Lee Lozowick at WIE

[Guest guest]

An interview with Lee Lozowick in Andrew Cohen's What Is

Enlightenment magazine.

 

WIE: You have said that Yogi Ramsurat-kumar was the source of the

awakening which occurred to you one year previous to your meeting

him. How can someone be the source of somebody else's awakening that

occurred before they ever met?

LL: Well, to a spiritual master there's no such thing as the past,

the present or the future. To us everything happens very linearly. In

1975 this shift of context happened for me. In 1976 I met Yogi

Ramsuratkumar. In 1983 I really dedicated myself to him as my

teacher. But to him when Jesus was born might be fifty years in the

future. And some person that to us hasn't even been born yet, to him

is like a living, breathing presence. Time is completely malleable.

So for a master like Yogi Ramsuratkumar the past, the present and the

future are completely interchangeable, and he can shift them around

at his will. I can't describe that according to a law of physics

although I'm sure that's possible. But that's how it is.

 

WIE: Has he ever acknowledged to you that this is the case in terms

of your awakening?

 

LL: Not linearly. I mean he doesn't really just sit down and talk to

you like that. First of all my relationship to him is one of 200

percent receptivity, so I never ask him for anything. I never ask

questions. Occasionally I'll have some curiosity, but as a principle

I will not ask him for anything, except for everything. When I'm in

his presence I will not make any gesture of appeal to him, none. I

won't ask him any questions. So I've never asked what his perception

of all this is, although he has said things to his Indian devotees

which get fed back to me. I have gotten feedback but it's never been

direct. And I know that if I asked him directly he would not give a

direct answer, so I wouldn't anyway.

 

WIE: Most people would say that after enlightenment you don't need a

guru. But you entered into a guru/disciple relationship after your

awakening, at a time when you were already taking on students of your

own. Did that mean that in some way that you felt there was something

lacking in your own realization?

 

LL: No, I didn't feel there was anything lacking at all. My view of

it is that I was in a guru/devotee relationship before my shift of

context—or the shift of context, since it wasn't mine—and that's what

actually led to the shift of context. My relationship to him is not

one where I feel incomplete and he's somehow going to provide the

missing pieces. All that's been done, that's over and done with. It's

a love affair, that's all.

 

WIE: What is the purpose of the guru/disciple relationship? What's

the role of this love affair?

 

LL: Well, in the real sense it's not sadhana that produces awakening.

It's assimilation that produces awakening. So to assimilate something

you have to be in its field, in its aura.

 

The guru is that which is

grace, living grace, and the real essence of sadhana is to assimilate

that. When the disciple wakes up it's because they've assimilated the

guru's grace, not because they've done sadhana. Paradoxically, one

has to do sadhana to create the kind of resonance that allows the

assimilation to occur. Sadhana is like preparing the field but really

it is all grace. And to get grace you have to be in relationship to

grace.

 

You don't have to be in its physical presence necessarily, although

there are benefits to that. You can get it anywhere as long as you

hook into it. But the guru is the hook, the source of it. A lot of

people say, " Well, why can't I go directly to God? " We can't go

directly to God because the human vehicle, which is the guru, is

basically about al we can take. Now there are examples such as

Anandamayi Ma and Ramana Maharshi who ostensibly didn't have a human

guru. But neither of them are alive to talk about that, and I think

that they could be cornered into acknowledging the need for a human

medium through which one hooks into grace.

 

WIE: When I hear people talk in terms of devotion or grace it makes

me wonder what role understanding plays.

 

LL: Devotion doesn't necessarily have to show up in the form of

bhakti [the yoga of devotion] alone.

 

Devotion can show up in the form

of jnana yoga [the yoga of wisdom]. So grace itself is not this kind

of romantic, soft, fuzzy thing. One could say that Nisar-gadatta

Maharaj, for instance, was a transmitter of grace and he was hardly

devotional. He wouldn't stand for any devotion around him. So one

shouldn't exclusively identify this idea of grace with the bhakti

traditions because grace is available in many, many different

traditions.

 

Even in any bhakti school, if it's a real bhakti school and not just

some sentimental approach, love is a fire. Love is a burning, raging

conflagration. It's not this weepy-eyed thing, where everybody walks

around saying, " Oh my guru is so gentle and I love my guru so much. "

If you call up a school and the person on the phone is talking like

that you have to question it.

 

WIE: What is it then that makes it not just a sentimental feeling but

actually something that is fiery?

 

LL: It's absolutely transformational. A metaphor might be a

caterpillar turning into a butterfly. The alteration of structure is

so great and so profound that it can't take place without crisis.

Often one element of the crisis will be what we call this tremendous

fire, this heat, or tapas.

 

WIE: What is the nature of this tapas or crisis?

 

LL: Some of it is the standard confrontation with ego's autonomous

identification with illusion as if that were reality, and having to

dismantle that dictatorship. And the first thing that's required in

any kind of healing is you have to first acknowledge that there's

sickness. So the first order of business is getting some recognition

of the illness of identification with the body as total reality. That

involves an honest recognition and ownership of the neurotic aspects

of behavior that ego has assumed as necessary protection for itself.

That can be shame, pride, all forms of narcissism and greed and so

on. We've lived 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and to admit that in all of

that time everything that we've done has been informed by self-

centeredness, egoism and narcissism requires tremendous, tremendous

discipline, attention and a lot of just basic hard work.

 

Theoretically we could come into this fire and see that we've been

selfish and that could be revelatory. We could just go, " Oh wow, I

don't want to live like that anymore, " and go on from there. But

realistically most people aren't willing to do that. The bottom line

is, it's a matter of a kind of core willingness to give up fifty

years of whatever we think we've accumulated.

 

It's like taking this

immense bank account and just giving it up. It's as if you were a Jew

in Germany or in Russia at certain times in history and you had a

vault full of gold, and you had a chance to hop on a boat with

nothing but the shirt on your back and get out. What would you

choose, life or your gold? Most people chose the gold and died for it

under horrific circumstances. It's the same analogy. Someone could

come to this work and get the fact of the illusion and then choose

life, but most of us want to take the gold along with us. Really the

gold is shit but it's just that it's familiar and i s served us well.

 

WIE: What is it that gets a person to the point where they're willing

to choose life, even though it means giving up everything that

they've had and that they've known and that they've done?

 

LL: Personally I think it's love. And whether that shows up in a

tradition of bhakti or in a tradition of jnana, love is not some kind

of weepy, sentimental, misty-eyed sighing kind of thing. Love is the

life-essence of creation. I think if one wants that badly enough or

is committed to serving that deeply enough, at some point you're

willing to go on past your own assumed, illusory handicaps.