The Light From Inside: Radiance Sutras Verse 37

During this session, we discuss Verse 37 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 verse 37 out of the Radiant Sutras by Lauren Roche.

This is one of my favorite books in the land of understanding the spirit of Tantra,

So I highly recommend it.

It's a beautiful book.

So let's close our eyes.

Let's breathe deeply because our goal here is to listen to the Sutra with our soul.

Some people call it our transpersonal self.

Our personal self is,

Well,

I'm Katrina Boss.

I'm 54 years old.

I'm a woman.

I live in Canada.

My relationship status,

My livelihood,

All these things,

These are all the statistics about me that are probably all the thoughts in my head.

But my transpersonal self,

My soul,

That's who I am always.

Whether I'm six years old,

Whether I'm 96 years old,

Maybe it's my same self throughout every lifetime.

For as long as I have existed,

Perhaps that's the same being.

So we want to listen with that self because that's the self we want to integrate into our personal world.

That's the journey of Tantra.

So that's what we're going to do.

All right,

You guys ready?

Here we go.

Go to a wide open space.

Gaze without looking anywhere.

The mind stops its building of thoughts and rests on its own foundation,

Immensity.

The light that you see by is the light that comes from inside.

I'm going to read it again.

Go to a wide open space.

Gaze without looking anywhere.

The mind stops its building of thoughts and rests on its own foundation,

Immensity.

The light that you see by is the light that comes from inside.

So what are the first thoughts or feelings that come into your mind when you hear that?

How does that make you feel?

The idea of gazing upon a barren desert,

Emptiness,

Emptiness,

Calm,

Spacious.

This summons Rumi's field without judgment for meeting.

Yes,

Immensity causes me to relax,

Peace,

To be still and know everythingness,

Possibility,

Humbled and in awe,

Illuminative from within,

Complete.

I'm going to read you another translation of this.

And now this one comes out of this book called the Sri Vijnana by Rava Tantra,

The Ascent.

It's kind of weird,

Goldish writing,

But and it's by Swami Sathya Sagananda Saraswati.

And this is a direct translation.

So Lawrence is a interpretation to help us meditate on it.

But this is a direct translation.

One should fix his gaze on a treeless place,

Like bare mountains or rocks,

Where there is no support for the mind to dwell on.

Then the modifications of the mind become less and the experience of dissolution takes place.

I'm going to read you another one.

This one comes out of the Vijnana by Rava or Divine Consciousness by Jaideva Singh.

Again,

This is another direct translation.

One should cast his gaze on a region in which there are no trees,

On mountain,

On high defensive wall.

His mental state being without any support will then dissolve and the fluctuations of his mind will cease.

So we often talk about vritti and vritti are the constant fluctuations in the mind.

And vritti also has to do with livelihood,

Work,

Business,

Money.

So when you think of the things that cause,

Like imagine your mind is perfectly still.

And then something comes into your mind and a fluctuation begins.

Right now your mind is thinking and it's chewing and it's wondering.

That's what they mean when they say the fluctuations of the mind.

So you imagine your life,

Your life,

You're walking through your day and the mind is in constant fluctuation.

If there's too many fluctuations,

We might end up with a headache or we might end up with a stomachache.

We might end up stressed out or with anxiety because the fluctuations are too much.

And these can happen almost like any topic that matters to you,

Any topic that is particularly important.

And they can be very positive things.

If I'm writing a new article or I'm pondering things,

My mind goes into a ripple,

My back brain starts to ponder.

These aren't bad things.

The problem comes when we are a slave to vritti.

That we actually don't know what it's like to not have fluctuations in the mind.

That we think it's normal for our mind to constantly be chewing,

To constantly be on,

To constantly be worrying about money or thinking about that or wondering about that or planning the future or thinking about the past.

And so if you imagine the mind also has the capacity to be perfectly still,

Like a still lake.

The question is,

Can you summon that reality?

Can you summon the still lake when you need it?

Why can't we?

Why is that hard?

Because we think it's normal to have this active vritti,

This active fluctuation.

And so this sutra gives us a practice to learn what it feels like to just have stillness.

So the idea,

And this is a practice,

Like this is something that I highly recommend going out and doing maybe every day this week as your tantric practice,

To go out into a barren place.

And it could be anything.

It could be a parking lot.

It could be a mountain.

It could be an open field.

But the key is that it should be barren.

Because if there's anything in it,

This is what they mean when they say that there is no support for the mind to rest on or there's no support for the mind.

Because as soon as there's something in the field,

It could even be waving grass,

The mind is going,

Ah,

Waving grass.

I love the color green.

Oh,

I love running through the grass.

Why am I not rolling?

Why don't I spend more time in nature?

Right?

As soon as there's something there for our mind to jump on,

The fluctuations continue.

So if you can find a place that is empty,

That is barren,

Even water doesn't count here.

The ocean doesn't count because you're going to be lulled by the sounds of the water.

You're going to be lulled by the water itself.

So it's very interesting to find a place that is barren,

Treeless,

Or a mountain that you can't focus on the individual bits,

Where you're not looking at the trails and the trees.

You can't see all that.

So then what happens is as you focus on the nothingness in front of you,

Your mind gets absorbed in the void.

And it's hard.

It can kind of be like a meditation,

Where when you start meditating,

The mind is very frustrated because your eyes are closed and there's nothing to think about.

There's nothing to focus on.

There's nothing for the mind to get support,

They call it.

And so we get very frustrated.

And then we say,

Well,

I'm not a good meditator.

I'm not good at this.

It's too hard.

So we have to practice actually focusing on nothing.

They talk about how important this practice is because it helps us understand two of the limbs of yoga,

Dharana and dhyana.

And dharana is focus.

And again,

Why do we study the eight limbs of yoga?

Because these are the keys to a happy life.

Dharana is concentration,

Is focus.

What's your life like when you're actually fully focused?

You are on a singular track.

Maybe you're just reading a book,

But you have no distractions.

Or you're washing dishes,

And you are 100% washing the dishes.

Or you're driving.

I love driving alone.

Sometimes there's music on,

But sometimes there's just that drive.

And you get to this beautiful,

Almost meditative state,

Where you're not really even noticing the towns you're going through.

You're not noticing what's in the fields.

You're not noticing the houses.

It's almost like you are,

You have this general focus on nothing.

And you get into this meditative state.

If you're not careful,

You don't notice the town you're going through.

I've gotten a few,

Well,

I've been stopped by the police.

I didn't actually get speeding tickets,

But I've been stopped by the police because I didn't see that town.

This is a meditation,

Because my mind has been emptied of thoughts.

So this is Dharana.

This is the thrill of Dharana,

The thrill of focus.

Because then what happens when we have this focus,

We become absorbed in whatever we're doing.

And that's Dhyana,

Which is another state of meditation.

So this is a practice for that.

And it shows us that all we have to do,

If we want to do it,

Just focus on something empty.

And again,

You could do this,

Even if you're not somewhere that you can just stare at a barren landscape.

Maybe that's just not even a possibility for you.

So you could just,

In your mind,

Close your eyes,

And we'll do this later in the meditation,

But you could just close your eyes and imagine an empty landscape.

And let your mind,

Like to throw your mind into that empty landscape,

And allow your mind to be absorbed into that emptiness.

And then as you practice this,

It doesn't happen instantaneously.

Sometimes it does.

But as you practice it,

You end up with this visceral memory.

The brain myelinates overnight.

You create white matter in the brain,

And suddenly this becomes easier and easier and easier to do.

So then at some point in the future,

When you find yourself and your mind is going a million miles an hour,

It just won't stop.

Like it's just chewing on this and chewing on that and wondering.

You're just like,

Oh my god,

Will the thoughts ever stop?

All you have to do is close your eyes,

Picture that barren landscape,

And like Pavlov's dog,

You're literally there.

The vritti has ceased.

The fluctuations of the mind have released.

And what's really beautiful,

They say something wonderful in this one book.

They say,

When the mind is absorbed in that space,

All thought constructs come to a dead stop.

That is the moment when the light within makes its presence felt,

And you realize there is a deeper reality than what is open to the senses.

Can you feel that?

This is what opens us up to the subtlety of life,

The subtle truth of life.

That there is this ever-present light within us.

And then when we come back to what Lauren said in the Radiant Sutras,

I'm just going to reread the original text here.

And he says,

Go to a wide open space.

Gaze without looking anywhere.

The mind stops its building of thoughts and rests on its own foundation,

Immensity.

The light that you see by is the light that comes from inside.

So let's think about that for a minute.

If our mind is filled with vritti,

If our mind is driven by vritti,

The fluctuations of the mind,

Every thought that comes in that creates a ripple on that beautiful still lake,

All these thoughts,

And then I'm thinking about my job,

And then I'm thinking about the dog,

And I'm thinking about my relationship,

And I'm thinking about my taxes,

And I'm thinking about rent,

And I'm thinking about my kids,

And I'm thinking about my future,

And I'm thinking about when I'm going to have time to have a bath,

And I'm thinking,

I'm thinking,

I'm thinking.

How much light am I experiencing inside of me?

If there is a light inside,

Whatever you want to call it.

You know,

I remember years ago,

I discovered Quakerism,

The Quakers.

I discovered them because I had read the book,

The Road Less Traveled by M.

Scott Peck.

And he talked about when he read,

He had met this Quaker,

And the Quaker had shared with him that their foundational belief is that when they meet someone,

They always look for the light within.

That's how they interact with other people.

So if our minds are filled with a bazillion thoughts building on each other,

Interacting with each other,

How much light are we able to feel inside of us?

And then all of a sudden,

Imagine you begin a practice like this,

And maybe this becomes your practice for 30 days.

Maybe it becomes a sadhana for you,

Because you're aware that,

Wow,

My mind is like a mat of thoughts.

I don't even,

You know,

Maybe it's not even fluctuating anymore.

It's so matted in there that I cannot experience the light within myself.

It's impossible.

So instead,

Every day,

I'm going to sit and I'm going to do this meditation,

Focusing on the emptiness and allowing my mind to dissolve into the void.

And slowly my mind becomes empty.

And to realize this is just a state that you become able to summon.

We don't live in that state.

I love thinking about stuff.

I love studying.

I love driving cars and doing interesting things.

And I am concerned about certain things I like to think about.

But if I need to rest,

Can I close my eyes and empty the pot?

That's the goal.

So all of that sudden,

You're sitting quietly,

You're meditating,

You're allowing your mind to dissolve into the emptiness.

It's almost like as soon as your soul knows that you really mean it,

And we're going to let all the thought structures go,

Suddenly we're aware of this light inside.

We're aware of our divine self.

We're aware that this self,

This being that I am,

Is eternal,

Is immortal.

Regardless of what body I'm in or what life I'm in,

We become aware of that.

And what if that becomes the light that we now see our life by?

If you imagine the light coming out of our eyes,

That it's almost like we are now interpreting the world through the light that's coming from inside of us.

How different might our life look?

It's like that there used to be a commercial for the yellow pages.

Back when we used,

I don't even know if yellow pages still exist.

But for anyone who's never,

Who doesn't know what yellow pages are,

Maybe it's just a North American thing.

We had used to have phone books that were white pages,

And that was all personal phone numbers.

And then there was the yellow pages that was all the business listings.

And so the yellow pages used to have this commercial where the whole world was in black and white.

It was a video and or a movie.

But if you were looking for a new car,

All the cars would be colored bright yellow.

And you would walk through the world seeing all the cars because they were in yellow.

Or if you were looking to buy a new headset,

You'd walk through this black and white world,

But you'd see every person's headset because you're looking for a headset,

And they would be colored in yellow.

Can you imagine the difference?

If you have this visceral connection to the light within yourself,

Not someone else's light or some external divinity,

But the light within you,

And then you walk out your front door,

What are your eyes gonna see?

If all of a sudden your friend appears,

What do they look like through the light that shines within you?

What do they look like when your mind is filled with fluctuations?

Maybe your partner comes home.

What do they look like when your mind is full of fluctuations?

What do they look like through this inner light?

Sometimes I can get,

You know,

We can get very confused about our future.

What are we really supposed to be doing?

I don't know.

Am I on my path?

Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?

Am I really living my real life?

Like what's going on there?

I can't even perceive myself if my mind is filled with all of these ponderings.

But if I am aware of this light inside,

And I even shine that light on my own journey,

What am I going to see?

What awarenesses are going to come up?

What thought patterns?

It's a very,

Very beautiful meditation to do.

That's exactly what I needed to hear.

I've been wondering if what I'm doing is on my right path.

Right?

It's,

Uh,

I think it was Alan Watts or something.

He said,

Trying to see yourself and your own path is kind of like trying to chew on your own teeth.

That's a real thing.

That actually it's in the void that the truth rises.

It's not in the fluctuations of the mind that the answers come.

How do you listen?

For me,

I listen in meditation.

I listen in life too,

But it's not always as easy.

But for me,

My favorite meditation is if my mind is swirling and the world is swirling around me,

It seems to be.

I sit down on my couch and I just let my mind empty.

I close my eyes and I just let it empty.

I let it swirl out almost like automatic writing.

I just let it swirl out and which sometimes takes a long time.

Having a practice is easier,

But this is just what I do.

And then all of a sudden it becomes quiet.

And then the answer appears because oftentimes we already know what the answer is,

But our mind is trying to talk us out of it,

Which is also why the mind doesn't want us to empty it because if it empties it,

All those arguments against our truth,

We'll have to leave and we'll be left with the truth that we already know in our heart.

So let's do a meditation.

So what we're going to do is we're going to do a meditation,

A guided meditation,

And then I'm going to read the sutra in English or in Sanskrit and then in English.

So please find a comfortable meditative posture.

If you've been sitting and you need to roll your legs around or roll your ankles and stretch your legs,

Then please do that.

You can sit on the floor,

You can sit on a couch or a chair,

As long as you're sitting upright.

If you're in Australia and you want to lay down because it's night time,

Or if you're anywhere and you want to lay down,

That's totally cool.

I'm going to lead it sitting up,

But feel free to lay down if you'd like.

So let's close our eyes.

If you're sitting upright,

Press your sit bones down towards the earth.

Let the crown of your head rise up to the heavens.

Let your chin tuck in.

Let your shoulders drop down the back,

Feeling a spaciousness between your shoulders and your ears.

Breathing deeply through the nose,

If you can.

As you inhale,

Expand the belly.

As you exhale,

Contract the belly.

With every breath,

Being aware of your posture.

These are two more of the eight limbs of yoga.

Asana is the seat you take on the planet.

So really feel your seat.

Feel your body as you sit.

Imagine it like a tree with roots going down into the earth and branches going up into the heavens,

And feel the stillness of that tree.

This is also our masculine-feminine dynamic.

The strength of our asana,

The strength of our posture,

Is the masculine structure.

And the stronger that posture,

The stronger that tree,

The more we're able to listen inside.

So within that strong structure,

Feel the gentle undulation of the breath,

The belly gently expanding as you inhale,

Contracting as you exhale.

These two limbs are asana and pranayama.

Pranayama to expand the life force through breath.

And so first,

To allow your attention to go up into your mind and just observe it.

I always see it like the magic school bus,

A cartoon that was on when my children were small.

This little school bus is going up into the brain to check out the brain.

Check out the brain.

And just to be aware of any chatter in the mind,

Any topics that are flowing around,

Wanting attention.

And just watch them.

We don't have to stop them or make them wrong.

Sometimes there's a lot going on in our lives.

And maybe even be aware of the hum of the mind,

Even if you don't want to focus on the details.

Almost like feeling the waves in your inner lake.

And just be aware of them.

This is natural.

Vritti is not wrong.

It's a natural part of the brain activity.

We just want to have choice,

Whether our lake is quiet and still,

Or whether it's active and moving and creating.

So just breathing deeply,

Just being aware of your mind.

And now I'd like you to visualize a barren landscape.

Trust whatever comes into your mind first.

Maybe it's a treeless field,

A mountain in the distance,

A desert,

Or whatever other,

It could be rocks,

Bedrock.

But trust whatever vision came to you first,

That is your soul meditating with you.

And now imagine in your mind's eye a place for you to sit,

A comfortable place for you to sit in this vision,

Where you are just sitting and observing this barren landscape.

Coming back to coming back to your posture,

Because sometimes the thoughts of the mind make our back slump.

So allow your posture to be tall.

Focus on your breath.

Sometimes we do new things,

We stop breathing.

Visualize yourself gazing upon this space.

And now we're going to take the mind,

That mind that we paid attention to earlier,

And we're going to project it into that emptiness.

Almost like you're taking the energy signature of your brain right now,

Exactly as it is.

And you're going to place it out into that emptiness,

That empty space.

And we're going to keep breathing.

We're going to allow any ripples of the mind to be absorbed into the emptiness.

Breathing deeply,

Knowing that we can summon those ripples anytime we want.

They are not lost forever.

We just want to practice stillness,

Stillness.

Allowing your eyes to gaze at nothing.

The landscape is in front of you,

But you're not really looking at anything at all.

Space is something worth looking at.

Space is worthy of worship and wonder.

It is the field within which everything exists.

Rest your eyes in emptiness.

Throw the one who is seeing into the center.

Entrust your mind to the embrace of space.

In a flash,

All boundaries dissolve.

Go to a wide open space.

Gaze without looking anywhere.

The mind stops its building of thoughts and rests on its own foundation,

Immensity.

The light that you see by is the light that comes from inside.

Let's just spend a minute focusing on that light within.

The last thing I want to do,

Continuing the meditation,

Is feeling this very quiet,

Still lake.

I want you to imagine a thought coming in.

Maybe it's the thought of a flower,

And you see the flower,

And it's so beautiful,

But it causes a fluctuation in the mind.

And you can see the ripple,

The little wave in your lake.

And then we're going to release the And then we're going to release the flower and allow the lake to be still again.

And then imagine another thought has come in.

Maybe two thoughts.

It doesn't matter what they are.

But now there's two different ripples in the lake.

And so there's two or three ripples in the lake now.

And now let's gaze upon the barren land or whatever you have.

Breathe deeply.

And as you exhale,

Allow the stillness to return.

And then to imagine yourself walking down the street.

And your eyes are seeing all kinds of things,

Causing fluctuations,

Engaging vritti.

And then you decide,

You know what,

That's all great.

But I'm just going to focus within and enjoy my walk.

And you take a deep breath in.

And as you exhale,

You let all of those fluctuations cease.

You allow your mind to be still,

Even as you're walking down the street.

And as your mind stills,

You feel this beautiful light within.

This light is flowing down your arms and down your legs and through your eyes.

Then you see a little bird.

You notice the sunshine.

And instead of causing ripples,

What you see nourishes you.

It feeds you.

So coming back in your mind into your meditative spot,

Let's just take a couple breaths together.

Feel the quiet within.

And know that you can do this anytime.

Let's gently open our eyes.

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

This was very calming for my busy mind. Thanks so much…