A Ceremony of Delight: Radiance Sutras Verse 34

During this session, we discuss Verse 34 of the Yukti Verses from the 'Radiance Sutras, a translation of the Vijanana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Loche. A meditation follows our discussion. These sessions are recorded on a weekly basis and all are welcome.

Transcript

So today we are reading out of the Radiant Sutras,

This beautiful book by Lauren Roche,

And it is a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

This ancient tantric text that comes out of the lineage of Kashmir Shaivism,

And it is a text that deeply touches me.

I have no doubt all of us here have perhaps many lifetimes,

However you understand it,

Studying things like Tantra and spiritual studies,

Which I believe is why when we read a certain text or we hear a certain teaching,

It really resonates.

It's almost like it opens up a memory,

It opens up something we already deeply know,

And the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is something like that for me.

That it's like I hear it,

It's like this little place in my heart and it says,

Remember this?

And all of a sudden,

Ten years or something comes out and I remember something,

And so this is a very special book for me.

And so what we're gonna do if you're new,

Is we're going to read a passage and then we're going to discuss it,

And then we're going to do a meditation.

So the idea here is that one of the foundations of Tantra,

And this is really important,

Like this is,

Like without this none of it makes sense,

Somewhere along the line we separated spirituality with our physical lives.

We separated,

That God became out there or enlightenment was out there,

It was some external possibility that I had to work towards,

You know,

It would be like I completed the marathon or something,

And enlightenment became something that was only something for gurus or something,

And our physical life was over here.

And Tantra asks us to go back,

To go back in time,

To go back millennia,

To remember that there is no separation between the divine and the physical.

That even right now,

As we're sitting or as we're laying,

Listening to this or doing it,

We are fully embodied divine molecules right now,

With no need to progress along the path,

No need to heal our traumas,

No need to do all that.

Even within our difficult life perhaps,

We are still divine molecules right now.

We may be divine molecules having a particular experience here on earth,

But even in this moment we are already enlightened,

We are already the entire universe in this physical form.

And this is really,

Really important because it helps us access our true selves,

Not our higher selves versus our lower self,

But our true self,

Which is all of that right now.

And that's what we are.

So when we listen to the Sutra,

To really remember that right now you are filled with divine molecules of energy.

That's all you are.

Whether you're five feet tall or six foot eight,

Or doesn't matter what our physicality is,

How old we are in earth years,

Like whatever,

We are divine energy.

And in this incarnation,

We are listening to the Sutra to remember who we are,

Or to give words to who we are.

Let's close our eyes.

Let's just breathe deeply.

Really imagine what this breath is.

We are literally breathing spirit.

Our pranic body is moving.

We are inhaling and releasing.

The air that I am breathing was exhaled in ecstasy by an ancient sun.

This earth I am standing on was born of cosmic fire.

The blood flowing through my veins is as salty as the primordial ocean.

The space permeating my body is infinite as the space all around.

Above,

Below,

To all sides,

Within,

The elements of the universe are engaged in their ceremony of delight.

This is my religion.

The attraction between suns is the same as the love pulsating in my heart.

Where does that bring you?

What feelings does that bring up in you?

Or what thoughts roll through your mind?

Expansive.

We are the universe embracing itself.

Deep connection to the universe and all there is.

I am all things and infinity,

Infinity and love.

This is my religion,

All that is,

The earth and universe and all beings.

Sun like God exhaling and giving us birth.

It makes me think my pulse ripples out to everything around me.

Infinity all around me is within me and I am made up of the same thing as this beautiful universe.

The divine connection is everywhere.

The sun is why and how we are here.

So there's two aspects that I want to talk about about this sutra.

And the first one I'm actually going to read out of this book,

Which is called the Sri Vijnana by Ravatantra,

The Ascent.

And it's by Swami Satya Sangananda Saraswati.

So this is the literal translation.

By this method,

One should meditate on all sides or aspect of the universe up to the Shiva tattva,

Which is the quintessence of all.

In this way,

The experience of the supreme reality arises.

Sorry,

There's another one here.

This is a book called the Vijnana by Rava by Jai Deva Singh.

If one meditates on the Shiva tattva,

Which is the quintessence of this entire universe on all sides to its last limits by the technique of sadadva,

He will experience great awakening.

And what's interesting about these translations,

Which obviously are harder to embrace,

Which is why I love Lauren Roche's interpretation of it,

Because it allows us to bring it into our real life.

But one thing that was really interesting is they talked about this Shiva tattva.

So first of all,

What it is,

Is for the last few weeks,

We've read the previous sutras that helped us go back in time to feel the original essence of the universe.

We felt it in the chakras,

We felt it within us,

We felt us.

And this is what Shaiva tattva is.

If you were to take us all the way back in time to when we were created,

Then we go just before that.

That is the essence of Shiva or Shaiva.

This is where we truly come from.

It's almost like the thought that creates,

That manifests.

And this is made up of two things,

Prakasha and vimarsha.

And these are new terms for me.

I mean,

I've heard of them,

But nothing.

It's funny that you can study something,

But if you don't have proper context,

It doesn't stick in your mind.

But I really loved what I found about these.

So this is what Shaiva tattva is.

Prakasha,

They call it the luminous and undifferentiated consciousness,

Or the primordial light beyond all manifestation.

So if you imagine prakasha,

This is the light that is sort of beyond all of us,

But it's not transcendent,

Because it's also within every single thing that is manifest.

And I'm sure we could interpret,

It actually has an S with that accent,

That's how they show you in Sanskrit,

That it's a sh sound.

So if you were to imagine whatever that is for you,

The light within everything that's created,

But you can even imagine it on an atomic level,

That our atoms are essentially light molecules.

That's all they are.

They're charged particles,

They're charged light.

So we are made up of light.

So then the second part,

This vimarsha,

Is the reflective awareness that happens within each individual person.

So not only are we light,

The Shaiva tattva is the light within us and the reflective awareness that we are alive.

So think of that in your own life.

What defines our life?

There's the light within us,

Or the light that has manifested this incarnation,

This body,

This mind.

But what makes us conscious is that we are aware that we are alive.

That we are alive.

We are aware of our life.

Similar to what we were talking about before we began the class officially,

That my mind is what creates my experience of the world.

If I walk down the street and there's a parade,

And I may hold an opinion that I don't like parades,

That opinion will play through my mind and I will have an experience of not enjoying what's going on around me.

But if I can bring in this power of vimarsha and understand and be reflective of how my thoughts are actually creating my experience of this moment,

I can say,

Wow,

Isn't that interesting that for some reason I don't like parades.

Hmm.

Is this the experience I want to have today?

Is this how I want to spend the next couple hours?

I want to enjoy this.

So what other thoughts can I have?

I can smell the beautiful trees I'm walking by.

I can enjoy the happiness in the people around me.

I can be thankful that I'm walking down the street that my legs work.

I can be thankful that I'm breathing and alive today and I don't have a migraine.

I can be thankful for the wonderful books that I'm going to be reading in the cafe that I'm heading towards.

If those are my thoughts,

Those are my reality.

Imagine walking around with this constant meditation that I am literally light energy.

I am divine light particles manifest on this beautiful earth and I have reflective awareness to be a conscious of what I'm creating here.

I'm not a victim of whatever.

I have this magical consciousness inside of what's going on around me and my part in it.

That's like a miracle.

That's an incredible life.

So that's a very practical application of this Shaiva Tatva.

But if you allow yourself to go into a more expansive space with it,

So you imagine these light particles that we're made of.

This consciousness that we're made of and we travel all the way back in time to when the earth was created or when human life or animal life was created and that consciousness and that light that is at the foundation of all of that is that is manifest.

And of course we can't actually imagine it.

We can't put words to what we're trying to explain but some part of us,

Some I feel it right now in my spine almost around the area below.

If you took to went to my heart chakra and went straight back to my spine and almost down a little there's some part of me that expands and can feel what we're talking about.

It can feel the Shaiva Tatva.

It knows this primordial awareness and light that created all of us.

But it's beyond words.

It's something we can only meditate on.

It's through releasing our mind,

Releasing the constructs within our brain so that we can feel it.

Mika says the attraction between suns.

I wonder why plural.

My sense of it is first of all I don't understand reality personally.

Yesterday we were out walking and William asked me something about do I believe that do I believe that there is more to life than our experiences.

You know is there a purpose?

Is there a higher thing?

And it's a very interesting thing to sit with that and and honestly say I don't know what life's all about.

I really don't.

I have theories but I don't really know.

I know that joy allows me to enjoy life and I believe that when I'm very attached to what I sense as a calling or a mission I feel very alive.

Connecting with other people makes me feel very alive.

And so I also by the same token don't understand the universe or the galaxies.

I don't know if we're actually all just one being and our brains have created this galaxy idea that there are other solar systems and there are suns with planets surrounding them and you know this is the theory.

This is our scientific astronomical theory.

But at the same time if you've ever watched the movie Contact with Jodie Foster and one of the final scenes is she goes on this little spaceship that they created and she travels through space and time having conversations with someone who appeared as her father.

But in our physical reality she never moved.

So I don't really understand.

I'm not sure if the world is as we think it is.

Whether there really are galaxies out there or not.

Maybe but I don't know.

But if we went with the galaxy theory that there is an infinite galaxy out there and there are suns,

Multiple suns with planets and beings circling those suns and that somehow our galaxy that we live in,

Our solar system,

Our universe,

That we live in,

Our solar system is somehow intrinsic to our survival or our creation which is why astrology is so interesting based in our solar system.

Maybe there are other suns out there that we are attracted to and that attraction creates the magnetism in the entire galaxy and maybe those other suns or other beings or and maybe each person that we see right now.

What if every person that we see on earth is actually every galaxy in the universe and that's why we have attraction and stuff like who knows?

I have no idea.

I'm just gonna back up through the chat for a second.

Not only is blood mostly water but the watery portion of blood,

The plasma,

Has a concentration of salt and other ions that is remarkably similar to sea water.

I think this is why live foods have such a powerful effect on our bodies.

Totally.

I think about that a lot these days.

Sirius is said to be our spiritual sun.

Yes,

There are more suns and more universes out there than what we thought.

When you read the sutra,

It took my breath away.

Now I realize it was a breathless sensation in the space between what you were just describing.

This sutra describes what I feel when doing the Mangalacharan meditation.

I bow to the wisdom of the ages.

This always brings up extreme emotion to me as if I'm connecting with the divine through time.

What an imagination the ancients had to think about what's in the universe.

Thinking about the two supermassive black holes spiraling towards each other,

Creating the hum of the gravitational waves science just discovered and how when they merge it could mean total destruction of all that we know.

But in that ultimate creation each of us is a galaxy.

I love that perspective.

Growing up I noticed I have the big dipper on my cheek and freckles.

I always felt it was my of the stamp of where I was from.

Felt silly then but now I wonder.

I want to read one more thing to you guys and this will sort of be the foundation of our meditation.

In Loren's book,

The Radiant Sutras,

Which I highly recommend having.

I am not an affiliate for it.

I just love this book and I think it's a beautiful beautiful book.

In the back of the book he has a meditation or a contemplation to think about for every sutra.

It's not always what we discuss because oftentimes what we do is we'll look at the actual literal translation of it as well.

But sometimes we often will look at what he shares with us.

The word that he gave us to look at is Samanta.

It means having the ends together,

Contiguous,

Neighboring,

Adjacent,

Being on every side,

Whole,

Entire,

On all sides.

What I love about this is one of the paragraphs here I'm going to read to you.

You may already sense infinity all around you and be slightly terrified by the vastness.

This terror is natural and is one of the doorways into ecstasy.

You may be able to tolerate it for only a few breaths at a time.

It is a very odd sensation to be standing in your garden or on a mountain and experience the earth beneath you as translucent,

A little grain of sand floating in a boundless ocean.

We just had an earthquake.

The earth speaks.

Feeling terror right now.

Wow,

That's amazing.

I believe this terror that we feel,

Like why do we make ourselves smaller?

Why do we prefer our limited human life?

Why do we prefer the limited perspective of our brains and what our parents think and what the world teaches us?

Why do we prefer the little boxes that we live in than expanding into infinity?

Why do we prefer it?

Infinity.

Why do we prefer it?

Because it's terrifying.

It's terrifying.

But when you imagine that terror of the universe is natural,

It means we're actually embracing everything.

Like sometimes some Buddhists will contemplate death.

They'll wake up in the morning and they contemplate dying,

Which also feels very terrifying.

I don't want to think about my own death.

But when you actually wake up in the morning and you think about your own death,

You've died.

They've had the funeral,

The celebration of life,

And life has gone on.

Now what are you going to do?

What are you going to do with your life?

What are you going to do with your day?

How are you going to spend it?

Are you going to complain about something?

Are you going to engage in the drama that's going on in the family?

Are you going to worry about money?

How are you going to spend these next 18 waking hours?

It's sobering in the right way.

It makes us experience life.

It makes us live.

It makes us be thankful for every single breath.

Every breath.

Like every breath is a gift because the minute this breathing stops,

This experience is over.

So every time we breathe is a gift.

It's so powerful.

It's so powerful.

So now imagine we sit and we experience the entire universe and we allow the terror to flow through us because it's natural.

And it's okay to be uncomfortable with it because what does that discomfort do?

It causes us to live.

It causes us to say,

Oh my god,

How do I really want to live my life?

What do I really want to do today?

Holy crap,

Like what is this world?

That's what it does.

We live all these weird ways of trying to avoid the terror,

Trying to avoid thinking about our mortality.

But what if instead we embrace it and then dive into our day,

Make today epic,

Whatever epic feels like to you.

That every breath is so full of power.

And in this way,

Embracing terror is a door to ecstasy.

These words help me embrace and hold the sacred terror,

Hold sacred the terror I've spent my life in.

I've had so much.

It's driving me into a new experience of life.

I contemplate on my death often.

I even bought a wooden urn.

That's awesome.

I have anticipatory grief.

I go back and forth between the love for death and fear of death,

Particularly my mom's.

We touch ecstasy,

Embody it and live in the power,

But then we run and hide from the feeling and experience we've been striving for our entire life.

Totally.

I love my mom so much.

Then I heard a clip of KRS-One saying that death is a gift for the living,

That when a loved one passes,

We now have a connection to the other side to guide us.

An ancestor.

It was kind of deep.

Wendell Berry quote,

Come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief is the forethought that gnaws at us.

All right,

Let's do a meditation.

Let's close our eyes.

Let's breathe deeply.

Relax the shoulders down your back.

Expand the belly as you inhale.

Contracting as we exhale.

And coming into the space behind your heart center.

Behind your heart center.

Just down a little bit.

Come into this Hridaya,

The spiritual heart center.

Who you really are.

Your infinite self.

Feel yourself breathing,

Feel the body breathing all around you.

But in this spiritual heart within you,

It's still.

This is our consciousness,

Our awareness of the world around us,

Our awareness of who we are.

And then imagine yourself sitting,

Meditating in that heart center.

And you are truly one with the universe.

You are one with God.

One with divine consciousness.

You are one with God.

One with divine consciousness.

And in that space,

You can see all around you.

Without moving,

Without opening your eyes,

You're able to see in all directions.

When you look forward,

You see the landscape,

You see the ocean,

You see the mountains,

You see beyond the earth,

Into the galaxy,

Into space,

Into other galaxies.

And you expand this vision in all directions,

Naturally.

Out the side,

Out the back,

Out the other side.

And as you sit in your center,

You feel the vastness of the universe.

And you breathe deeply.

And as you breathe,

That entire universe comes into you.

And releases back out into form.

And it's easy to feel this.

It's easy to feel infinite.

The infinity flows through you like a tea bag.

It's completely effortless.

As you sit in the center of your heart center spaceship.

And feeling one with all things in all directions.

Lauren gives us a couple beautiful mantras for this.

So to repeat this within our minds.

In all directions,

Relatedness.

In all directions,

Intimacy.

In all directions,

Belonging.

The endless divine mystery is extending around me in all directions.

On every side of me is infinite God consciousness.

In all directions,

Relatedness.

In all directions,

Intimacy.

In all directions,

Belonging.

Feeling your entire body breathing.

Just take a few breaths on your own.

Perhaps using different words that really feel right to you.

As your consciousness embraces all that is in the world.

All that is in the world.

All that is in the world.

All that is in the universe.

The air I am breathing was exhaled in ecstasy by an ancient sun.

The earth I am standing on was born of cosmic fire.

The blood flowing through my veins is as salty as the primordial ocean.

The space permeating my body is infinite as the space all around.

Above,

Below,

To all sides and within.

The elements of the universe are engaged in their ceremony of delight.

This is my religion.

This is my religion.

The attraction between suns is the same as the love pulsating in my heart.

Let's just take a few breaths with our eyes closed.

Feeling whatever is within us.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

Exhale.

Let's gently come back together.

If you would like to continue meditating,

Awesome.

Thank you so much for joining me.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Thank you so much for joining me.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

Beautiful, thank you very much. I feel more connected to the beauty within and all around me. 💕

Thank you so kindly❣️♡~°•★
Lovely❣️♡°•☆✨️🙏🏼°•●○°•

I’m so glad you are sharing these sutras here on IT. Every one of them is a gem. I appreciate your interpretations and insight into each reading. 🙏🏻

Precious pearls. If only I could bathe in the vastness of consciousnees and deep knowing of its presence.

This is my religion! Like you said, I used to think that spirituality was outside of me. But it really is inside and all around me. Connecting with infinity is becoming more and more natural as I experience less and less separation through meditation and consciousness. From fear to bliss. Just like you said, I really don’t know what is out there, but just as I understand that I am made of exactly the same particules the earth is made of, I can’t help but extrapolate that the earth is made of the same particules as the universe is made of. That space at the heart center level near the back by the spine is the space I have been softening for years now through my practices. What a delight to be able to sit there and experience infinity with bliss as opposed to fear! I’m having so much fun following you with your series of sutras tantras. Each one is like a jewel star lighting up my heart.