FROM A SITE VISITOR: i seek a sadguru, finding your site i read of different teaching methods, different appraoch, different yoga. I have study teachings of hinduism, buddhism,even islam,now find advaita vedanta. How to find in all this the sadguru who is for me? Anwar
F.: (Continued from yesterday) So, the two key (and no-so-popular pointers) about the seeker and the sadguru are these: (1) the sadguru who self-assigns the label of being "a spiritual teacher" cannot lead you any farther than halfway along the "path" and (2) the encounter with a sadguru is to be a limited engagement, not a "lifetime relationship."
"My teacher" typically allowed seekers to visit his loft for two sessions a day for a week or two, and then they were sent away to contemplate the pointers offered, to reject belief in lies, and to find the Truth within. The few who were allowed to remain for a longer period were those considered to have the potential to share "the natural yoga teachings" after that speck of consciousness called "Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj" was no longer manifested.
If a sadguru speaks to you at one point of moving to a “higher” level, so be it, but eventually, the message must transcend talk about that “level” and make clear that the issue is solely an issue of understanding and has nothing to do with any “higher level.”
Eventually, not only the guru’s message but also faith in, and contact with, the guru must give way to the message of the inner guru…of the inner resource. If Full Realization and abidance as the Absolute is to happen, then eventually even the spiritual pointers of your sadguru must be transcended.
To be in touch with the no-concept, non-duality Reality, all “kindergarten level spirituality” and all “high school level spirituality” and even “university level spirituality” must be transitioned. It's all involved only with the third of seven steps.
“My teacher” made clear that the spiritual subject matter must be covered, but if that level is not transcended, then what will happen is this, he said: “First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and ... you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.”
For those ready to advance beyond that stage, he made clear: “Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false.”
Might the holy texts of any religion (or of any philosophy warped into a religion) be employed along the way? That certainly is a common happening, but Maharaj also said, “I have no faith in anything which has ever been told, not even what has been told by the Vedas. Only my own experience."
Of the few who even begin to seek, most of those seekers will fixate at the spiritual stage, loving the emotional "high" that comes from hearing inspirational talks about "dreaming grandly" and "success" and "how to produce spiritual giants" and "finding the power to make wishes come true" and "having power now" and "Infinite Self-ness" and "gaining knowledge" and "acquiring power" and "making yourself strong" and "being at one with God" and "creating your own reality" (which is the practice of the truly insane).
All of that is relative, conceptualized nonsense, all the focus of "persons" who want to gain and who believe that they can. Yet ultimately, all nonsense and concepts and ideas are cast aside by the truly Realized.
So select a sadguru, sure, but understand that even dependence on the sadguru as well as the adoption of religious identities or spiritual personas must be transitioned. The second half of the “journey” from the false “I” to the Absolute can happen only (a) in the careful consideration and contemplation of pointers and (b) in the absence of identification with any persona (including those “old, bad ones” and the “new, good ones”).
Best regards as you complete your search within the search and then continue to search out the non-truths, reject all belief in those ideas and concepts, and then access the Truth within. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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