Energy Process Work and Robert Noha Sensei
As mentioned in the Introduction, Remember Who You Are came out of experiences doing Energy Process Work with Robert Noha Sensei. According to Noha Sensei:
Energy Process Work is the creation of Robert Nadeau. It is based on over 40 years of practice and teaching. He is a direct student of Aikido Founder Morihei Uyeshiba. Robert Nadeau teaches throughout the United States, Israel, Europe and Russia. His work is highlighted in numerous books and magazine articles including Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom and George Leonard’s The Ultimate Athlete.
Energy Process Work opens the system to allow us to experience, acknowledge and integrate all aspects of ourselves. It also includes practices that bring to conscious experience our deeper and higher dimensions. It is compatible with other practices and does not require knowledge of specialized movements. This makes it accessible to new students.
Energy Process Work promotes spiritual growth and improved functioning in our daily lives. It also helps to make these two important aspects of life more mutually supportive.
Noha Sensei, my friend Bob, was the midwife of the remarkable experiences described in Remember Who You Are. Bob is an ordinary looking guy, about six feet tall with graying hair. He works for an insurance company. But if you were to look at him closely, you might notice some hints of the unusual. There’s a sense of ease about him, like nothing could rattle him. His eyes hold a deep, quiet merriment.
Bob’s wrists are the size of some folks’ ankles, perhaps from practicing Aikido for almost 40 years (he has a 5th degree black belt, and has trained with the greatest Aikidoists on the planet). He also is proficient in T’ai Chi, having trained with Professor Cheng Man-Ching and his senior students.
One of Bob’s Aikido students, no mean martial artist himself, has compared Bob to an Ent, Tolkien’s ancient, giant tree shepherd. This same student is a triathlete, and is able to bench press almost 300 pounds. He says that doing Aikido with Bob is like wrestling with an oak tree. The student adds with awe that despite his own great strength, Bob can at any point in an Aikido technique (such as a throw) effortlessly rewind him to the place an error was made and play the technique forward from there. Notwithstanding his power, Bob has a very light touch.
Yet for Bob Noha Sensei, physical prowess is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to his mastery in the physical realm, he is at ease in what we might call the realm of the transpersonal. He can, for example, perceive and comment on the internal state of someone with whom he is working. “What’s going on in your lower back?” he may ask. You might be unaware of anything going on, but when you cast your attention to that area, you find something, and at the moment you find it he’ll say, “Yes, that, right there. What does that feel like?” He claims that the students do all of the work, but if pressed he will acknowledge that now and then he may perceive in the student’s energetic system something that is waiting to happen and unfold, and give it a little nudge—which doesn’t require physical contact.
Bob Noha Sensei will use the student’s perceptions as a gateway to aspects of being and nonbeing that are astonishing in their scope, from the microcosm to the macrocosm, touching now and then on the eternal, infinite stillness that permeates and supports everything, all the while helping the student to accept them all as inputs into his system. Bob gives each input its turn, welcomes it, helps it grow or shrink to its natural size, and ultimately to integrate into the ever-evolving being of the student. Time and again, we see that it all is us.
A well-read former philosophy teacher, Sunday school instructor and military policeman, Bob draws on numerous sources to make a point with great good humor. He might mention the wonderful unkinking freedom the genie in the cartoon Aladdin felt when released from the lamp, then allude to Shakespeare, the Upanishads, the Bible and Captain Marvel. At the same time, he’s a serious and accomplished martial artist who will explain the lethal application of an innocent-looking T’ai Chi posture.
In practice, Energy Process Work sessions with Bob Noha Sensei often are like being a kid, meeting your best friend after school, and going out into the woods to play. Bob knows the woods well, and introduces you to the swimming hole, shows you where the fox has his den, stops by the blueberry bush for a snack, and knows the best place to lie in a meadow and watch the clouds amble by overhead. You might get caught in a thunderstorm or be surprised by a bear, but that’s part of the fun and you know that you’ll get home safe.
To give you more of the flavor of the practice, here are two descriptions of Energy Process Work sessions with Noha Sensei, focused on suffering:
Bob and I talked for a bit about the integration of my spiritual and physical aspects, my mother’s death and its impact on my development and world view, and sexuality. When he said, “What do you want to work on?” this was the subject. Before we began the clearing process (an easy way to let the components of one’s system take a break, leaving simple awareness with “no places to go, no promises to keep”), he commented on the amount of tangible “stuff” there was. I don’t recall that he had ever commented like that before. As he spoke, I too became aware of the “stuff.” It was almost like standing in chest-high undergrowth.
The clearing went very quickly. We simply expressed the desire to clear, and with a few simple physical movements that can, literally, be learned in 10 seconds, we released the various aspects of our systems to rest awhile in whatever is Club Med for them. My sense of myself was as a somewhat radiant white cylinder which transformed into a blank white field, again somewhat radiant. Bob asked how I had cleared so quickly. I said that I was just returning to my default state.
Post clearing, I visited the realm of the core of the earth. As in the past, I felt nurturance through my pores, a sense of being like a sponge soaking up sustenance from my surroundings which were red and charged with volcanic power (without being hot). I became this realm. Unlike past experiences in and with this realm, the feeding through the pores didn’t last long. I was already “tanked up” so just received a topping off. There was a sense of the “proprietor” of the realm giving me a friendly pat on the shoulder as I left. I felt welcome there, a “regular” at this place. Bob made a funny observation about the alien bar in Star Wars.
I cleared some more. Then, as I opened myself to a sense of space, I at first sensed a cathedral-like structure, initially behind me. It was vast, cool, serene, safe, and (as Bob observed) artistic in its implementation. The artistry of its construction (if that is the right word) made it not cavelike.
I became the cathedral, and as the cathedral explored my attributes and discussed them with Bob. Among these, I felt myself as a refuge, a haven, for others to enter. Bob mentioned that this was a theme we had encountered in other sessions, and I agreed. Bob pointed out that the cathedral had a kind of energy, a charge, and that helped me to experience myself as a vast, safe space in which others could abide, and in which I as the cathedral could offer my energy, my self, to imbue those abiding in me with my peaceful being.
Then something entered me as the cathedral from my left front. Initially it presented as a kind of angry, blood-drenched semi-human form, with a Tasmanian devil energetic flurry aspect. With some trepidation I became this, and looked down and saw that my feet left bloody tracks as I walked. I felt juicy and very raw. Later in the experience I realized that this form had been squished; I looked and felt like I had been stepped on by a giant. As this, I was the embodiment of human suffering, of the agony of the flesh, the horror of incarnation.
As I received and more fully became this raw, bleeding being, I sensed another aspect of myself that was pure, unsullied, undamaged. The sense of self, the “I am,” was the same at all times—while getting fed in and being the red realm, as the cathedral, as the maimed one, as the pure core.
As Bob and I interacted, the juxtaposition of the maimed one and his pristine core was very important. There was a sense of this being the essence of Christ. Bob suggested healing for the maimed one, but that was rejected. He (the aggregate of external maimed one and internal pristine core—actually, the subjective experience was “I” not “He”) insisted on keeping the woundedness, which was at one level both a bridge to the suffering of the world and, if fully experienced, was the suffering of the world. Spirit wanted the connection to the material realm; it sought to fully embrace it, to be it.
Subsequently, I pondered this in the context of various religions, and appreciated Christianity for offering the embrace of suffering rather than escape from it as some other religions appear to offer. In terms of the relationship between transcendence and embodiment, which Bob and I have often discussed, and the role of the material realm (of which the human body is what we might call a holographic facet), the willingness to accept suffering, to embrace and be it, seems to me to be essential to the integration of the spiritual and material realms.
There was also the element of juiciness of the maimed one; I/he could be partaken of and provide some kind of sustenance. “Take, eat…this is my flesh…”
Bob and I as the maimed one discussed various things; there was a palpable and potent energy in the air. Bob suggested that I as the maimed one could return to the cathedral now and then for replenishment. The maimed one said that the energy of the cathedral, perhaps the cathedral itself, was an aspect of him, manifesting what we might call a less-refined energetic presence.
I/He said that people need to accept the suffering of the world, and acknowledged that having that suffering wrapped around the pure core, as it were—a package—would make that easier. Subsequently, I was reminded of Mother Teresa’s prayer that begins, “Dear Jesus, you who suffer…” She saw Christ, that pure core, in the people she served.
Bob then said, “Is there anything else?” In response to this, a smiling, distinctly feminine presence, appeared in front of me and merged with me—kind of put me on like a wet suit, but at a cellular level.
I felt a vibrant, gentle blessing at a cellular level percolate through my physical form, like microscopic carbonation. I identified her as Mary, although she might also be known as the Shekhina, Tara or Quan Yin depending on one’s background. She was there to comfort us. Thinking about this, I realized that in addition to the suffering, which must be received, there also is this personalized, loving motherly comfort offered to us.
Asked if she had anything to say, she told Bob that she was very pleased with him as her child. His “thank you” must have seemed to her a little modest and somehow not fully receptive, so she made clear that she wanted him to fully receive her blessing. There was then a humble, loving resonance between Mary and Bob, which was how the blessing was provided.
Mary had a message for me, too. “Don’t give yourself away, even to Me,” she said.
We were done. “I felt like I’ve been through a wringer,” I told Bob. “You did all the hard work,” he replied, as he often does when I thank him. But I know that we did it together.
✻
Bob and I met for energy work this morning. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, and talked for a while about a number of things, including the Vedantic “That Thou Art” and what I am experiencing in that regard, the different “maps” I am working with (and the idea of locating on the meditation “map” the experiences in Energy Process Work, thus bridging these two complementary endeavors), returning to the green realm, and suffering.
I chose to work on suffering today, in follow up of the very interesting work the last time. I also said that I wanted to work with Christ. Bob chatted a bit about what Christ represents, and said that he was a good choice for exploring suffering.
Parenthetically, I’ll note that between the last diary entry and this one, I did some energy work on my own in which I felt that something pretty big was going to come through. After clearing, I did the double spirals and these quickly resolved into a huge vortex that sucked the material and immaterial realms (two realms total) into my chest. After that there was just me, whoever or whatever that is, just me as limitless space, not even darkness, just awareness that if it could talk could only say, “I am.”
Back to today. During the clearing, I felt big chunks of the back of my head fall away. I made a joke about being a blockhead, to which Bob replied “Blockhead no more.” He reminded me to let the lower back, heels and lower legs clear. The lower back, particularly, had had a burning sensation in it from a lot of sitting, and the clearing enabled that to ease a lot.
After the clearing, I experienced myself as a nougat-like substance. I could feel my viscous, creamy, swirled being. I realized that I was tasty, nourishing. It felt like a not too advanced form of being. Bob observed that it didn’t appear to have much relationship to suffering. He may have asked a question or two, but somehow triggered a self-examination to determine what, if anything I as Mr. Nougat had to do with suffering.
As I experienced my rich, nourishing being (“indescribably delicious!” I joked, recalling the old candy ad), I felt sadness realizing that there are beings who don’t partake of me. I said I was sad for them. Bob asked a question or two, and a wave of agony came in on the right half of my body. It felt somewhat like an electric shock, like one would feel immediately after having one’s skin ripped away over a large portion of the body. I experienced this in a way that was real, and as I write this, I feel it again. Yet it is not painful, or I should say the pain is very distant, like this is now happening to a part of me that is very far away.
I interpreted this as the pain God has because there are beings who turn away from Him, who don’t partake of Him. He suffers greatly from His incompleteness, which is the result of those who turn away. The suffering I experienced was mostly from the incompleteness itself, not on behalf of the beings who don’t partake. “How can they do this to me?” I said. I commented that this is a peculiar way paralleled Jesus’ statement, “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” There was a sense of whomever I was at the time becoming more aware of the situation, the plight, in and through my experience.
The torn part of me became recognizable as the maimed one from the prior week. Yet this time he was not a separate entity, but rather was my right side. To be him was to feel like the aftermath of a traffic accident, really shredded meat. It was pretty bad, and is pretty bad as I write this, but somehow tolerable, attenuated as mentioned above.
My left side was comforting my right side. As my left side I spoke of “him” (that being my right side) and my left arm cradled my right side and I (as my left side) held him (from my left side’s perspective; I was simultaneously my left side and him, the maimed one who was the right side). So somehow in my one physical body I was two beings. From one perspective, it was like holding a friend weeping with inconsolable agony, while being in a way that friend. But the split wasn’t equal. “I” was more the left, consoling, side than “I” was the right side. As I write this on my right side I feel grief and wailing, and like crying on my right side. My left side is more or less “normal.”
Bob and I were running out of time, and I remarked on the splendid oddity of doing this very interesting work, then having to hasten off to a business meeting. Bob acknowledged that, and wanted if not to complete the whole cycle, then at least to see if there was anything more that needed to happen right then.
Bob observed that Mary had been an important presence last time, and asked if there was anything else, anyone else, who wanted to speak. When he said this, I felt the presence of Mary again, this time above me. She was gentle, sweet and kept a respectful distance. She knew the process needed to be given its head, and did not interfere or console. Interestingly, both times Mary had the feeling of being someone or something from outside the process, not involved in it in the same way as the other entities. She had the feeling of coming from a deeper order of being somehow.
✻
“As a sensei, I have a sense of obligation to the students, a need to help them interact better with their families and co-workers. The aim is to instill a feeling they can make more of their life than it currently is,” Bob says. I deeply appreciate Bob’s friendship, and the humility with which he has walked with me and helped me to open more and more. You can learn more about Bob’s teaching at www.aikidopetaluma.com.
Paramahamsa Hariharananda and Kriya Yoga
Paramahamsa Hariharananda was a monk, a Swami, an ancient yogi with unfathomable spiritual power. He initiated me into Kriya Yoga, which simultaneously develops body, mind and Soul. He was very kind to me and to my family, and gave us many blessings. He died at 95 years of age, after a life devoted to serving God. I use the past tense advisedly, because I and others have experienced him after his physical death.
Paramahamsa Hariharananda, although he left his body during the time covered in Remember Who You Are, participated in and supported the Energy Work Process even after his physical death. Sometimes he simply was a watchful incorporeal presence. Once he joined us with such power and presence that Noha Sensei, who is not easily impressed, said “Whoa! This guy’s got some juice!” Once Paramahamsa Hariharananda took over the Energy Process Work session, transported it to what I will call the engine room of the Cosmos, became me, and charged himself as me with blasts of lightning, “giving my stillness dynamo hum.” Finally he revealed himself as myself and more…
In Paramahamsa Hariharananda the little, pinched and strained self was perfected, love has been fulfilled in faithfulness, and the mortal has been united with the immortal God. He was saturated in holiness, from his decades of meditation and immersion in God. Just as you can smell wonderful fresh bread cooking when you enter a home where baking has been done, the holiness in his vicinity (not just in his presence) was palpable. It was, in a sense, mouth watering, just like the fresh bread; it awakened a hunger in you. To mix metaphors, sometimes being with him was soothing, almost as if you were sweaty, sunburned and sore, and slowly slipped into warm, amber-colored water. Ahhh! It felt good.
His physical appearance was deceptive. His body had been well-used over the decades, and during most of the time I knew him he had trouble walking. He lay on his bed most of the time, absorbed in God. He kept a toehold in that old body, swimming in the Divine, coming back when needed to guide and bless us. Paramahamsa Hariharananda looked feeble, but was not.
Twice, he grabbed me and pulled me with irresistible strength. Once, he did this to show me a particularly lovely flower. Another time, it was to move me closer to him. Both times, I might as well have been tied to a moving car. His strength was far beyond what his little body could have generated.
Paramahamsa Hariharananda could be fierce. For those who wanted to open themselves fully to the Divine, he would help. And since what keeps us from the Divine often is parts of ourselves that we cherish or at least comfortably indulge, his rooting out of these things, his placing us in situations in which we were scoured cleaner, was excruciating.
He could be extraordinarily tender and loving, too. Like an adoring mother, he has caressed my face, and pulled my head to rest on his chest as he held it in blessing. His ferocity was an aspect of his love: sometimes we need a chisel applied to us, sometimes soothing balm. He gave and gives us what we need to open more fully.
In life, Paramahamsa Hariharananda was a master of and taught Kriya Yoga. “Kriya Yoga” means, roughly, a path for realizing union with God through experiencing that God, the Soul of the universe who is present in all things (not excepting ourselves), is the sole active agent, the sole doer. As a corollary, he taught that “Work is Worship.”
In other words everything that we do or think can be done with awareness of God as the One who is doing the work. We (what we think of as ourselves) are, in a sense, along for the ride—and that, too, is incorrect because there really is no “we” separate from God. This concept can be hard to accept, but if God is omniscient and omnipresent, does he not pervade us too? Doesn’t he breath in our breath, see through our eyes, love and suffer with and through us? As the Sufis say, God is closer than our jugular vein.
A fully developed human being, he taught, is “God in human being, human being in God.” Paramahamsa Hariharananda gave thousands of hours of lectures to tens of thousands of people. Here are a few drops of nectar from him:
Through sight you see the seer. It is all coming from Soul. Who is seeing but God? You practice it, when you will walk, how God is walking. You are not realizing this; apply it in your daily life. When you walk, feel that God is walking. When you stand, feel the divine vibration of God’s presence within you.
Watch how the power of God is moving in you. You are forgetting, and deviated from truth. If you remember that you and He are one, and always have been, you are the immortal Soul. He is doing work through you. He loves you.
The power of God is within you. Your blood is the blood of Jesus, your face is the face of Jesus, and the power of Jesus is within you. Remain in God, then all the time you will perceive the presence of Jesus within you. This is religion. (In other words, this is both the path and the result of following the path).
Walk and feel that He is walking, eat and feel that He is eating, laugh and feel that He is laughing. If you forget, it is your death. You are advancing toward immortality. If death dies, then who will die? Practice it. Who can say who will die earlier, you or I? So just complete your course. Mistake is not mistake, it is for correction. We learn from mistakes. God is giving you time to change your mistakes. Constant alertness, constant perception of Self. This is Kriya Yoga. Seer, sight, seen are one. Feel that at any moment you can die.
It is said that someone like Paramahamsa Hariharananda can grant any wish that is in accord with our destiny, and as I was walking to have a moment with him toward the end of my visit to his ashram, I thought about Ansari of Heart, an early Sufi master. On the one hand, Ansari surrendered to God: “I know not what to ask of thee, thou art the knower…give that which thou deemest best.” Yet he also demanded the gift of God’s fullness: “…intoxicate me with the wine of thy love, place the chains of thy slavery on my feet; make me empty of all but thy love…” I concluded that I would ask Paramahamsa Hariharananda, at least mentally, for the gift of God-intoxication.
With this in mind as I walked toward his home to say goodbye, I found myself pausing, looking at a garden outside his house and feeling insights unfolding. In his vicinity, this kind of thing happens: he seems to communicate in a nonverbal way through what happens in the physical world.
I stood looking at the garden, and reflected that the entire multi-acre ashram had been planned by Paramahamsa Hariharananda. He gave ample evidence of knowing every single one of the hundreds or even thousands of plants and trees that he had directed be placed in definite locations, and which he visited regularly, pushed in his wheelchair by strong assistants. “I know what I’m doing,” is the message I received in a nonverbal way from this master gardener as I looked at the lush garden, bursting from the earth, trembling in the breeze. And I was given to know that the master gardener knew what he was doing with me, as well as with the garden. He prunes me, weeds me, waters and feeds me; he knows what my potential is and ensures that I get what I need, when I need it.
As I continued walking toward his home, I let fall my wish for God intoxication. Enough to offer my love to him, and let what was to come, come in its own time. He was lying on his bed, very still. I touched my head tenderly to his sock-clad feet, and stood up, my hands clasped in front of my chest.
“Come here,” he said. I carefully walked over and knelt beside his bed. He looked at me from his pillow and smiled. He reached up with his hand and made a small gesture to come near. I did so, and he stroked the side of my face. Then he pulled my head to his chest and held it. “I am very happy that you have come. It is very cold in your place. But it is very warm here.”
Held close by this ancient yogi, a being from another culture, almost a century old, a being who roams in realms as yet unknown to me, I rang with gratitude like a gong struck by love, and the words “Thank you, thank you, thank you” reverberated within me. He had the wisdom, and the wish, to love me in a way that I could understand and respond to. It was a deeply human intimacy, God-in-Hariharananda holding me close to his heart, caressing me, blessing me, inviting me to return.
He gently released me, and I stood up, looking at him. Another small gesture of his hand meant it was time for me to go. I walked to the bedroom door, then turned back to look at him. His eyes were open as he lay on his side, facing me. His eyes were unseeing as he swam again in the Infinite, his body waiting for the next time it was needed.
✻
If you saw The Matrix, you may remember how at the end Neo leapt into Smith and burst forth in him as light, shattering Smith and becoming him. While doing the Energy Process Work, I realized that Paramahamsa Hariharananda has permeated me and in some way become me. The process has been thankfully slower and somewhat less traumatic than the demolition of Smith. Rather than presenting this in Remember Who You Are, I’ll offer the after-the-fact realization here:
I am
The old monk, Hariharananda
Not other than our lineageNot other than the fingerof the One Personnot other than the One PersonHimself
Paramahamsa Hariharananda’s successor, Paramahamsa Prajnanananda, continues his work. You can learn more about them and Kriya Yoga at www.kriya.org.