Northern CA
Moderator: A question from a person in the United Kingdom, “Is having a heart connection essential between the teacher and student to make progress?”
David: May I ask what you mean by progress?
Moderator: Going deeper into myself, expanding through the heart.
David: The first thing I would say is going into the self, not myself, not yourself. The heart is the only doorway. All forms of practice lead to the point whereby gently leaning against the heart you come into full awareness. The heart is not merely meant in a transcendental sense in this context, by the heart I mean the Absolute Being as well as the human connection to it, in other words a place where relative and Absolute connect. If you’re talking about progress in that sense then my answer is yes since my heart has already become saturated in that intensity. If you’re able to approach me with that consciousness, that temperament along with the values of innocence, trust and abiding in the real, abiding in what is, then there can be a definite connection established, one that actually precedes even any idea of having to connect. So, in a sense what I’m saying is that this is more of an acknowledgement of what is the case than a path to it. The sort of progress you’re describing is really the result, from where we actually have to begin, from where we have to start for this to become even more real since there are always more levels of appreciation of the enlightened condition even in someone who’s realized. That further appreciation has to do with binding back into the human community with other human beings who are now tasting that for the first time or further evolving in that which they have already tasted.
Moderator: “Very clear, thank you.”
David: There’s more that can be said about the heart. Ramana Maharshi for example spoke about the heart. He talked about the self and he also talked about the heart. The heart for him represents an even deeper level of recognition. In some sense the self and the heart are one since it’s a non-dual presentation but in another sense the heart has a slightly more primordial meaning for him and also for me, which is why I have brought up his name in this discussion. We can talk about non-dualistic realization and we do talk about it as being the essential context in which truth occurs since truth by its very nature is un-fragmented, that is, if you wish to define it as un-splintered. The non-dual consciousness of self-recognition or self-realization demonstrates that there can be no ultimate distinction between the observer and the observed, between what realizes and what is realized. So, that’s an inescapable foundation that we must acknowledge before we proceed to talk about the heart. The self will appear to be a reality, which shows itself to the mind and speaks the language of mind in its initial phase of recognition. As realization of the self sinks more deeply into an enlightened being’s awareness there’s a radical transformation in the field of feeling. This transformation into feeling points the way toward enlightened relationship or what I like to call divine relationship which is something that happens within a human context. Now just so that I am not misunderstood I am not suggesting that animals, and plants, and various species, insects and so on, the whole ecosystem is not somehow divinely embedded in consciousness. And also that these variegated aspects of the ecosystem cannot relate to each other within the divine light, within the realized state, for nature that’s all there is, is the realized condition. It’s humans apparently which are challenged to realize it as you can say a stand alone reality and a kind of independent enterprise that appears to be just for humans. That is a particularly human delusion since everything is operating in the same frequency, which is the ultimate reality, the self. But to return to the topic now of the heart living in the self, in its initial phases does not offer the full value which develops as one becomes acclimated humanly to the presence of the Absolute Being.
Overtime, its accurate to say, in my experience and my opinion, that the self becomes transformed into a mass of enlightened feeling. You can call it feeling Being. The feeling of Being itself. It sounds like a duality is created between the feeling of Being and Being but that’s just an unfortunate consequence of speaking in the English language. If we were perhaps speaking in another language where you don’t have this kind of grammatical layout, of subjects and objects, of very rigid distinctions between past, present and future, different kind of grammar perhaps then it would not seem so dualistic. But when I say the feeling of Being I’m referring to a radiant sun of feeling which is itself the light of the self. The development in consciousness from mere absorption in the Absolute toward this more developed radiant feeling happens through simple human maturation, that is, once the human mind has confronted the Absolute, has recognized it to be itself then simply abides in it. It simply abides inside of that wide-open space of pure mind, pure being, and pure light. You can call it many things but gradually there’s a ripening in which the values of compassion, empathy, tolerance occur and there’s a distinct movement away from the kind of separate non-duality we see in certain circles, that sort of austerity patriarchal in nature which wants to remove the self from the word. Instead of that movement you see a movement toward unifying with the world, in the world. This is a very exciting transformation and the possibilities for what can happen are wide-open, they are infinite. The sphere of enlightened feeling becomes a powerful area of recognition, it does not replace the more strict form of non-dual recognition of the self but it adds to it. Perhaps it’s just a natural offshoot of that primary realization, but it is certainly possible than that through the heart, through the consciousness of Absolute feeling, radiant feeling, Bliss informed feeling, bodily feeling. I haven’t discussed the role of the nervous system in radiating Shakti or force, that’s a different discussion. We’ll just stay on this one for now. But the radiant feeling is sufficient to carry the full force of the Absolute consciousness form one human being to another, from one heart to another.
Moderator: A follow-up question form the United Kingdom, “How can one keep helping the heart to open more?”
David: There are many ways. Some of them are discovered intuitively. One might be as simple as walking in nature, walking in a beautiful area and really being there. Really letting your senses come alive inside of a context where the pristine primordial qualities in nature can speak. What I’m saying is by simply moving into the world with your attention, by simply moving into the world with your attention. That will cultivate a unity, a consciousness of unity whereby you begin noticing the self outside of the strictly subjective orientation. Also, by simply opening in trust and innocence in this moment and feel the activating powers that I describe often to you that are the properties of consciousness. Divine light, divine love, Kundalini-shakti, in meditation the multi dimensional lights or colors in consciousness that arise spontaneously representing all the different frequencies of matter and spirit, physical energy, psychological energy, emotional energy, Absolute energy. By letting all of this work upon you and feeling the direct effects of it so it is verified as an experience for you, that will help. I can say many things and if you simply believe them it does not necessarily provide the experience of what I’m talking about. But if you actually begin to taste and enjoy some aspect or several aspects of this transmission process you should also begin to quickly observe its transformative power. So, whatever level you’re on that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be and from there it deepens. You don’t have to worry about taking discrete steps, a to b to c. I’m doing this. It’s me doing it. I need to get to the end. That approach falls apart, that linear approach that mind based approach. So, why don’t you just come into this field of spherical and radiant feeling now? Just by feeling it, just by letting your awareness touch it, taste it.
Moderator: “I am feeling it.”
David: That’s correct, the “am” is feeling it, the “am” not really the separate “I”. It’s just a bit deeper than that. So, it’s in Being that you begin to feel this. It’s actually prior even to the activity of the mind and you’ll notice that it’s felt. It’s not thought. It’s not even the disappearance into no mind. It’s a fullness, a fullness, a radiance affluent, moving, not necessarily still, Absolute, segregated from human awareness but quite close to the whole operation of the body and mind. It’s not far away. It’s not distant. So, just be in that with me, relax in that. In this case it’s a radiant field, very potent, innocently potent. It’s potent because it has no aggression in it. It’s just the fullness of Being.
Moderator: From a participant in Lithuania, “When I meditate I often feel pressure in the root chakra. Should I do something with it, move it to the brain or just observe it?
David: Just relax and stay where you are. Let if transform now. I’m not going to give you a formula for how to deal with this later on because there’s no later on, especially once you’ve been welcomed into this intimate gathering. We’re not looking how to fix ourselves tomorrow or next week. What’s going to happen when I wake up in the morning? Why don’t you just get transformation now? See if a new identity is produced or an old identity is dissolved. And then greet that as part of your spiritual experience. Come into love with me now. Come into love communion with this blissful, motionless Being. Does that make sense? Does that response help?
Moderator: “Yes it does, thank you.”
David: Just relax where you are. Let’s not worry about anything. If you’ve gotten here, if you’ve been lucky enough to get this far, you’ve done very well. It’s like getting on the bus. You don’t want to worry about where the driver is going once you’re on the bus. So, you put your luggage down, you sit down, you relax and you let yourself be taken. If you start thinking, does the driver really know how to get where he’s going? Then you’re crazy. Then you need help. The driver is trained to get where he’s going. You are to relax and let the driver do his or her job or it’s job. It might be a robot based on how world affairs are evolving. It may not be a human at all. Then you have to trust the crazies who created the robot. So, now it’s a truly crazy situation.
But in this case this is not a robot speaking to you, this is the living quality of David, hopefully it’s not mechanical. You don’t hear it as mechanical but as something that’s just flowing beautifully in this moment that you feel an inherent connection with the whole spirit in which I’m speaking. That’s what’s central. That’s the heart feeling, just connecting to the vibrational quality. Don’t worry about states of consciousness and what is high and what is low, that won’t be helpful. What will be helpful is just your ongoing, innocent, and delicate recognition of where you’re beginning to succeed in this heart awakening. We can’t fix what’s wrong, because what’s wrong in some real sense is an illusion. It’s the byproduct of a series of misperceptions and misunderstandings I’m talking here about this so-called entity, human ignorance, and spiritual ignorance. You can’t talk about it as though it’s a real thing. How can you talk about nescience as a real thing? It’s like talking about the qualities of a very black night in which there’s no moon where it’s really almost perfectly black. What can you say about that? You can’t say anything. It’s just the absence of light. There are no adjectives to describe it. So, if you understand that mental obscuration, ignorance it’s just really it’s own thing and all you do is replace it with awakening, then you can relax. Then you don’t need to fix yourself.
In the habit we develop of taking care of our outer body and that body in relationship to a physical environment where you have to change your clothes everyday, you put on fresh clothing, you wash your clothes, you clean your house. There’s effort to maintain the physical body inside of its environment. Because of that physical relationship we get tricked into thinking we have to do the same thing to our self when it comes to spiritual well being, that’s an illusion. Only the body demands that kind of attention. You have to brush your teeth. You have to go to work or work at home, drive your automobile or ride your bicycle. Which is a better idea? So, this idea that delusion is something that’s real and something we have to deal with, that there’s some defective quality of your I, your identity, all that is wrong spiritual teaching. There’s just a simple misunderstanding that comes about naturally by not paying attention, not paying full attention moment by moment whereby experience is shown to be incomplete but that’s the very nature of experience. If you understand what experience is, where it begins and ends you are not confounded or disturbed by the fact that you cannot become happy through experience. This sort of philosophy arises through having the body as the main object in attention, as a separate object. What I’m suggesting is that there’s a whole different shift that needs to happen in listening, and hearing, and seeing, and in breathing so that you begin to feel yourself in what is. That recognition can be called non-dualistic awareness. It can be called the self. It can be called no mind, no self, pure Being. That’s the beginning of the awakening process.
Moderator: An additional comment Lithuania, “I love that this path is so easy, it is so relaxing.”
David: Very good. I want you to continue to be really innocently turned toward this recognition now. And as time goes on talk to me about how this is deepening. How you feel it is beginning to happen for you in a very natural way, if that’s your direct experience. The less you do, the more you can feel this. The less occupied you are the more you begin to float. You feel the lightness in Being. We don’t have to talk about degrees of recognition here. Let’s get rid of that talk because it’s competitive, it forces you to compete with yourself as though you’re a long distance runner and you want to beat your previous record. That’s a very uncomfortable approach and it’s doomed to fail. As soon as you begin to set your mind free and know that the inherent capability of the mind is to recognize itself, you begin to relax. You just let it happen. The Shakti is that power which lets it happen. The Shakti is the radiant and communicative aspect of pure Being. It’s the Absolute. Shakti is Absolute. It’s the feeling aspect of Being. More accurately it’s the energized aspect of pure Being, which is motionless. But because we live in a field where opposites play inside of one reality Being also appears to be something other than mere stillness. It arises as pure frequency, pure energy and through that gentle momentum of energy it produces the self. It produces pure consciousness because it is pure consciousness. You won’t be able to figure out why the Absolute has an energetic side. There’s no higher metaphysics than this. So, if you’re looking to explain why, you’re just getting into meta-explanations. Do you follow? You’re just moving the mind into deeper regions of it’s own theorizing. But if you can accept this basic structure that I’m offering you, that there’s a masculine side that’s silent, a feminine side that’s active, then you can appreciate what you’re feeling with me to be that Shakti transmission.
Moderator: A further comment, “When Shakti gets me strong then I have no more questions, there’s no point to ask them.”
David: Is that your experience or is that a speculative comment?
Moderator: “It is my experience. I feel Shakti every day. My friend and I are watching this video. The first question was my friend’s.”
David: Are you feeling the Shakti? Are both of you feeling the Shakti in this engagement that’s happening?
Moderator: “Yes we do.”
David: So, this should add to your day-to-day experience now. It should deepen and widen, become more visible. Nevertheless I suggest not holding on to the Shakti in and of itself, just as I advice not to hold onto silence in and of itself. There’s no need to hold on to that which is preeminently real. There’s no necessity to attach to that, which is actually reality. So, it’s implied here that realization should be allowed to come and go just like the flow of the tide, in and out, in and out. What that ultimate condition is that is beyond in and out, that you will never recognize. That’s what Ramana Maharsi calls the self. It’s beyond recognition. Still, Shakti, divine light or non-dual experience and devotional intoxication, those are the qualities or flavors that the Absolute offers of itself in order to be cogently recognized by human intelligence and perhaps by other forms of intelligence as well. Who’s to say or who’s not to say whether a lion can have this experience or an eagle? Do you want to speak on behalf of a lion’s consciousness? I don’t.
But we ordinarily assume as human beings that somehow this is a human event specifically prepared for human experience. Humans have this delusion that they are at the center of things, that they are special, that they are unique in creation. They are no more unique than a fresh water otter. They are no more unique than a leopard in a tree. Humans have to get over this idea, this hubris, this arrogance of thinking themselves above and better than, unique. In some sense the human race considers itself ignorantly as a chosen species, the chosen species, god species to whom god talks. Nothing could be further than the truth. The whole movement of nature is filled with what we call the miraculous presence of god if you want to use that language. And it is no different, it is neither better than nor worse than. It is not above nor is it below what happens inside of a human being.
This is why an understanding of reality as non-dual is critical for any intelligent spiritual approach. If you don’t have that you’re going to end up putting yourself on a ladder where you have to be up but someone else has to be down or something else. This is the critical phase of ignorance and human intelligence that is now being confronted in terms of the world calamity that is displaying itself as the continually falling ecosystem, the destruction of natural habitats, the destruction of species that are already endangered. Wiping them out completely. This stupidity of the human being is extremely pronounced, insidious, and eternally dangerous. We are not here talking just about the possibility that the whole planet might go into some kind of calamity or cataclysm. We are talking about being able to function intelligently with discrimination, sensitivity, and love inside of an ecosystem. That system has to be your own self for you to treat it right. You have to understand that the tree one hundred yards from you is a part of your own Being. Once you get that recognition then everything will automatically proceed in an intelligent direction. Intelligent means life preserving, loving and respectful toward life.
Moderator: The participant in Lithuania has commented that the friend does not feel Shakti every day.
David: It’s not necessary to be felt everyday. Once you feel it, it’s moving. It’s more important to be in the moment, be purely in Being as you are, not to try to get somewhere toward the Shakti or anywhere else. But the Shakti has obviously been gifted and it will continue to be gifted here because that’s just what happens. That’s the unique spiritual ecosystem that’s happening on this webcast.
