The Deepest Magic Of All: Radiance Sutras Verse 110

During this session, we discuss Verse 110 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 every week, and all are welcome.

Transcript

Today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras,

Which is a beautiful translation,

Interpretation of the Vidyāna Bhārava Tantra.

So the point of this book,

This is a teaching from Kashmir Shaivism,

From that branch of Tantra,

And the foundational teaching is that God,

Brahman,

Shiva,

However you understand it,

Is not only this omnipotent creative energy,

It exists everywhere.

We are Brahman.

The trees are Brahman.

Everything.

It's not just infused with the energy.

It is that.

And this is the foundational teaching of Tantra.

This is why this world,

This life,

Really matters.

Classical yoga,

Not asana and all that,

But classical yoga of Patanjali and the ancient yoga,

Had no use for the body.

The body just held all kinds of desires and earthly primal needs that separated us from God.

And this is one of the main differences between Tantra and classical yoga,

That Tantra says this body is divinity incarnate.

So we want to experience divinity through the body.

So hatha yoga,

Which most people identify with the kind of yoga you see in studios,

The physical asana and flow and all that stuff,

Hatha yoga actually came from Tantra.

Because again,

Classical yoga,

The body is of no value.

The body is to be left behind so that we can experience Samadhi out there.

So the original Tantric said,

No,

No,

No,

We can actually do this through the body,

Through the physicality.

And this is why you want to keep the body healthy.

You want to move the energy and stay in the body.

So the point of this book is to learn how to experience that God self,

That infinite self in this body.

And I don't just mean like sexually or something,

But to actually experience the wonder,

The infinity,

The omnipotence,

The omniscience of all life here today in this body.

Whatever we're doing,

That's the point of Tantra.

So this book is a series of sutras or verses that each individually are an individual meditation that you can take away,

Ponder,

Contemplate.

So the idea is that if we want to experience all the facets of the divine in our day-to-day life,

It's more like a diamond than a single awareness.

And so when you experience something inside,

This little part of you over here opens up.

And then this little part of over here opens up.

And some of these things may not even feel connected,

But they all expand us into that divine experience.

So that's what we're doing here.

And today we are reading number 110.

So let's close our eyes for a moment.

Breathe deeply.

Here we go.

The juggler with her spinning torches conjures dazzling wheels of fire.

The magician taps his wand and suddenly a net of jewels sparkles in the darkness.

What do we love in magic?

Each gesture is a kind of jest inviting us beyond itself into the deepest magic of all.

God alone is.

All that we see is the performance of the divine magician.

Stand at the center of this wonder and breathe the wild serene.

Where does that take you?

Where are you right now?

Divine magician.

What feelings does that evoke or what thoughts roll through your mind?

Wonder.

To live in wonder.

God alone is the thought of our Devi,

The juggler.

Let go.

We don't have to understand it all.

It's divine magic.

The invitation.

Manifestation.

That I can do the conjuring.

Just a thought that there used to be magicians so many years back when these sutras were written.

That's interesting.

I'm definitely on the right part.

Keep making jests and invasions into the divine.

Breathing the wild serene.

We are all magic.

All that we see is the performance of the divine magician.

Anything is possible.

Breathing in the wild serene.

It makes me think of the tarot card.

I'm going to read you a direct translation.

That's a poetic interpretation of the Sanskrit.

Here is a direct translation.

This world is illusory like magic.

Devoid of any essence.

What essence exists in magic?

Being firmly convinced of this,

One attains peace.

Here's another direct translation.

This whole universe is without any essential reality like a magical spectacle.

What is the reality of a magical spectacle?

If one is fully convinced of the non-essentiality of the universe,

In this way he attains peace.

There is a part of me that sees God as creator magician.

And the other part of me that sees God as trickster magician performer.

And sometimes I'm angry about the illusions.

And this is really important.

It's really important to feel what emotions get triggered by that.

The second translation is from this book called the Vijnana Bhairava to Divine Consciousness by Jai Deva Singh.

It sounds like to me from a literal reading that we are an illusion.

So when I first read things like this,

When they really talk about how God is the only thing that exists and we are an illusion,

Personally my first feeling is ah I don't like it.

I don't like that feeling.

I don't like the idea that we're an illusion.

So it means I don't matter.

It means that what I do doesn't matter because I'm not real.

This has sort of created a lot of existential angst for people who study philosophy where it comes to this nothing's real anyway so why even bother getting up in the morning.

This kind of teaching can be very challenging in that way.

But what's interesting is when we understand it from the tantric perspective that everything is God.

Everything is Brahman.

Everything is Shiva Shakti.

Everything.

So then the question becomes if all of this is an illusion but we are all made of divine essence,

Which part of it isn't real?

So they talk about specifically that to imagine the world like a magic show and that wasn't even just Lauren Roche's interpretation.

That's from the original Sanskrit and as Debu said,

You know that there were magicians around a lot back when these were written.

So now let's imagine you're a child and you go to see a magic show or you just maybe don't even know it's a magic show.

Maybe you just are talking to some person on the road and all of a sudden,

I don't know,

An elephant magically appears beside you which I don't think is really possible but you know but something happens.

Or all of a sudden,

You know,

The person is actually creating magic all around you and the adult that's standing with the child can see what's happening.

They know they're just magic tricks but the child is awestruck like whoa,

This is crazy,

This is crazy and the child completely buys in because why wouldn't they think this is real?

They haven't had enough life experience to know the difference between what's real and what's just an illusion being put on by this person.

They don't even know that this person's a magician.

They just think it's some person and now all these crazy things are happening all around them.

But now let's imagine that the magician does things that are scary.

What if all of a sudden he creates great noises or,

You know,

A scary dog with big teeth or something and the child is terrified and of course the adult is like,

It's not real.

It is real.

Look at it.

It's real.

It's right there.

I can see it.

The child doesn't know that it's magic.

It doesn't know that it's illusion and the adult's just standing there kind of enjoying the show.

Maybe not the enjoying of their child being terrified but they're enjoying the show.

This is what this sutra is saying,

That there is a divine essence in the world.

All of us are made of this divine essence and everything around us,

Maya,

This creation that we are living within is an illusion for our benefit.

It's a magic show.

It's juggling.

It's energy.

When we understand this,

We are the same as that adult watching the person do these funny tricks.

We're just watching.

We're standing in the center of it all,

Watching the show.

And this is why the sutras all end with,

And you will feel great peace with this understanding.

As I was researching and making my notes for today's class,

Storm,

My son's dog,

Who's a beautiful white husky who I love desperately,

She was curled up here on the mat where I'm sitting.

And of course,

Whenever a sutra starts to talk about the illusion of life and things aren't real,

You know,

I start looking at Storm and I'm like,

Well,

If she's not real,

Why is she here?

This is what happens when we start to notice the magic.

We start to go,

Well,

Then why is this happening?

Why is this illusion here?

And so I'm looking at Storm and my very first answer to that question was because I get to love her.

And I get to be with her.

My soul gets to be with her.

My soul gets to have this experience.

When we understand that things are a magic show,

Instead of getting caught up in the action of the magic show,

We start to ask different questions.

We start to sit and say,

How do they do it?

What's really going on?

And then we maybe look at the magician and say,

Who is this magician that's doing this?

We start to become very grateful that we got to be part of the show.

And we just ask different questions,

Or we ask ourselves,

What is the point of this part of the show?

Am I supposed to be sad?

Am I supposed to be excited?

Currently,

I love that maybe I can let go to allow the magic.

This is preferred over the judgment and scrutiny.

Your example reminds me of things like kids meeting Mickey Mouse or believing in the Tooth Fairy.

They believe it because why wouldn't they?

I'm striving to live life with childlike wonder.

They like Storm show us a different side of love.

Exactly.

So now imagine this.

Imagine how the understanding of this changes our life.

How would it change your life?

When you can look at everything that's in your life,

As literally it's a show being put on for your benefit.

There's a saying in Tantra,

You know,

That Brahman is real.

And the entire world is an illusion.

But part of this is also that you are real.

But everything that we do want,

Love,

All of that is an illusion.

Or all of that.

Illusion is a funny word.

It's transitory.

It comes and it goes.

But you are always there.

And this is a very interesting thing to contemplate.

When you dive into who you are,

Like right now to kind of sit,

Take a deep breath in and connect with the real you.

And again,

You can't understand it,

But you can feel it.

You can feel the essence of you.

And then all of a sudden you can feel that that essence of you was there when you were five years old.

And when you were 25 years old.

And when you were 50,

Or when you'll be 50,

And so on.

Everything else changed around you.

Everything.

Like think of how many things have changed around you since you were five years old.

And yet there is an essence of you that has not changed.

Your body will have changed.

What you know will have changed.

What you've accomplished will have changed.

What you've lost will have changed.

But there's an essence that is the same.

So this essence that we can feel inside of us as the one constant in our life,

Is the same all over the world.

That there is a constant Brahman,

A constant God,

A constant divinity within every tree,

Every person,

Every mountain,

Every dog,

Everything.

So to imagine walking through our lives and seeing a tree,

And you can see the tree,

The physical tree,

But then you also know that there is a subtler body there as well.

This energy body that is made with the vibrating atoms of the divine.

And you imagine looking around the world at all of this sparkly incarnation of the divine.

Then imagine looking at another person,

Looking at someone you love,

And seeing them as this sparkly.

.

.

Why have I lost that word?

Incarnation,

That was the word.

And so another part of this journey with this teaching,

If we have pushback to this,

Why?

And this comes back to one of the foundational teachings across all Eastern thought,

Is to let go of attachment.

And again,

This doesn't mean don't love people,

Doesn't mean don't care,

That doesn't mean,

That's not that kind of attachment.

We become attached to transitory parts of maya.

So for example,

If I say,

The world is an illusion,

Personally,

That bothers me,

Because I've really been stressing out about this one aspect of my business lately.

And I'm concerned about my father.

Well,

Do you mean that all this worry and concern and emotional upheaval is for nothing?

Because it's like I have attachment to maybe the success of my business,

Or I have attachment to my dad,

Finding peace about something or whatever,

Right?

I have attachment to that.

And if I have attachment to that,

Then I'm going to have a really hard time recognizing the reality that it's all an illusion.

And everything is showing up for everyone just as they need it.

BD Post,

Page 287 for maya,

Let the world turn,

Let the illusion spin,

Let everyone else believe the scripts they are playing out.

Party on all you people.

Right?

And so now imagine the final line in this,

This sutra is,

Stand at the center of this wonder,

And breathe the wild serene.

Stand at the center of this wonder.

What does that feel like for you?

Like when you sit when you hear the words stand at the center of this wonder,

What feelings rise for you?

Bliss.

Stand at the center of this wonder.

Calm,

Surrender,

Mystery,

Unknowing.

There's a quiet there.

It feels like the ultimate key to magic.

Exactly.

And the beautiful thing is when we can stand in the center and wonder of the wonder,

We get to enjoy it all.

We get to respond to it all.

We get to experience it all.

We get to cry because something upset us.

And we get to laugh because we think something's funny.

We still play,

We still fully play.

But it's like we play with a deeper knowing.

And there's something about it that it changes,

Where if we don't have this deep knowing,

The emotionality of what we're going through can take us over.

And we can actually really feel extremely depressed and very sad and very despairing.

But when we also have this knowing,

It actually lets us dive deeper into the darkness.

Before this recording,

Before I turned on the recording,

I told a story about how Friday night I had a struggle with my partner,

And it was very emotional.

But in my heart,

What I truly know about life at this point of my 55 years on earth,

I know that if something comes up,

There's something important to be found here.

And if it's emotionally loaded,

It's not easy,

Because if it's been hidden,

It's dark,

And it's painful,

But it's worth it.

And I know that when we go through it,

It'll be better on the other side,

And it will not last forever.

And that's just me,

But every one of us has that kind of philosophy.

And when we deeply understand this divinity in everything,

We know that there's even divinity in the hard emotions.

There's wisdom there.

And then what it does is it gives us the courage to dive deeper,

To cry more,

To be more vulnerable,

To be more open.

It's like the faith or the understanding is like a lifeline.

And so it's a really beautiful practice knowing this.

So let's do a little meditation.

Wherever you are,

Let's close our eyes and just breathe deeply.

And I'd like you to imagine yourself at the center of a downtown street,

Maybe in a square.

And if you like big cities,

Then be in a big city.

And if you prefer small towns,

Be in a small town.

But you're sitting on a comfortable chair or a park bench in the square in the center,

And all around you,

There are people eating ice cream,

Playing with their dog,

Cars driving,

Music coming out of the odd car.

The sky is blue.

There's birds flying all around.

And I'd like you just to take this scene in.

Allow yourself to see as many details in your inner vision as you can.

What does it smell like?

What does it sound like?

Breathe deeply into that vision,

Into that,

All your senses that you see,

Hear,

Feel,

Touch,

All around you.

The juggler with her spinning torches conjures dazzling wheels of fire.

The magician taps his wand,

And suddenly a net of jewels sparkles in the darkness.

What do we love in magic?

Each gesture is a kind of jest,

Inviting us beyond itself into the deepest magic of all.

God alone is.

All that we see is the performance of the divine magician.

Stand at the center of this wonder and breathe the wild serene.

So thank you so much for being here,

And I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

My eyes have been opened to see the beauty of this universe. My heart feels fully open to experience deeper emotions. This talk was so powerful. Thank you!

Wonderful. I so appreciate you introducing me to and exploring these sutras! I do have the book! 💙🙏