Enter The Great Self: Radiance Sutras Verses 144, 145, 146

During this session, we discuss Verses 144, 145 & 146 of the Insight Verses from the 'Radiance Sutras', a translation of the Vijanana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Loche. A meditation follows our discussion.

These sessions are recorded every week, and all are welcome.

Transcript

So today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras and this is an interpretation of the Vijnana Bharava Tantra.

Beautiful tantric text and this text is based in a tantric philosophy that says we are all divine and every bit of energy that flows through our system is the same as the essence of everything in the universe that there is this divine spark this magical quality this divinity of Shiva,

Shakti,

Brahman,

God and this all in one dimension or in one way of looking at it is a oneness and it is like that now but here in maya here in duality we get to experience this oneness in form and we are that form and every single person here is an incarnation of that divinity in physical bodies.

So the goal of this tantric book is to help us remember that divinity and then integrate it into every aspect of our life so it isn't about transcending this physical form it's understanding that we're supposed to be here we're supposed to be here in physical form we're supposed to be here in all the challenges and gifts and wonder and everything that it is being human living in duality living in whatever the third dimension however you want to see it this is the point and it's this vehicle of living in the world like this that we get to experience divinity let's say you go to school and you learn all these amazing things maybe you learn about engineering or maybe you learn about philosophy or maybe you learn 12 languages there's really it's really not interesting on a wise level it might be interesting as intellectual gymnastics while you're in school and I dig school but until you actually take it out on the road you don't know anything yet it's kind of like that great saying you know before I had children I had six theories about raising children and now I have six children and no theories we can learn all kinds of things but until we go out on the road then suddenly all those things we know form like a charm bracelet because every experience is so juicy and we can use the information that we know out in the world and then suddenly every experience we have is so interesting so you know the chakras if you don't know the chakras they're just energy centers in the body and in the heart center here right in the place where if I said to you who are you you would point at yourself and always in the exact same place and you'd say I am Katrina you wouldn't go one inch in any other direction you would point directly at your heart chakra and say I am Katrina and to really be intrigued by the fact that we always capitalize I why?

Why do we capitalize I?

Because it's divine that when I say I am Katrina it's like the divine is embodying the person we call Katrina right now I am Katrina I love chocolate it's the soul speaking and so now and what's interesting is in some traditions this is what they call Atman an Atman it's like the personal version of God and this is not official tantric teaching that I'm going to say right now this is just my own perception but I always see Atman as this like alien or something sitting right here in and of course the alien looks like the alien from the Flintstones and he's sitting there and as I go through my life the great gazoo is observing everything and kind of like wow that's interesting and to feel the heart and to even feel the pain of life and to feel the joy of life and to feel the excitement of life that's what the I is here for it's to experience the whole gamut it's not to experience some pure perfection of existence that never wavers it's here to be human and so this is sort of the goal of Tantra is to fully embrace this life that you were given exactly as you are exactly as your life has been up until this point and will be in the future that it's all here for this incredible experience of the I so imagine that imagine cultivating your awareness of the I the divine self within and that's the point of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is how do we bring this amazing experience of life and merge it with the divine that we are and live like that all the time it's an incredible journey and what I love so much about Tantra is that it isn't about transcending who we are it's about diving into who we are it's almost like the more we fully embrace who we are our truth,

Our gifts,

Our challenges,

Whatever the clearer we see life the clearer we see everything that excites me to no end and it isn't that we don't heal we don't spend time doing things like that because of course what is healing?

Healing is very often getting rid of the things that stand in the way of us experiencing our I it stands in the way like sometimes we've say had trauma and things like that and they've actually twisted us that we actually can't even access who we really are because there's some weird block in us so the healing journey is getting rid of all those blocks so we can experience who we really are as a physical form and then also in divinity that's what this book is all about also the book is separated into three parts the first set of verses is called the banter verses which lays the foundation for the whole book this is a conversation between Bhairava and Devi or between God and the human or between Bhairava and the goddess however you want to feel this duality of the divine and the physical and of course the physical being Devi,

Ourselves,

Whoever is saying what is this world all about?

Like I don't get it I don't understand I mean how does this all work?

How do I remember who you are and how do I like I don't understand then the next 112 verses are individual contemplations,

Meditations,

Ideas that help attune us with that divine I and how we attune that with our actual self as well and then the later verses are called the insight verses and these are the ones that we're focusing on now if you're new and you'd love to go back in and experience some of those other ones we have a playlist here on insight timer called the radiant sutras and there's over a hundred recordings there so you can always go in there and find one that's interesting you can just pop in and go wow that one interests me or you can start at the beginning and sort of flow forward and it's a lovely lovely fun thing to do and it's okay if you're if you're new because you know we've all had lots of great experiences that we can draw on so today we are actually doing three verses at once and we're doing 144,

145 and 146 part of the reason we're doing three verses is because in our friend Lauren Roche's book here he groups them in three and it's actually a nice grouping that's just how we're going to do it yes we're all here in human form to experience it all the ups the downs all around it's amazing so what we're going to do is we're going to read this we're going to contemplate it we're going to have a conversation and then we'll see if we have time for a meditation at the end or we'll just we'll just chit chat but I will reread it at the end for sure if you're following along in the book it's page 157 but even if you're following along in the book let's all close our eyes and let's just breathe deeply and just release any thoughts you may have or any distractions from where you are right now here we go the lord who shines in us all replied oh goddess the practices you are speaking of I'm going to stop for a minute what we're referring to is the previous verse so I'm actually going to read the previous verse because then this one makes sense all right here we go the goddess then asks if this is the nature of the universal self then who is to be worshipped who do I invoke and who do I meditate upon to whom do I offer oblations to whom do I sacrifice if everything is divine and consciousness merges with that divine essence then what happens to the distinction between worshipper and worshipped so we discussed that one last week but here we are this week the lord who shines in us all replied oh goddess the practices you are speaking of refer only to the externals when you enter into the great self all prayers go on inside you spontaneously without ceasing in reality all songs of gratitude and ecstatic love making are resonating in every particle of creation at every moment when you are established in this recitation you are listening and you hear them plunging without reservation into the ocean of bliss is meditation no image no thoughts no prop concentrating on the image of god with a body eyes and mouth is not meditation I'm going to read that again I might read it three times because there's a lot there and I'm only reading the parts that we're looking at today the lord who shines in us all replied oh goddess the practices you are speaking of refer only to the externals when you enter into the great self all prayers go on inside you spontaneously without ceasing in reality all songs of gratitude and ecstatic love making are resonating in every particle of creation at every moment when you are established in this recitation you are listening and you hear them plunging without reservation into the ocean of bliss is meditation no image no thoughts no props concentrating on the image of god with a body eyes and mouth is not meditation so what comes to you when you hear that is there any part of that that sort of clicked something or touched you or are there certain words that are rolling through your mind I know it's a lot and we will unpack it touched every fiber of my being no thinking yes a lot so when are we meditating it feels like our whole being being involved phew it's a lot so there's three big aspects of this that all work together that we're going to look at so this is a translation of the first one the 144 because there's kind of three aspects of this so Devi has asked to whom should the invocations be made to whom should oblations be offered during the sacrifice and how should these be done Sri Bhairava says oh gazelle eyed one these acts are the gross forms of worship so the first part of this is all about like we're very often taught that if you want to pray or have ritual or do all these things then you sort of have this object of ritual and you do the thing and you sacrifice to this thing and you know that kind of thing and they say and again this is just according to these teachings you know it doesn't it doesn't negate if you love another kind of practice that's totally cool it's always important to do the practice that calls to you right now but what they're saying is when we do these practices these rituals like that it can very often help us with our gross form and of course gross in this way doesn't mean ew it means physical gross versus ethereal gross versus air or something right it's let's say you begin meditating because you're struggling with anxiety or maybe you're with insomnia or maybe there's something going on and you're just like i just really need to learn how to meditate so you choose maybe something like candle gazing and so you sit and you gaze at the candle you have an object that you're using so this form of meditation it's it's lovely and it helps us with the issues in our gross form it helps us with our anxiety it helps us with our insomnia it helps us with slowing down our monkey mind so that we can have clarity and so this is really important and so in that way when we meditate like that it isn't that they're wrong it just means that these are meditations pranayamas that we use because there's some issue in our gross form versus our divine self and that's when we use it the challenge of course is that if we think that's the end of meditation that's as far as we go if we stay with candle gazing if we stay with whatever meditation practice you like it helps us in this form and then it ends it doesn't allow any further expansion that's what that one means i'll read you a slightly different version of that and again these are these are literal translations versus what we were reading oh gazelle eyed one this practice is exterior and pertains only to gross forms that's the first part of this teaching it's just understanding that it's wonderful to do all the practices we find because we are on a healing journey of this form and that's awesome the second verse that we're looking at i'm going to read you again a literal translation of it contemplate on the thought of being in the supreme consciousness again and again this is also japa that self sound which is spontaneously produced is verily the sound of mantra japa is done like this so what they're talking about again as the a lot of traditions use mantra repetition and very often this is linked with what they call japa so this is when you sit and you have the prayer beads you know you have a mala with 108 beads and you recite a mantra and every time you recite the mantra you move one bead along and you just keep doing it until you get to the end of the 108 beads and this is very often what we're taught to be japa meditation and in many many traditions that is japa meditation but again if we look at the previous verse what these teachings are saying is that's awesome and that will do wonderful things to your physical mind to your physical constitution your nervous system and all that kind of thing but just know that you can go further japa in its core teaching is meditation or repetition of your consciousness of your awareness of that I consciousness on the essence of being on bhairava on the nature of god whatever this is for you and not a religious god of like the eternal essence of life now imagine that imagine all day long repeating some way of remembering the essence of life and it could be anything it could be an idea I read this book it was a book on taoism by chung I never had to say his name changzi and the phrase was wander with the ancestor of the 10 000 things I don't know what it is about this saying but it touches something deep in my heart like it just it reminds me of something that I don't even understand what he's saying but it expands me into this huge space when I think of it and so it's an interesting thing to think like what is an idea that you would love to remember all day long I would actually love to know in the chat if you were to have a japa if you were to have something you repeated a phrase that you repeated all day long what would it be and again it's an idea that expands you and it's an idea that reminds you of something bigger but I'd love to know what japa rings for you all is love I am love let go never doubt in the dark what you saw in the light oh I am grounded I truly like the wanderer with the ancestors of the 10 000 things I am divine I am like imagine taking a meditation time and saying okay I'm going to take 10 minutes and I'm going to sit you set a nice timer from here on insight timer and with every breath you think I am divine I am divine I am grounded I am grounded like this is a japa and it's an idea it's it's a little bit different right than using something to meditate and but it can be anything let's say you want to expand your relationship maybe you have a beautiful intimate relationship and you would love to deepen your connection with your beloved so maybe your japa is remembering them all day long thinking of them whatever whatever that is but in the end the real goal is to simply remember this I inside to deeply remember that you are divine but and it's beyond the language even right so you can sort of see the progression that oh we we start with sort of using an object to help us then we shift into an idea because the idea is even more expansive it's almost like when I think of you know wander with the ancestors of the 10 000 things it expands into places I don't know yet consciously and then the next step is now remember the essence of life and in some ways the way we do that my teacher Jim he called them reference points that there are times in your life that time stood still and you knew everything it was like a moment that everything made sense and it can be a happy moment it can be a sad moment it can be you know I remember for me there were moments when my children were young and I would go up at the end of the night to kind of check on them and I'd stand outside their door and my whole being would just I don't know it just became so quiet I and I talk about these in my books but I remember one time I was at my uncle's funeral and he was an incredibly loved man and he was a choir master in his church he taught music in this in the high school and over the years he just amassed so many incredible friends in all the choirs that he had taught and at his funeral they all created a mass choir at the front of the church and they sang songs that he had written in like four and five part harmony all bawling their eyes out at the front of this church I will never forget sitting there for as long as I live I even have memories of you know sitting with my mom in the hospital when she was dying and nothing else mattered in that moment you know there's a buddhist mantra that goes present moment only moment and it's like the experiences in your life where present moment only moment was easy because there was only this moment in these moments we touch reality we touch the essence of life so now imagine that your japa is remembering these moments or one moment but whatever that moment is when you bring that feeling that I feeling in it does something so now imagine you even have a meditation practice and you sit and all you do is repeat the memory a powerful memory over and over and over again imagine what that would do in your consciousness and then what happens is this essence of divinity starts to permeate your mind beyond all of this you can't explain it I can't educate myself to have this kind of calm inside you now have to have experiences where this feeling permeates the cells of your being permeates your mind and then what happens slowly is the dramas of life don't have anywhere to land you hear them and you watch them and you're like they don't own us anymore and it doesn't matter who it is that would normally have triggered us into an emotional spin the more our cells are permeated with our own experiences this isn't something that a guru gave you this is from your life experience you know and it's interesting I read a book once called tantra quest tantric quest or something it's the story of a man that goes off on a journey to find this tantrica and when he finally you know gets to her and finds her and it's quite an ordeal and everything she looks at him and says when was your first moment of awakening and he says I don't know I don't know if I've had one and she said there's no way you would have done everything you've done to try to find me if something hadn't opened you up if you hadn't had an experience that created a what does Leonard Cohen say the the break is where the sun gets in or the crack is where the sun gets in so just imagine you know that if all of us here on insight timer the very fact that you're on insight timer there's been one or two cracks or a hundred and it's interesting to kind of sit and quietly contemplate the moments that actually the world stood still and this becomes the ultimate meditation this becomes the ultimate absorption in the eight limbs of yoga they talk about dharana being that focus that we talked about earlier then dhyana is this absorption state you've done the focus and then you fall into absorption and this is what he's saying that what this is what they're saying in the book that when you fall into this pure absorption this is meditation it's not dependent on anything no props no pictures no idols no practices no repetitions no nothing you are just now fully absorbed in the essence of god of consciousness of the world and this is essentially the goal of all the practices in this book is slowly releasing all of our attachments to all these little props and hooks and tricks and everything and if we could keep turning the dials and turning the rubik's cube eventually we end up clear and we can actually just sit in that deep space and feel this presence it's interesting because it sort of it circles back to the idea that shiva shakti is the oneness god whatever you understand this to be in duality there is shiva and shakti and shiva this is not gendered at all shiva is the masculine energy of consciousness energy all those kind of things shakti is the manifest being everything but they're the same but shiva is just the energetic version of it and shakti is the manifest version of this essence so imagine here you are and you are this pure shakti you are just pure manifestation and imagine being able to clear yourself so much that you feel this pure shiva energy flowing through you it's like total bliss so let's close our eyes for a moment and i'm gonna reread our sutra so just closing our eyes let's just breathe deeply and remembering that whatever practices you love are perfect for your journey and that these sutras are introducing potentials opportunities and expanding the container of what's possible but it's still important to be exactly where you are right now so japa the lord who shines in us all replied oh goddess the practices you are speaking of refer only to the externals when you enter into the great self all prayers go on inside of you spontaneously without ceasing in reality all songs of gratitude and ecstatic love making are resonating in every particle of creation at every moment when you are established in this recitation you are listening and you hear them plunging without reservation into the ocean of bliss is meditation no image no thoughts no prop concentrating on the image of god with a body eyes and a mouth is not meditation thank you guys so much for being here we'll see you later