Reminder: When I write about spiritual teachers I’m not necessarily recommending them or endorsing claims about their states.<\/p>\n
A couple of weeks ago I happened to listen to one of Ed Muzika’s satsang talks in which he gives a first-hand description of something that Ramana often recommended: noticing the process of waking from deep sleep.<\/p>\n
I think Muzika’s description is independent of anything that Ramana said. Their vocabularies are different, and Ramana describes the I-thought rising from the Heart while Muzika says a light rises from his gut. I think these sorts of “alternative descriptions” are valuable and I recommend this one to you. It begins at 21:53 in the following video.<\/p>\n
I’ll point out particularly that Muzika says at 25:12:<\/p>\n
Once it got into my head the totality of the world appeared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Compare to Ramana in Who Am I?<\/i>:<\/p>\n
Just as a spider spins out thread from within itself and again draws it back into itself, so the mind makes the world appear [or projects the world] from within itself and again dissolves it back into itself. When the mind comes out from \u0101tma-svar\u016bpa, the world appears. Therefore when the world appears, svar\u016bpa [one\u2019s own form or real nature] does not appear; when svar\u016bpa appears (shines), the world does not appear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If you’re accustomed to Ramana’s vocabulary, or more exactly the one used by Ramana’s English translators, Muzika’s vocabulary may be confusing. Muzika’s terminology is like the one used by Nisargadatta’s translators. <\/p>\n
When Muzika says “consciousness” he means what Ramana (really, his translators) calls “I-thought” or “mind” or “ego”.<\/p>\n
When Ramana (really, his translators) says “consciousness” he means what Muzika calls “awareness”.<\/p>\n