41 - Gurus and Awakening?

What is the role of the Guru in awakening?  Can they take your karma?  Can they give you awakening energetically?  Do they do anything more than simply guide you?  Do you need a Guru?  William discusses his deep "awakening" experiences with Gurus.

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

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Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together. Relaxing into happiness. I trust you're doing well. Today, let's talk about gurus and their role in awakening. Do you need a guru? What do they do anyway? Teach you? Do they burn karma? Do they transmit awakening energetically? What do they do anyway? Well, as we talk about this, it might be helpful to know my background and where I'm coming from. I first started meditating in 1972. I went to a four-year theological program. I became a licensed professional counselor. Through the years, I've been taught by dozens of awakened teachers. Everyone that you probably have heard of, I've met, I've had lunch with, maybe they've lived with me. For the longest time, I've been interested in wholeness, health, and awakening. I've gone on to go to India 13 times, Bhutan, Thailand. I've met with so many awakened people and I've met and had thousands of meetings with what I would call avatars or mahatmas. These are people that are so awake that the infinite streams through them with such power, you yourself being in their vicinity, start to become very clear, have awakening experiences. Sometimes the energy is so powerful, you can't even move. Some of them include Ammaji, Amma and Bhagavan, Guru Namaya, Ganapati Satchananda Swamiji, Sai Baba, Shiva Shakti, Prajnananda, Sri Ma, Om Amma, etc. Very powerful individuals, some more than others, but all very powerful. Jesus, for instance, would be considered in my view, perhaps the most powerful mahatma or Buddha. Very powerful. But some of these that I've just mentioned are in that category. Very powerful. They change time and space. They bend time and space. You see miracles. They appear in visions. You talk to them. They change your body, your mind by being in their presence. Very powerful. I don't know how to even transmit my experience to you. I'm trying to, but until and unless you've met one of these mahatmas, it's hard to understand what somebody's talking about as they try to explain their interactions and experiences with one of these avatars or mahatmas. My experience with them has spanned well beyond 20 years. So it's out of this background that I'm simply giving you my opinion based on my experience of being with some of these hugely awakened beings. Through the years, my opinion has changed. And at one time I felt one thing. And as I've spent year after year after year, my observations based on my own internal clarity and what I was seeing around me has shifted and changed. So out of that, I'm giving you my experience. I'm doing it full well, knowing that others have other experiences and would disagree with me. So take it for what it's worth, but it's a useful conversation, I think, nonetheless. For time's sake, I'm going to just start with one of these mahatmas, but each of them is quite different. And the experiences are unique to each mahatma. But we have to start somewhere. So let's start here. In 2004, I had seen so many teachers and mahatmas. Unknowingly, somebody included me as a character in their book and asked me to come to their book signing once they had completed that book, because I was in it. So I came to the book signing. And in this spiritual bookstore, there was a flyer and it said that some people who had been to India, they would touch you on the head for $108 and you would become awakened. Now, I had seen so many people for so many decades. I thought, you know, that's interesting, but unlikely. But in the end, I ended up going because I went to everything. I thought, what could have hurt? Maybe I'll learn something. They touched me on the head. It was nice. I relaxed. They said go home. It was the end of the day. When you go to sleep, just sleep naturally. And that's it. You're done. You'll wake up awakened. It's automatic. You know, I just went home and when it was time to go to bed, I'd already paid my money. I got tapped on the head. I don't know, maybe if anything happened, I'd be happy. I woke up the next morning, opened my eyes and boom! The room exploded. It was on fire. I was on fire. There was no meaning. It was all bliss and vibrant energy. Everything was strobing and radiant. It was on fire with love. I couldn't believe it. I did nothing. I just opened my eyes and it was automatic. I couldn't believe it. I knew it wouldn't last long, but I knew that it was something. It was beyond the mind. It was everything that I had heard about, that I was straining for, that I had been with teachers trying to achieve. It was happening automatically. I was one with all things. There was no me. There was just looking and experiencing and I just decided to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Maybe a half hour. I don't know. Hopefully. It went on and never stopped to this day. It never stopped. Two weeks later, I had never been to India and now I was in India being trained in how to do this and the experiences got even stronger. I remember looking at an oak tree and suddenly it was like my brain's melted out of my head and I just became nothing. I was God looking at God. The tree and I were one. There was no separation. And as the day continued, I lay down in the grass and I was one with all things and I was covered in mosquitoes in India, covered with mosquitoes. And slowly I might move my arm down my body and the mosquitoes would just start laughing because I was one with the mosquitoes. I knew what they were feeling. They were laughing and having such a good time. The next day I was startled. I didn't have one bite. Mosquitoes don't bite themselves and we were one. I started, I can't say I saw the future because there was no me. There was only the future and the present. It was all one. Time didn't exist. And these things that I saw were impossible for a variety of reasons with the people involved and so on and so forth. I knew them to be impossible, but nonetheless I was seeing them. Guess what? They did happen. I couldn't believe it. My chakras, my energy center started to open one by one. Boom, boom, boom. I didn't try. I didn't mean to. They just started opening until a beautiful light and energy started shooting out of the top of my head and streaming down over my body. And I just soaked it up. Bhagavan, my new guru at the time, started communicating to me telepathically. Now all this was pretty new to me, not completely, but pretty new. I was startled. I was like you. And suddenly these things are happening. Mind blowing, life altering. Fast forward a month later, I'm back in the United States and I told them I would try to start a group. I didn't really think anybody would come, but I put some flyers up. 25 people showed up. The energy was so strong coming through my body that people were flocking and they were having incredible experiences. I asked them to email in their experiences and they were telling me they could move. They were having visions. All sorts of things were happening. I started saving all those emails in one document and after that document got up to 500 pages, I just had them stop sending in the experiences. They were just so unique and powerful. And I'm just a guy that a month before was in the United States and go to India and boom, around my guru and all this starts to happen. Suddenly I've got a group of a hundred people all paying money to come and be with me because this energy streaming through me is so powerful. So I become a teacher only because I have a hundred people looking at me and I was the one that put up the flyer and went to India. So suddenly I'm a teacher. What do I say? I don't know. I did my best. It was mostly about the energy and I learned as I went. People's lives were transformed. It was amazing. Later I started training people in how to do this themselves. Bhagavan empowered us to do that, you might say. And I became in charge of a region of, I don't know, five or six states. And I would give these workshops and I remember people not being able to move. The energy was so powerful. One man came up and he said, my wife's in the back of the room and she cannot get up. Is it all right? Come talk to her. And I said it would be fine because I knew what was happening. Bhagavan's energy was coming through me and it was so very powerful. I would talk to Bhagavan every day, psychically, through his picture, through a picture of him. And he would tell me what to do. I would ask questions. He would give me his advice. Maybe we would argue, maybe we would laugh, but we would talk. And it was a conversation just like he was there. In my various trips to India, I would visit the ashram and be there for maybe four weeks at a time or three weeks at a time or something like that. Often I would stay in India for 12 months or longer, once six months, and go to other ashrams and see other teachers. But I would always go back and see Bhagavan. And after some time, he started seeing me privately. Now he had millions of followers. And one time I'm talking to him privately and he looks at me quizzically and he says, you know, it's quite odd, but I have millions of followers. And, but I'm thinking about you all the time. You're on my mind all the time. It was because I was communicating with him daily through his picture, through his Sri Murti. Now that's another podcast perhaps, but I was, and these conversations were very, very real. They continued over around a 10 year span. And during this time, the radiance that was going through my body became unbelievably strong. I could walk in a room, another spiritual event, and you could feel the energy coming through my body. Sometimes people would want to be close to experience this powerful awakening energy. Other times people found it overwhelming and wanted to sit far back and enjoy it from afar, or even take a break and rest from it. I myself had become fairly psychic and miracles were happening all around me. You can read the writing I put on my website called miracles under the writing tab, www.williamecooper.wordpress.com. A mala turned into ashes at my house. Glasses were blowing up in my hands, very powerful. And I considered it symptoms of a deep awakening clarity that was supported and guided by my guru, Bhagavan. Well, as I continued to communicate with Bhagavan daily, a funny thing started happening. It first started in India. The picture that I would talk to the Sri Murti started turning around and going into my chest so that he was looking outward from my heart rather than at me having a dialogue. At this point, he said that we were becoming one. And in my experience of oneness, I no longer needed him as a guru that I could now just be in oneness myself and learn about that rather than having his support. It was time to go out on my own. So he felt it was best that we did not communicate anymore. And it was a very nice way. But you can't go out on your own unless you go out on your own. Funny enough, I used to be able to talk to Jesus or a number of other beings that I would connect to in different realms. And I didn't do that much. But sometimes they would come and talk to me and I would Krishna. They wouldn't talk to me anymore, either. Everybody cut me off. I was on my own because in oneness, there is only one. Rather than live on Bhagavan's radiance, it was time for me to open up and experience the radiance that comes through this body. The problem is I didn't fully understand that I was living off of Bhagavan's radiance. I thought he was showing me my radiance. He had been teaching me all along, that's for sure. But I had been living off of his radiance. What happened? Well, I went through the dark night of the soul. I was cut off. The power of Bhagavan receded. The power and communication from other beings receded and disappeared. Now my experience was of a person who had had the experience of awakening, but hadn't actually awakened himself. I left off where I was way back. I had much deeper learning. I knew intuitively that we are one and that I was and could awaken, but I hadn't yet. I had to now do the work myself. It's a sign of a good teacher when they cut you loose. It's not pleasant. But now that I had experienced flying, it was time for my teacher to push me out of the nest and I had to fly on my own now. What was life like? Just how I was before all of this stuff started to happen. People that before had felt strong radiance from me, now if I asked them, they said, no, they didn't feel anything anymore. Nothing. But you know what? When you're used to just being radiant and bliss and psychic and clear, you get addicted to that. And so it was a bit sad. I was in a dark place. I was doing okay, but the contrast was startling. I was on my own for over 10 years. I felt that I was deeply awake, radiantly awake, but guess what? What I was feeling was the energy of Bhagavan coming through my body and Bhagavan's clarity and Bhagavan was creating those miracles through me. But it wasn't me. It's like a kid on a bicycle being supported by their parent or training wheels or something. You're not really riding the bike, but you're learning. I remember when I went to Disneyland as a little kid, there was a boat and it had a gas engine and it was so exciting and you could get in it and all the kids could drive the boat. I felt very empowered. Later I found out it was running on some tracks underneath the water. I really wasn't steering it or running the boat. I thought I was though. Kind of like that when you're around a Guru. You think you're awake. It sure does feel like it. They give you the experience of being awake, the experience of actually being a Guru. You can have that experience, but you're running through with their power, their clarity. I remember when I first started seeing Ammaji, another very powerful Mahatma, one man kept coming up and saying, Ammaji, touch me on the head. You can awaken me. I know you can do it. And she would just laugh and laugh and laugh because it's impossible. I asked Bhagavan and his wife Amma to take my karma, to take my troubles, and they couldn't do it. They said they would, but really they couldn't because my troubles are my troubles. If I have a snarl inside of myself, I have to undo that snarl. If I have my hand balled in a fist, they can't open it for me. I have to open my fist. If my personality is balled up in a fist, I have to let my personality open. That's my karma. Maybe they can help me loosen up a little around the edges, but it's my karma and it's my body that has to relax. It's my nervous system that has to open up in the end. It's me that has to meditate and sit still. I have to be in touch with who I am and let everything else go. I do that. They can't do that for me. I often use the example, if I'm with somebody and I have a rock in my pocket and I feel great, after I leave, is the rock still in my pocket? Yes, until I take it out. Well, we have rocks in our personality. What if I'm in it with a guru and he's very powerful? I still have that rock in my personality until I let it go. It's a little bit confusing because with the guru's energy, it feels like everything is letting go. But what happens is you're so centered in that powerful energy, you can't quite feel all the stuff rumbling around underneath. You can feel some of it and you can release some painful stuff, but you're really not getting in touch with it in the same way as you do when you just rest in your own energy and you let the awareness that comes through you naturally burn off the old karmas that you have held on to the old vasanas, which are your psychological habits. The awareness that comes through you burns that off. And as it does, your radiance grows stronger and stronger and more and more radiant, just like it was when you were with Bhagavan. But now it's coming through you. But what they did do is they taught me through their perspective. They gave me their experience of awakening. They showed me what it was like. So I knew what it was like, but they couldn't make me let go of my thoughts. They couldn't make me sit still and burn off my karma myself. They sort of transcended my karma in a sense. And for a while, for over 10 years, I had the feeling of awakening. I was connected to them and experiencing their experiences, not mine. It was kind of confusing because often I would feel the deepest bliss and clarity, but at the same time be so distressed or anxious. And what I was feeling was myself and them at the same time. I thought it was all me, but I did learn a lot. They taught me through their energy. So yes, gurus can teach you. You can see an experience, but it's on loan. You have to give it back and then do the work yourself. You have to sit still. And that's why in these podcasts, I emphasize meditation. I emphasize clear seeing, and we talk about things and we take baby steps, but you have to do it. Buddha could tell us how to awaken and he could tell us his experience and that's good for Buddha, but we have to do it. If we're to awaken, Buddha's already got it made. He is awakened. We have to do it. So in my experience, gurus can show you, they can guide you. They can give you the experience and they can teach you, but you have to do it. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. He either is or he's not. And in the perspective of the East, what's the hurry? You've got forever because the infinite is infinite and it's all one and you're infinite. So past lives, reincarnation or whatever you want to call it, but it goes on forever. So take your time. Enjoy. There's no hurry. However, if you want to be whole soon, if you want to feel it now, you have to do what it takes. You have to stop distracting yourself away from who you are and you have to stop and feel who you are. Simple, right? But you have to do it. So what happened after all of that? Well, I continued going to India. I continued meeting with various beings and avatars and so on and so forth. But in the end, I just had to do a lot of hard work. There's one woman I met in India named Shiva Shakti. She was in a cave for a long time and became highly awakened. And she comes and meets with you for maybe 10 seconds. She's in a room, you're in a room of maybe 100 people and she stays there for 15 minutes and she spends about 10 seconds with each person. And she opens up every chakra one by one or any chakras, any energy centers in you that are closed just by looking at you. And then every day she picks up where she left off before. But you can feel things open because she's supporting you and she's sending this beautiful energy and you're opening up into her energy. But as the day goes on, all of the stuff that kept those chakras closed, that's now on the surface and you have to feel it. You have to deal with stuff that happens during the day. So one time I stayed there for six months and I would see her twice a day. People would ask me, William, how's it going? Five out of six days, I would tell them horribly because I was in so much pain. I had so such a backlog of repressed hurt and anxiety in my personality. So much unforgiveness and anger that I had squirreled away for all of this life and lifetimes. And you know, in our society, we just push it to a side and motor on. We just soldier on. And I had been very successful in life and you know, just like everybody else, I felt good. But under my frozen facade that I didn't even know was there was a world of hurt and pain. So working with a guru like Shiva Shakti is more or less a good illustration of how it works. They can open things up, but you have to do the work. They can show you, but you have to do the work. They can't burn your karma. They can't give you awakening. They can show you what it's like, but they can't give it to you. Now, slowly over time, what's happened is I found my own awakening. It's not stable. It's kind of stable, but it evolves day by day. It's like I keep falling off the bike. Why? Because still more stuff to burn off, still more stuff evolving, still more stuff bubbling out from deep down inside. I had a lot of stuff. And when it comes up, it can overwhelm you a little bit. That could be for minutes or hours, but then it's gone. And during that time of being overwhelmed or distracted, I never lose touch with my true nature because it's not all or nothing. As I've said many times, you're always there. You don't have to do anything to be yourself. You're there. Your radiant, happy, infinite being is always there. It's simply covered up or partially covered up. So it makes sense that you will feel yourself even while you feel all the chunks of discord or hurt or pain or anger, the blocks, the thoughts, the emotions that are getting in your way. So great progress for me, an ordinary person who's worked hard. And I say that because you're probably an ordinary person and just do baby steps, do anything, but be consistent. Do it every day, at least five minutes or one, one minute, just something every day. More the better because it's like cleaning up a room, a very dirty room. You could spend one minute on it and it might take you all year, or you could just get in there and spend a nonstop a day and maybe get it cleaned up in a day. Awakenings a little bit like that. But if you do something every day, that room will get clean. So I just say, even if you're busy, do something every day, sit down and do your meditation, because that's the most powerful thing you can do. No guru is going to do that for you. You have to sit down. You have to watch your thoughts and emotions and let them burn off. You have to connect to them so that they do burn. We've talked about that in other podcasts in the past. If you're new to these podcasts, and somehow you just ended up with this one as your first one, and it seems a little bit strange, you might go back to my very first podcast, number one, and work your way forward. Each of these podcasts are independent, but they do build one upon the other. And our view is, just like the title says, for real awakening together, relaxing into happiness. That's what we're doing. So do you need a guru? Absolutely not. You are your own guru. Is a guru helpful? Absolutely. I think if nothing else, to have that first experience of awakening, even though it's not your own, to just feel that experience, it is very helpful. It helps build your confidence. Just don't get addicted to the guru. And if you don't have a guru, you're enough. In fact, in the next podcast, let's talk about that. How is life your guru? It really is, and very powerfully so. In the meantime, sit still, meditate, and experience your true self. Let everything else go. Okay. I hope that was helpful. I enjoyed it and look forward to talking to you soon. Take care.