A current description of Tiravannamalai, Mooji and the visitors perspective.
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by mdenicola9 on January 30, 2011.

[mdenicola9.wordpress.com]



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Thiruvannamalai! ahhhh! I can relax! This place in wonderful! When I saw Arunachaleswarar mountain (apparently Shiva’s Lingam!) I was in heaven. Immediately I knew I was going to be happy here the next few weeks. Luckily, Nishin gave me the number to Jayalaxmi’s homestay (which I actually called – the first place I called in India) because Moogi, the Jamaican Guru, is here. And there are TONS of tourists here to see Mooji. I don’t think I would have gotten a place to stay at a reasonable price if I hadn’t called Jayalaxmi. All her rooms are full for the next month or so, but one person left the day I arrived, opening one room for me! For 3 weeks at her place, it is going to cost $84. I have a nice small room (with a squatter!) and a mountain view from her beautiful rooftop. It is extremely quiet, and just a few minute walk from the Ramana maharshi Ashram, the mountain, and all of the happening things in this small village. On my search for Jayalaxmi’s home, I met an extremely helpful Social worker. I forget his name, but he let me use his phone and he took my on his motorcycle for a tour of the town and brought me to Jayalaxmi’s doorstep! What a blessing! He also introduced me to a man that would rent me a Moped for $35 for the 3 weeks! Incredible! The only problem: i can’t keep it outside because it might get stolen, so I need to figure something out ASAP because Mopedding in India rules!

Again, by luck..I talked to someone who informed me about Mooji’s satsang. I ran into another woman who showed me the way, and chose the lucky waiting line that was called in first to find our seats. I sat front and center, 2nd row, and absorbed the wonderful teachings of this great Jamaican Guru. By chance, it happens to be Mooji’s birthday! and he is having a birthday celebration right now! ha! I went for a little while – enjoyed the coconuts, delicious treats, and took part in illuminating a Gigantic Flower OM with candles. I didn’t know anyone there, and felt like an hour or so was plenty of time to celbrate Mooji’s birthday. He is hosting a 5 more days of free satsang, and then he will be putting on a 5 day silent retreat – which I may or may not take part in.

Throughout this village, there is Chi Gong, Yoga, daily drum/dance circles, shakti dance classes!, and organic food shops. I also found the most incredible place to get Thali for lunch, 35 rs (75 cents), for all you can eat, DELICIOUS Thali. The best I have had in India. I am a happy man. It is time for me to really dive into my Sadhana, into my being, and to experience my real identity. I keep thinking about the future. Am I going to hike the Appalachian trail? Take the GRE’s? Teach Yoga? or School? Camp with Bubba? Go to California? Come back to the Himilayas? What? WHAT? WHAT?!?!? Ultimately, I need to go inside. I can do that anywhere, and I need to stop making excuses or being scared to do so.

I am going to do it.


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[mdenicola9.wordpress.com]


[mdenicola9.wordpress.com]
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On the outside, I am solid. But in my head, I was always thinking about what I could do different or improve in order to reach self-realisation quicker. As you can imagine, this is a never ending battle. If you “push” for self-realisation, you are creating a barrier in between “you” and the “infinite.” In order to merge with the ultimate, there can be no “I.” Therefore, there can be no goals, no wants, no aspirations, no drive, nothing.

Self-realisation, or enlightenment, happens spontaneously to many people – Ekart Tolle for example. He hit rock bottom, absolute nothingness, and the divine moved in. Others, Buddha for example, sit for days on end and lose themselves in nature. Merge with nature, and become the infinite source of all. In spiritual development, “hustling” brings turmoil. Nothing can be rushed, because any enlightenment one receives is given only through God’s Grace.

In my case, I wanted to go to all extremes possible. Going to the most powerful, FIRE, SHIVA mountain in South India. Fast and not speak for 21 days. Do tons of Pranayam, sleep in caves with sadhus, and eat bananas with the monkeys (I still will-monkeys rule!). In my militaristic, linear brain, this was a path to God. If you bring the fire to a fire mountain, you’re gonna get buuurnt. I got burnt hard. After 4 days, my fever just went down but my insides are still twisted. I’ve had weird dreams where I wake up and don’t remember who I am or where I am, I bump into walls, I can’t read anything intellectually stimulating, and I just started to be able to enjoy music today.

But, during these past few days, I have only focused on one thing: feeling better. Although sometimes I thought I was going to have to submit and go to the hospital for weird antibiotics or IV, I refused to lose my spirits. What the would that do? Only weaken my immune system and prolong the healing process more. Everyone knows positive thinking heals, so I kept my spirits high. Last night, someone moved out of the “big room” (3 rooms, big bed) downstairs in Jayalaxmi’s home. For $50 extra dollars I could have the mini-apartment for the next 3 weeks. Sold. I picked up my stuff and got out of my feces infected room and left it all behind. Started completely fresh in a completely new space.

After a broken few hours of sleep, I found a place that served warm porridge with banana and honey. My belly was sitting right (relative), and my attitude was strong, so I went to Muji’s satsang. Sat near the door for quick release to the surprising clean, westernised facility. Mooji is the man. I encourage anyone to see him speak or watch a video of his (mooji.org). Anyways, he said one thing that really struck me. When talking about us as Consciousness, not merely human bodies, he says something like: “When we perceive something, who is it that is perceiving? It is something inside us. According to science, space is the subtlest element. But, humans can perceive space. So whatever is inside us that is perceiving space, must actually be subtler than space.” At this point, it seems that all we have to do is sit and listen. Only when we are completely silent, inside and outside, then we can perceive our own subtle being.

Now, I have been doing tons of Kundalini yoga and meditation for the past 3 1/2 years. Almost all of the postures involve some kind of mental or chanted mantra, intense mudra, or pranayam. Rarely, if ever, is there a chance to just sit and be silent. To really go deep inside yourself and discover the subtle you. Yogi Bhajan may have had a reason for not “teaching” this. It probably was because: sitting and listening doesn’t need to be taught, it needs to be experienced. I have never been motivated, nor wanted to just sit and listen. But I have finally reached the stage where this is all I want to do.

At lunch, (the place had wi-fi..fancy!), I read a friends quote that said something like “Love something..etc.etc.” It all began to come full circle for me. What did I love? What was I living for? The only answer I could come up with was, I love God and I love everyone and everything on this planet. This is what was missing: Bhakti. Complete love and devotion for the universal creator and all his creations. Swami Vivekananda says that true yogi can be compared to a bird. Jnana (knowledge) is one wing, Bhakti (devotion) is another wing, and yoga is the tail. The bird needs both wings to fly and a tail to keep balance. Equally, the yogi need knowledge and devotion to fly, and meditation/yoga to stay balanced.

After consuming and processing all these ideas, I put some bentonite (healing clay powder for intestines) on my belly, slapped on some amazing mantra, and laid down in my full size bed. It is truly right there. Joy. For all of us. We just have to remember. Carefree, beautiful golden rays of sunlight are pouring on us ever instant, but we have to tune into their frequency to receive them. In the next couple of hours I laughed deep from my belly, cried in pure bliss, and slept peacefully.

When I woke up, I felt like I did when I was a little kid. With the attitude “Fuck it.” I wanted to dance through the streets, with no concern of anyone’s thoughts or judgements, whatever. The reality is, I got my smile back. My true smile. My real joy. And all I had to do was open my heart back up, and look for it. I have put myself through intense sadhana and austere practices, which I truly benefited from, but now I want to fully open my heart to the world a spray magnificent rays of golden light wherever I go, without judgement and with no reason. I am tired of doing all this hard ass, sweaty yoga. I just want to laugh and spread the light of our divine mother. Thank you!


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If anyone is into Advaita Vedanta, the key author is Shankaracharya (c. 800 CE)

Shankara's text for beginning seekers is Crest Jewel of Discernment

[www.realization.org]

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Scripture declares that there is no hope of immortality by means of wealth, so it is evident that liberation cannot be brought about by actions. 7

So let the man of understanding strive for liberation, abandoning desire for the enjoyment of external aims and pleasures, and after becoming the pupil of a good and great teacher, let him fix his mind on the goal he indicates. 8

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So much for types such as Eckhart Tolle, who do all they can to market themselves as personalities, pulling in as much money as possible, and who price seating at their events according to proximity to the lecturer's podium.

and

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The realisation of the truth is seen to depend on meditation on statements about what is good, not on bathing or donations or by hundreds of yogic breathing exercises. 13

Achievement of the goal depends primarily on a fit seeker. Things like locality and time are merely secondary in this matter. 14

So he who would know his own nature should practise meditation on the subject after taking refuge with a guru who is a true knower of God and an ocean of compassion. 15

It is the wise and learned man, skilled in sorting out the pros and cons of an argument who is really endowed with the qualities necessary for self-realisation. 16

Discriminating and dispassionate, endowed with peace and similar qualities, and longing for liberation - such is the man who is considered fit to practise seeking for God. 17
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and this is just the first few stanzas.

Now, how many teachers of nonduality begin by taking listeners through a careful study of Crest Jewel of Discernment?

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He who is devoted to the authority of the scriptures achieves steadiness in his religious life, and that brings inner purity. The man of pure understanding comes to the experience of his true nature, and by this Samsara is destroyed, root and all. 148

[www.realization.org]
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By achieving the purity of an habitual discrimination and dispassion, the mind is inclined to liberation, so the wise seeker after liberation should first develop these. 175
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Realising the identity of yourself and God by the help of sayings like "You are That", see to the removal of all ideas of additions to your true self so as to strengthen the adherence of yourself in God. 283

Eliminate completely your self-identification with this body, and with determination see that your mind is devoted to the removal of all ideas of additions to your true self. 284

So long as even a dream-like awareness of yourself as an individual in the world remains, as a wise person persistently see to the removal of all ideas of additions to your true self. 285

Without giving way to the least descent into forgetfulness through sleep, worldly affairs or the various senses, meditate on yourself within. 286

Shunning the body which is derived from the impurities of your mother and father and itself made up of impurities and flesh as you would an outcaste* from a good distance, become Godlike and achieve the goal of life. 287
*not a nice or compassionate tradition, this. An outcaste is someone who today would be called a Dalit and is fighting for his or her human rights in India today. To a Brahmin, a person in this catagory was such a source of pollution that if an outcaste persons shadow touched your shadow, you had to undergo ritual purification. Corboy)

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Give up identification with family, tribe, name, shape and status which depend on the putrid body. Give up physical properties too such as the sense of being the doer and be the very nature of undifferentiated joy. 297


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Even wise men cannot get rid of the sense of doership all of a sudden when it has grown strong, but those who are unwavering in so-called imageless samadhi can, whose desire for this has been developed over countless lives. 342

So much for being able to realize nonduality or 'wake up' merely by attending someone's satsang. Even the craving to wake up is no different than the craving that led Bernie Madoff to plunder people.

Kleshas are Kleshas.

'Even the craving to wake up is no different than the craving that led Bernie Madoff to plunder people.'

You got that one right.
So if Bernie and the 'spiritual' seeker are both utilising the self-same craving to reach their two different aims, what is it that distinguishes between the two--what makes one 'good' and the other 'bad'?

Is there really a difference, and if there is where does it come from? If its 'all one' anyway how can there be difference?

I think Mooji is a joke by the way, probably not too harmful--he appeals to the easily pleased who aren't likely to look at anything difficult anyway.
Does that make me an elitist or a realist, do you think?

Or do birds of a feather just naturally club together?

"Indian philosophy long ago solved the puzzle of human suffering by depriving it of reality"

Stoic, You sound like a realist. And yeah, birds of a feather flock together.

The craving I am speaking of is the kind of craving that is massaged by the commerical guru set up and sustained by advertising.

Its different from a more deep and haunting realization that there's something else that needs attention.

One thing that got me going was seeing my stepfather die in utter self hating misery, yet he had done so very many generous things for people. It broke my heart seeing him in this condition, nothing I could say or do could help him. Above all, I wondered, why all his kind actions had failed to bring him peace and didnt touch whatever was making him so desperately unhappy.

That sadness puzzlement and curiosity set me to wondering. I dont think I wanted to wake up and get enlightened.

It was more a drive to solve some sort of human mystery.

As for the commercial gurus who function on PR and marketing as a car runs on petrol...

All these persons can talk of stuff that contains a kernel of truthfulness, but whatever is good in their teaching is cancelled out by the marketing/PR and hype that massages the very same cravings that a seeker is supposed to learn to observe and to allow to cool down. The kind of inner turbulence associated with celebrity and seeking a celebrity guru will be an impediment to the very goal the guru claims to offer.

The commodification of of 'enlightenment' or 'waking up'.

With a back message that someone who is depressed and geeky looking can suddenly become as desirable as Brad Pitt if that person reports becoming 'spontaneously enlightened.' and then goes and sits up on stage, with focused lighting, microphone, limo, entourage.

Its where the notion of 'awakening' has become associated with celebrity, wealth, attention, adoration from multitudes and where the face of the awakened teacher is plastered all over websites, paid for adverts in magazines, and on and on.

The factors of awakening (Brahmaviharas--equanimity, loving kindness, sympathetic joy, conpassion) are disrupted by the celebrity guru context.

Equanimity--Omigod, will I get an awakening tonight? I got a good seat near Guruji this time. Oh fuck, its takign forever to get in her and get parking. Omigod, Guruji has cancelled that teaching retreat in India and my plane ticket is nonrefundable. Im fucked, Im fucked, Im fucked...

Loving-Kindness--why are those people getting seats close to Guruji and I'm not?

Sympathetic Joy/Joy in Anothers Good Fortune -- why are all those people able to get private interviews with Guruji and I cant? Why are all those people waking up and I am not?

Or..I am awakened. Why are my friends so skeptical. Fuck em. I'll find people who listen to me and gimme what I want. Now, how much $$$ am I gonna need to buy a margin advertisement in Tricycle Magazine. Lets get a website set up....

Compassion--anyone who is skeptical of Guruji and wonders if my loyalty will be reciprocated after I bust ass helping to build his ashram--skeptics are schmucks.

Here is another mind-fuck for persons going to India.

They're going to hear all this stuff about compassion in the teachings---even by good teachers.

Facing the beggars and the high pressure sales people in India is brutal. So there you are hearing all this stuff about compassion, about wisdom, and then you face a tough choice of getting eaten alive by the hordes or turning tough in order to cope (and then feeling horrendous inner conflict between what youve been taught and having to cope with the streets).

One very tempting thing to do is ramp up another type of clinging--cling to the teaching that all the emotions and situations you cant stand dealing with are illusion.

People can abuse Advaita or Buddhism as a kind of dissociative strategy.

A teacher who faces crowds and who possibly is running away from his or her own human feelings of vulnerability wont be able to assist students who are tempted to use
this material for dissociative purposes.

Jeffrey Masson visited India as a teenager--in the 1950s. His family had been students of a Theosophical guru named Paul Brunton and had learned Advaita from Brunton and later studied with Atmananda.

Masson describes himself and how he coped when he was shocked by Bombay.

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'This was my first trip outside of Europe and the United States' Jeffrey Masson writes. '..and my first visit to a Third World country. I was not prepared in any way for the reality of India, fo rthe poverty and human suffering that I glimpsed for the first time in my life from the window of the taxicab driving past some of the world's biggest and poorest slums. The only way I knew to deal with this sudden descent into the real world was to immerse myself even more in the shadow world of spirituality. The appalling poverty and disease I saw when I arrived in Bombay did not really exist: it was Maya, an illusion. What you see is not what you get. What you see, the sufering you preceive around you, is unreal, a philosophic illusion ("the external world is a joke and a very poor joke at that", and therefore not be attended to.

'India was particularly well suited to the spiritual insularity I had developed. It too suffered from some of the same debility, so we were well matched. Indian philosophy long ago solved the puzzle of human suffering by depriving it of reality.

The philosophers were constantly discoursing on a cosmic double standard. Suffering, misery and unhappiness were defined as such only form the lower(Masson's italics) point of view. From the higher point of view, there was no difference between the wealthy man and the beggar. It was, needless to say, extremely convenient as a balm for any conscience that threatened to erupt when faced with the suffering all around.

THis powerful rationalizing phrase---which parallels many other spiritual traditions---was invented by a priviliged Brahmin class to distract (dissociate? C) from the poverty and misery created by this same class.'

page 112

My Father's Guru:A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Arthur Koestler visited India at about the same time the Masson family did. He wrote about it in a small book, The Lotus and the Robot.

Koestler was struck by one feature of Indian life in particular--the staggering levels of noise and the utter lack of privacy. Even the temples were noisy.

Koestler that he found it easier to find contemplative peace and quiet in New York City than in India.

Worse, those in the Indian spiriutal elite, including MK Gandhi had the attitude that if one was a sufficiently spiritual person, one would not be bothered by this ambient noise.

Though Koestler did not use the term dissociation (the term did not exist in the 1950s), it appeared to him that all too often in India yoga and meditation were used to split oneself off from a problem or from a painful situation, rather than acknoweleging the situation, the stress one actually felt, and then examining ways to solve the problematic features of that situation.



[forum.culteducation.com]

'The Lotus and the Robot.'

A travelogue for tourists. Second hand impressions, not even a good joke in it.
Indians endure and thrive in apalling hardship and still manage to find life worth living.
Who is Koestler to sniff and patronise? Just another dead man--pale, male and stale.

Some things here

[sunyata.blogsome.com]

[chi-ting.blogspot.com]

I do not approve of the needlessly foul language of the latter blog.

However, both sources make a valid point: It shows no respect to Arunachala, to Tiruvanamalai or the tradition of practice to come in large numbers to a quiet town famous for meditation and to bring in party animal behavior.

Goa is renowned and valued as the party scene in India -- and even there, the residents prefer that the young, the noisy and scantily clad confine such behavior to segregated venues dedicated to that purpose.

The memory of Ramana Maharshi is being used and abused to make entrepreneurs/euses wealthy in exactly the way Maharshi renounced for himself.

The least they can do is keep things quiet and gracious in respect to the town that nurtured the name who now dead is worth more in dollars and paise than he ever was when alive.

What people are looking for, sometimes perhaps without knowing it themselves.

""this man is the incarnation of love itself

Chronic wrote:

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Mooji is always interested in giving satsang, its just whether you can get the turn out, he travels when invited so im sure he would love to give satsang in a new environment, maybe give me details of where you are etc & ill speak to him further?

Mooji gives skype satsang with friends from NYC, im sure he'd be persuaded to give other meetings, hes also replied to youtube video responses before, hes a very hands on guy & willing to speak with anyone, i remember i was emailing him about experiences i was having & he invited me round for tea!

His replys to questions may not seem 'skillfull' in the normal sense of Q&A but its because he relentlessly points your attention back to the source, no dillydallying around to please the mind, you should really go see him even if you have to travel within the US, how much does bus ticket cost?

To find a teacher like him is incredible, not that im an expert as hes the only teacher ive ever been to but ive been given an interview DVD to edit where people who came to satsangs were interviewed and theres was people on it who have been living in Tiruvannamalai for many years & say they have never met anyone who gives off such incredible presence & grace, they also said that if they'd known about him sooner they would have travelled to him, wherever in the world he was, im in full agreement, but of course you can't say that until you've met him & felt his presence yourself.

My favourite quote from the interviews was "this man is the incarnation of love itself"

See the thing that really draws me to him is before meeting him there was so much confusion & attachment to thoughts but since its like everything is rapidly losing its power, its like before i was on a slow burn, slowly melting away on the stove, then i met mooji & the flamethrower came out! Its the intensity of sitting with the master that leaves no escape for mind & mooji is a true master no doubt about it.

Mainly ive found its how he insists you have this direct experience yourself, he shows you to follow his words but neither cling to them or him, which is one of the most important things any teacher should do.

"

[now-for-you.com]

What people may consciously be seeking are 'teachings' or non dual realization, or enlightenment.

As adults in calendar years, we can say we seek these and keep our dignity, and even, if we choose our listeners carefully, gain respect and fellowship and support.

But what if, unconsciously, we are yearning for something taken away from us in babyhood or early childhood, taken away from us while we still needed it--what if deep down we are looking for the UNDISTRACTED STEADY LOVING GAZE of a loving parent?

In India little kids, especially tiny boys, are, with rare exceptions, adored, mom keeps them with her, even when she is at work. A son, especially, will be kept on mothers lap as long as possible, carried by her, fathers often come home late, gaze upon their sleeping children for whom they sacrifice so much, sometimes wake a child up from sleep to play with them a little bit before the weary father goes to bed.

In Western countries, there is so much disruption to early childhood bonding. Parents have to return to work much too soon after a baby is born, etc.

So we stumble into adulthood in the west, both as adults with highly sophisticated educations and unconsciously as lost little children.

This can make it very difficult to disentangle whether one is aching for enlightement or for completion of child/parent love bonding that was disrupted before a little one was ready to begin venturing into independance.

The foundation of a of unique, boundaried ego fuelled self is constructed in early childhood.

If the parents are stressed out for any number of reasons, this can be interfered with and a child may function in an adult body but with an inner fragility of self that has a partly psychological social cause. Metaphysical ideas and gurus may provide temporary patchwork and relief by re-enacting that shared gaze between infant and adult care provider.

But many gurus cannot manage the task of how to assist students to incorporate this into themselves and regain a combination of groundedness and autonomy they can draw upon apart from the guru.

That is where problems arise.

How people become gurus and get disciples--Vikram Gandhi's new film Kumare

Director Vikram Gandhi pretended, merely pretended to be a guru. Had some help from a few film making assistants. This was an experiment.

The results were all too real and raised ethical concerns. He acquired devotees who were convinced his teachings had changed their lives. He had to let them know, eventually, he was not who he had presented himself as being.

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[www.moviemaker.com]

Director Vikram Gandhi is not a guru. But he plays one in the documentary Kumaré, opening tomorrow, which sees him adopt the guise of an Eastern spiritual leader as way to explore the issue of why so many people flock to them.

What starts out as a funny (sometimes cringingly so, as in the scene where Kumaré leads a group of New Age true believers in a ridiculous session of Sound Healing) and insightful look into the realm of New Age spiritualism takes a turn for the serious and insightful when the fake guru and his fake religion start attracting real followers—people who rely on the teachings of their Indian guru who, unbeknownst to them, is actually a moviemaker from New Jersey with a fake Indian accent.

Below,Vikram Gandhi writes about the experience of directing the film—and how “director” and “spiritual leader” really aren’t as far apart as most would assume them to be.

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In my film Kumaré, I impersonate a wise guru from the East and start a following of real people in Arizona. In order to look the part, I grew my beard and my hair to Gandolfian lengths, wore a sarong and mala beads and carried a five-foot-tall custom-made trident. I looked like the kind of reggae fan who sells oils and incense on Venice Beach. But people called me a guru, therefore I was considered one by everyone I met.

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New York Times

[movies.nytimes.com]