Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

The felt Void, the all containing emptiness of the
Jnani, the sage, often snuffs out love, connectedness
and compassion. One becomes an Arhat, dead to the
world and dead to one’s own desires, an impersonal
puppet of the movements of consciousness, witnessed
from afar by the Absolute and final Witness,
Parabrahman. One has died to his or her self, to
desires, to a sense of mission or goals. All are gone in
order to live in peace and a breath of continuous bliss.
This is Nisargadatta in his last years. All emptiness
and a cutting mind who had lost all his desires even for
life itself. This is so much the position of many of the
neo-Advaitins, living in their crystal bright, clear
awareness, with no felt sense of a separate self.
Ramana was a lot like this as are most Zen classics,
and most Buddhist schools.
On the other hand, we find the various paths of the
heart: Christian mysticism, much of the Sufi tradition,
and the various paths of Bhakti, as espoused by
Ramakrishna and others. This path is far different
from the quietism of Zen, Buddhist meditations on
emptiness, and self-inquiry as described by Ramana
and Robert Adams. This path is full of energy, love,
passion, anger, jealousy, sometimes violence,
sexuality, attachments, and most especially of
ecstasies, bliss and movements of currents inside the
body and inside one’s sense of presence.