Some people feel confused by changes in my teaching.

Six years ago I spope of the Absolute versus the manifest including the world, body, and mind, and spoke of the path of self-inquiry through inner observation, and all that there is ultimately is emptiness. All objects, all the world and our bodies are permeated by a lighted emptiness.

Then I spoke of realizing the Manifest Self, divine sentience itself living thrhough the body. I spoke of finding God within, first perceived as Other, then seen as your own deeper Self. The manifest Self is found through devotion, love of other, and feelinh the explosion of light, energy, and bliss welling up from the dark depths of your Self.

For six years I taught this, how to realize that life fore, that inner light, that Shakti within through inner, feeling exploration of emotions, light the energy body, one's sense of presence. I taught self-inquiry through feeling, not looking, through love, not meditation, and self-inquiry, by focusing on the I-sensation, letting it grow into one's sense of presence ravealing the energy or Subtle body.

I truly believe that pursuit of an awakening the Manifest Self, actually of becoming aware of the Manifest Self within, and then is brought forth into the human world to bring love, light, compassion and service is the best teachings for our time, our era of a dying world filled with death, war, terrorism, mass shootings, and politics of corruption.

But, all that arises from within in terms of feeling relates to the body, which narrows down one's focus, contracts one's being into a body and relationships, and I am so much more than this.

By focusing on the I Am sensation, the energy body, love, sadness, depression, anger, and body sensations, I have found they all evaporate again, and there is only space, lighted emptiness, vast without border, wherein everything is seen/felt to be empty, and all concepts left behind. The yearning and burning, the big emotions, awakening gthe energy body, the heart and gut, realizing the divine within were necessary before stepping back into the Void, leaving nothing undone.

Without concepts there is no self, no Self, no inner, outer, manifest or unmanifest. There is just total freedom, and I cannot say I am any of this. There is no longer anything to identify with, even emptiness. Emptiness itself is empty, and exists only in the mind.

When thus I rest, I am everywhere and nowhere, coextensive with emptiness, yet not emptiness. I am not a witness anymore of emptiness, because there is no witness, nor is there identification with emptiness or the body. Identification is gone.

I only know there is nothing to be known calmly and equally resting in the unchanging Void and ever changing world. Like Almaas, like Nisargadatta, like Robert, I keep unfolding, changing, expanding.

The Way of the Falling Leaf

There are people who totally misunderstand my message on spiritual seeking, thinking I am siding with the Neo-Advaita do-nothings and know-nothings in their denial of spiritual paths and effort. Just because their are many spiritual paths with differing goals and experiences, yet everyone ends up where they started as ordinary humans confronting problems of everyday life, does not negate seeking and spiritual effort. Every moment of effort is transformative.

Anyone of integrity and honesty to self, who sincerely seeks truth, God, Self, or to understand Consciousness over a lifetime, and who comes to a position of rest, reaches rest because he has found what he did not know he was looking for, whatever that is for him. That path has transformed him into a different kind of ordinary man. The ordinary man who started at 0 degrees, is not t ordinary man of 360 degrees.

At the end of his path he has seen and experienced things 99% of the human race regards as pure fantasy, such as directly experiencing emptiness or the Void, the inner light of Consciousness, periods of great bliss, internal energies and healing, and has lost his primary identification with his body, identifying now more with different aspects of Consciousness, and different spiritual stations such as one of being totally surrendered to life in the moment, the relative disappearance of mind, yet living day to day with appropriate actions and attitudes, as well as recognizing that all life is precious.

He has truly been transformed with nothing special to do except to live out his life, letting it live through him rather than attempting to master or control anything. He is a renunciate who renounces nothing, a veritable vagabond with no path, no sustained desires, just touching earth in the gentlest way, and living in peace. He has been transformed into a cloudlike form, with continuous change totally embraced, forged by 20, 30, 40, 50 years of spiritual effort, and thereby transcending all teachings and all practices.

Therefore do not despair that your path is long and difficult. Do not despair that you know nothing, because all teachings and all spiritual states are eventually experienced as empty.

Do not fear that you will never find your way, nor chafe at the drive to endless spiritual practice. Not one minute of effort goes to waste and every obstacle is a blessing, forging, transforming. The key is perseverance and constant movement and growth until your specific spiritual path flowers through you.

BE VERY CLEAR

BE VERY CLEAR: Religion and spirituality are all about 1. Belief and 2. Experience.

Belief encompasses ideas about God, the Absolute, Consciousness, the divine, all is Consciousness, all is Brahman, all is Shakti, the Subtle, Causal, and Turiya Bodies, prophets, son-of-God, effectiveness of prayer, existence of heaven and hell.

Experience is all about everyday experiences of the world, sex, eating, seeing, hearing, etc., dreams, consciousness without an object.  It also encompasses all the meditative and pranayama experiences of light, the Void, emptiness, visions, subjectivity versus objectivity, experiencing the divine, God, Shakti, sense of presence, energy body, Kundalini.

Experiences also include experiencing the gray area of astral projection, shadow entities such as demons or angels, other worlds where there is an overlapping of individual internal experiences and the “outer objective” world.

But, experiences mean absolutely nothing until you talk about them and give them meaning, which supports or becomes a belief, which then guides your thinking, behaviors, and eventually your teachings if you become a teacher.

It is very, very difficult for people who experience various spiritual and meditative experiences, NOT to interpret them in terms of existing belief systems, whether of Christianity, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, of God, the divine, the devil, demons, angels, or theories of Consciousness, beingness, the absolute, the witness/witnessed.

After you have seen through the apparent truth of thoughts, beliefs, ideology, religions, etc., you see and understand it is all just talk, entertainment, artificially generating “special” or spiritual experiences through meditation, chanting, and conversion experiences.

All of this happens within an apparent external world of belief systems of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and increasing impacr of Mohammedism.  Then there is the pervasiveness of the ideas and ethics of capitalism. Socialism, Keynsian economics versus monetarism, New Age concepts, Shammanism, feminism, racism, authoritarianism versus democracy, etc.

We are lost in multiple seas of concepts and ever changing experiences.

What to do; what to do?

In the end it all comes down to living your life in a way that when you look back at your life in retrospect, you can do so without too much pain or regret, and when you look forward within the perspective of not experiencing too much regret or guilt in the future, how do I act?  Do I act with integrity, kindness, compassion and loyalty, or do I act in ways to maximize my own happiness in every moment?  Are we giving or greedy?  Are we patient or impulsive?  Do we strive or rest in ourselves?

Then spirituality becomes not a matter of belief or experiences, but of ethics, of becoming the good shepherd, or a wolf, a peacemaker or war monger, a helper or a taker.  Then by our example we affect others rather than by creating or repeating belief systems and spiritual practices.

However, none of this is possible until you have read about belief systems, experienced all kinds of meditations, spiritual experiences, and teachers, to realize all of this is just stimulation, distraction from living life, and just plain old entertainment.