Please share your personal experience with a "Living Master" or Enlightened one

I am doing doctoral research in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, and could use your help.

I am looking for "personally-salient accounts of some richness and depth" on the experience of coming into contact (an in-the-flesh meeting) with one you take for being a Living Master, Enlightened, or highly awakened. It can be one-on-one or as part of a larger group.

The questions:

1. The Awakened One's name:
2. Whether they are living or deceased:
3. Last known location of this master:
4. Your personal experience of meeting this person, being as descriptive and detailed as possible:

You are welcome to post it as a response, or to send it to me as a private message. Thanks!

Livin-in-India, since I have an interest in spirituality, I am keen to know the Scientific (Humanistic Psychology) definition of an 'Enlightened / Awakened One'?

Until the International Standards Organisation take on this one, we will all continue to have our own definitions, inclusions and exclusions.

Hi
I am not sure if it is what you look for but I was at Throssel Abbey in the UK. I was as a guest to live with monks. Sometimes I felt peace to be with a monk, to eat with them or to cook with them. Of course it did not last for long time and it could be funny to tell that it was because there are "The Awakened One".
Take care
Ivana

Words are just symbols. At best they can point to reality, yet in no way are they reality. Therefore a definition does not interest me, nor possibly most in my field. The word Enlightened or Awakened One likely points to one who has transcended identification on some level. It likely points to one with a silent mind, one that is more integrated, and more rooted in their being than in their personality. However, again, the definition is not important here.

What interests me is find the "lived experience" of meeting one that you sense to be Enlightened or highly Realized/Awakened. This isn't a question about them, it is a question about you, about your experience. I am curious what do people's experiences have in common. The method of analysis that I am using is called Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.

So, if you or anyone you know has met someone who matches the above description, please share your stories with me.

Thanks!

Anyone else?

It is unlikely you will get many (useful) responses, because most people have not ever encountered a living master and at best the idea has become a mythical one. Then there are those of us who have encountered many people claimimg to be living masters, but have found nothing demonstrable about them to set them apart from anybody else. Still, there are others who claim that their master is enlightened(Osho, Sai Baba, Sri Sri Ravi shankar et al) but others have found them to be nothing more than charlatans, imposters etc

I was fortunate enough to encounter one man called Jivasu on my travels, who is the closest to what I would call a master. Yet, he is very much a dude. There is nothing exceptional or supernatural about him. All I can say is that he presented spiritual teachings to me in a way that made the most sense than others I have encountered. He was honest, calm, patient, intelligent, openminded, highly articulate, easy-going. Certainly, not qualities that are exclusive to enlightened people, but the best realization of these qualities I have come across so far.

In general people who I have encountered who seem to be enlightened all seem to exhibit these characteristics. The best way to describe them is that they are unhinged: they are not afraid to be themselves.

Plus those that have are unlikely to be talking about it on the internet.KK

plus, you are asking us to articulate a highly and deeply personal field of experience.

while i see the value of your work, and i like the awareness with which you address the subject, it will take a lot of 'building confidence' with your would-be volunteers, i reckon.

give it time and see what happens....

i remember coming across a doctoral study called 'darshan in a ballroom' or something akin to it, out of the university of chicago which you might find relevant although her approach and focus are more than different to yours i think.

I know musicians and dancers whose spiritual content and effect in their performance, and sometimes in their teaching too, is so great that maybe they might be known as living masters, but I doubt very much that they would want to be so called.

One of my "living masters" would (though I think she is no doubt as to who and what she is) be appalled to have those words applied to her, but if we can believe and accept that some are able to know about stuff with neither books nor travel, then maybe the following conversation can be accepted as genuine:

Student, "Is it true that there are hermits, living in places like the himalays; very spritual people?

Teacher: "Yes, it is true."

Student: "Could I find one?"

Teacher: "Even if you could, and even if you could overcome the language barrier, there would be no point. He would understand no more of your life than you could of his: there would be nothing you could talk about."

So, would they be living masters? That there is no point in even meeting?

Come to think of it, I think Robert Crumb came close to this in some of his cartoons, a few decades ago...

i wish i could post a open response here, but to be honest i don't wish to invite skeptical comments that few of the forum members have heaped on almost every seeker or finder here.

my experiences have not just been rich and in-depth but truly amazing and they continue to be.

i will send you a personal reply soon.

BTW, anyone who is interested is welcome to e-mail me

& livin - in - india, good luck with your doctoral research. Will be interested in reading it when its done.

From what I have read and heard even in this forum SriM may fit in to your idea. I have not been able to meet him; but from what I have read-including his autobiography- he is an enlightened person without making much fuss about himself and without doing any marketing of himself. I understand that he has many followers and they are not also marketing agents it seems. Any way hope you can find out.

If you read Sri M's autobiography, you would have more than enough reason to be incredulous. He makes Yogananda's autobiography of a yogi look mundane. He has encountered every master, personally met Jesus, Guru Nanak, Mohammed, Krishna and Buddha, initiated and taught by the Ascended masters Mahavatar Babaji and co, and even met shapeshifting neon Naga beings flying to this planet in their spaceships! Ironically, when he sees the extraterrestrial naga being, he remarks to his etheric master, 'When I write my book, how am I going to explain this to people, they will not believe me' Really? Is that what somebody would really say if they encountered something like that, calculate in their mind how people would perceive it in their future book? The ironic thing is all the great masters that Sri M meets are dead at the time he has published his autobiography. So nobody can test his story.

Sunny D, I felt the same as you say when I read his AB and I sent a mail to him telling that I find it very difficult to believe what he wrote.He wrote me back that he was glad to see that I was honest about this. I had also asked him whether I could meet him and he had said that I could; but I could not go to the place where he was at the given time as I had viral fever and could not travel.No reasonably thinking man can believe what he says about many things and I am at a loss as what to think of him. He surely does not seem to be a poser and we cannot undertand how the human mind works sometimes. Swami Rama also has kept me wondering as have many Sanyasins about whom I have heard and read and I find solace in what Hamlet told that there are more things here than are dreamt of in our philosophy and I remain a doubting Tom reg. many things though I am not a believer in God in the normal sense of the term.May be I have to wait to be enlightened.

I am very open to everything Sri M says happened to him. Even shapeshifting Naga beings from out of space(In fact an idea that is very popular with conspiracy theorists like David Ike) I can even accept that it is possible to float of into a plane of reality and meet Ascended masters, Jesus et al. I am not going to shut out any possibility because this universe is a mysterious and vast place, where possibilities abound. However, the way in which Sri M presents this seems very dubious to me. So he meets Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, Buddha all at once? He is initiated into every system of knowledge(Sri Vidya, Kashmir Shivaism, Vedanta, Sufism, Gnosticism, Theosophy etc) I think there is more reason to believe that Sri M is a fraud than not. His story is far too convenient, to be real. So unless more evidence is forthcoming I see no reason to entertain him.