Link: http://www.masterkeywisdom.com/
Mooji - The Guru From Jamaica
Into the room walks Mooji, a charismatic Jamaican holy man with greying dreadlocks, dressed in the Indian style clothing of the mystic.
A very unusual guru, he’s a cross between Mahatma Gandhi and Bob Marley.
It’s obvious you’re in the presence of a holy man as the fifty or so casually dressed people, mostly well-off whites, who’ve gathered in a meeting room in New York City hush themselves in respect as the revered figure, who positively glows with good vibes, appears in their midst.
Mooji, who was born Tony Moo Young in Port Antonio, Jamaica in 1954 but who’s lived for many years in London where he once earned his living as a street portrait artist, smiles broadly as he takes his seat.
On a stool next to him are two tins of a favourite ginger ale which he’ll need to keep himself refreshed for the lengthy spiritual session ahead.
Mooji offers a general welcome and it is time to begin what’s called satsang, a five hour spiritual question and answer session during which devotees can ask their guru how best to find the spiritual contentment money and material positions have not brought them.
A satsang, which in Sanskrit means an assembly of the highest truth, can take place indoors or outdoors.
Spiritual healing?
At a Mooji satsang in India recently, hundreds of people squeezed into a tent to be in his presence and later pursued the taxi he left in.
“I have just experienced what the disciples felt around Jesus" said a visitor to the satsang.
Mooji had a similar effect on those attending the New York satsang, one of many such events he hosted recently while in the US on the first leg of a nine-month world tour which will take him to India, Brazil, Italy, Ireland and to Spain.
Why, a devotee asked the guru, had she not succeeded in getting in touch with her inner self despite having given up her job and living a very simple life?
Because, Mooji said, in essence, you’re trying too hard.
Why, a devotee complained, was he not sleeping as contentedly as he once had?
Mooji laughed and, like a standup comic, told the devotee not to worry because he knew a man in London who hadn’t slept for seven years, and this man, Mooji said, introduced him to another man who hadn’t slept for more than eleven years and was, somehow, still alive.
The satsang rumbled with laughter.
The point, artfully made, was something to the effect of ‘don’t worry, be happy’ or the Jamaican equivalent, ‘no problem.’
Advaita, the popular Hindu philosophy practiced by Mooji, says, in essence, that a person’s inner self is the only real and conscious part of them and that recognising this will bring one closer to the true state. Mooji’s version of Advaita does not seem to make great demands on adherents.
Beyond I Am with Mooji
The lazy man’s way to enlightenment?
To belong, it’s not, at all, necessary to abstain from worldly pleasures.
Mooji, for example, enjoys a nice plate of chicken or duck and is a big fan of the British TV talent show, The X Factor.
Mooji has called his approach, the lazy man’s way to enlightenment.
“This is a kind of religion without religion, without doctrine,” Mooji, his accent somewhere between Calcutta and Kingston, explains after his New York satsang.
It’s this easy path to enlightenment – his devotees line up after satsangs to receive a big hug from him like children waiting to see Santa –that’ve made Mooji such a popular guru.
“Mooji gives his devotees what they lack most of all – not enlightenment, but love,” said a visitor to a satsang.
Perhaps Mooji is so good at giving people what they want, and need, because he’s been in need often in his own life.
His father died when he was very young. He was separated from his mother, who migrated to Britain in the 1950s, for many years.
His eldest child died of pneumonia and his sister, Cherry, was accidentally shot and paralysed by police in London, sparking the Brixton riots of 1985.
“I simply help put people who come to me,” Mooji says, “back in touch with themselves.”
To 'get in touch with himself', Mooji gave up his home and a job as an art teacher in London and set off for India in 1993.
Mind is not your enemy
Mooji stayed in India for several years to 'get in touch with himself'
He had no idea he would stay there, on and off, for several years, become a disciple of an Indian guru known as ‘Papaji’, and return to London where, after a time selling incense and Chai tea on the streets, would himself become a guru in 1999 after a group of spiritual seekers who’d begun to congregate at Mooji’s home convinced him to begin offering satsangs in London and abroad.
Mooji’s disciples, which include an Italian filmmaker and a former French philosophy professor, now manage his website, record and film his satsangs for sale on CD and DVD, and are planning to make a documentary about him and publish a book of his teachings, Before I Am, in 2008.
“I’ve been adopted by people in this role, I guess,” Mooji says. “I don’t like labels, but I don’t mean to avoid the labels, either.”
It all started in Jamaica
Though Mooji might seem an unlikely guru to some, those who’ve known him the longest say he’s always had his followers.
He was the most popular boy at his high school in Jamaica, Titchfield, in Port Antonio, where he was respected by the boys because he was a star athlete and loved by the girls because he was a good singer.
His brother, Peter Moo Young, 45, one of Jamaica’s top table tennis players, says he doesn’t understand his brother’s transformation, but is not surprised people follow him wherever he goes.
“I have no understanding, whatsoever, of what it is he has become, but I tell you something about Tony, his personality always drew people to him in whatever he was doing.”
Still, though he’s always been something of a Pied Piper, is Mooji, at all, surprised at what he’s become?
“I don’t know if I can say I’m surprised, really, because I wasn’t into looking ahead and forecasting what my future would be,” he says smiling but obviously perplexed by the question.
“That Tony Moo Young is now known as ‘Mooji’? What can I say, except that’s life.”
Enlightenment http://www.mooji.org/dialogue_01.html
Question:Mooji, is it really possible to become or to gain enlightenment ? Has there be anyone who has become enlightened or awake through coming to Satsang and if so, could you say who ? ( All laugh )
Mooji:In truth it is not possible to become enlightened as you put it because no one is there as such to become enlightened in the first place. The firm recognition or realisation that there isn't a 'somebody' in reality to gain enlightenment, and that there can never be an entity at any time, either now or in the future, to gain any such state, is what amounts to enlightenment. This direct realisation occur and become revealed, confirmed and convincing truth through the process of self enquiring. 'Self-enquiry', also called atma-vichara, is one effective means of exposing the unreality of the 'I-concept', or ego, ordinarily felt to be the fact of oneself, leaving the pure immutable Self as the single an perfect reality. This is the ultimate truth.
You ask: 'Is there anyone who through attending Satsang has become awake'. This has already been addressed in my previous statement but I will further add here that there has been and continues to be the constant recognition of this fact that the ego identity is a myth, a fictitious character. That individuality as such is an expression of pure consciousness/beingness and not the fact or definition of that Beingness. That oneself remains behind as the witness or the noticing of the phenomena arising spontaneously in consciousness. That ones true self is formless and nameless presence only which arises or shines as peace, joy and happiness felt as loving contentment. When this recognition occurs within each individual point or expression of consciousness known as a person, that state is called 'awakening' or 'enlightenment'.
You ask that I point out if there is such a person present here ? In common language I will say a number of persons here have arrived at this point of clear seeing/being beyond mere intellectual or academic understanding or acceptance. However, the mental tendencies and identification aren't instantly or completely destroyed and the ego-sense, posing as the seat of reality, though expose through enquiry as mere illusion, continues to appear; this is natural. The duty and challenge here is to repeatedly bring this I-individuality sense back into the heart/source whenever it arises and by training the attention to stay in the source, which is your true self, it gradually merges in the source and become the source itself.
Finally, who could the 'I' be who will claim 'I've got it' or 'I am a realised person'. Who or what can be the possessor of enlightenment ? Isn't it the same ego ? Do you see my point ?
However, some masters have indeed declared and affirmed themselves as the one pure, qualityless reality and have spoken so from pure, direct ego-less knowledge/conviction. This is also correct in my view and is most refreshing, authoritative and natural, so that we may know it is not possible to frame or limit the pure self by any human standard or logic.
Q:But I feel myself as a 'someone', I cannot feel myself as a 'no-one'.
M:Again you put this 'myself' as an object of perception. How can you be an object ? An object must have a perceiving subject. If the subject is also perceived it automatically becomes an object and must have a deeper perceiving subject. Do you see ? You cannot be any object perceived, you must be the perceiver/subject. Who or what are you that perceives ? Take hold of that. Your statement 'I feel myself as a someone' contains three aspects: I, my feelings and the someone that I take myself to be. This someone is merely your idea of yourself, not your real self. And your feelings, merely the feeling concerning this idea of yourself. Finally there is the you who is the subject/perceiver of this observation. Am I right ?
Q:Yes.
M:Who or what are you exactly ?
Q:I am me, myself !
M:And what exactly is that ?
Q:Me ! Or rather my knowledge of myself.
M:So, not the body ?
Q:No, I know I am not the body.
M:How do you know you are not the body ?
Q:I can see my body and I just know that is not what I am, although sometimes I feel I am that too.
M:Ok, fine. Can we go back to your answer that you are your knowledge of yourself ? Are you sure it is the knowledge of yourself and not merely the knowledge of the idea of yourself or your personality ? How did you come to know yourself ? How are you knowing yourself here and now ?
Q:When I began perceiving the other things and people.
M:Yes, how does perceiving otherness brings you to yourself.
Q:Because I know I am perceiving. That I must be there in order to perceive.
M:Therefore any object perceived cannot be you, am I right ?
Q:Right.
M:Exactly ! Very good ! Now who or what exactly is it that perceives or notices ?
Q:Me ! This !
M:Is 'me' the same as 'this' ?
Q:Yes.
M:And again what is that ? What is its quality, its substance ? What makes it you exactly ? Look and tell me. Is it some particular you ? A person ? As distinct from a she or he or him or them ?
Q:Well yesÉnoÉit is vague, I don't quite see.
M:Remain compose, do not drift off, be steady and look. What are you here ? In this looking can you say ?
Q:I am not any person or anything, but I don't know what I am. There is nothing there, I cannot answer that. There is a feeling of not wanting to look, of tiredness, resistance and irritability.
M:Ok. Don't engage in any evaluation, don't touch anything, just be one with that noticing. Stay here without trying.
(There is a long pause here)
You seem puzzled what are you puzzled by ?
Q:There is just this blank.
M:What is witnessing the blank ?
(the questioner looks up and smiles, eyes fixed on Mooji)
M:Where is this smile coming from ?
(SilenceÉ)
Q:I don't know, there is a feeling of relief, space and peace, a kind of lightness.
M:A kind of ?
Q:No. Lightness, space and peace.
M:This lightness and peace shines where there is no one. This is peace. This is real joy. This is pure love. Only now don't clutch at this. Don't own it or claim it. Remain the witness.
Q:Yes, yes (smiling) I see I am just the witness here. Thank you, thank you. (she clasps her hands in the traditional Indian way of greeting or gratitude).
M:Don't go just yet..
(few moments pass)
Now drop being the witness.
Q:I am confused.
M:No, you are not confused. Confusion is being witnessed. Don't identified with that. What remains ? Don't touch anything, even the witness, don't be a 'witness-er'. Witnessing without witness-er, do you understand ?
Q:Yes.
M:Who is understanding ?
Q:No one, just understanding.
M:Very nice. Very happy to meet you. Now from this placeless place in total emptiness as emptiness, beyond the concept of emptiness, you effortlessly are. You didn't become this or gain this because there is no one here to gain anything. Out of, yet within this indescribable awareness the consciousness rises and shines as I-ness perceiving. And whatever arises here are mere apparent forms of I-consciousness being perceived.
Q:Thank you.
M:You are welcome.
Confronting the Horrors of the World
Mooji - The Guru From Jamaica
Into the room walks Mooji, a charismatic Jamaican holy man with greying dreadlocks, dressed in the Indian style clothing of the mystic.
A very unusual guru, he’s a cross between Mahatma Gandhi and Bob Marley.
It’s obvious you’re in the presence of a holy man as the fifty or so casually dressed people, mostly well-off whites, who’ve gathered in a meeting room in New York City hush themselves in respect as the revered figure, who positively glows with good vibes, appears in their midst.
Mooji, who was born Tony Moo Young in Port Antonio, Jamaica in 1954 but who’s lived for many years in London where he once earned his living as a street portrait artist, smiles broadly as he takes his seat.
On a stool next to him are two tins of a favourite ginger ale which he’ll need to keep himself refreshed for the lengthy spiritual session ahead.
Mooji offers a general welcome and it is time to begin what’s called satsang, a five hour spiritual question and answer session during which devotees can ask their guru how best to find the spiritual contentment money and material positions have not brought them.
A satsang, which in Sanskrit means an assembly of the highest truth, can take place indoors or outdoors.
Spiritual healing?
At a Mooji satsang in India recently, hundreds of people squeezed into a tent to be in his presence and later pursued the taxi he left in.
“I have just experienced what the disciples felt around Jesus" said a visitor to the satsang.
Mooji had a similar effect on those attending the New York satsang, one of many such events he hosted recently while in the US on the first leg of a nine-month world tour which will take him to India, Brazil, Italy, Ireland and to Spain.
Why, a devotee asked the guru, had she not succeeded in getting in touch with her inner self despite having given up her job and living a very simple life?
Because, Mooji said, in essence, you’re trying too hard.
Why, a devotee complained, was he not sleeping as contentedly as he once had?
Mooji laughed and, like a standup comic, told the devotee not to worry because he knew a man in London who hadn’t slept for seven years, and this man, Mooji said, introduced him to another man who hadn’t slept for more than eleven years and was, somehow, still alive.
The satsang rumbled with laughter.
The point, artfully made, was something to the effect of ‘don’t worry, be happy’ or the Jamaican equivalent, ‘no problem.’
Advaita, the popular Hindu philosophy practiced by Mooji, says, in essence, that a person’s inner self is the only real and conscious part of them and that recognising this will bring one closer to the true state. Mooji’s version of Advaita does not seem to make great demands on adherents.
Beyond I Am with Mooji
The lazy man’s way to enlightenment?
To belong, it’s not, at all, necessary to abstain from worldly pleasures.
Mooji, for example, enjoys a nice plate of chicken or duck and is a big fan of the British TV talent show, The X Factor.
Mooji has called his approach, the lazy man’s way to enlightenment.
“This is a kind of religion without religion, without doctrine,” Mooji, his accent somewhere between Calcutta and Kingston, explains after his New York satsang.
It’s this easy path to enlightenment – his devotees line up after satsangs to receive a big hug from him like children waiting to see Santa –that’ve made Mooji such a popular guru.
“Mooji gives his devotees what they lack most of all – not enlightenment, but love,” said a visitor to a satsang.
Perhaps Mooji is so good at giving people what they want, and need, because he’s been in need often in his own life.
His father died when he was very young. He was separated from his mother, who migrated to Britain in the 1950s, for many years.
His eldest child died of pneumonia and his sister, Cherry, was accidentally shot and paralysed by police in London, sparking the Brixton riots of 1985.
“I simply help put people who come to me,” Mooji says, “back in touch with themselves.”
To 'get in touch with himself', Mooji gave up his home and a job as an art teacher in London and set off for India in 1993.
Mind is not your enemy
Mooji stayed in India for several years to 'get in touch with himself'
He had no idea he would stay there, on and off, for several years, become a disciple of an Indian guru known as ‘Papaji’, and return to London where, after a time selling incense and Chai tea on the streets, would himself become a guru in 1999 after a group of spiritual seekers who’d begun to congregate at Mooji’s home convinced him to begin offering satsangs in London and abroad.
Mooji’s disciples, which include an Italian filmmaker and a former French philosophy professor, now manage his website, record and film his satsangs for sale on CD and DVD, and are planning to make a documentary about him and publish a book of his teachings, Before I Am, in 2008.
“I’ve been adopted by people in this role, I guess,” Mooji says. “I don’t like labels, but I don’t mean to avoid the labels, either.”
It all started in Jamaica
Though Mooji might seem an unlikely guru to some, those who’ve known him the longest say he’s always had his followers.
He was the most popular boy at his high school in Jamaica, Titchfield, in Port Antonio, where he was respected by the boys because he was a star athlete and loved by the girls because he was a good singer.
His brother, Peter Moo Young, 45, one of Jamaica’s top table tennis players, says he doesn’t understand his brother’s transformation, but is not surprised people follow him wherever he goes.
“I have no understanding, whatsoever, of what it is he has become, but I tell you something about Tony, his personality always drew people to him in whatever he was doing.”
Still, though he’s always been something of a Pied Piper, is Mooji, at all, surprised at what he’s become?
“I don’t know if I can say I’m surprised, really, because I wasn’t into looking ahead and forecasting what my future would be,” he says smiling but obviously perplexed by the question.
“That Tony Moo Young is now known as ‘Mooji’? What can I say, except that’s life.”
Enlightenment http://www.mooji.org/dialogue_01.html
Question:Mooji, is it really possible to become or to gain enlightenment ? Has there be anyone who has become enlightened or awake through coming to Satsang and if so, could you say who ? ( All laugh )
Mooji:In truth it is not possible to become enlightened as you put it because no one is there as such to become enlightened in the first place. The firm recognition or realisation that there isn't a 'somebody' in reality to gain enlightenment, and that there can never be an entity at any time, either now or in the future, to gain any such state, is what amounts to enlightenment. This direct realisation occur and become revealed, confirmed and convincing truth through the process of self enquiring. 'Self-enquiry', also called atma-vichara, is one effective means of exposing the unreality of the 'I-concept', or ego, ordinarily felt to be the fact of oneself, leaving the pure immutable Self as the single an perfect reality. This is the ultimate truth.
You ask: 'Is there anyone who through attending Satsang has become awake'. This has already been addressed in my previous statement but I will further add here that there has been and continues to be the constant recognition of this fact that the ego identity is a myth, a fictitious character. That individuality as such is an expression of pure consciousness/beingness and not the fact or definition of that Beingness. That oneself remains behind as the witness or the noticing of the phenomena arising spontaneously in consciousness. That ones true self is formless and nameless presence only which arises or shines as peace, joy and happiness felt as loving contentment. When this recognition occurs within each individual point or expression of consciousness known as a person, that state is called 'awakening' or 'enlightenment'.
You ask that I point out if there is such a person present here ? In common language I will say a number of persons here have arrived at this point of clear seeing/being beyond mere intellectual or academic understanding or acceptance. However, the mental tendencies and identification aren't instantly or completely destroyed and the ego-sense, posing as the seat of reality, though expose through enquiry as mere illusion, continues to appear; this is natural. The duty and challenge here is to repeatedly bring this I-individuality sense back into the heart/source whenever it arises and by training the attention to stay in the source, which is your true self, it gradually merges in the source and become the source itself.
Finally, who could the 'I' be who will claim 'I've got it' or 'I am a realised person'. Who or what can be the possessor of enlightenment ? Isn't it the same ego ? Do you see my point ?
However, some masters have indeed declared and affirmed themselves as the one pure, qualityless reality and have spoken so from pure, direct ego-less knowledge/conviction. This is also correct in my view and is most refreshing, authoritative and natural, so that we may know it is not possible to frame or limit the pure self by any human standard or logic.
Q:But I feel myself as a 'someone', I cannot feel myself as a 'no-one'.
M:Again you put this 'myself' as an object of perception. How can you be an object ? An object must have a perceiving subject. If the subject is also perceived it automatically becomes an object and must have a deeper perceiving subject. Do you see ? You cannot be any object perceived, you must be the perceiver/subject. Who or what are you that perceives ? Take hold of that. Your statement 'I feel myself as a someone' contains three aspects: I, my feelings and the someone that I take myself to be. This someone is merely your idea of yourself, not your real self. And your feelings, merely the feeling concerning this idea of yourself. Finally there is the you who is the subject/perceiver of this observation. Am I right ?
Q:Yes.
M:Who or what are you exactly ?
Q:I am me, myself !
M:And what exactly is that ?
Q:Me ! Or rather my knowledge of myself.
M:So, not the body ?
Q:No, I know I am not the body.
M:How do you know you are not the body ?
Q:I can see my body and I just know that is not what I am, although sometimes I feel I am that too.
M:Ok, fine. Can we go back to your answer that you are your knowledge of yourself ? Are you sure it is the knowledge of yourself and not merely the knowledge of the idea of yourself or your personality ? How did you come to know yourself ? How are you knowing yourself here and now ?
Q:When I began perceiving the other things and people.
M:Yes, how does perceiving otherness brings you to yourself.
Q:Because I know I am perceiving. That I must be there in order to perceive.
M:Therefore any object perceived cannot be you, am I right ?
Q:Right.
M:Exactly ! Very good ! Now who or what exactly is it that perceives or notices ?
Q:Me ! This !
M:Is 'me' the same as 'this' ?
Q:Yes.
M:And again what is that ? What is its quality, its substance ? What makes it you exactly ? Look and tell me. Is it some particular you ? A person ? As distinct from a she or he or him or them ?
Q:Well yesÉnoÉit is vague, I don't quite see.
M:Remain compose, do not drift off, be steady and look. What are you here ? In this looking can you say ?
Q:I am not any person or anything, but I don't know what I am. There is nothing there, I cannot answer that. There is a feeling of not wanting to look, of tiredness, resistance and irritability.
M:Ok. Don't engage in any evaluation, don't touch anything, just be one with that noticing. Stay here without trying.
(There is a long pause here)
You seem puzzled what are you puzzled by ?
Q:There is just this blank.
M:What is witnessing the blank ?
(the questioner looks up and smiles, eyes fixed on Mooji)
M:Where is this smile coming from ?
(SilenceÉ)
Q:I don't know, there is a feeling of relief, space and peace, a kind of lightness.
M:A kind of ?
Q:No. Lightness, space and peace.
M:This lightness and peace shines where there is no one. This is peace. This is real joy. This is pure love. Only now don't clutch at this. Don't own it or claim it. Remain the witness.
Q:Yes, yes (smiling) I see I am just the witness here. Thank you, thank you. (she clasps her hands in the traditional Indian way of greeting or gratitude).
M:Don't go just yet..
(few moments pass)
Now drop being the witness.
Q:I am confused.
M:No, you are not confused. Confusion is being witnessed. Don't identified with that. What remains ? Don't touch anything, even the witness, don't be a 'witness-er'. Witnessing without witness-er, do you understand ?
Q:Yes.
M:Who is understanding ?
Q:No one, just understanding.
M:Very nice. Very happy to meet you. Now from this placeless place in total emptiness as emptiness, beyond the concept of emptiness, you effortlessly are. You didn't become this or gain this because there is no one here to gain anything. Out of, yet within this indescribable awareness the consciousness rises and shines as I-ness perceiving. And whatever arises here are mere apparent forms of I-consciousness being perceived.
Q:Thank you.
M:You are welcome.
Confronting the Horrors of the World
