A Path Of Liberation: Radiance Sutras Verse 33

During this session, we discuss Verse 33 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're reading from this book called the Radiant Sutras by Lauren Roche.

It is an interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

It's a beautiful ancient tantric text.

The goal of tantra is to really feel one with the universe.

It's really easy for us to not only feel separate from our divine selves,

That we kind of feel like what's going on in my physical life is sort of my whole world,

And we forget that we actually really are these radiant divine beings.

Like to the point that we don't even know exactly what we're talking about.

It just becomes words.

It's like,

Yes,

I am a spiritual being having a human experience.

I am a divine being.

I am light.

I am whatever.

Even saying something like I am a light worker,

Which has been a really common phrase since the 80s.

What do we mean by that?

What do we really mean?

Is it just a label that we like that makes us feel like we're doing good in the world by being positive?

What does it really mean?

So if you imagine that we really remember that we are infinite,

That we are more than our name or our gender or our age or our marital status or how much money we have in the bank or don't have in the bank,

That literally it's almost like this is a play that we're acting in.

And it's an important play.

Like that's the one thing that that distinguishes Tantra from a lot of other spiritual practices.

The question becomes how do we feel our infinite selves and our physical selves in almost equal measure?

It's not that the infinite and the galactic and the transcendental is more important than my relationship with my partner or that it's more important than my experience going for a hike later.

There's no distinguishing between them.

They're the same.

That's the point.

That's why we want to study Tantra.

That's why this book is so beautiful.

And we actually we want to read the sutras in it.

We want to read it and kind of allow them to percolate inside of us so that that separation between my physical life and some kind of transcendental version of myself that they actually become the same.

It's not like we're like looking at someone going ah well my physical self thinks this,

My transcendental self knows the truth and all things are trans.

Like we don't get preachy and weird because everything is the same.

That's the goal of Tantra which makes it quite a challenge sometimes because we can't study it academically.

We can't just learn it and go ah yes I am a student of this kind of Tantra and I get it.

Because the only way to really embody being fully transcendental and physical is actually to experience it.

And we can experience it and we all have experienced it or else we wouldn't be here.

And the thing is how do you know if you've experienced it?

Because these are moments in your life that you can't explain.

It's a moment and it might be longer than just a moment but it's a moment that kind of stops you in your tracks and you can't explain it but you're filled with some kind of joy,

Some kind of stillness and it feels wonderful.

So this is the goal and this is why the sutras are put out in kinds of like meditations because meditation isn't just something that we do to kind of torture our mind and make us stay still and make us try to focus on a dot or focus on a quiet mind.

Within the journey of meditation we can experience the blending of the transcendental and the physical and then we have these experiences but we can't explain them.

We just start living differently because it's almost like you've had a visceral experience of something and you just act differently.

It turns a dial in it turns a dial in the background that you can't even explain to anybody.

So that's the goal.

So what we're going to do is we're going to read and today we're reading verse 33 on page 68 and you don't have to have the book and even if you do have the book I would recommend setting it down for the first couple readings to just allow your soul to listen.

It's almost like you know what a vista pisces is?

A vista pisces is when you have a circle here and then you have another circle here but there's an overlap in between.

So you've got two circles and they've overlapped in the center and there's this opening.

If you imagine one of the circles is your cosmic infinite self and the other circle is your physical life,

Your ego,

Your definition of self,

Your life,

Your relationships,

What you eat,

Your physical world.

In our world and for the last you know thousand years or so those circles have almost been apart for a lot of people or maybe they're just touching.

But the goal is to slowly let them blend so there's no discernment between one or the other.

So if you imagine what we want to listen to if we're listening to this reading we want to listen with the overlap.

We want to listen with the part of us that is easily both physical and transcendental.

So that's why it's really interesting to close our eyes and almost listen with our soul and then we can read it later if you have the book.

So let's close our eyes.

Let's just breathe deeply.

Expanding the belly as we inhale.

Contracting as we exhale.

This whole universe is a path of liberation.

A vast arena for your endless play.

Playing let your awareness be everywhere at once.

Planets,

Stars,

Swirling galaxies,

Subatomic moats,

All are dancing within you.

Enter the rhythm.

Descend into the space between beats.

Dissolve into intimacy with the dancing one.

With the dancing one.

What does that mean for you?

You know what words stay with you and stay in your mind?

Are what emotions rise to dance more?

I concur.

Joy dancing with the universe.

Dancing,

Dissolving,

Deliciously dynamic my being.

I'm challenged to do a self-portrait with my eyes closed.

This helps.

A vast arena for endless play.

I frequently forget that we are here to experience life and have fun and be happy.

That struck me too when I read that.

It's like you think oh no no but my world exists in my apartment and maybe in that cafe and maybe at my daughter's house.

That's my world.

And to think that the whole world is a place of endless play.

Endless.

No limits.

Dive deep into the pool.

Go with the flow and follow the passions that the universe presents you.

This morning I had a deep yoga nidra and I did dissolve into oneness.

It's fun there.

Expansive.

Dancing your truth.

I'm going to read another translation of this and this comes out of this book called Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

The Ascent by Swami Satya Sagananda Saraswati.

So this is a literal translation.

By meditating on the entire form of the universe and the course of its development through time and space,

Gradually dissolve the gross into the subtle and the subtle into the state of being into the state of being beyond until the mind is finally dissolved into pure consciousness.

I felt like the cosmos was in my belly and a dance was going on in my belly.

That's awesome.

Deep transcendent loving.

What can I do for fun today?

How can I make every task more fun?

So this is really interesting.

What they're saying here,

First the literal translation,

By meditating on the entire form of the universe and the course of its development through time and space.

So what they're asking us to do is imagine the creation of the universe.

So let's say you're out walking or you even imagine our physical body,

But first let's imagine the universe.

Imagine that it began with energy.

Maybe a conscious energy that wanted to manifest something and in its oneness it just existed.

But then as it began to manifest into physical body,

As it began to manifest into physical form,

It started to have separation.

That you could say,

Oh,

That life energy,

That is now a leaf and that over there is a tree and that over there is a rabbit.

Even though every one of those,

The rabbit,

The tree,

The leaf,

Are all essentially made of the same thing.

Like even if you imagine on an atomic level,

When you get down to the core fundamental building blocks of each one of those,

The rabbit,

The leaf,

The tree,

They're all just made up of electrons and neutrons.

Not rabbit electrons or leaf electrons.

They're just made up of electrons.

They're made up of the exact same things that we're made of.

And then electrons are some kind of light charged energy.

So when you kind of begin with that and then you start looking around the world and seeing the creation and all the variegated forms of that light energy.

So that's the first step here.

The first step is by meditating on the entire form of the universe and the course of its development through time and space.

We begin with that knowledge.

Ah,

Okay,

We all are made of building blocks of light.

Okay,

And now I can see the world around me and I can understand it.

You could even imagine the evolution of earth.

You can picture all the different things being created over time and space,

Bringing us to the place where we are right now.

Now that we have that in our mind,

Gradually dissolve the gross into the subtle.

So the first step,

We're walking down the street and we see all the gross,

Gross meaning physical.

We see all the physical things around us and our,

Our dharana,

Our focus is to then look at them and imagine them in their atomic form.

If you see a tree,

Picture it as vibrating molecules.

Molecules.

If you're at work right now,

Look at your computer screen and realize that this computer is just molecules,

Atoms,

No different than the atoms that make up your garden.

So imagine that,

So,

Or imagine the chair you're sitting on,

That the chair you're sitting on is just molecules.

Right?

So that's the first step.

We want to go from the physical to the subtle,

The physical to the energetic.

It's easily within our comprehension to go to the atomic level because atoms are just energy.

And the next step,

The next step,

Gradually dissolve the gross into the subtle and the subtle into the state of being beyond.

So now you're looking at this tree and you can see it in its subtleness.

You can see it in its molecules.

You might even say,

Ah,

I see the molecules that create the bark,

I the molecules that create the sap,

The molecules that create the leaves.

I go down even more into the subtle and I realize that,

Wow,

The leaves,

The sap,

The bark,

The roots,

Everything are all just made of atoms,

Are made of electrons.

Wow.

Okay.

So now the whole tree is buzzing in subtle energy.

And now they're asking us,

Go beyond that,

Go even deeper,

Go into the subtle,

Go into the atom.

What does that feel like?

What is that reality?

And this is where we can't explain it.

We have to experience it.

So they say,

Dissolve the gross into the subtle and the subtle into the state of being beyond until the mind is finally dissolved into pure consciousness.

This is something that is most easily experienced in meditation because it feels like a very impractical thing to do walking around in your day.

There doesn't really seem to be a lot of value as we walk through our day imagining every little thing in our house being from something beyond the atomic realm.

But to sit in meditation and go there,

To sit in meditation and experience that,

That turns a dial inside of us.

It's like a transcendental dial that creates a visceral experience inside that just,

It's almost like that Vista Pisces we were talking about,

The subtle,

The subtle,

The subtle,

The subtle,

The Vista Pisces we were talking about,

The circles get a little bit more overlapping.

That's it.

Just the most subtle,

More energy is now inside the overlap.

In a previous class we talked about doing silent meditations.

This is something that you can do in a silent meditation,

To sit and visualize something in its physical form,

Its atomic form,

And beyond the atomic form.

And you just let yourself dive into it and let your psyche have an experience that your brain can't understand.

So we are going to do a meditation like that.

I want to look back at the Radiant Sutras version for a moment.

So the first line is,

This whole universe is a path of liberation.

So how is this a path of liberation?

How does seeing the world this way free us from something?

Or maybe the question is,

What are we being freed from?

Believing we're separate,

Believing we're small,

Believing we're limited.

And so then suddenly you can go out into the world,

Anywhere.

You could live in the country,

You could live in a mountain top,

You could live downtown Toronto.

And everywhere around you is just manifest stardust.

Everything,

Every glass building,

Every taxi cab,

Is just made of atoms.

And wherever atoms came from.

And so every day,

No matter where we go,

This whole universe is a path of liberation,

A vast arena for your endless play.

And to think of that,

That it's play.

It's not that we're walking around in shrouded monk robes,

Looking around the universe,

Seeing through what it is and all that.

It's not serious.

Like we get to play with this.

We get to try things,

We get to look at something and allow a lightness about it.

Because that's when it will show itself.

That's when something cool will transpire inside of us.

Then he says,

Playing,

Let your awareness be everywhere at once.

So imagine that.

You're walking down the street,

Or you're in your office,

Or you're in your bedroom right now.

And you instantly allow your awareness to be everywhere.

And again,

Every one of us can do that instantly.

Our psyche knows how to do that.

Okay,

I'm everywhere at once.

Now what?

Planets.

So if you close your eyes,

I'm everywhere at once.

Planets,

I can feel them.

Stars,

I can feel them.

Swirling galaxies,

Got it.

Subatomic motes,

All within us.

Subatomic particles.

All are dancing within you.

If you kind of close your eyes and you kind of are like,

Okay,

I'm everywhere at once.

Planets,

Trees,

Mountains,

People,

Cars,

Galaxies,

Stars.

Okay,

I've got it.

Like almost to the point of letting yourself just vibrate with it.

And then the next step,

He says,

Enter the rhythm.

Descend into the space between the beats.

You can feel the planets,

You can feel the stars,

You can feel the trees,

You can feel the wind blowing through the trees.

Dance in it,

But play in between them.

And then dissolve into intimacy with the dancing one.

And of course,

Dancing one is capitalized.

One of the other beautiful things about this,

One of the benefits,

Like why would we do something so ethereal?

Like to what end?

Like why is this helpful?

Why,

You know,

Is this just going to make me weirder or less able to be a part of society?

Because now I've,

I don't know,

Dove in between the subatomic particles to feel the pulse of creation.

I love this one line,

They said,

Through this,

We understand our connection to the universe by experiencing ourselves as an integral part of it.

Because if the trees and the mountains are all made up of this original energy of oneness,

So are we.

Like every person here is made up of the same stardust.

So if we go from that,

We watch the whole universe be created,

Including ourselves,

We also rose up out of that quantum field,

That oneness,

Whatever.

It means that we are a part of it all.

We are not separate.

And the belief or the feeling that we're separate causes us a lot of pain.

It's a very helpful focus.

It's a helpful meditation to create that deep connection within to everyone all around us.

I feel like I did that on my trip to the mountain.

I'm wanting so bad to return to that feeling.

It's making me feel like I'm now fly fishing.

I'm now a fly fishing line all pulled out of its spool.

I want to retain that feeling that I fear I'm being misperceived by my new friend.

Powerful energy exchange is so hard to find the subtle.

This way of being,

Thinking,

I find does separate you from others.

A lot of people never think beyond day to day.

They can't comprehend.

Imagine this is your perspective.

So when you sit,

And there's other people around who absolutely don't see the world like you do.

Our meditation is to perceive that person,

Perceive their atoms,

And then to perceive them beyond the atoms.

And some part of us that we don't understand realizes that we really are them.

Although they may perceive the world very differently than us,

We really are just we really are just like two different dog breeds.

But we're still all dogs.

Uni equals one,

Verse equals song.

These readings are a reminder of our mystery and connectedness.

I always think of a universe where everything is made out of Lego blocks.

We're all just stacked a little differently.

It's very interesting.

It's like just to really allow us to have our experience.

But we've been trained that it's about the other people.

They need to understand or they need to perceive us or they need it.

It's like,

It's never about them.

Ever.

All right,

We're going to do a meditation.

Actually,

If anyone has any thoughts or questions before we go into a meditation,

I would love for you to share them in the chat.

It's just good to be able to put out something that's rolling in your head before we become quiet.

It's incredibly frustrating to understand this at a visceral level,

To want to share it with everyone,

But they just don't get it.

Something happened on the weekend about this for me.

It's actually a huge lesson for me.

It's very current for me right now,

Is deeply understanding that I have no idea what anyone else is thinking.

No matter how close they are to me.

It's almost like the people in my inner circle.

I believe I do understand them in that they wouldn't surprise me.

If they made a choice,

It wouldn't surprise me.

I believe I understand them in general enough that their choices make sense to me.

But I have a lot of people in my world,

Acquaintances and students and people around me.

And it is one of my greatest disciplines to never assume that I understand where they're coming from.

Because I have lots of people around that I hang out with.

They're not that kind of inner circle feeling,

But lots of people that we go out with and we have fun with.

But lots of people that we go out with and we have fun with.

And they'll tell me stories and I'll look at them.

I always have this,

I thought I got you.

I don't say it,

But I tend to just sort of stare at them because I'm like,

It's so far out of left field.

And that's when you realize,

Wow,

I have projected my own feelings and beliefs onto you.

Almost to make myself comfortable in our friendship.

That,

Oh,

You think that?

Oh,

Then you must also think all these other things,

Because those are what I think.

And then all of a sudden they do something and they're like,

Oh,

Can you believe this?

And you're like,

No,

I can't believe that.

That somehow your mind got to that point to make that choice.

And it's not a judgment.

It's just a humility inside of me that everybody has their own thoughts and their own perspectives and their own journey and their own reason for being here.

So it's a real discipline for me to actually listen to what people say and not fill in the blanks.

Because if you think this,

Then,

Oh,

Obviously you must also think this.

It's like,

No,

It's not obvious.

And I think what's different about people in our inner circles,

It's almost like we know them at a soul level.

Our souls get each other,

Which is why there's a resonance that is easy.

It's not just based on stories.

And I guess for me too,

I think I've always felt like a little outside of the norm so that people aren't going to get it unless they join me in something cool.

When we imagine everything as atoms,

Then what do we think,

Feel about this regularly?

How to let go of everything else if we do?

See,

This is why I think that this particular dharana,

They call it,

This particular focus is really good to do in meditation.

Or if you're having sort of a meditative walk,

Or if you're sitting by the ocean and you're having sort of a meditation experience.

I believe it's important in that context.

And then it turns that little transcendental dial inside.

Then we return to the world.

But we're a little bit different.

That's just my interpretation is I wouldn't do this focus out in the world while I was trying to record my audiobook or something.

But I might do it ahead of time to sit for 10 minutes and have this focus to kind of get myself in a certain mojo.

Then go out into the world and do something interesting.

I really hear you about being taught about external thinking,

Of worrying about everyone else.

But it's more about how we are and act.

These differences to me are what makes dealing with others worthwhile.

A soup is only tasty if there is a wide diversity of flavors,

Some of which I could never have imagined in isolation.

Oh,

Interesting.

That happens to me so much more frequently now.

People say things that make no sense to me and I just stare at them.

Realizing that the behavior of others may not make sense was also very liberating to me.

Are we all musicians in the orchestra?

It reminds me of that old Quaker song.

We're all just players in the choir.

Some sing low,

Some sing higher.

I was a Quaker at one point in my life and we used to sing that song.

So I invite you to sit for a meditation or maybe if you're in bed or Australia or Japan and you would rather just stay in bed,

That's awesome too.

So let's sit nice and tall or if you're lying that's cool but I'm just going to lead it as if we're sitting upright.

So close your eyes.

Breathing through the nose,

Inhaling,

Expanding the belly,

Exhaling,

Contracting the belly.

Exhaling,

Contracting the belly.

If you can't breathe through your nose,

Just breathe through your mouth but maybe just make your mouth very small,

Almost like you're breathing through a straw.

And if you're sitting,

Pressing your sit bones down into the earth,

Letting your spine rise tall,

Letting the crown of your head rise to the ceiling,

Letting your chin tuck in a little bit to straighten the spine.

And I want you to imagine that you're walking down a country road.

You're walking nice and slowly.

Feeling the sun on your face,

Feeling a gentle breeze.

You're just enjoying the movement of your body through time and space.

And up ahead you see a beautiful tree.

And about 10 feet from the tree is a bench.

And as you walk up towards the tree,

You start to head towards the bench.

As you sit down on the bench,

It's the perfect height.

And your body completely rests with your feet on the earth and your back leaning against the back of the bench.

And you gaze upon the tree.

And as you sit down on the bench,

You're just sitting there,

Leaning against the back of the bench.

And you gaze upon the tree.

And you imagine the life of this tree.

You almost see the tree going back in time,

Getting smaller,

Maybe even going through the change of seasons,

As it begins the journey of reverting back to a seed.

And you watch this movie playing out in front of you.

As this majestic seed tree slowly ends up in the ground as a little seed.

And the seed is completely dormant,

Waiting for a rainfall,

Waiting for the season that it's going to germinate.

And then one day the rain comes,

The seed becomes wet.

And it starts to break open.

And somehow,

The atoms,

The molecules in that seed start to replicate.

Because it knows it's going to become a tree.

All the cells continue to replicate as the little seedling pokes its head out of the ground,

And it starts to grow.

And sitting on your magic bench,

You get to watch the tree grow from a seedling.

All of these magical molecules,

Magically life,

Creating more and more life as you're watching it.

And you start to imagine the life of this tree.

And you see the trunk start to reach up,

And the branches reaching up to the sky.

You see little buds appearing,

And leaves appearing.

And you keep watching this tree growing and growing and growing.

Until eventually,

It is the tree that you see before you.

And as you breathe deeply,

You start to gaze at the trunk of the tree,

The branches of the tree,

The leaves on the tree.

And as they are right now,

You imagine their molecules.

It's like the chemistry of the molecules.

It's like the chemistry sets we had in school.

All these little molecules held together by magnetic bonds.

And then we go deeper into the molecules.

And we see the atoms,

These tiny charged particles flying around.

And we see the atoms,

These tiny charged particles flying around in orbits,

Seemingly around nothingness.

Perhaps this nothingness is the energy that we come from.

The zen,

The oneness,

The quantum field.

And as these charged particles fly around in their little orbits,

Presenting as life,

We watch that for a while.

And then we dive into the darkness,

That the little lights are flying around.

That the little lights are flying around.

But of course,

It's not dark.

It's everything.

It's the whole universe that we are floating within.

Within this place,

We can feel the whole world.

We can feel the oceans,

The mountains,

The birds.

Because every one of them is made of the same nothingness.

We are in the same nothingness.

And we are in it.

Then we realize that our bodies as well are made of molecules,

Electrons,

And this beautiful,

Indescribable nothingness.

Indescribable nothingness.

And so our beings,

Our brains,

Our minds,

Dissolve and join the ocean of everything.

And we release the bonds.

We release anything holding us back.

And we breathe a little deeper.

Curious even about this breath.

What is it that I'm breathing?

Oxygen,

Carbon,

Prana.

Feeling the molecules of the air we're breathing.

Realizing that those molecules are made of atoms,

Electrons,

Charged particles,

Nothingness.

So we are breathing in the same energy that we're swimming in.

And I'm going to leave you for a minute or so to play in this space.

To visualize anything you desire to visualize.

And go from the physical to the subtle to beyond the subtle.

Allow your mind to go wherever it draws you,

Breathing deeply.

Siddhāya,

Yāvat-anti-manas-leyā.

This whole universe is a path of liberation,

A vast arena for your endless play.

Playing,

Let your awareness be everywhere at once.

Planets,

Stars,

Swirling galaxies,

Subatomic moats,

All are dancing within you.

Enter the rhythm,

Descend into the space between beats,

Dissolve into intimacy with the dancing one.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

Exhale.

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

These recordings are such rich blessings, thank you 🌸

So good as always, so many thanks Katrina for your work. 🦋

It’s never about the other, it’s always about me. And through connecting with the freedom of the universe, I am one with everything and everyone. Another amazing verse of wisdom. Thank you Katrina for sharing these ancient writing with us.