Class 7: Experiencing Bliss

Introduction

In my Seven Masters One Path text I talk about several contemporary spiritual teachers that I was lucky enough to know and study with at one level or another. In this seventh expansion we focus on the teachings of a man called Krishnamaurti who I knew since I was a very little boy in Ojai California, where Krishnamurti spent half of each year.

I also mention in my Seven Masters book another spiritual teacher from my youth, who influenced me perhaps more than even Krishnamurti, and I'd like to say a bit about this man also here.

This man was my grandfather, also named John Selby. He was born in the 1890's in early-times California, sixty miles north of Los Angeles - and so was a contemporary of Krishnamurti. In fact they lives justd across the Ojai valley from each other, yet never met.

Gramps was a cattle rancher of the old order. He quit high school early, because all he wanted to do was get way out from civilization and make a living off the land. As a youngster he started spending weeks at a time supposedly all alone, way up in the virgin oak forests, chopping wood that he hauled by wagon two days down to Ventura to sell.

Just before he died of natural causes at 86, I spent a couple weeks with Gramps - and for the first time, he talked about how there were still Chumash Indians living up Coyote Creek where he camped and chopped wood. And for several years he was more with these Indians than with his own kind.

• For the rest of his life, Gramps was noticeably different than his peers - he spent most of his time in nature, he was quiet, centered, and clearly packed a powerful spiritual charge and bright glow - but he never preaching his personal path, he taught by example..

I was lucky enough to spend most of my childhood with Gramps in the ranch near Ojai. And I assumed that the way Gramps was was simply the way to be - in harmony rather than in conflict, centered in his heart rather than his mind, and almost never judgmental.

Later in his life, people began to talk about Gramps as the rancher guru, as the valley's spiritual gem - a CBS crew even came up and shot a TV special about him in the early 60's. But through it all, he just grinned at the city folk and their antics, and went on with his quiet life, very much a cowboy Zen master but always simple and humble.

Around the time when Gramps was first going into nature alone (with the Indians) in Ojai, a teenager named Krishnamurti was brought to the other side of the Ojai valley by a group of people who had very seriously identified him as the new Christ. He lived in a small spiritual community in Ojai during the winter months, and then in the summers was taken to his other home in England.

I first heard Krishnamurti's voice in my ear when I was three or four, when my aunt started taking me to listen to him talking in the oak groves of Ojai. He spoke so powerfully and clearly, that I absorbed what he ws saying as naturally being just how life was.

1. Only later as a teen ager did I start to realize that what Krishnamurti was saying was considered totally radical, even though it seemed so simple and logical.

In essence Krishnamurti was expressing in words what my grandfather was expressing in his life - that we need to live honestly, accept reality rather than fool ourselves with grand ideas, love one another with trust and honor, and constantly open to new experience rather than settling into religious beliefs and cultural trances.

Throughout my life I continued to return to the Ojai valley to spend time with Gramps, and also now and then to have individual talks with Krishnamurti. These two men seemed like human anchors for me, living and speaking the truth and inspiring me to do likewise.

Krishnamurti's books and audio CDs continue to speak eloquently on their own. However, I'm pleased at the finale of this particular book to mention my own experience of how this man contributed to our understanding of meditation.

Instead he insisted on presenting the psychological and spiritual parameters of the meditation experience in such a way that we must discover for ourselves how our own minds enter into a meditative state.

As a result of his focus on the simplicity of spiritual awakening, as well as the discipline required to attain that simplicity, some people found the man a bit frustrating, intellectually obtuse, even downright stubborn at times. He upset many religious folk with his insistence on putting aside all beliefs in order to encounter the true divinity in life. But he stuck to his guns for a lifetime, teaching what he knew to be the truth to those who had ears to hear - and in the end there were a great many who flocked to his gatherings in America, Europe and India.

• Throughout, he staunchly refused to allow his followers to turn him into a hip guru or spiritual master, even though he talked from the natural posture of an awakened human being.

On his deathbed at the ripe age of 92 he said his memorable words:

Nonetheless, many of us still hold our memory of this man in the highest spiritual regard. Along with my grandfather, he certainly lives in my heart as a spiritual presence beyond all verbal teachings... Let's look a bit deeper into who this man was.