tests or explain much.

Seems to me that Rupert Spira also teaches about losing identification, he just might not use that language.

The trick with evaluating teachers is that they might not use the language you use. So you have to give them some leeway. Some teachers develop their own systems which do not use the categories and verbiage of classical traditions like Vedanta or yoga or Buddhism.

Seems to me that it's possible to awaken without having a kundalini awakening experience, thus people who awaken without much kundalini surges might not emphasize it in their teachings. Teachers tend to emphasize their own path to awakening. But there is more than one path because not all human minds/brains/bodies/personalities are the same. Imagine for example what it would be like for an autistic male to awaken versus a super emotional psychic female. They will have VERY different paths even though the ultimate realization of Truth will be similar after the dust settles. There are a lot of psychic people who have very weird and twisted paths to awakening. It's going to be very hard to understand or evaluate them unless you have had those kinds of extra-sensory abilities for your entire life. It's like being a different species of human. Their brains work differently.

Imagine what awakening might have been like for a neanderthal. It is said they may have had bigger brains than humans. Their awakenings would have been different than human awakenings. But of course this does not negate that the Absolute is still the Absolute. People underestimate how much neurology plays a part in the awakening process. This becomes obvious if you do a lot of various psychedelics. You experiences impossible states of consciousness which are totally outside the catalogue of the traditional spiritual literature. Because consciousness can basically be any which way imaginable and there are just things which you will never be able to meditate or self-inquire your way to. Something like saliva you are not going to get through meditation. There are also various kinds of brain-damaged states and brain pathologies which lead to interesting new kinds of consciousness which virtually nobody knows about or understands because all that's really mapped out are the mainstream norms. Not the very weird edge-cases. Imagine what it would be like to awaken as a psychopath or schizophrenic.

[Salvijus]

Nothing comes close to Shiva. He's originator of spirituality. Everything that's possible and impossible was propounded by this being. Nothing new has ever been sayed after him by any enlightened being. Everyone else is just a sidekick of Shiva

Interesting thing about it is that he's still alive in many forms.

"Everything you think Shiva is, I am" #sadhguru

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=273079519990779&id=100018661985266

 

Edited March 30, 2019 by Salvijus

[SunnyNewDay]

You are your best teacher

The techniques we practice are the best teachers

Avoid making gurus of people 

I think sharing techniques and theory is fine but a purity test of spirituality or trying to gage teachers in such a discussion is making them into gurus

[FoxFoxFox]

@Leo Gura Ah it's great to hear that then. Always glad to know people are not being mislead by pseudo-gurus. I personally don't study neo-advaitans much because there's just so much potential for disaster. I also believe it's possible to self-realize without Kundalini, but i don't think it would be possible to realize the bliss aspect of God without it. It's a shame that Ralston (like Adyashanti!) won't dive deeper into the shakti. Honestly i don't see how one could move from God-consciousness to unity consciousness without it. The important thing is to stress losing the identification mechanism. That is more than enough reason to bow down in recognition. 

[Joseph Maynor]

7 minutes ago, FoxFoxFox said:

@Leo Gura Ah it's great to hear that then. Always glad to know people are not being mislead by pseudo-gurus. I personally don't study neo-advaitans much because there's just so much potential for disaster. I also believe it's possible to self-realize without Kundalini, but i don't think it would be possible to realize the bliss aspect of God without it. It's a shame that Ralston (like Adyashanti!) won't dive deeper into the shakti. Honestly i don't see how one could move from God-consciousness to unity consciousness without it. The important thing is to stress losing the identification mechanism. That is more than enough reason to bow down in recognition. 

Pseudo-gurus?  Wow, that's a word.  I think we all have different people that we think fit that label.  Probably your guru is my pseudo-guru and vice versa.

Edited March 30, 2019 by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

@FoxFoxFox I once asked Ralston about yogis and kundalini. He laughed and said that yogis are not really enlightened.

Whatever that means.

The bliss you can definitely experience on psychedelics. Very strong doses of 5-MeO-DMT also activate kundalini although I'm not sure if it's being activated safely. On my highest dose ever of 5-MeO-DMT, the consciousness was so powerful that it was too much to handle and I felt kundalini shoot out of my fingertips like force lightening, resulting in skin damage to my fingertips. It was a very freaky experience bordering on the paranormal. I don't think it was healthy. But damn was it powerful. I have never had kundalini activation on 5-MeO-DMT except that one time. That was a very large dose which I would not want to take again. To be any more conscious you'd be so conscious you'd physically pass out.

[FoxFoxFox]

@Leo Gura Well he is right you know! If God believes it is a [insert anything] they cannot be the absolute. At the same time, God does not limit itself by believing itself to be something else other than god. Such is God's mystery, and the reason behind the adage that there can never be any ignorance. 

But Kundalinishakti has nothing to do with beliefs. It persists, like the voidgod that Ralston believes he is. It exists even when the mind is asleep, like when you sleep or are unconscious under anesthesia. It is not something that needs the senses to be perceived either. It's a... unspoken understanding. God's recognition of its own Godhood, just like how void is God's recognition of its own complete emptiness. 

Edited March 30, 2019 by FoxFoxFox

[Leo Gura]

@FoxFoxFox I'm all for kundalini work and activating it. I think awakening must be not only in the head but the whole body. Energetic blockages must be released. Otherwise you might awaken but your embodiment of it will be lacking.