I am the naked sword of eternal annihilation.
The laughter of final Death.
Why look for me in incensed sanctuaries?
Come if you are among the scions of Warriors.
Come to the very depth of dark Hades where Void laughs Her terrors.
Wade through the ocean of funeral fires.
Swallow up cosmos after cosmos
And look at my Terror, if you can!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Explosion of Bliss!
Memory is not experience. It doesn’t have the flavour of what it seeks to recollect. Yet, some pointers are so significant that even a vague remnant of their flame in a hidden crevice of the dark shadows of our past can still enlighten the alive present. In the winter of 06, I spent a few extremely significant weeks in solitary meditation. I did it in my own bedroom. Telling mother to keep some food for me in the fridge but to never ask me to come for any of the meals and having extracted the promise that nobody would ever come into my room or disturb me in any manner, I went deeper and still deeper into the layers of my being. My room had an attached bath and I had the least need to venture out. I came out only once, around 2 every night, to have a meagre cold meal. I drank quite a lot of water with honey and some milk. Besides that, I just stayed in the room, concentrating neither on mantra, nor on breath and following no meditation. I just let myself go deeper and still deeper in the space of free awareness, without any hope or fear, and with no formulation, either secular or spiritual. There was no communication of any sort with anybody in those weeks.
Since I never met any other, the need of the self to emerge was diminished. As external language became redundant, thoughts, which is just internal language, too subsided and gradually became almost indiscernible. The expanding field of pure awareness, which I often experience as a vibration, sometimes as a current like sensation and at others as an audible ‘air’ became increasingly intense. There were times when a great engulfing vibrating density was experienced in the entire room and when one’s fingertip touched it, a sensation very close to an electric shock was experienced, though it wasn’t unduly unpleasant. At other times, a great expansion was experienced…an expansion so great that awareness encompassed an immense vastness…a sky within which great planetary bodies were experienced and a sun like star. These massive heavenly bodies were experienced in the space of vastly expanded awareness, without any experience of the human dimension…without a mind with its thoughts and without a body with its terrible limitations. The sense of ‘I’ in these spaces of vastness emerged only from time to time and its leitmotif was always a great and always fresh wonder.
It was in this phase that I had my only full-blown and clearly experienced NDE (near death experience). I had become quite used to the immense expansions in awareness and there was no need of the articulation of consciousness in the human dimension as a person. Indeed ‘I’ was experienced only as an emergent sense of wonder which came only from time to time in those vast spaces. That evening, the same wondrous vastness was experienced. As was my habit in those days, I was lying down on the bed with my head perpendicular to the rest of my body at the medulla point. The immense expansion was experienced in that state. Gradually I went into a deep state of extremely profound sleep or extraordinarily subtle awareness…a kind of ‘shunyata’ or ‘creative void’…sleep is quite the wrong word to use for it. It was dark before I lost consciousness of the external world so I am not sure for how long was I in that state. However, when awareness returned, it was into a most strange state. The first thing I noticed, to my intense discomfort, was an absolute inability to breathe, even after trying really hard. It was a really unpleasant choking sensation…like being under water…I was absolutely unable to breathe. My body was…well…absolutely absent. There was no sensation of any kind of the body. Absolutely none! However, an intense oceanic sword or river like sharpely pointed mass of pure vibrational consciousness was penetrating a minute point at the nape of my neck, possibly the medulla point. It was entering with serpentine motion, and it was intense and massive…pure vibration of awareness…and it added to the discomfort. Not only was I completely suffocated, but a great sword was entering the nape of my neck! However I did realize that strangely I wasn’t dying or losing consciousness despite the absence of breath. I also became more aware of the great river of awareness entering my neck. I felt death was very close. Strangely there was no memory of any kind of ever having been a human…no image of my body or that of parents or any friend…not even a single flashback of any kind. There was a fear but no memory. Soon an ever-widening spiral movement of awareness was experienced and the expansion was me! Even the consciousness of the nape of the neck vanished in the great rising spiral. In that rising spiral, light and darkness had strangely blended together…At what seemed the apex, the presence of the Beas mystics was experienced. I somehow knew I would lose consciousness and just before the blast, I prayed that my Guru must come to my rescue.
The experience this far was anything but pleasant and soothing. Indeed I had never been more afraid in my entire life, though I consider myself pretty brave but I was really scared and felt I would most certainly die. However the climax was so extraordinarily exhilarating that I would gladly go through a million repetitions of the ordeal. While it was still dark, awareness came with a tremendous explosion…my brain was flooded with a veritable ocean of pure ecstasy. Every neuron was dancing with a joy that was infinite love and the profoundest bliss. Waves of supernal ecstasy were continuously exploding in my head. It was most sacred, infinitely intimate and more joyous than a trillion times trillion orgasms happening together!!! That joy stayed with me for hours and its memory still nourishes me even in the most taxing times.
Since I never met any other, the need of the self to emerge was diminished. As external language became redundant, thoughts, which is just internal language, too subsided and gradually became almost indiscernible. The expanding field of pure awareness, which I often experience as a vibration, sometimes as a current like sensation and at others as an audible ‘air’ became increasingly intense. There were times when a great engulfing vibrating density was experienced in the entire room and when one’s fingertip touched it, a sensation very close to an electric shock was experienced, though it wasn’t unduly unpleasant. At other times, a great expansion was experienced…an expansion so great that awareness encompassed an immense vastness…a sky within which great planetary bodies were experienced and a sun like star. These massive heavenly bodies were experienced in the space of vastly expanded awareness, without any experience of the human dimension…without a mind with its thoughts and without a body with its terrible limitations. The sense of ‘I’ in these spaces of vastness emerged only from time to time and its leitmotif was always a great and always fresh wonder.
It was in this phase that I had my only full-blown and clearly experienced NDE (near death experience). I had become quite used to the immense expansions in awareness and there was no need of the articulation of consciousness in the human dimension as a person. Indeed ‘I’ was experienced only as an emergent sense of wonder which came only from time to time in those vast spaces. That evening, the same wondrous vastness was experienced. As was my habit in those days, I was lying down on the bed with my head perpendicular to the rest of my body at the medulla point. The immense expansion was experienced in that state. Gradually I went into a deep state of extremely profound sleep or extraordinarily subtle awareness…a kind of ‘shunyata’ or ‘creative void’…sleep is quite the wrong word to use for it. It was dark before I lost consciousness of the external world so I am not sure for how long was I in that state. However, when awareness returned, it was into a most strange state. The first thing I noticed, to my intense discomfort, was an absolute inability to breathe, even after trying really hard. It was a really unpleasant choking sensation…like being under water…I was absolutely unable to breathe. My body was…well…absolutely absent. There was no sensation of any kind of the body. Absolutely none! However, an intense oceanic sword or river like sharpely pointed mass of pure vibrational consciousness was penetrating a minute point at the nape of my neck, possibly the medulla point. It was entering with serpentine motion, and it was intense and massive…pure vibration of awareness…and it added to the discomfort. Not only was I completely suffocated, but a great sword was entering the nape of my neck! However I did realize that strangely I wasn’t dying or losing consciousness despite the absence of breath. I also became more aware of the great river of awareness entering my neck. I felt death was very close. Strangely there was no memory of any kind of ever having been a human…no image of my body or that of parents or any friend…not even a single flashback of any kind. There was a fear but no memory. Soon an ever-widening spiral movement of awareness was experienced and the expansion was me! Even the consciousness of the nape of the neck vanished in the great rising spiral. In that rising spiral, light and darkness had strangely blended together…At what seemed the apex, the presence of the Beas mystics was experienced. I somehow knew I would lose consciousness and just before the blast, I prayed that my Guru must come to my rescue.
The experience this far was anything but pleasant and soothing. Indeed I had never been more afraid in my entire life, though I consider myself pretty brave but I was really scared and felt I would most certainly die. However the climax was so extraordinarily exhilarating that I would gladly go through a million repetitions of the ordeal. While it was still dark, awareness came with a tremendous explosion…my brain was flooded with a veritable ocean of pure ecstasy. Every neuron was dancing with a joy that was infinite love and the profoundest bliss. Waves of supernal ecstasy were continuously exploding in my head. It was most sacred, infinitely intimate and more joyous than a trillion times trillion orgasms happening together!!! That joy stayed with me for hours and its memory still nourishes me even in the most taxing times.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Awareness
The Purity of Absolute Nothingness negates itself and creates the infinity of Being in Awareness. As Buddha says, "Form is shunyata and shunyata is form. There is no form without shunyata and there is no shunyata without form." He further said, 'To meditate on shunyata is futile like being a moth burning in a flame. While the moth that burns in fire atleast achieves extinction and hence the end of its suffering, the one who merely meditates on nothingness just suffers endlessly.' Nothingness or Mahashunya is just a transitory state before the Supreme Conscious Bliss which is verily Paramatman. The Spanda Karika or 'stanzas on vibration' specificaly counter the deluded belief in 'nothingness'. To quote from the Spanda Karika (Stanzas on Vibration), a beautiful flowering of Kashmir Shaiv mysticism,
12. Nothingness can never be an object of contemplation because consciousness is absent there.( It is a mistake that one has perceived nothingness) because when reflection (subsequently) intervenes, one is certain that "IT WAS".
13. Therefore consider that to be an artificial state similar to deep sleep. That principle( awareness) is forever perceived and not remembered in this way( as a memory of 'nothingness').
Again,
23-24. Once the Yogi enters That State which he takes as His support and firmly resolves that 'I will surely do whatever He says,' both the sun and the moon set, following the ascending way, inot the channel of Sushumna, once the sphere of the universe is abandoned.
25. Then in that Great Sky( of Awareness), when the sun and the moon dissolve away. THE DULL MINDED YOGI IS CAST DOWN INTO A STATE LIKE THAT OF DEEP SLEEP. THE AWAKENED HOWEVER REMAINS LUCID.
The last verse clarifies everything. Nothingness is the casting down of the dull yogi into deep slumber and not any valid experience. The adept does not swoon but goes deeper and still deeper into ever vibrant awareness. Thus Awareness is Real while nothingness is a stupor which appears in awareness due to dullness of the seeker.
To inhere in Awareness is sadhana and all talk of 'nothingness' is a delusion and an obstruction.
The last verse clarifies everything. Nothingness is the casting down of the dull yogi into deep slumber and not any valid experience. The adept does not swoon but goes deeper and still deeper into ever vibrant awareness. Thus Awareness is Real while nothingness is a stupor which appears in awareness due to dullness of the seeker.
To inhere in Awareness is sadhana and all talk of 'nothingness' is a delusion and an obstruction.
Shunyata is like a bathroom where the soul washes off all taints of materialism and becomes pure spirit and then an enjoyer of the Supreme Conscious Bliss and then verily Supreme Conscious Bliss whih is Paramatman. Nothingness as an intermediary state is crucial but any idea of 'absolute nothingess' as an abiding state is a delusion. The Spanda Karika and Shiva Sutras and also yogic experience is absolutely clear on this.
Nothingness as the end goal of spirituality is tantamount to accepting existentialism nihilism and would make everythign futile.
12. Nothingness can never be an object of contemplation because consciousness is absent there.( It is a mistake that one has perceived nothingness) because when reflection (subsequently) intervenes, one is certain that "IT WAS".
13. Therefore consider that to be an artificial state similar to deep sleep. That principle( awareness) is forever perceived and not remembered in this way( as a memory of 'nothingness').
Again,
23-24. Once the Yogi enters That State which he takes as His support and firmly resolves that 'I will surely do whatever He says,' both the sun and the moon set, following the ascending way, inot the channel of Sushumna, once the sphere of the universe is abandoned.
25. Then in that Great Sky( of Awareness), when the sun and the moon dissolve away. THE DULL MINDED YOGI IS CAST DOWN INTO A STATE LIKE THAT OF DEEP SLEEP. THE AWAKENED HOWEVER REMAINS LUCID.
The last verse clarifies everything. Nothingness is the casting down of the dull yogi into deep slumber and not any valid experience. The adept does not swoon but goes deeper and still deeper into ever vibrant awareness. Thus Awareness is Real while nothingness is a stupor which appears in awareness due to dullness of the seeker.
To inhere in Awareness is sadhana and all talk of 'nothingness' is a delusion and an obstruction.
The last verse clarifies everything. Nothingness is the casting down of the dull yogi into deep slumber and not any valid experience. The adept does not swoon but goes deeper and still deeper into ever vibrant awareness. Thus Awareness is Real while nothingness is a stupor which appears in awareness due to dullness of the seeker.
To inhere in Awareness is sadhana and all talk of 'nothingness' is a delusion and an obstruction.
Shunyata is like a bathroom where the soul washes off all taints of materialism and becomes pure spirit and then an enjoyer of the Supreme Conscious Bliss and then verily Supreme Conscious Bliss whih is Paramatman. Nothingness as an intermediary state is crucial but any idea of 'absolute nothingess' as an abiding state is a delusion. The Spanda Karika and Shiva Sutras and also yogic experience is absolutely clear on this.
Nothingness as the end goal of spirituality is tantamount to accepting existentialism nihilism and would make everythign futile.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Immensity
What is the end of our search? Or is the endless search its own end? The movement of life with its turns and twists experienced as joys and sorrows comes from a deep Unknown and seems to move towards an even deeper Unknown. While going through the business of being alive, there is an intensity of awareness which seems to come from a source much deeper than memory and hope. Awareness inheres in a timeless, spaceless grand essence which is neither of being nor of nothingness. At an earlier juncture, I would have been content to see a holistic awareness as the grand essence. But it increasingly seems apparent that the essence transcends awareness. The Grand Essence speaks through Awareness but is neither of awareness nor of oblivion. Neither being nor nothingness penetrate it. Indeed, what is being from one vantage point is nothingness from another. In the night, when I go off to sleep and enter the universe of dreams, it can also be said that I wake up from the waking sleep into the dreaming wakefulness. This long dream that I take for life seems mere nothingness compared to the transcendental experiences of a tremendous expansion that touch me at times. Those times seem free from the very notions of time and space and my entire life as a human being and experience as a human body seem like evanescent visions in a hypnotic mist. When I say I do not really feel I am only human or am living a truly ‘real’ life, I do not mean it in an abstract or philosophical sense. Even a dream cannot be called a dream until it meets its end in a higher reality. Here the maxim is that Reality is as Imagined as Imagination is Real. Ultimately, what is taken as reality and what as imagination is a matter of conviction and hidden predilections. I am not talking about a purely ideational negation of the reality of the objective world for that would be mere wishful thinking and reality is too obdurate for such escapism to last for long. I am talking about an experiential realization of a reality so immense and transcendental that empirical reality and the usual life utterly pales in its comparison. Clearly, such an experience doesn’t happen to many and is not bound to happen again even if it happens once but to those who touch the Transcendental, the sharpness of the empirical reality is blunted forever. My own experiences of the Vast oceanic awareness has made me an onlooker, a stranger to the mirage like shadows of human life. I know integration is desirable and even necessary but at times the human dimension seems too prosaic for me to want to be integrated with it. Everything is half-baked here. The Whole is not amenable to human categorizations like good and evil or existential speculation like Being and Nothingness. Even the immensity of physical universe is neither Being nor Nothingness. The stars we see in the night sky are not what they seem. Too many light years have passed and some of them have withered before there light could reach us. And the very notion of an infinite Universe is built upon the juxtaposition of an infinite points of condensed matter, the stars in space illumined by their expansion. If the points were taken away, the space would be neither finite nor infinite, neither of being nor of nothingness. Without matter, space is neither empty nor full; indeed it is hardly space. It is the great Unknown, the immensity which can contain absolutely anything. For awareness, the Great Immensity is revealed when all thoughts become still without even an iota of dullness because thought-patterns in the mind function as starry constellations in the spaceless and timeless physical trans-universe. Just as stars create both time and space, thought-patterns create psychological time and space and the resultant web of pleasure and pain, hope and fear et al. Meditation is then the retention of profound awareness minus any content; an awareness of Awareness rather than an awareness of thought. The pure Awareness free from all content is the window to that which transcends Awareness itself and is absolutely beyond everything, beyond even the notion of beyond. And once the Immensity appears, meditation becomes redundant and is dropped as the boat once the river has been crossed.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Burning joy
this is a joy
which naturaly wants to spread
and it sustains itself through burning the net of cosmic illusion
the more it burns
the brighter it burns
the more souls it touches
the brighter its flame
its like a roket that gains that escape velocity
to transcend gravity
this supreme quest
that defies all 'natural' laws
to touch the Presence
beyond and yet enlightening nature
Its joy is immeasurable and ever-new
its sport the creation and dissolution of cosmos
its mystery the end of all knowledge
its bliss the fountainhead of all happiness
what i told you last night
my exp
was touching the presence
when freed from my biological garment
or 'pseudo-body'
i experienced the presence
as unimaginable
Bliss
joy beyond all earthly ideas of pleasure
an all-accepting, all-burning joy
today, when i was typing my limited take on Krishna's eternal geeta
i felt a much heightened presence
a few months back
one of my hostel buddies wanted me to record
an interview with him for linguistic analysis
he asked me to talk on a topic i was comfortable with
i talked on mysticism
and after 5-10 mts
i felt the Presence
and it almost wiped me off
which naturaly wants to spread
and it sustains itself through burning the net of cosmic illusion
the more it burns
the brighter it burns
the more souls it touches
the brighter its flame
its like a roket that gains that escape velocity
to transcend gravity
this supreme quest
that defies all 'natural' laws
to touch the Presence
beyond and yet enlightening nature
Its joy is immeasurable and ever-new
its sport the creation and dissolution of cosmos
its mystery the end of all knowledge
its bliss the fountainhead of all happiness
what i told you last night
my exp
was touching the presence
when freed from my biological garment
or 'pseudo-body'
i experienced the presence
as unimaginable
Bliss
joy beyond all earthly ideas of pleasure
an all-accepting, all-burning joy
today, when i was typing my limited take on Krishna's eternal geeta
i felt a much heightened presence
a few months back
one of my hostel buddies wanted me to record
an interview with him for linguistic analysis
he asked me to talk on a topic i was comfortable with
i talked on mysticism
and after 5-10 mts
i felt the Presence
and it almost wiped me off
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Immensity of Silence
Boundless Love and Immense Peace move in the Unimaginable Silence. I hear that Silence and laugh my tears in Her bosom. She asks why do I stray and I tell Her of all the great games I have played and the Universes I have woven. She listens not to the tales of the game but is happy at the wonder in my eyes.
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