Question: What seems to cause some confusion is that while you have been given Selfrealization, the state can not fully manifest itself because of your old layers of ignorance. So though you have been given the goal, there is a path involved as the Self automatically clears away all the stuff that covers it. How do you experience that? Could you tell more about how this is experienced and how it goes on in your life?
Jan: I used the word "confusion" both to when you before gnyan vidhi try to understand what the process of akram vignyan is, and also to after gnyan vidhi, when you try to understand what is actually going on in you.
Q: So what goes on?
J: In the first days or weeks I experienced the Self as omnipresent nothingness. Then there were weeks with frequent and growing intense bliss. Then these fits of bliss faded out and were gone for weeks. It saddened Jan because it left emptiness.
Q: Do you mean emptiness. like in the nothingness-experience of the Self?
J: No, I mean Jan felt empty, abandoned, lost. Sad. A very normal experience everybody have when they loose a source of love and joy in their life. Usually you don't experience that loss every other day, but only a few times in your life. Experiencing it every other day requires guts. Nevertheless the ego feels the loss and gets sad and feels empty. As far as you as Self go, you are not affected. Today, that is by april 2007, I have been in permanent love-bliss for almost half a year.
Q: You sometimes talk about yourself in the third person. Why?
J: I am not Jan. You look at me and think: "There is Jan in front of me. Jan is talking about gnyan vidhi, something Jan has experienced." But I am definitely not Jan, just as I am not this body. Nor are you your body or your personality and ego. Body and ego are a complex; you can't have one without the other.
Q: What do you get with gnyan vidhi and what not?
J: The question also is: of what you get, what will you keep and what may you loose again. First of all, you do not get gnyan vidhi. Nor will you experience gnyan vidhi, you experience some consequences of gnyan vidhi, and in your (meaning the minds) inability to understand what is going on, you might cause confusion for yourself and begin to doubt. The Self gets gnyan vidhi, meaning the Self, gets what can be called "awakened". This awakening is in such a special way as to cause the Self to begin to automatically clear away hindrances to full Selfrealization and moksha. Since it is in the nature of the small self to imagine authorship of what goes on inside, you of course also feel you are the author of this or that process or state, or at least the owner of it. This is of course silly, but on a very subtle level it is unavoidable. Because of this wrong claim, confusion may arise, or even frustration, when the process or state changes. Eventually Self breaks through in full clarity and you are filled with love-bliss continuously.
Q: Do the initial ups and downs make any difference to you? I mean, if you are no longer identified with Jan?
J: Well, yes and no. As you know you are not your teeth, and you are a witness to the pain of a toothache, the toothache hurts never the less. Same thing with Jan. There were some weeks in the beginning, when I was overwhelmed with the pain of loosing the bliss and joy.
Q: So you forgot about it? Does that not mean, you lost it temporarily?
J: Well. For a few weeks I thought it was a temporary loss and that nothing permanent had been reached. But then I began questioning that doubt. I looked at its source and found it to be Jan, and then I also looked back at the last few weeks and clearly saw the witness state continuously present. Once you get it, you can't loose it again. Your mind and attention may get overwhelmed by Jan and the ego's sick games of self preservation, or if you have a crisis in your life. All you have to do, to remember it, of course is to look at Jan or go out and talk to other people, and you quickly realize they are not in the witness state and that you are different. Once the love-bliss becomes well established, you never, ever loose it again.
Q: It sounds like you need to practice after gnyan vidhi. So it is not altogether automatic.
J: In fact your sadhana after gnyan vidhi is to practice not loosing Self-awareness by not allowing conflicts with other people, or the world, to overwhelm you. My practice slipped grossly a few times. But it was also a lesson, because I realized that no matter what, the witness state was always there and I was that. Now that the intense love-bliss is my natural state, it is a different matter.
Q: I find it a bit disturbing that you repeatedly talk about Jan. So Jan is still there? I thought that Selfrealization was no-mind and no-ego. In other words, that Jan would be gone.
J: Good point. First you get Selfrealized while the ego is still there, but the realization may be more or less strong yet the witness state is permanent and never overshadowed. You have realized your Self as nothingness. Then the second stage is when the Self manifests itself not as nothingness, but as joy, and later it manifests as intense love-bliss. These last two stages come and go in the beginning, and before you get more clear on these states and stages, the mind will think loss of joy and bliss is also loss of state. It is of course possible for the mind to instantly recognize joy and bliss, but the mind simply can not recognize nothingness. So when the joy and bliss is gone, the mind thinks all is gone. And if you have got used to much joy and bliss, you may find the emptiness a tad boring and uninteresting, but still you as nothingness are the perpetual witness and that can never be lost. So the sadhana at this initial level is to practice awareness of nothingness and make the consciousness of the perpetual witnessing constant. Later your sadhana is to merge with love-bliss.
Q: So initially you may think something is lost, but it is never lost on this path?
J: Yes. Once you get the witness state, you are safe. Then love-bliss will soon come to you also.
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