Today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras,
Which is a beautiful interpretation of this ancient tantric text called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.
And you know what's really interesting about that is that one of my current studies is studying the ancient tantras,
Like around the time of this or even before the Vijnana Bhairava.
And it's really interesting because I'm not finding what I thought I would find.
I thought I would find all of these incredible techniques and processes that were all this,
You know,
Really tantric.
And so far what I'm finding,
Truthfully,
Is just a lot of dogma.
A lot of belief in this god or this deity,
And here are the rituals,
And here is who's allowed to do it.
And you can almost just insert,
Whether it's Shiva,
Shakti,
Vishnu,
Kali,
It doesn't matter what it is,
It's all kind of the same.
And I'm reading it thinking,
What?
Because I know I'm meant to study this.
I know this is a call,
That there's something I'm meant to find here.
And I'm kind of starting to realize I think whatever I'm meant to find,
It's going to come in between the lines.
It's not going to actually be written,
Because it's the same with a lot of our experiences with the Radiant Sutras.
We can read the text,
But the transformation happens between the text and your soul.
So the actual tantric journey can't be written down.
And so far this sutra,
Like this set,
This Vijnana Bhairava,
Is the most profoundly transformational tantric piece I've found yet.
It's so potent,
Like right now.
And so as I continue my studies,
I love this text more and more.
So we're reading from the Radiant Sutras.
And I also use this other book,
Which is very interesting,
Called the Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,
The Ascent.
And it's a,
The translation in here is a literal translation.
But then they also go much deeper into different aspects of what it all means.
And so I really enjoy that too.
So the way this works is,
We kind of settle in to our eternal soul,
The part of us that has never changed,
The part of us that was here when we were four years old,
If you like,
Tune in with your four year old self and who you were.
And you come to today and who you are.
And then imagine yourself like 90 and who you are.
And you could even go so far,
Whether we believe in multiple lives or not.
Imagine you're in a future life and imagine who you are,
That eternal soul.
And then we have this personality that for whatever reason,
We're kind of playing this interesting role,
This particular DNA sequence today.
But inside is this eternal soul.
And that's who we want to listen with when we listen to this sutra.
And so I'm going to read you a sutra.
If you have the book,
I highly recommend buying the book.
It's just the most beautiful book,
But you certainly don't need it for this class.
We're doing Yukti verse number 16 on page 51.
So I'm going to read it out loud.
And then we'll have a discussion.
And then we're going to do a meditation.
And then I'll reread it in Sanskrit and in English.
Because there's something magical about hearing it in Sanskrit as well.
So let's close our eyes.
And let's just breathe deeply through the nose.
If you can,
Not everyone can breathe through the nose.
And as we inhale,
Expanding the belly,
The ribs,
The upper chest,
Contracting as we exhale,
Relaxing the shoulders and allowing your attention to just rest in that place inside that is your eternal self.
The roar of joy that sets the worlds in motion is reverberating in your body and the space between all bodies.
Beloved,
Listen.
Find that exuberant vibration rising new in every moment,
Humming in your secret places,
Resounding through the channels of delight.
Know you are flooded by it always.
Float with the sound.
Melt with it into divine silence.
The sacred power of space will carry you into the dancing radiant emptiness that is the source of all.
The ocean of sound is inviting you into its spacious embrace,
Calling you home.
Which words or what feelings rise for you when you hear that?
The sound of om,
The space between,
Radiate into nothingness.
Three seconds before you said flooded,
I thought my body is filled,
Flooded with everything in the universe.
The sound and feeling of love,
Smiling,
Knowing I am in that space and humbly grateful.
The feeling of floating,
Then melting,
Source of all things.
So many things I love in that sutra,
Floating,
Dancing,
The ocean melting.
I love to lay and do nothing but let chocolate melt in my mouth.
It's a beautiful metaphor for this.
The sound of the universe vibrating and uniting.
I hugged myself to embrace everything inside of me.
All that is outside me and beyond is within me.
The sacred power of space.
God is space and we are encompassed within.
I'm going to read another translation of it from our other book here,
The Ascent.
In this book,
The Ascent,
The title of this is actually called Pranava Dharana.
And Pranava is this,
The sound om,
But it's like the primal sound,
The primordial sound before all else.
They call it the sound before the shout or the sound,
It's almost like,
Yeah,
It's the sound that creates all things.
And Dharana is focus,
Concentration.
And so the whole idea is to focus on this primal sound.
So here's a much more literal translation of this.
Oh,
Bhairava,
One who repeats the Pranava perfectly while concentrating on the void for protracted periods,
Experiences the void and by that void,
The transcendental Shakti is revealed.
So what they're talking about here,
The idea is that we want to chant the sound om.
There's a lot of theories about this sound.
Very often it's pronounced om,
Which many will say that is not accurate.
And others will do it happily.
So whichever school we're playing with.
But the idea of the sound om is that if you imagine opening your mouth and making a sound,
What are the sounds you can make without using your tongue or your teeth or anything special,
You can go ah.
These are the only sounds we can make.
And the idea is that beginning with nothing,
The primal sound will be like that.
It's just ah.
And so what's interesting is when they talk about focusing on the protracted aspect or focusing on the void or shunya.
So let's imagine for a moment,
If you close your eyes,
Imagine there is no earth,
There is no galaxy,
There is no us.
And we are just in a void or we are the void.
So you have this void and then last week we talked about the sound anahat,
Which is the unstruck chord.
It's almost the vibration that the world makes before any sound is made.
So even within your own body as you ponder the void,
Maybe it's the feeling of your heart beating or the feeling of the blood flowing through your body.
And now let's imagine that creating sound is the sound of the heart beating.
That creation is going to happen.
And from that void,
A vibration begins.
And we are part of that void as humans.
Like we are part of this creation.
So what happens,
We open our mouths.
Our mouth is open,
We're in a void and a vibration begins.
And imagine the vibration is going to end in creation.
And that's when our mouth closes.
So let's try this,
Right?
We're right where you are.
So open your mouth and we're in the void and then a vibration begins.
Ah,
Ah.
So what's really interesting about that is when we focus on the void,
The sound of om makes more sense.
If we walk through the world,
Our busy lives and a million things and all creation all around us and we just chant om,
It feels good.
The sound of om is actually a beautiful meditation.
It's so,
So healing.
If we have any kind of struggle mentally or emotionally,
To simply make these sounds every day.
If you said,
I'm going to sit down and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to spend three minutes or five minutes just chanting om like we just did.
The physiological,
The mental effects of that is huge.
Because if you even break it down and the sound ah.
So even right now as we're sitting here to just chant the sound ah,
But feel it in your body.
Don't chant it,
Sing it.
Feel it vibrating in your body.
Ah.
Even feel it in your first few chakras.
Feel it in your root,
Your second chakra,
Your lower abdomen.
Okay,
Let's try it again,
But feel it down there.
Ah.
And then you imagine it rising up the chakras and ending kind of in the third eye,
But it's sort of in this mouth third eye area,
Right?
Because there's area between the throat chakra and the third eye.
So imagine the sound is now rising up as we go to close our mouth and then we close our mouth to creation.
So now let's try that.
Ah.
So the sound of the ah is so healing.
So if that's all you did was chant ah in a day,
It's so like literally a pranayama for healing our mental,
Our emotional bodies.
The mm sound is a very common meditation.
Mm.
This too,
I was once given this as a meditation.
I told the story before when I went to this Ayurvedic doctor and he told me that I had so much anger inside of me and I had no concept of how much anger I had because I prided myself in not being an angry person until my daughter corrected me when I told her what he said and she said,
Mom,
You just don't get angry at the people you're angry at.
You just get mad about it later.
And then I realized I had to start talking to the people I was actually angry at.
But he actually gave me this meditation that I was to sit and meditate and go mm and this would burn out the stored anger inside of me.
So if you imagine taking as a daily practice to first imagine the void,
Because this is a very powerful thing.
It's not just chanting om.
Just chanting om can be cool,
But imagining the void and then chanting om.
Set a timer and allow yourself to just chant om.
But this is a dharana.
This is a practiced focus.
So the key is to focus on the sound,
Focus within,
Focus on every vibration within you.
And there are many,
Many interesting aspects to this in terms of our mental health and our emotional health,
But even how we navigate the world.
Because for me,
What it does is it helps me sort out what's real and what's not real.
I believe that what drives us crazy is all the not real things that we have to respond to,
That we have to integrate versions of reality that aren't ours.
They're not real.
And there is something visceral and magical about closing your eyes,
Experiencing the void,
And then allowing the true primal sound to resonate through your body.
And it's almost like this is what's real.
And then we sit,
And it might be even an interesting journaling exercise after you meditate with the om,
Like later at a different time,
To actually determine what is real in your life.
What belongs in the primal truth of real in our lives?
And we don't even have to really identify what isn't.
You can if you want.
But it's more visceral than intellectual.
And then all of a sudden,
The more we do it,
The more we chant om,
The more we realize that there are real things and there are unreal things,
But we feel it in our bodies viscerally.
Then as we go through life,
Someone says something,
And you just know it doesn't ring true.
It just doesn't,
It's not part of reality.
It's a fabrication.
And then we don't waste our energy entertaining it,
Because it's not real.
It's as real as someone watching a soap opera and then coming to you the next day at work and going,
Can you believe what Victor said to.
.
.
And you're like,
It's a TV show.
I know,
But you know,
And then we're going to have this big dramatic conversation about something,
And it's like,
No,
But it isn't real.
And can you imagine living a life only focused on what's real?
You imagine the power of your intention,
If that was the only place you were shining your flashlight?
Another interesting interpretation of the word om is that it means yes.
And Lauren in the back of this book,
He has a commentary and meditation about it.
And he talks about how it's so interesting that if someone was to ask you a question or they say something that you really agree with,
What are the sounds we make?
We go,
Ah,
Ooh,
Mm.
These are the natural sounds of yes.
So now again,
You imagine this beautiful void.
And then all of a sudden you imagine the universe saying,
Yes,
Ah.
Imagine this yes.
And now imagine that in our lives.
Imagine you have an idea,
But it's just a seed.
It's almost like just sitting there.
It hasn't decided to sprout yet.
So there's almost like there's this void in the world that you want to create something.
There's something you want to create.
So here's the void.
And then there's the rumble that,
Ooh,
An idea,
The anahat,
The idea.
And all of a sudden you realize you're going to step into this.
And one of the interpretations of om is the roar of joy.
So then all of a sudden you say,
I'm going to do it.
And the roar begins.
The sound begins.
The creation begins.
This doesn't have to just be some esoteric thought of the creation of the universe.
This is every single moment of our life,
Even speech.
You imagine you're having a difficult conversation with someone.
Maybe they're in a bad place.
Maybe you're having an argument.
Maybe there's just a misunderstanding.
Who knows what.
And you end up in that quiet place that,
What do they call it in chess,
Stalemate.
But you want to figure it out.
You actually both want to figure it out.
And you sit in the silence,
Sort of waiting for an answer.
And all of a sudden something starts to rise.
Something starts to come.
And you open your mouth and you say something.
Ah,
And here.
And whatever that is,
Suddenly you're embracing again.
We don't understand how powerful our words are.
We don't understand how powerful the sound of our voice is.
And when I chant om,
I feel like I'm outside of everything.
Like I'm watching life around me,
Like television.
It's weird,
But I can explain it properly.
Yeah.
The archetype of the empty room.
The space between.
So if we look at this sutra a little bit more deeply,
The roar of joy that sets the worlds in motion is reverberating in your body.
And the space between all bodies.
Beloved,
Listen.
So then he's talking about now,
Find that exuberant vibration rising new in every moment,
Humming in your secret places.
So this is like the first chakra resounding through the channels of delight,
The energy channels rising up through your body.
Know that you are flooded by it always.
Let's feel that.
That there is this sound,
This om,
This vibration flowing through us from the core,
From the earth,
Always through the energy channels of our body.
And then what's beautiful is when something is a dharana,
A focus,
A concentration,
The next limb of yoga,
Because this is one of the eight limbs of yoga from Patanjali sutras.
The next stage after dharana is dhyana,
Which is absorption.
So we focus until we are absorbed into it.
So the next part says,
Float with the sound,
Melt with it into divine silence.
The sacred power of space will carry you into the dancing radiant emptiness.
When we think of the void,
When we think of shunya,
It isn't nothingness.
That's the problem with our western mind of the left brain,
That the only things that we can count exist.
But in the nothingness,
In the void,
Is where all things are created.
Into the dancing radiant emptiness that is the source of all.
The ocean of sound is inviting you into its spacious embrace,
Calling you home.
Before we meditate,
I just want to reread this other very literal translation,
Because there's one other piece in there that I want to share.
Oh Bhairavi,
One who repeats the pranava,
Om,
Perfectly while concentrating on the void for protracted periods,
Experiences the void,
And by that void,
The transcendental shakti is revealed.
What's interesting about that is,
So by chanting om,
We get to experience the void.
As we get absorbed into the void,
We get to experience the transcendental shakti.
So within this tradition,
The idea is that there is the oneness,
And then the oneness separated into two,
Masculine,
Feminine,
God,
Divine,
God,
Physical,
Divine,
Matter,
Whatever.
And the idea is that Shiva is the consciousness that stayed at the crown,
And shakti descended down into form.
And that our lives are this perpetual dance of Shiva and shakti,
Energy.
And that shakti is the manifest world.
It isn't the feminine like women,
Or gendered,
Or something like that.
It's simply the manifest of the masculine,
Of om,
Of all that.
So when you think of that,
Through experiencing the void,
We experience the transcendental manifestation of our lives.
Not just the physical,
Not just the paying the bills,
And getting here,
And the worries,
And the concerns.
But we get to experience our transcendental life here.
And then all of a sudden,
Whether we're letting chocolate melt in our mouth,
Whether we're singing to our favorite song,
Or whether we're practicing yoga,
Or making love,
Or walking in the sunshine,
Or walking in the rain,
We're experiencing the transcendental aspect of the physical world.
So the meditation we're going to do is we're just going to chant om,
Or um,
More accurately.
And I'm going to do it with you.
But you don't have to do it with me at the same time.
It's actually very beautiful in a group when everyone just chants om sporadically,
However you want.
And so it's sort of a constant sound reverberating,
But you don't have to chant at the same time.
You can chant with me if you want,
If our breath signatures match,
But feel free to just do it at your own pace.
So let's get sitting comfortably.
So you want to sit upright.
So you want to sit up straight.
And the reason we sit upright,
There are a few reasons.
One of them is you want to feel the container of the universe.
You want to feel the earth underneath you,
The manifest underneath you.
And you want to feel the energy meridians flowing up your body into this infinite space above.
We also want to sit upright so that we can have a full breath,
Because this is important.
You know that they say that the earth breathes,
That if you superimpose the two platonic solids,
Two of these beautiful solids,
If you put them inside each other,
You see the earth,
And the earth actually breathes in this geometric shape.
That's us.
So breathing is really important.
And as we sit upright,
We're going to kind of be that galaxy.
We're going to be the earth beneath,
The galaxy,
The infinite above,
And we're going to breathe in between there and chant this beautiful sound.
For a mudra,
Feel free to just let your hands rest,
Palms facing up on top of each other in your lap.
If you feel called to another mudra,
It's okay.
Do that as well.
Do whatever feels right for you.
So let's close our eyes,
Really pressing your sit bones down into the earth,
Letting your lower back press forward a little bit,
Letting your spine straighten,
Your chin to the side,
And your head to the ceiling.
Let's just breathe deeply,
Expanding the belly as we inhale,
Contracting as we exhale.
And let's imagine the void.
Let's imagine infinite space,
The space where all things are possible.
And very gently,
Let's just gently open our mouth,
And our mouth is open.
And we're going to then very gently,
Let's just gently open our mouth,
And we're going to take a deep breath in and chant this primordial sound,
Aum,
Again at your own pace,
With me,
Whatever you'd like.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum.
Aum Shakti Shunya eti Bharavi.
The roar of joy that sets the world's in motion is reverberating in your body and the space between all bodies.
Beloved,
Listen.
Find that exuberant vibration rising new in every moment,
Humming in your secret places,
Resounding through the channels of delight.
Know you are flooded by it always.
Float with the sound.
Melt with it into divine silence.
The sacred power of space will carry you into the dancing radiant emptiness that is the source of all.
The ocean of sound is inviting you.
Into its spacious embrace,
Calling you home.
Thank you so much for being here.
Hope you have a wonderful day.
