Richness Of Experience: Radiance Sutras Verse 149

During this session, we discuss Verse 149 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.

This is a beautiful book written by Lauren Roche and it's a translation of the Vijnana Bharava Tantra,

Which is a wonderful ancient tantric text that helps us remember that we are both divine and physical,

That both of these are meant to dance together,

That truly we have this infinite self,

Which is real,

Not something out there.

Sometimes I imagine all the cells of your body being these little divine lights and it's like they magically have organized themselves into this physical being.

And each one of us is this unique organization of divine elements,

A divine being.

And so here we all are gathering here on Insight Timer.

It's almost like all the divinity is looking at each other,

You know,

Like oh look at how you turned out,

How cool is this?

You know,

But to remember that joy,

To remember that excitement of being alive,

But how so often when we fully embrace being human we get so lost in the emotions and the struggles and the pain and the pleasure and the success and the money and the health and the politics and the neighbors and the family,

Like we just we get completely enmeshed in everything and we forget that we are divine cells organized in this human expression.

And again it's not about transcending and running away from our physical lives at all.

It's about bringing all those little divine lights into whatever it is we're experiencing.

This is really what the point is.

So that's what this book is about.

This book has three sections.

The first section are banter verses,

Which is the foundation of the journey.

And it's a conversation between God and the human,

Or Bhairava and Devi,

Or your highest self and your physical self.

And even there you hear that language,

My highest self and my physical self.

Like my physical self is lowly,

Right?

You can hear how we would so easily misunderstand this to say,

Oh I shouldn't care about my physical world so much,

I should only care about my spiritual self.

But to understand that this is a language problem,

Because in Tantra there is the oneness,

God,

Shiva Shakti,

Brahman,

Whatever you understand that oneness to be.

Now when they say this is the highest consciousness,

It's like vapor.

Like if you were to imagine water and all the ways that water can appear.

You can have water and if you quote,

Raise the vibration of it,

Meaning to heat it up,

Raise the vibration to a higher temperature,

Slowly that water will evaporate into mist,

It will become a vapor.

So theoretically vapor is a higher state of vibration than water.

And water is a lower vibration,

It's a denser vibration of H2O.

This is the same in the Tantric view of what it is to be alive.

Our human bodies and our existence is water.

It's the same as the vapor,

But it's a lower quote,

Vibration.

It's a denser vibration,

But water and vapor are the same thing,

Just in a different vibration.

But it's not higher like it's better and water is worse,

They're the same.

And that's sort of the journey of understanding that it's all the same.

Anyway,

So the foundation of this,

The banter verses,

Is the conversation kind of between the vapor and the water.

If you were to imagine that vapor can go up and sort of float around and see the world from 50,

000 feet kind of idea,

And imagine if the vapor could have a conversation with the water,

How interesting would that be?

But of course the water can also inform the vapor.

And it's like,

Well that's awesome,

But here's what it's like down here in the ocean.

One's not better than the other,

They just have different perspectives.

So those are the the banter verses.

And the next 112 verses are called the Yukti verses.

And these are the practices,

These are the meditations,

These are the teachings that help us release the ideas that get us stuck as either water or vapor.

Because we're supposed to be able to effortlessly transmute from vapor to water to ice,

But that's a whole other complication of our metaphor.

But we're supposed to effortlessly flow from one to the other.

We don't want to be attached to being vapor,

And we don't want to be attached to being water.

But that's what happens.

We get super attached in our physical lives to all the things around us,

All of our circumstances,

And we forget that we have another way of being.

And we can do that here,

Right?

And that's what the Yukti verses are.

Individual teachings that help us to just turn little dials inside that make us freer to be able to flow from one state to another.

And then the last section are the insight verses.

And these sort of bring them all together into a,

And therefore here's how we live.

And this is the section that we're working on now.

So if you're new to the Radiant Sutras,

And you'd love to dive in deeper,

We have a playlist called Radiant Sutras where we go through many of the Banter verses,

Nearly all of the Yukti verses,

And they're very,

Very beautiful.

But if you're new,

It's all good.

So today we're going to look at Insight Verse 149.

Now to understand that this teaching is coming on the heels of Devi,

Or the human,

You know,

After she's listened to all of these teachings,

And she's come to the realization that so if we're God,

Like if we are Supreme Consciousness,

What happens to worship?

What happens?

Like who do I bow to?

Who do I give thanks to?

Who do I sacrifice to?

Because we've been so taught in this dualistic model where God is up there,

And I am down here,

And I have to do all these things,

You know,

To this external being.

Which again,

That could easily be your belief system,

Which is awesome.

This is just the Tantric belief system that sees it very differently.

And so Devi's just like,

Well then what do I do?

And the teaching has come that,

Well,

Those external teaching,

The external rituals only serve you sort of on earth.

They don't really connect you to a transcendent state.

And that's sort of where we are in the journey right now.

So let's close our eyes.

Let's breathe deeply.

Expanding the belly as we inhale,

Contracting as we exhale.

The real transmutation,

The most sacred offering,

Is to pour the elements of your body,

All of your sensual impressions,

Into the fire of the great void.

Your richness of experience is the wine you offer to the divinity that is everywhere.

What does that mean for you,

Or what rises inside of you when you hear that?

There's no one way to translate these.

Our own experiences matter,

How it touches our soul,

Filling the void.

Meditation is the completion to experience.

It's so beautiful.

Everything we experience here is valid,

All part of our journey home.

I think of a forge,

Alchemy,

Trust in alchemy.

Unconditional something,

Can't put a finger on it though.

I love remembering that my experience is unique.

What are the elements of the body here?

In this system,

The elements are earth,

Fire,

Wind,

Water,

And ether.

I know they're different in different systems.

Oneness,

We receive and we give in unison.

Our life experiences are alchemized into what we offer back to the universe.

All experiences,

Rich,

Sacred,

And every soul too,

Steeping myself in that awareness with loving energy.

Everything we experience,

Everything is sacred offerings.

This is quite a challenging sutra,

And I think part of the reason is there's many,

Many ways we can go with it.

There's many ways we can think about it.

Could you read it one more time,

My fellow sleep?

Sure.

The real transmutation,

The most sacred offering,

Is to pour the elements of your body,

All of your sensual impressions,

Into the fire of the great void.

Your richness of experience is the wine you offer to the divinity that is everywhere.

I'm stuck with this one.

I usually have a rich experience,

But not today.

Please,

Could you read it again?

So we can look at this metaphorically.

The elements,

So in that tantric vision that I was telling you about,

That there is the oneness,

God,

Shiva Shakti,

Universal consciousness,

Brahman,

The oneness.

The way we all exist here on earth is a progression of what they call the tattvas.

And sometimes tattvas are seen just as earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

Water,

Just the elements.

But in this case,

There's like 34 tattvas,

Something like that.

I can't remember exactly how many,

But essentially each one is a level or an aspect of what makes us human,

Like almost the creation of maya.

So from the oneness,

They split out personal will,

Or they split out consciousness,

Or they split out all these different things,

Which then creates maya.

And I am crazy oversimplifying this,

Because we could talk about every single level for hours.

But essentially there's all these different levels that we kind of come down to the human being,

And they say,

Oh well each human has to have a memory,

And it has to have discernment,

And it has to have an ego.

And these are all separate tattvas,

That each level creates a new complexity that makes us so interesting.

And then from there,

Each one of us are individual beings,

But we are made of something.

Well,

We are made of the elements.

We are made of earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

Water,

Ether.

And then from those elements,

The whole world is created.

And then we have to have senses.

Each being has to have a sense,

And those senses experience the elements.

I have a nose,

And a mouth,

And eyes,

And ears,

And skin that can now experience the world around me,

And experience the elements.

And each one of those is a level.

The fact that I can hear is an interesting complexity.

The fact that I can see,

The fact that I can feel,

And then smell itself,

Like it's very complex.

But essentially,

If you were to imagine shiva shakti as that purest energy of oneness,

And then all the beautiful complexities coming all the way down to the bottom five tattvas,

The grossest elements,

Gross meaning densest,

Of earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

And ether.

And all of our experience in life is the dance between these five elements that are the most manifest of God.

But they're not the lowest.

Earth is the very,

Very lowest,

Not the worst,

The most manifest,

All the way up to pure consciousness.

So this is the dance of being human.

This is the dance between our most basic experiences on the earth,

To our very highest self that understands all things,

All the time.

To understand that even though each one of us is an ego,

Ego just is latin for I am.

I know that we can get attached to different things,

And there's a lot of teachings around transcending the ego and all that,

But that's not what we're talking about.

Ego in this sense means that every single one of us here is a being,

Having experiences,

And the ego is the center of that experience.

It's very,

Very important.

It's intrinsic to the system.

So this teaching,

What they're saying.

.

.

Okay,

Actually I'm going to read you a literal translation of this sutra,

Because Lauren Roche does a beautiful poetic version so that our hearts can hear it,

But I want to read the literal translation of the Sanskrit.

The real oblation,

And if English isn't your first language,

Or even if it is,

Oblation means worship,

Or sacrifice,

Or something you give to someone,

Or a deity.

It's something you give to a deity in worship.

Oblation.

The real oblation is made when the elements and sense perceptions,

Along with the mind,

Are poured as oblation into the fire of the great void.

For example,

Bhairava,

Or supreme consciousness,

Using the consciousness as a ladle.

That's the literal translation.

So you can hear what they're saying when you think of these interesting levels of complexity that makes up maya.

The elements,

The sense perceptions,

The mind.

What would it feel like to give all of those back into the great void?

And right now we're just speaking metaphorically.

We'll go to the practical in a moment.

It's almost like releasing the human aspect of me,

So that I can remember that I am oneness.

Right?

That's the metaphor.

If you were to release all of this stuff,

And again,

And what's interesting is,

You know,

Angie said,

You know,

When we have a hard day,

It's much harder to feel this.

But the thing is,

Pleasure and pain are just functions of how we're experiencing the world.

That's all,

Like,

Pleasure and pain aren't,

Pleasure isn't intrinsically good,

And pain is intrinsically bad.

Sometimes pleasure is bad,

And pain is good.

These are just the mind's interpretations of what's happening.

Could I read the literal translation again?

Lost wi-fi.

Sure.

The real oblation is made when the elements and sense perceptions,

Along with the mind,

Are poured as oblation into the fire of the great void.

For example,

Bhairava or supreme consciousness,

Using the consciousness as a ladle.

So I think metaphorically,

We can all grasp,

You know,

If you kind of close your eyes and imagine,

I release Katrina.

I release the role I'm playing in maya,

And I can feel the oneness inside of me.

Because I release the limitation of being me,

That I can expand into the oneness.

It's almost like worship is to surrender the denser vibration where it culminates to the higher vibration,

And they both exist together somehow.

Yes,

Wonderful,

That's perfect segue.

So glad you're back,

Kirti.

That's great metaphorically,

But what does it mean in real life?

Like,

What does it really mean?

So let's say you're having a difficult conversation with someone.

Okay,

So we're deep in the weeds now.

We're deep in our personal experience of life.

Someone has done something,

Said something,

And you're triggered.

And there's an old memory,

An old pain rising.

What do you do?

Well,

If we stay in the weeds and kind of lost in that sensory experience,

Lost in the memory and the fighting and the defensiveness and all that,

We may lash out.

We might withdraw.

We might even re-traumatize ourself from the previous experience we had.

But it kind of goes from bad to worse.

But let's say you have a practice,

Some kind of tantric practice,

Yogic practice,

Where maybe you're meditating or maybe you're doing a kundalini kriya or something like that.

But you're in,

Let's just go with meditation.

So you set an alarm for 10 minutes and you sit there and you're breathing and you're uncomfortable.

You know,

Thoughts are coming in.

You're feeling twitchy.

The discussions are going on in your head and you're angry at somebody.

You know those days that you try to meditate and it's hard.

Look,

It's just your mind is so busy.

You just can't.

You just don't know what to do with yourself.

Well,

Sometimes we just give up.

We turn off the timer and we just get on with our day because we're just too busy.

But let's say you didn't.

Let's say you were really crazy and you stayed and you reset because,

Because you were having such a hard time meditating,

You actually set the timer for 20 minutes instead.

Because there's something juicy here.

So you're sitting there and you've got the timer set for 20 minutes and you know you've promised yourself you're not going to get up.

So you sit there.

Okay,

Sorry,

I'm going to back up.

We'll come back there.

We're going to put a pin in that right there.

In the Bhagavad Gita,

They use the word yoga 140 times.

But what they mean by the word yoga,

We're going to study the Bhagavad Gita in a couple months.

What they mean by yoga is,

You know,

They talk about how it means to yoke,

Like to yoke oxen to a wagon or something.

This is actually the literal reason,

Literal meaning of it,

That yoga means to yoke yourself to whatever you're doing.

It could be the yoga of conversation.

Bring all of yourself to this conversation.

It could be the yoke of,

The yoga of parenting,

That we bring all of us,

Body,

Mind,

And soul to this.

And they say that yoga actually is meant to be the yoga of something.

It's never a standalone.

So now coming back to we're having a difficult conversation in our day.

Sorry,

Going back.

We are having this practice.

We're meditating for 20 minutes and we're super actively busy.

So we're sitting there and instead of kind of getting caught in all the monkey mind,

You know,

Back and forth,

We are actually going to practice the yoga of concentration.

And we're going to bring our deepest self,

Our consciousness out and we're going to say,

Okay,

I'm really busy today.

Let's breathe a little deeper.

All right,

Let's really allow these thoughts to flow through.

Wow,

I'm really having this conversation with this person that's not here.

Okay,

Let's let that go for now.

So it's like your highest self is dancing with the self that is caught in the weeds of life.

So that 20 minutes,

In that 20 minutes,

You are developing a relationship between your divine self that is not in the weeds.

Your divine self that is part of this whole universe.

Good,

Bad,

Ugly,

Mean,

Happy,

Sad,

Kind,

Everything.

Oneness is not discerning.

Oneness isn't good or bad.

Oneness is everything.

So part of you has this amazing oneness mentality and in your meditation practice,

You are allowing that oneness to dance with the personality that's struggling.

That's struggling with our experiences of pleasure and pain,

Our experiences of our experiencing smell,

Touch,

Taste,

All these things.

So let's imagine you've had a practice that's been helping you.

The sutra right before this,

Which I skipped,

Is 148 and here's what it says.

I skipped it because it's very similar to some previous ones.

Here's what it says.

Being transformed by even one of these practices,

Fullness of experience develops breath by breath.

One day the desire of the Self,

The small S-Self,

For the Great Self,

Capital S-Self,

Is consummated.

So you've been practicing.

Tantra is about practice.

It isn't an idea that we have or we read in a book or we heard that and we just go,

Aha,

I am enlightened and now I am tantric.

We have to have a practice so that we have a personal experience of blending our Divine Self with our very wonderful,

Unique,

Personal Self.

So now let's imagine you've had a practice and you've been getting used to dancing with this,

Right?

You've been getting used to blending your Divine Self and the Self that is very much in love with this thing or very much hurt by that thing or whatever,

Right?

And now we are back in our difficult conversation with someone and we're super triggered and we're super angry at this person,

At life,

At ourselves,

At everybody.

So we take a deep breath and all of a sudden the dance returns.

We're not denying what we're going through but now there's a bit of light in it that allows us a little bit of clarity to say,

Hmm,

When did this happen?

What is this?

And all of a sudden we remember,

Oh,

This is a experience I've had.

This is an experience with the senses,

With my brain,

With my mind,

With my very physical Self.

And if we truly desire this expansive Self,

If we truly desire this sort of tantric life,

In this moment,

Can I release all of these emotions?

Can I let them go?

Can I pour them into the fire of consciousness?

So that in this moment,

In this challenging conversation that I'm having with someone I love or someone at work or whoever it is,

Can I let all that go?

Pour it back into the quantum field and bring my highest Self to this moment?

Because what happens in that moment when we do this?

Something miraculous emerges from our voice.

Words we've never heard before.

Words that bring us together with this person we love but have maybe fallen out with.

Words of insight that change the room wherever we are.

And one of the challenges of this teaching is that the only way to believe it is to experience it.

It's like those moments in time that are really hard.

But when we've remembered who we are in those moments,

Earlier,

A couple people mentioned alchemy.

Yeah,

Angie,

Divine,

Natural alchemy.

Alchemy is that is,

I mean,

Literally,

Metaphorically,

It's turning lead into gold.

And there is something so powerful when we can take our experiences of life,

And when they're really hard,

Release them back into the void.

And then we renew.

And then we're still here.

And we get to have a new experience.

And there's something miraculous about that.

What's really beautiful is,

So there's two parts of Lauren's translation.

So the first part is what we're talking about.

The great transmutation,

The most sacred offering,

Is to pour the elements of your body,

All of your sensual impressions,

Into the fire of the great void.

That's what we've just discussed.

Then he adds this beautiful second stanza.

So this is the crazy paradox.

When I say,

In a difficult moment,

Release all of these things,

You know the crazy thing is,

The way we release it is by diving into into it.

It's not by going beyond it and all that.

It's like if you are in a relationship,

And you're having this hard conversation,

And whatever it is is very sad.

It makes you sad.

You can't just release the sadness.

You can't just let it go,

Oh turn that frown upside down.

That doesn't,

That's not how it works.

You have to actually have the courage to dive deeply into that sadness.

That's why we have to have this dance of the divine intermingling,

Because that's what gives us the courage and a different tether.

It's almost like you've got this this golden chain that you know that you are divine.

Because I know I'm divine,

I'm going to dive deep into this sadness,

And I'm going to feel it with every cell of my being.

I have full courage to do that because I also know that I'm this divine being,

Which is very hard to feel when you're super sad,

Or super angry,

Or super lost,

Or in pain.

Like it's not,

I'm saying it,

But it's not easy.

You know,

Again this is why we have to have some kind of practice that is actually developing this muscle inside of us.

So then what happens when we dive into the sadness?

So you're sitting with this person,

And we're just going to say that they did something,

Because normally when we're super triggered,

You know,

We're definitely feeling victimized.

And me too,

I'm not putting this out there,

Not on me.

So what do we do?

We dive into that sadness,

And by diving into that sadness,

We actually feel what's going on.

Right,

It's almost like we get rid of the mind,

We get rid of the stories,

We get rid of the defensiveness,

And we dive into the feeling.

And suddenly,

You know,

We're six years old,

And we're feeling the experience that began the emotion to begin with.

And as soon as we feel it thoroughly,

It just dissipates.

But it doesn't dissipate unless we dive into it.

This is the oblation,

This is the gift,

This is the giving back to divinity.

That whatever it is,

I'm here for it.

And it includes beautiful things,

It includes wondrous things,

And saying,

Wow,

This is amazing.

Because sometimes we don't even notice the beauty either,

And we don't know notice the joy,

Because it's almost like we're just waiting for the bad thing to happen,

And we don't even dive into the good stuff.

So the true oblation is to just give it all back.

And so that's why I love this second stanza.

Your richness of experience,

And I'm going to say in quote,

Good and bad.

Your richness of experience is the wine you offer to the divinity that is everywhere.

So let's just close our eyes for a moment.

Let's just breathe deeply.

And I would love for you to visualize a streaming white and golden light flowing through your body.

Feel it streaming and weaving throughout your organs,

Your muscles,

Your brain,

Out your fingertips,

Down to your toes.

Feel this lovely divinity sparkling and touching all aspects of you.

And then in your mind's eye,

Imagine yourself walking down the street with both your physical and this white golden light weaving together,

Walking down the street.

And then imagine that whatever happens joyful,

Difficult,

Challenging,

Easy,

All of yourself will be there.

All of your physical self,

All of your divine self,

Which allows you to pour all of who you are into every experience.

Really breathing deeply.

The real transmutation,

The most sacred offering,

Is to pour the elements of your being of your body,

All of your sensual impressions,

Into the fire of the great void.

Your richness of experience is the wine you offer to the divinity that is everywhere.

Let's take a deep breath in.

And exhale.

Thanks so much.

We'll see you soon.

Reviews

Diving deep into experience and sharing its essence with all of divinity :) yes please and thank you

Thank you, as always! And I love having the book! 🙏💕