Anadi

“With hardly any money and no return ticket, I took the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to China. I then took a boat to Korea in order to attend a three month winter retreat in a monastery there. Although the Zen master was not able to help me in any way, the retreat was very good. I began to face the fact that whether I was in Poland or in Asia, I was stuck with myself. Moreover, seeing how lost the people around me were, wasting time trying to solve those endless koans, I more and more deeply realized the sad truth that no one out there had the answers. Solving the riddle of awakening was increasingly becoming my own responsibility…

I decided to move to Japan. Initially I wanted to study Soto Zen, but I ended up in a Rinzai monastery. It was a very strict place, samurai style, and life was hard. However, my practice was very good. I underwent months of intense practice and passed through various states of spiritual desperation – the dark night of the soul. Eventually I had several breakthroughs and openings to a deeper realization of consciousness and at the end of this period, in December 1993, my consciousness was fully stabilized. Although no one there had the ability to verify it, I left that monastery much freer than when I had entered it. Additionally, the stabilization of consciousness had healed and dissolved my depression. My mind was like a blue sky, clear and vast…

My experiences in Korea and Japan highlighted to me the severity of Zen’s shortcomings. I did not see anyone who was properly awakened in those Zen monasteries. Much of their time was spent trying to solve koans. But what is the relationship between solving a koan and knowing oneself? Those who solve ten thousand koans can be as ignorant as those who don’t even know what the word koan means. By sitting zazen on the street in Japan, I collected a substantial amount of money, enabling me to continue my spiritual quest in the East...

The next stop was India. I met Poonjaji, was invited to dinner with him and attended one of his satsangs. My question to him was: How can one arrive and not know that one has arrived? Isn’t recognition inherent to self-realization? Or does recognition bring this realization to a higher level? Poonjaji did not seem to see the important nature of this question. Rather he appeared to feel personally challenged and reacted with anger. My question was sincere, and because his response was quite rude, I left. I met Nisargadatta’s translator and his disciple, Ramesh Balsekar. When I asked Balsekar about the state prior to consciousness, he denied that such a state exists; he had mistaken consciousness absorbed in consciousness for the absolute...

Both Balsekar and Poonjaji presented themselves as the disciples of great masters, although in truth they had spent very little time with them, and the teachings they expounded carried little of the potency and true insight of their teachers. I did not receive any spiritual benefit from meeting these teachers. They seemed to all be repeating spiritual clichés; their understanding reflected a simplistic and primitive vision of human enlightenment. My searching questions that pointed towards the multidimensional nature of evolution, the role of me, and the interdependence between our inner self and the human dimension were left entirely unanswered. My conviction that no one had the answers was becoming increasing established…

I met a very high soul, Houman. While I came from the tradition of consciousness, he came more from the tradition of love, and we both needed this exchange to come closer to becoming complete and whole. I began to see that I was still incomplete and not spiritually free… I realized that it is not enough to be beyond the construct of the mind and the energetic dimension of the subconscious (meaning to abide in the witnessing state or any state of I am) to transform our human existence.

The human psyche has to be embraced and illuminated by our higher consciousness, our soul, to reach the requisite purification. Additionally, in order to facilitate an even deeper transformation, consciousness has to be in the state of surrender to the source in order to reach its truly natural condition. The initial realization of consciousness, in fact, represents the consciousness of the waking state of this universe. Though one can be under the false illusion that it is perfect, it is not perfect and it is not absolute. Consciousness becomes perfect only by reaching the state of samadhi in the realm of absence...

So, it was based on this sense of imperfection that I had begun to contemplate how to reach the absolute state. This was not new to me as even before stabilizing my consciousness I had been contemplating how to experience the state prior to consciousness but did not have the proper tools with which to grasp its true meaning. In response to the intuitive guidance we had received through Houman, I went into retreat for one month in Kerala in order to penetrate the boundary of the absolute, the source. I was trying to put myself in the state of consciousness prior to I am (or prior to witnessing consciousness). It was only after many years that I realized that it was this realization that Maharaj was speaking of, not the absolute state. The absolute that he reached is what in our teaching is now described as horizontal samadhi in consciousness or the realization of horizontal absence. However, that which I was seeking was vertical absence, samadhi in the unmanifested.

It is a great paradox that while I was inspired by Maharaj to seek the absolute, the absolute I reached was actually an entirely different absolute! How is it possible? Can there be two absolutes? The human soul transcends through the one absolute which constitutes the foundation of the unmanifested for this universe. However, there are two portals to that absolute that determine the nature of this realization. The horizontal absolute is reached through consciousness. The vertical absolute is reached through the center of tan t’ien (hara) in the lower belly. Though the absolute can be accessed horizontally, as Maharaj did, the vertical realization is deeper because verticality is more deeply rooted in the source.

This is perhaps an opportunity to point out that not all self-realized masters are in the same state. Very few people are aware of this. This can be either because they have chosen different types of evolution or because they have stopped at an incomplete realization. Even the basic factor of whether one sits in meditation or not will have a profound effect on the flavor of one’s awakening. For instance, Ramana Maharishi was much more grounded in being than Maharaj simply because he spent most of his life sitting in absorption. Different traditions lead to the realization of different states even though sometimes these realizations overlap. The path of Zen leads to a different type of evolution than the path of Advaita, for example. The path of the heart leads to different transformation than the path of consciousness.

Those rare souls who seek to become whole cannot be confined to any tradition because evolution requires freedom, and all traditions are imprisoned in the past. Since the birth of the science of enlightenment in this plane, its main objective has been to transcend suffering. However, there is a higher truth than transcendence, which is to reach true self-realisation and become whole. To reach spiritual wholeness is the very reason why we are born into this plane, and it is high time that this new definition is given to what self-actualization really signifies. We must begin to view our human existence from a universal perspective and go beyond a suburban mentality that sees that path merely as a means to escape suffering…

After years of sitting meditation, my being was deep, but due to my very strong consciousness (and particularly concentrated awareness), there was an energetic blockage to surrender. Only after many, many attempts and assistance from the inner plane, did I experience the grace of shifting into the absolute state. It was beyond anything I could imagine, like an inner sky opening under my feet, an infinite breath of freedom, an ecstasy of relief. I was so free and so grateful and so afraid that the state would close! I had finally entered the beyond, the first chamber in the inner temple of freedom.

After that initial shift, I still had to cultivate the state in order for it to become fully perfect, as there were still some fluctuations in the continuity of surrender and absence. In Zen they describe this type of cultivation as ‘to become like a withered tree’. This is because one has to die to the will of the vital force; one becomes as if dead, heavy like a stone with the weight of inertia because one has surrendered so much. After it is integrated with the unmanifested, the vital force is then relearning how to function from the place of absence and no-will. In Zen they say, ‘and the tree becomes green again.’ I was a beginner on the path again, entering the amazing adventure of diving deeper and deeper into the dimension of spiritual truth and the unfoldment of my higher self. Houman and I decided to meet again in Seattle in order to continue our spiritual work.

I spent one year in Seattle with Houman. One of the aspects of my work with the heart was to accelerate a certain emotional healing without which the heart can never fully open. It was a deep work which took a considerable amount of time and grace to reach completion. Awakening of the heart melted my whole being, opening me to the dimension of the soul, and brought me one step closer to being whole. The connection of love, intelligence and consciousness between me and Houman continued for some years to come before our paths diverged and our lives took a different course. Several years later, during my seclusion, Houman passed away in Hawaii.

I found that not only did all available teachings not help me to properly realize who I was, but they were the main obstacles to knowing myself. I had to challenge them because they represented the bondage of incomplete understanding blocking my path. None of the teachings or teachers really spoke about the essence of our true self… To become whole and free, various aspects of our internal and external evolution need to fall into place. This includes the awakening of the three centers of the soul and their unification into one being, reaching the state of complete samadhi (unconditional and permanent absorption in the universal reality), awakening of me (in fact an integral element of soul-awakening), purification and alignment of the human identity with the soul, and then the surrender and merging of the human with the soul. To become whole is a combination of complete awakening, complete surrender, and complete integration of all aspects of our existence as the one self of our sacred individuality.

Perfection is our nature and destiny, but it is not easily reached. A man or woman of the path must devote their whole life to serve the noble purpose of actualizing the light of their higher self. At times it is hard, like walking through hell; at other times it is pure joy, a great adventure in the land of true magic and amazement. Those who look for a quick fix, to reach instant enlightenment, should forget about the spiritual path – it is not for them. The path is designed by universal intelligence for those souls that have the capacity and profound desire to become real on all levels.

Every seeker on the path has to awaken the qualities of the soul and become the warrior of light. Those who are weak, which means those who succumb to their weakness, will fail and become lost in the wilderness of ignorance that will alienate them even further from their ultimate future. There is suffering on the path, and the role of this suffering is to test each seeker: their integrity, dedication, honesty and sincerity. The fire of suffering purifies the lower self and breaks down the structure of arrogance, the false autonomy of ego. Only then can the soul enter and take over our will, becoming the one who is in charge of our ultimate destiny…”

~ “Anadi (Aziz Kristof) has stepped out into the unchartered territories of reality with honesty and courage, to carve a new path through the mountain of the self. Out of his deep devotion to truth, he has created a rich and singular vision of the path which completely transcends one-dimensional, simplistic views of self-realization. His teaching is a true gift, a salvation from confusion for any soul who holds the fire in their being to seek higher understanding. To follow it, a seeker must have the passion to explore the inner realm, the sincerity to let go of the false, and the courage to stand alone in a world that is ruled by lethargy and spiritual conformism. Above all, he needs to awaken true love for his soul so that he can begin to serve her highest purpose of becoming whole.”

 "To seek is the most challenging endeavour in human existence. Therefore it is critical that one will develop certain essential qualities such as sincerity, maturity, inner strength, patience, determination, purity of intention, humility, as well as discriminative wisdom, sensitivity to the realm of I am and the ability to meet oneself." ~ Anadi

http://anaditeaching.com/