Our Inner Reality: Radiance Sutras Verse 66

During this session, we discuss Verse 66 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 from the Radiant Sutras,

A beautiful book by Lauren Roche,

An interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

The foundation of tantra is all about merging the divine and the physical and every sutra helps us bring ourselves just a little bit closer to that.

How do we do that?

In many ways is realizing that there is actually no difference between the divine and the physical.

It's like,

I was sitting on one of my friend's deck yesterday and we were all like hanging out in the sunshine,

You know,

And somebody asked me,

He said,

Well,

What exactly is tantra?

Which is always a funny question to be asked in the middle of sort of a kind of party afternoon situation.

But it's also always interesting how we answer this question,

Because it's often dependent on who we're talking to.

And what came out of me to him was,

There was a time where we all realized,

Or we always knew that we were fully divine and fully physical.

Like it was never separated.

And in many indigenous cultures,

That's just always the way there's no,

There's no God out there,

Or divine up there.

It was always just known that that was us.

We are the incarnate divine.

Like it wasn't,

There's no separation.

So in many ways,

The journey of tantra is going back to that space where there is no separation.

I mean,

It's,

It's almost insane to think about them separately.

So if you were to imagine right now,

That this body you live in,

You live in is divine energy,

That looks physical,

Or appearing physical,

Or that our thoughts are the thoughts of the universe flowing through us.

It's just a very different thing.

Like we don't,

We wouldn't necessarily personify it so much.

We wouldn't take it so personally,

Because we would really realize that we are just energy flowing.

We're just experiences,

And we just get to ride those wonderful waves.

So today we are going to read a sutra.

We're going to read number 66.

Then we're going to have a discussion,

And then we're going to have a meditation.

So welcome to anyone who's new.

And thanks for coming back for everyone who's been here,

Perhaps for years,

As we journey through this tantric path.

All right,

Let's close our eyes.

Let's just breathe deeply.

And imagine every cell of your body glistening,

Sparkling,

Your whole being alive.

Whenever any of the senses is impaired,

It becomes a gateway to infinity.

Whether by deprivation,

Injury,

Or age,

Obstruction of the senses invites awareness of soul.

The mind can no longer take the world for granted.

Attention spirals inward and touches the glistening emptiness,

The reality behind appearance.

What comes up for you when you hear that?

What comes up for you when you hear that?

Or what words flow through your mind or feelings?

Gateway to infinity.

Glistening awareness.

I smiled huge when you read it.

Feeling into what obstruction of senses feels like.

Our world is an illusion.

Fearlessness.

Wow,

Makes me think of how I feel so much more awareness in Kundalini more awareness in Kundalini because the eyes are closed.

Or maybe that's awareness.

That awareness is coming from my age.

It's what we cannot see or understand in youth.

I was meant to hear that today.

I've been having some eye issues and I'm really feeling this sutra.

Makes me look at my stuffy nose differently.

It's interesting because so,

Laura,

What you said that it's what we cannot see or understand in youth.

Part of what this sutra asks us to think about is one of the yogic,

One of the parts of the Eight Limbs of Yoga is Pratyahara.

Pratyahara often means withdrawal of senses.

And it's a much bigger thing than that.

But this is what they're talking about.

If you want to fully concentrate on the truth,

If you want to fully concentrate on the nature of God,

On the nature of consciousness,

On the nature of being human,

It's very hard to concentrate when our attention is so outward.

So when you even think of the word concentrate,

What does it mean to concentrate?

You take everything and you make it into a singular thing,

A singular focus or your concentrated attention.

Even orange juice concentrate,

You take the bulk of it and you create a concentrate.

It's all very,

Very tight and clear.

If you want to concentrate,

You can't be all of a sudden seeing a dog go by and hearing this over there and wondering,

Oh,

I want to taste this thing because that'll be delicious.

And oh,

What's that smell?

It's all very distracting and it disperses our concentration.

And the reason we want to concentrate in life or in yoga or whatever,

For example,

If you close your eyes and you allow what you would normally imagine the energy that you normally use to receive information from the world visually,

You normally look like right now,

I can see my desk.

I can see the sky outside.

I can see the house.

I can see the trees.

I can see my plants.

I can see this is what I can see right now around me.

So there's a lot of visual stimulation,

Right?

There's a lot there.

I close my eyes and imagine all of that energy is now looking within.

So all my energy is now concentrated,

Looking within.

When I am looking out the window and I see the house across the street,

I am the subject who is seeing this object.

I see the house across the street.

I see the tree out that window.

I am talking to you right now.

This is the subject object part of duality.

This is the definition of duality.

As soon as we close our eyes,

There is no subject and object anymore.

You might create a fantasy in your mind that you're playing out or something,

Your thoughts,

But thoughts are just reruns maybe or just flowing around.

They're not real.

If you actually close your eyes and look within,

It's dark and there's no more subject and object.

And therefore,

There's no duality.

And therefore,

We get to experience oneness.

We transcend duality and experience the true self,

The Atman,

The God self,

Whatever you understand that to be.

So what's intriguing about what Laura said about about what we can or cannot see in the in youth.

Imagine that you're born onto this planet and you're meant to experience it so you see everything.

You imagine a one-year-old child sitting on the grass.

They see everything.

They see the grass.

They see the bugs.

They see the ball.

They see the dog.

They see everything.

They feel everything.

They put stuff in their mouth.

They are literally experiencing this world.

And then we start going through all these changes and we suddenly go through puberty.

And now we have all these other feelings that we are now projecting out into the world and wanting other tastes and sounds and pleasures and all these kind of things.

It's almost our natural progression being here on earth because we are here to experience this earth.

This is the definition of maya.

This is the definition of duality.

Getting to experience this amazing world with all of its sounds and tastes and sights and smells and feelings.

This is why we're here.

It's like how maya was created.

And then we have these epic senses to experience it.

So when we're young that's what we're doing,

Right?

We're just like hungry for all the possible sights and sounds that we can experience.

And then after a time we maybe mature into a different realization that we've you know we've eaten chocolate and tiramisu and we've had a lot of sexual intimacy and we've seen mountains and we've seen all these lovely things.

And all of a sudden that might not be as interesting.

Still juicy and awesome.

But we also may think and there's more.

I could go within.

I can also go within and I realize wow there's something rich and interesting inside of me as well.

Because we have experienced so much of the senses out there.

At the same time if we ever want to become more youthful and become more timeless in that way we just activate our senses again.

And we taste things like it was the first time we ever tasted it.

And we experience touch in ways that we've never experienced it before.

Or we walk down the street.

You know what's funny?

There was a.

.

.

It's not funny.

I went to university the first time for math but then the second time I went back to study psychology.

And I remember reading about a Japanese treatment for depression.

And it wasn't recommended for most people.

But every so often there were people that this was the treatment.

And what they would do is they would actually put you in a room and you would have to lie on a bed.

And sometimes they would even strap you to the bed.

But you weren't allowed to move.

The only time you were allowed to move was to go to the bathroom.

You just had to stay in this dark room for like a week.

And then eventually they would let you out in the garden for five minutes.

And you had five minutes that you got to walk around the garden and you have to go back into the room.

And the next day they would let you out for 15 minutes.

Maybe they did that for a week.

And it was a very interesting thing to actually almost restart the body.

Restart our experience here on earth through experiencing the senses in a very pure way.

In a way that we really appreciate the gift of sight,

The gift of hearing,

The gift of taste.

So even this sutra which asks us to experience pratyahara,

To release the senses and go within,

We don't want to have dulled the senses.

We want to go inward with the same passion that we see the world outside.

When we close our eyes,

It's almost like that illumination that we experience out here,

Outside,

We now want to experience inside.

So we still want to be fully alive.

We don't want to be dulled.

We don't want our senses dulled.

We want to go inward with the same curiosity that we experience the outside world.

Because that's what creates beautiful concentration.

To concentrate nothing isn't interesting.

Right?

If you're just sort of like dead into the world around you,

You're probably dead within too.

So this is the whole thing about tantra,

That we are meant to be here in maya.

We are meant to bring our divine self to the world.

This is the point.

But we also want to be able to go within and realize that as much as I can see the sun shining on the house across from me,

When I close my eyes,

That sun can be focused inside as well.

And it's interesting.

So like even this idea,

How do you come to this place of concentration?

How do you come to this place of concentration so that you can experience divine oneness?

So yoga,

There are many,

Many paths of yoga.

One of them is hatha yoga,

Which is what we normally think about in the West.

Asana,

Pranayama,

Traticum.

And what all of these do,

The intention is pratyahara.

It's one of the intentions.

So imagine if you're a hatha yogi,

If you love to do asana,

Vinyasa flow,

Yin yoga,

Ashtanga yoga,

All these,

Imagine doing it fully concentrated within.

So you're not listening outside of you.

You're not looking over there.

You're not thinking about groceries later.

You are 100% within and you're experiencing the body in all of these beautiful postures.

Or pranayama,

You close your eyes and you do some kind of interesting breath technique.

You know,

Maybe it's one nostril breathing or it's all kinds of interesting breath techniques to rewire the nervous system.

Or traticum,

Which is the single gaze,

Whether it's candle gazing or staring at a rose or into the eyes of a guru,

Whatever.

But maybe you're a raja yogi and for raja yogis,

Meditation is the path.

Meditation is the path to oneness.

So you close your eyes and you practice releasing sound,

Releasing taste,

Releasing everything until all your concentration is within.

And this is how you transcend the duality and experience oneness.

Maybe you're a bhakti yogi.

Bhakti yogis,

They focus on God,

On the Lord,

Whatever that is for you.

It could be Ganesh.

It could be Krishna.

It could be Jesus.

But your entire concentration is on the spirit of that entity.

And you want to emulate it,

Which is why they repeat the names,

Emulate it,

Which is why they repeat the names,

Which is why it's often connected with kirtan and things like that.

Maybe you're a jnani yogi.

I'm a jnani yogi,

Hence the magic bookshelf.

And you find your concentration through contemplation of the truth.

And the more truth you hear,

The more concentrated you are.

And all of a sudden,

Subject and object disappear in the face of truth.

It isn't your truth or my truth.

It's the truth.

And once you hear it,

You just know it.

Or maybe you're a karma yogi.

And you find your concentration in service to others with no desire for payment or anything like that.

But there is something about going out and being of service and surrendering to that journey that brings you to oneness.

So pratyahara isn't necessarily just,

You know,

There actually are,

There actually are,

We've done them here,

I think we've actually,

There actually are meditations where you actually plug the ears,

The eyes,

The mouth,

The nose,

Like you actually plug everything.

It's interesting to me that people choose that type of practice.

Well,

Prisoners that get thrown into the hole go through a similar experience,

But it's not lovely.

And it's,

It is to oppress,

Break without having loving kindness.

Well,

That's just it.

Everything,

In all situations,

There's no right answer for everything.

And there's no one thing that works all the time.

And what for one person is medicine is torture for another.

So important to always listen within.

So like,

Let's say,

For example,

You really wanted to try this.

So you're sitting nice and tall,

And you're going to say,

Okay,

I'm going to do this through meditation.

Okay.

I'm going to close my eyes.

Okay,

So now the eyes are closed.

That's good.

And I'm going to not listen to what's going on around me.

And I'm going to ignore the taste of my mouth.

And I'm just going to,

And the body,

For example,

I have a meditation here on Insight Timer called Kystherium.

And it helps you to become perfectly still.

And you sit upright.

And this process helps you to release the body completely.

So you no longer have any inputs from touch or feeling in the body.

What's interesting is the only part that we have to actually work on is getting to that point,

Actually releasing everything from the world.

Because once we've actually achieved that concentration,

Illumination naturally happens.

It just happens.

It's effortless.

There's no more trying.

It's almost like once you get beyond duality,

There's no effort anymore.

You just expand into illumination.

So it's a very interesting and relatively simple process.

I always think that it's like it's sort of becoming more and more apparent these days that everything that we need in life,

Like the big things we need the paths to enlightenment,

The paths that we want to take,

They're all hiding in plain sight through the simplest acts.

As soon as someone says,

Oh,

You've got to go through these 12 things and do all these interesting things.

You just have to ask yourself,

Are you sure?

Are you sure it's not right here?

And this is one of those meditations.

But just for a moment,

Let's discuss why this is sometimes hard.

You know,

It's kind of like,

Because we were raised in duality,

For example,

Why do we want to transcend duality?

Like,

What is the point of that?

What is the point?

Why do we want to do that?

Well,

What we want in life is an end statement where I understand duality,

And it's awesome and juicy.

And I understand oneness.

And I know that joy in that as well.

Because then the two kind of play with each other.

So for example,

If you only understand duality,

You only understand the subject and object,

The me and you,

Those two things,

If you only understand that world,

We become very attached to things.

Because my whole reality is about me and that house or me and my partner or me and my bank account or me and my job or me and my friend group or whatever.

And we can become very attached to that because this is the only reality we know.

And so our attention tends to be what they this is a slightly different use of the word.

But it it's like our whole world is extroverted.

And I don't mean loud and boisterous.

I mean,

It's outside of us.

It's extroverted.

So my world is defined by everything outside of me,

Which is why if I lose my job,

I become depressed.

If my relationship ends,

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

If suddenly I lose all this money,

My life is over.

Because the subject object relationship in the world is my only reality.

But if we have had glimpses of oneness,

And I mean,

Glimpses,

We don't have to be walking around in some purely awakened enlightened state.

Everyone here has had moments of experiencing oneness,

Or we wouldn't be on a spiritual path.

So all of a sudden,

We close our eyes,

We close our eyes to everything.

We let go of the things we're attached to,

We let go of all those things we go within.

And we experience the dark,

The void,

The truth,

Our reality.

But when we are super attached to things,

That darkness is scary.

It's void.

There's nothing there.

This is terrifying.

I don't want to look inside.

I don't want to look at nothing.

It's nothing.

There's nothing there.

Nothing scary.

And I don't know what to do with myself,

I don't know what to do with myself,

Because we're too attached to the subject object thing.

You know,

We close our eyes and we're like,

Well,

Now what are we supposed to do?

What am I supposed to be looking for?

Am I supposed to be,

You know,

Having ideas?

What am I supposed to be doing here?

Right?

Because we're so attached to this,

I'm supposed to be doing stuff to things or something.

So it's really valuable to actually close our eyes and allow ourselves to just sink into the darkness.

In a lot of our past sutras,

We've talked a lot about darkness.

I think the last three that we've done,

This is number 66,

Maybe 65,

64,

63,

All about the joy,

The bliss of darkness.

And now here we are,

We release the senses,

We allow all that attention to go within,

And we become introverted.

And again,

It's not necessarily what we think of as introverted out in the world.

But our gaze and our attention goes inward.

It's almost like we're looking within at our chakras,

Our heart centers,

Our whatever.

And again,

Now I'm playing in subject and object,

But we allow ourselves to look within and allow ourselves just to flow in that dark,

In the oneness.

And the more we do that,

The more we can experience that within ourselves,

Then suddenly we open our eyes and we look around and we say,

Wow,

Isn't that a beautiful tree?

I could stare at this tree all day.

Like suddenly duality is more interesting and we have more gratitude and we have more joy.

We're going to do a meditation.

Does anyone have any thoughts or questions that you'd like to share before we dive in?

After discovering oneness,

Does duality stop being dual?

No,

It's a great question because as long as we are here alive,

We are living in duality.

It's by design.

We are in duality.

Experiencing oneness,

And I know we use the words dimension in different ways,

But in this instance,

I really love thinking of oneness as a particular dimension to experience life in.

And then duality is like another dimension.

Of experiencing life.

You can sit on your meditation mat and breathe and experience incredible oneness.

Or you know what?

You could have a busy,

Busy day,

Crawl upstairs to your bedroom,

Lay down on your bed.

And I remember somebody called it a bedgasm.

And you lie there and the entire world falls away and this absolutely blissful feeling flows through your whole body.

And you are in oneness.

You are in a bliss state lying on your bed.

It doesn't have to be a meditative thing.

And then you can dip in and out of both at will.

Exactly.

But now you have and.

I have oneness and I have duality.

And because I know both,

Both are richer.

It's like loving to be alone.

Well,

Loving to be alone is great,

Especially when it's balanced with time with loved ones.

And time with loved ones is great as long as you have lots of time to be alone.

It's all it's so good to not go into one or the other.

Let's do a meditation.

So wherever you are,

Let's close our eyes.

You can be lying down.

You can be sitting.

Whatever you are is perfect.

Close your eyes.

Let's breathe deeply,

Expanding the belly as we inhale.

Contracting as we exhale.

As you breathe,

Allow your mind to flow to a part of your body that is uncomfortable.

And allow all of your attention to go into that discomfort.

And then see if there's another part of your body that is uncomfortable or difficult.

And just breathe deeply there.

And in your mind's eye.

I'd like you to imagine that you are sitting at the side of an ocean.

The ocean is very calm.

The sun is high in the sky.

And you can feel the sun bathing your third eye,

Your crown chakra.

And your whole body is being filled with this loving,

Warm energy.

And as you feel this energy flowing inside of you,

Your focus becomes inward.

You start to feel this beautiful light permeating your skin into the center of your body.

With every breath,

The sounds around you start to disappear.

And it's as if your ears have turned inward.

And it's as if your ears have turned inward.

And you're listening to your own heartbeat.

You're listening to the inside of your being.

Your breath becomes very quiet.

To the point that you're really not smelling anything or even feeling the breeze on your skin.

You are totally within your being.

And there's a beautiful stillness there.

As you gaze into the stillness,

It starts to permeate every cell of your body.

And all the cells relax.

Your organs relax.

The muscles release.

Soon,

Your whole body is simply oneness.

And then you feel a beautiful light within.

And as you breathe,

It is a beautiful light.

And as you breathe,

It expands out into all parts of your body.

Expanding through the organs,

Out the shoulders,

Down the arms,

Down the legs,

Up into the face,

The head.

And you realize that this is the true reality.

Tatra eva atma prakashate.

Whenever any of the senses is impaired,

It becomes a gateway to infinity.

Whether by deprivation,

Injury,

Or age,

Obstruction of the senses invites awareness of soul.

The mind can no longer take for granted.

Attention spirals inward and touches the glistening emptiness,

The reality behind appearance.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

And exhale.

And let's slowly open our eyes and come back together.

So thank you so much for being here,

And I hope you have a wonderful day.