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A
series of talks from 2007-2008 Retreats
on the
utilization of
meditation, Tantra and the Royal Path
for
wholistic living and the enjoyment of everyday life
Excerpts From Sunday Talks
A series of talks from 2007-2008 Retreats
on the
utilization of
Meditation,
Tantra, and the Royal Path
for wholistic
living and the enjoyment of everyday life
Part V
Retreat 8/18/07 Saturday noon
The realization that we are created in the image of God, that we are eternal Satyam Consciousness is probably the greatest realization that we could ever have. It frees us from all our fears and insecurities. It frees us into living our life in a manner that is in harmony with Om Satyam, Om Shivam, and Om Sundaram.
All people take on original sin, which is the idea of separateness or incompletion, when they take an incarnation. Most people live their whole life with the idea of incompleteness and separateness. Thus, every desire, motive, and action is driven by the need to find completion, and is influenced by the four primal instincts, which are the need for food, the need for sleep, the need for procreation, and the need for self-preservation. Most people don’t realize how much of their life is spent looking for food, shelter, a mate, and for survival. They also live their lives in fear of loss, of losing their jobs, their mate, their health, and even of losing their life.
The major religions of the world all talk about being saved, about having to save your soul from eternal annihilation or eternal punishment. This concept is based on fear and is driven by the four primal instincts. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are symbolic of bringing about death, disease, and destruction to humanity and the world. This fear of loss causes people to live their lives pursuing the fulfillment of the four primal instincts (food, sleep, sex, and self-preservation) and the harvest of materialism. It doesn’t matter whether we live a perfectly healthy life or a dysfunctional unhealthy life, death will come to us all. Birth and death are a small part of our whole life. They are just another day in our eternal journey. However, in order to realize this, we must experience a greater reality. We have to experience the astral heavens, not just read about them. All the religions teach about life beyond earth, yet everyone fears death. All religions talk about the greatest ecstasy is to be with God in heaven, yet people are so attached to the objects of their affection that the thought of leaving those objects brings them to a temporary state of mental and emotional fear and insecurity.
When we come to realize that living under the influence of this idea of incompleteness is a very unhealthy and incomplete lifestyle, we will begin to seek something higher. Until then, we will say that life is just the way life is, or phrased another way, “Life gets hard and then you die.”
We have to choose how we want to live. We have to choose what we want to be aware of. This can be difficult because we are a product of desires and creatures of habits. These habits may come from incarnations ago. Long ago we may have set something in motion and now our life is the product of those interests and desires and actions. In order to change our view of reality, change our life, we need more education. We need to read, study, and hear about new things, and then we need to go and explore. The holy ones, the realized souls, come to earth and help humanity to gain a larger view through providing new choices of re-education.
The holy ones give humanity an alternative to the limited earthly life. They allow humanity to see that there is more to life than just the material world. They give techniques on how to experience more than just the material world. They remind humanity that they are created in the image of God, and that it just takes an inward awareness to realize this. Inner awareness starts with meditation, calming the mind, body, breath, and ego. We withdraw our attention and beliefs from the senses and the external. We let go of the beliefs that we have to have something outside our self for our happiness. For a short half-hour or hour we are willing to withdraw from the external. We don’t look inward at our mind and subconscious, which is concerned with the external, but we look inward until we actually begin to feel and experience something greater than the idea of incompleteness.
This withdrawal aspect of the inward journey is the fifth step of Patanjali’s Yoga system. It is the step where we begin to actually experience that we are created in the image of God. Before we experience this step it is just theology or another external belief.
In the past, the realized souls have shown miracles so that humanity could see that there was a greater law or understanding. I’m not suggesting that miracles aren’t still happening, but I am suggesting that miracles are not what we should be looking for in the teachings of the realized souls. “Unless you see signs and wonders” is still an external thing. The standard now becomes our own awareness, the experiences we have, and what we are able to experience in our meditations and in the presence of a realized soul. These experiences are the inner miracle we should be seeking.
To be in the presence of a realized soul is equivalent to sabikalpa samadhi (the state of super consciousness or union with God). However, unless you can experience sabikalpa samadhi in meditation you won’t know what “equivalent” is. If you don’t know what the experience is, you can be in the presence of a realized soul and you may not realize or utilize it. Sabikalpa samadhi is the experience of our soul, the experience of super consciousness that still has “seed” or individual identity. This experience is the glimpse of how we are created in the image of God. This becomes the goal of the spiritual life, and it can be glimpsed in the presence of a realized soul.
The goal of spirituality is to realize our wholisticness, our oneness, and realize that we are Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram, that we are eternal Satyam Consciousness. We are already created complete. It doesn’t mean we are God, or that we are as large as existence, but we are complete. This becomes the goal and practice of the inward journey. We calm down the mind, body, breath, and ego, or the idea of separateness and incompleteness, so that we may experience our self as complete. Most of humanity cannot even relate to this concept. The samskara or belief that they are incomplete is so accepted that they feel they need something or someone to complete them. We have such a sense of incompleteness that we do not feel connected with any part of life, to say nothing about being connected to God or all of life.
We need to recognize this need for completion is the soul calling out for more. We need to recognize that the physical body, the astral body, and the causal body all have specific needs. Once we begin to recognize what the needs are that we are looking externally for to complete us, we will begin to see that our needs cannot be fulfilled externally.
We have seen that our body needs more than food because there are different kinds of food. Science and medicine have already told us that there are empty calories and nutritious calories, bad food and healthy food. The body doesn’t just need any kind of food; it needs nutritious food. Science will eventually develop a little further, and they will see, as the yogis have seen, that the best foods are the pranic (life force/energy) foods. Pranic foods are foods that have the most prana, or life force. However, we take in only small amounts of prana from even the most pranic foods. We draw in life-sustaining prana directly through the medulla oblongata on a continuous basis. There are yogis so focused on prana that they are able to nurture themselves with pure prana alone and do not need to eat food.
In order to truly go beyond these ideas of incompleteness, we must withdraw and go inward and experience our Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram nature. This takes place when the mind, breath, and ego are quieted. This superconscious state is called sabikalpa samadhi. We go right to edge of this state every night in alpha sleep. For 1–1 ½ hours every night we go to this alpha state and are recharged, revitalized, reenergized, and it heals the body for another day’s activity, yet most of humanity does not recognize this state. It is not difficult to get to this state. A baby, a child, everyone can get there every night. However, a yogi is able to get there at will with full awareness. The yogi is able to go to the superconscious state by concentration and identification with the super consciousness that energizes and revitalizes the mind, and spirit. Most of us have experienced a five to ten minute power-nap or catnap that has revitalized us. We have willfully gone to the alpha state and recharged. To think that we cannot get to sabikalpa samadhi is false because it is just one step deeper than alpha rest. Because everyone gets to alpha sleep each night, they are getting to the edge of sabikalpa samadhi.
The physical, astral, and causal bodies are an outward expression of the soul; therefore to experience the soul, we go inward with meditation. The difficulty in getting to the soul in meditation is more about our beliefs, our attractions, and our distractions in the creation. This is where the mind is either the greatest tool we have, by being able to focus and concentrate, or it is our enemy by not allowing us to go to the alpha state unless we are totally exhausted and need to go there for rest and recovery.
This is a difficult concept for most people to accept. They want sabikalpa samadhi, they want to know their superconscious self, and they want to know their wholistic nature, yet they can’t get there because their mind is too active, they lack the focus and concentration. “There is too much distracting me.” This is just a rationalization because we go to this state every night in alpha rest. It is time to be honest with ourselves and admit that we also have beliefs in the idea of incompleteness, and that we are unwilling to non-attach from these ideas even in the short period of time that we meditate. We have a holy war taking place inside of us. Part of us wants to experience the superconscious eternal nature, yet part of us still believes that happiness comes from the external illusion of separateness and that we will be fulfilled once we find the object of our attention or affection.” We must acknowledge this, because if we don’t, we will remain stuck in the idea that we want God, Self-realization, wholistic-consciousness, but something unseen, some unknown source is keeping us from it, while in reality, what is keeping us from it are just our desires in the idea of incompleteness.
In my poetry I talk about dancing with the devil and all my sins are being laid out before me like a feast at the devil’s table. Most people see the devil and sin as negative and bad, while something positive and beautiful are not seen as the devil. “I don’t want the ugliness, nor hell, nor hatred, nor disease, but I do want all the positive stuff.” Unfortunately, in the world you cannot have one pole without the other. You must have them both. Even though you can enjoy one pole (sattvic/positive) and identify with it, you must accept that the opposite pole (tamasic/negative) will also be there.
We must have the courage and honesty to actually look at our desires and beliefs, and in what we think will bring us happiness. This may take actually sitting down with pencil and paper and asking, “What can’t I live without? What would make my life so empty that I wouldn’t want to go on if I didn’t have it in my life? What am I afraid of losing? What am I clinging to? What is my attachment? What is my mind thinking about night and day? What am I dwelling on?”
Swami Rama said the difference between the saints and the average person is that the saints do not dwell on the negative. Most people think they are not dwelling on the negative, but Swami Rama and the realized souls define the negative as the limited. The causal, astral, and physical is the negative or incomplete pole of our wholistic nature. On the positive side we have God the Absolute, the Christ Consciousness, and the Holy Stream, with the soul and the heart as the gate or the doorway of this polarity. So, the first three bites is the limited. Swami Rama meant that the difference between the saints and humanity is that the saints do not dwell on the limited. They strive to constantly focus and have their attention on the unlimited. One of the goals of meditation is to experience the unconditional love, ecstasy, and omniscience of God. Once we can experience this, then it is easy to non-attach from our ideas and the beliefs in the limited.
The difficult part of this process is in letting go of an idea or belief until we have something better with which to replace it. This brings us to discipline and daily effort. There is no one experience that will enlighten anyone. There are experiences that will enlarge our vision, but it is still a willful choice to learn and grow into a larger vision through daily effort. We cannot just repeat empty mantras. They have to have a meaning to us, and to have a meaning, we must have a goal of where we want the mantras to take us. We have to understand that we are not just repeating a mantra to experience something nebulous. The manta we use must be accompanied with a meaning or understanding of the goal or purpose of the mantra.
No one will sit down to spend time repeating empty words when we believe our happiness lies in the external. In the beginning of our journey, we are under the influence of the idea of incompleteness, and we need to have some inspiration to give up our attachments, even temporarily. This is why it is important to read the books and messages of the realized souls. It reminds us that there is more to life than the four primal instincts. These teachings will remind us that we are created in the image of God, and will inspire us to do the practices that will enlarge our vision so that we may have the experiences of our wholistic nature. If we don’t do this daily and consistently, then we are reminded of what the five senses are aware of at every given moment, which is the limited. Reading the teachings of the holy ones will give us the inspiration to withdraw from the senses, and give us the hope of experiencing our wholistic nature by going inward. We must be disciplined in our efforts to be focused and concentrated until we have these experiences constantly.
Studies have been done of people sleeping. The researchers went into the rooms while the people were sleeping and did various things. When the people woke up they were asked if they remembered anything that occurred and they said they remembered nothing. Yet under hypnosis the people were able to remember the researchers being in the room and the exact things they did. This shows that even in deep sleep we are aware of what the senses are telling us. There is no escaping the influences of the senses, but we can add greater awareness of our super conscious nature through meditation. We read the holy ones because they are the only ones who are saying that happiness is our very nature. We are created in the image of God, the eternal Satyam Consciousness. Liberation, realization, enlightenment are about identifying with that wholistic nature.
The Royal Path allows us to live our life in a manner that has physical activity, allows us to provide food, clothing and shelter, allows us to have interests and delights in life through love and beauty. The Royal Path allow for nurturing the senses through art and beauty. It allows us to try to understand and be in harmony with the cosmos or the whole creation. However, the Royal Path is not complete useless we have meditation or transcendence. Meditation is not just repeating a mantra, which is concentration. When I say meditation, I am speaking about sabikalpa samadhi or the “be ye still and know that I am God.” These four ingredients–Sex (Karma Yoga)-Love (Bhakti Yoga)-Prayer (Jnana Yoga)-Transcendence (Meditation Yoga) make up the Royal Path. It is what helps us live or experience our wholistic nature.
Most people are very much under the influence of the cosmic mayac sheath. In ancient times the priests call this mayac sheath Satan. They tried to scare people into being good, and they just created more fear. The mayac sheath is not an evil thing. It allows for the cosmic play, for the cosmic beauty, for the diversity. It is truly beautiful when viewed wholistically. However, if you want to experience your wholistic nature, you must go beyond this mayac sheath.
There is only one way to go beyond the mayac sheath, and that is to calm down the body, mind, breath, and ego and experience our self as being created in the image of God. This isn’t about believing or thinking that we are created in the image of God, but the actual experience of your self being created in the image of God. When you are permeated and saturated with the Satyam Consciousness, you feel complete—complete ecstasy, complete with no desires or ideas of incompleteness. There is only one way to do that, which is to calm down the body, mind, breath, and ego in meditation. After you have this experience, you can then learn how to identify with your nature with a calm ego, but still have the mind, breath, and body in motion. This is the state they call nirvikalpa samadhi, which is the state that the realized souls live in. They are so identified with the God Consciousness and the Christ/Krishna Consciousness that they have no individual ego. It is not a state of annihilation or cosmic blahness. It is truly a state of freedom (mukti), of inclusiveness, appreciation, and delightfulness of every aspect of living.
The dervish (Sufi tradition) does not hide their awareness, and they do not go around forcing enlightenment on individuals or societies. A student once asked Sri Yukteswar (Self-realization Fellowship) if he read minds or knew what his thoughts were because it seemed to him that Sri Yukteswar knew just what he was thinking. Sri Yukteswar said, “No, I don’t go there. Where the Lord is not invited, neither will I go.” What he meant was that unless the person’s mind was open to include God, Sri Yukteswar wasn’t interested in going there. This is why the realized souls live in the world but not of the world, because where the Lord in not invited, they don’t go either. They walk around and see the beauty of divinity. They see the Satyam Consciousness and they see the soul everywhere.
What do we want to experience in meditation? Are we looking for the God Consciousness? Are we looking for our wholistic nature? Are we looking for the vibration of the soul or Satyam? Do we want to feel love? Do we want to feel love as pure Satyam, or for as Dylan said, “Love always seemed to hit me from below”? It is freewill and choice. We must be honest enough with our self to recognize that it is our choice, our freewill. This is the place for self-analysis, and we must do it to recognize the ideas of incompleteness. We must not only recognize our ideas of incompleteness, but then must have the courage to go beyond them. It has been scientifically proven that everyone goes to the alpha state. Knowing we are able to go there, then it is just a matter of concentration, and willfully calming down the body, mind, and breath when we meditate.
When we begin to feel the Satyam Consciousness, we will see that there is something beyond our individual ego or identity. We can surrender and go beyond our ego-self into our higher nature. This is a very simple process if we are willing to go beyond our attachments to our ideas of incompleteness. It is simple, but not always easy. Christ said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all else is added.” The “all else” that is added are the appreciation and joy of the diversity that is God in creation or manifestation.
If we haven’t gone beyond the idea of incompleteness, we will not appreciate and enjoy most of life because we will have such a limited idea of what it is we need to complete us. We must recognize our illusions are nothing more than illusions.
We non-attach an hour or two each day while we withdraw and go inward. The rest of our day can be spent pursuing the physical, astral, causal, and all our hopes, dreams and aspirations. It doesn’t take much time in samadhi each day to have greater vision. We don’t have to meditate all day long to appreciate God. We only need to meditate to that superconscious state and identify with our Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram nature.
The ego is the idea of “I,” or ownership; it is the idea of separateness. The ego has both a positive pole (our higher/universal nature or sattvic nature) and a negative pole (our lower nature or tamasic nature). While we have an ego, we need to identify with the higher ego of: “I am Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. I am eternal Satyam-consciousness.” This is still an individual identity, but of the higher ego. Freewill allows us to identify with whatever we want, either larger identities or more limited identities. Whatever our identity, it comes through the mechanism of our ego. The lower ego will bring tamasic experiences of self-centeredness and pain and suffering. The higher ego will bring sattvic experiences of joy and bliss.
When we are in our higher ego, we can identify with God as our nature, and our lower nature would be our individual soul. We can still have a duality, with one hand on creation with the other hand on God. We must choose the unlimited and we must not accept the limitations as reality. We must not accept the idea that we can’t get to samadhi, that meditation doesn’t work, that it takes years of discipline and practice to get to samadhi, because we get to that alpha state every night in our rest. However, in alpha rest you stop before you go into the superconscious state of union with God. You come right up to that point then go back to play in creation. In meditation you can also do that. You can get recharged and feel blissful in the alpha state. You can get so much energy that you can’t even sit still, then you come out of meditation and go out and play. However, we must set our goal to surrender to the God Consciousness or the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, to the Holy Stream, not just stop at the alpha state.
It is all about choice. The choice is determined by education. You have to know what your options are and what you have to choose from. Without the knowledge that these higher states of consciousness are our nature, and the nature of all life, we cannot choose them. A person who is not educated as to what is beyond the earth in the mystical realms does not have those choices available. Lack of awareness becomes lack of choice.
Intent, willpower, and freewill all work together. Faith, or the belief and hope that it is possible to reach our nature, is also important. We go within to see, experience, and identifying with our true nature. All that is necessary to have this experience is to calm down the body, mind, breath, and then we are on the edge of the alpha state, where we calm down the ego and go into the superconscious state.
This is a simple process. It takes courage, right activity, and preparation. The right activity and preparation is simply the willingness to be non-attached from our beliefs that our happiness, fulfillment, completion, our love, and security come from some kind of external source or activity. “Be ye still and know that I am God,” this simple belief that we are created in the image of God allows us to make this step. This is why it is important to listen to the holy ones. They remind us that we are created in the image of God. They share this wholisticness by their living example.
It wasn’t anything that Sri Chitrabhanu did or said that influenced me. It was what I felt when I walked into his presence of Satyam Consciousness. I knew that this person had what I wanted, and I wondered how he gotten it. He didn’t have to convince me to do any of the practices so I could be happy. I just felt the bliss. I knew it was possible and had been trying my whole life to get to that state, but I couldn’t successfully keep it. I bought his books, studied his works, and began to practice his teachings because those are the things he said he practiced to get to that state that I wanted. This is also why we must identify with the message of the holy ones. They have that state. They not only share that we are created in the image of God, but also share how to attain that awareness, that wholistic identity, that wholistic.
Self-realization is a choice. We can choose the limited, or the unlimited, or the eternal. This is freewill. The Royal Path allows us to pursue both the unlimited in meditation, and to pursue the limited in our physical, astral, and causal activities. We can pursue our beliefs, and as long as we are honest enough to acknowledge what those beliefs or activities bring us, we will continue to learn and grow.
Namaste
Tantra and the Royal Path Part–posting # III
From Retreat 2007 Fri 1 pm
GLOSSARY
Ananda: Bliss
Astral: Consciousness of senses
Astral body:
Spirit body, host of senses and chakras;
pranic body
Aum: Name given to
God-consciousness in action; Holy stream; a mantra
Avatar: One who has been liberated
and has chosen to incarnate and serve humanity
Bhakti:
Love of, or for divinity
Bhakti Yoga: The path of love
and devotion, leading to the attainment of knowledge of
divinity through the
experience of love, beauty, compassion, and reverence for all life. The path
of awakening the heart and going beyond the ego through love for others, and
ultimately God
Causal:
Consciousness of ideas
Causal body:
Subtlest of three bodies, host of the mind
Chakra:
A force center or wheel in the pranic body.
The seven chakra seed mantras are:
Lam, Vam,
Ram, Yam, Ham, Om,
Chit:
Consciousness
Christ Consciousness:
Tat; God-consciousness in the first form of manifestation
Darshan:
The presence of a holy one’s consciousness,
holy sight
Deva:
A realized one residing in astral or causal
heavens
Devotee:
One who is devoted to God
Dharma:
Duty of one’s soul; the harmonization of
one’s uniqueness within the universal
God-consciousness
Divine Mother:
God
Eightfold Path: A process
of practices and disciplines, which leads to realization of our
wholistic nature; Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Four fountains:
The four primal instincts of eating,
sleeping, procreation, and survival
God Consciousness:
Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram without
form
Guru: A stream of consciousness;
the dispeller of darkness
Holy one:
One who realizes his/her nature of Sat Tat
Aum
Hrim: A mantra for invoking the
indwelling energy
Humility: A willingness to learn
Ida:
A cooling current; one of the three main
energy channels in a pranic body
Japa: Repetition of a sacred
sound
Jnana: Wisdom, knowledge
Jnana Yoga: The path of harmony,
leading to the attainment of harmony of the soul and
God through direct
knowledge and understanding of the Divine Will or Christ- consciousness. The
path of being a student of life, in harmony with the wholistic life
Karma:
Motion; action; law of motion
Karma Yoga: The path of action,
leading to the attainment of knowledge through
accepting responsibility
of self, home, family, one’s community, the international
community; living and
learning amongst society; doing one’s duties joyfully, skillfully, and
selflessly
Kundalini:
Primal energy rising from the gross
physical to the God-consciousness
Liberation:
The realization of one’s holistic nature of
Sat Tat Aum
Meditation Yoga: The path of
stillness, leading to attainment and realization of the
oneness of life through
quieting the body, mind, ego, and breath; utilizing and focusing on the
Moksha: Liberation
Mukta: A liberated soul
Mukti:
Liberation; freedom into life
Na Hum:
A mantra meaning “not this/not that”
Nirvikalpa samadhi:
Samadhi without seed
Non-attachment:
Process of letting go
Pingala:
A heating current; one of three main energy
channels in the pranic body
Prana: Life force
Pranayama:
Control of life force
Pranic body:
Spirit body, host of senses and chakras
Royal Path:
Combining Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana
Yoga and Meditation Yoga
Sabikalpa Samadhi:
Samadhi with seed, realization of
one’s holistic nature
Sadhana:
Spiritual practices and disciplines
Samadhi:
Samskaras:
Mindsets; view of reality that is
incomplete
Sat:
Eternal
Satguru:
One’s personal, eternal guru, determined by
similarity of soul vibration
Satmuktananda:
Eternal, liberation, bliss
Satyam:
Eternal God Consciousness as love; part of
the threefold nature of God:
Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram
Self:
Includes the purity of our soul and the
limitations of our personality
Self-realization:
Realization of one’s nature as
Satyam Shivam Sundaram
Shakti:
God manifested, the Omnipresent Power
Shalom:
Grace of manifested God Consciousness
Shiva:
God unmanifested in the creation
Shivam: Eternal God Consciousness as harmony, part of the threefold nature of
God: Satyam Shivam
Sundaram
Siddhi:
Mystical power developed through practice
So Hum:
The sound of the breath; a mantra meaning,
“I am this/I am that”
Sundaram:
Eternal God-consciousness as beauty and
joy; part of the threefold nature of
God: Satyam Shivam Sundaram
Sushumna:
Largest of the three energy channels rising
from the base of the spine to the
Crown
Tat:
God in manifestation; God Consciousness in
form
Upanishad:
Sitting close to God Consciousness
Yoga:
Meaning “to yoke.”
It is the science of uniting the small spirit to the large Spirit
Yogi:
One who practices yoga
Yuga:
Age; cycle of approximately 24,000 years.
This cycle is made up of Kali Yuga,
Dwapara Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Satya Yuga
Tantra and the
Royal Path
Part I
Namaste, welcome to all.
This retreat will be on the Royal Path and how it correlates to Tantra—Sex, Love, Prayer, Transcendence, how it correlates to the Yuga System—the Kali, Dwapara, Treta, and Satya Yugas.[1] Most importantly, the message of the retreat is that we are created in the image of God. It should be the goal of every devotee to realize and experience his or her oneness with the God Consciousness. Up until this realization and experience, it is just theology, which pleases the mind and allows for interesting conversations and study, but without the direct experience of God, life will remain incomplete.
We need to realize that the longing everyone has (the longing to feel connected or a part of something, to feel complete) is the longing of the soul to realize its oneness with God. Shiva and Shakti are ever in union, but with cosmic ego (mayac sheath) involved, the individual will interpret this longing, including the longing at the physical, for connection with another human being, or the longing for love and beauty, even as the longing for knowledge or truth, and as a longing for external conditions. The soul has the longing for completion within the creation, and also for the absolute peace of the Om Satyam, which is the absolute God Consciousness.
Love, beauty, knowledge, truth, and Om Satyam, are all part of our nature, but under the influence of the mayac sheath, they seem separate from us. If we are only aware of the physical manifestation, or the material world, then this longing is interpreted as needing a connection with another person, also the need of love, beauty, and joy from others. A part of this is also longing for the truth, or the right practices, to help us live in harmony with our wholistic Self, God, and the Divine will. The degree of our realization or awareness will be reflected in the degree to which we interpret what is natural to the human being or infinite spirit. Until we feel completion with the whole, we are living an incomplete life. There will always be a part of us that is calling out for completion.
The physical incarnation is not meant to be forever. The physical body has a pattern and a lifespan. A healthy wholistic incarnation happens during the Satya Yuga when the average lifespan is about 1200 years, yet this is still limited. The average lifespan during the Kali Yuga is approximately 35–45 years, which is even more limited. The degree of harmony or realization of our wholistic Self will determine how much joy we have in living everyday life. This will influence how healthy and prosperous our life is on earth. It may be difficult, but not impossible, to enjoy everyday life when all those around you are suffering. It will just take discipline, along with the right activities and practices, to be in harmony with the joy and happiness that is our nature.
There is a harmony and balance that the spiritual path helps us to attain. The journey is about finding that balance. We need to understand what is needed to be open to life, because each yuga and each generation has a different balance. And this brings us to spirituality as taught by the realized souls that incarnate. The realized souls take a living incarnation just like the rest of us. We walk the earth, and they walk the earth. They find a balance and a harmony for their time and culture. They vibrate out the message, and they teach the message of what it takes to be in harmony, which becomes the message of the time.
Ancient holy books give the messages of different or former times, cultures, and people. These sacred messages found in the ancient holy books are universal to all times. The secular messages are appropriate during a different age or culture. For example, our morning routines or practices may be appropriate when we get up in the morning, but are not the same as for when we are preparing to go to bed at night. Our morning and nighttime routines are both true, but not necessarily appropriate when interchanged.
There is a struggle in the both the East and West to
incorporate the old traditions and the new traditions. Many people do not
feel that the old religious teachings apply any longer, and so they reject
religion, formal theology, or spiritual based education. This leaves them
with no hope for a better day.
It leaves them without an ideal or an ideology to strive after. It is a
trying time for humanity because the eleven major religions have not built a
bridge to a new day, the new yuga.
The realized souls have come back to build that bridge.
Paramahansa Yogananda talks about the harmony between East and West,
between Hinduism and Christianity.
Swami Rama brings the message of the
In both the East and West
societies are rejecting traditional religions, and are also beginning to
reject anything that uses religious terminology.
Some people are blaming religion for their problems, for the wars,
for all the ignorance and suffering. We need to realize that coming into a
new day or new age, the bridge that is being built will need to be
wholistic. We don’t need to condemn the traditional religions; rather we
need to build a vision to a new age, one that helps us live in harmony with
our wholistic nature and with life around us.
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH: We need to
accept the responsibility for our happiness rather than blame tradition for
our suffering. We can look to traditions like the Eightfold Path, for a
healthy view of guidance. The Eightfold Path is a process of practices and
disciplines, which leads to realization of our wholistic nature. These eight
practices and disciplines are: yama–moral conduct (truthfulness,
non-injury, non-stealing, non-coveting, continence or self-restraint),
niyama–religious observance (reverence for all life, contentment in all
situations, self-discipline, self-analysis, love and devotions to God and
guru), asana–right posture, pranayama–control of prana, breath,
pratyahara–withdrawing the senses from external objects, dharana–concentration,
dhyana–meditation, samadhi–superconscious experience. As you
work up to the eighth step of the Eightfold Path of Yoga you will come to
samadhi, which is oneness with God Consciousness. As with most religions,
the Eightfold Path begins with the small ego and states what should and
should not be practiced. As the
person or humanity matures, the guidance evolves until it brings one to the
state of practicing a healthy lifestyle, of having a healthy ego, and of
identifying with Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram rather than identifying with the
four primal instincts. Then,
withdrawing from the senses or the external, we begin to go inward and
concentrate on our inner nature or the consciousness-nature that permeates
the nature of life or God.
This process allows us to
take control of our small ego, then to identify with the observances, then
to identify with our pure Self, then to the realization that we are created
in the image of God. With
concentration, affirmation, and meditation, we then go on to have more and
more experiences with our wholistic Self, the Christ/Krishna Consciousness,
and the God Consciousness, until we are able to go beyond the idea of unique
self and immerse into the God Consciousness as our identity.
This is not a new process.
It is not something the realized souls are just now bringing to
humanity. The realized souls
have always brought this message to humanity, but humanity has not always
understood the whole message.
ROYAL PATH:
The Royal Path is the utilizing and
combining of the four main paths of yoga: Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana
Yoga, and Meditation Yoga to attain moksha or liberation. These four paths
are:
Karma Yoga: The path of action, which leads to the attainment of knowledge through accepting responsibility of self, home, family, one’s community, and the international community; the experience of living and learning amongst society, and doing one’s duties joyfully, skillfully, and selflessly.
Bhakti Yoga: The path of love and devotion, which leads to attainment of knowledge of divinity through the experience of love, beauty, compassion, and having reverence for all life. This path is one of awakening of the heart and going beyond the ego through love for others, for all life both great and small, and ultimately God.
Jnana Yoga: The path of harmony, which leads to the attainment of harmony of the soul and God through direct knowledge and understanding of the Divine will or Christ/Krishna Consciousness. This path is one of being a student of the eternal life, and being in harmony with the wholistic life.
Meditation
Yoga: The path of stillness, which leads to the attainment of the
realization of the oneness of life through quieting the body, mind, breath,
and ego. This path is one of
utilizing and focusing on the
The Royal Path is the realization that we are created in the image of God. This realization comes with samadhi. Meditation leads to samadhi, or the realization or our oneness with God. The realization of our oneness with God leads us to living the Royal Path. The Royal Path’s premise is that we are created in the image of God, that we have the pure God Consciousness within, that we have the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, the Holy Spirit, the soul, the causal body, the astral body, and the physical body. We need to discover and live in harmony with our whole Self.
TANTRA: We must understand that in order to move forward on the path, we need to be open. We don’t reject life, or say “no” to life. We open our self up to become more inclusive to Sex (physical), Love (astral), Prayer (causal), and Transcendence (pure consciousness). Tantra is the awareness and surrender to the harmony of the Divine impulse, as it flows from formless to form, and is the dance between form and formless. We don’t say ‘no’ to sex, but rather we add love. Sex is when we are trying to get our own needs met, when we are only concerned about our self. Love is when our thoughts and feelings are concerned with others. We aren’t concerned only with our self, but also with other people. When we add love, it doesn’t mean we give up sex, or stop taking care of our body, or stop eating properly, or stop doing the things that are beneficial for the body. It doesn’t mean we stop enjoying the senses. Adding love simply means we now think of others first.
We then add Prayer…we begin to identify with, and appreciate, Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram in both form and essence. We begin to harmonize with the Divine will. We begin to understand how this unique soul is part of the wholistic wave, or God Consciousness, and how we fulfill our dharma or purpose. Now we have gone beyond just sex and love and have included prayer, or what is beneficial for others in our thoughts and actions, but it doesn’t mean we no longer have sex or love. It means that we have added a higher or greater awareness that is more inclusive. Once we realize we are created in the image of God and begin to experience it, we find that the creation, within the mayac sheath or cosmic play, is delightful, beautiful, and enjoyable, yet there will still be times we want more. We will want more than to be eternally busy, eternally active, so we will also want peace. This is when we will seek transcendence, which is beyond prayer, love, and sex.
Transcendence is the direct experience of God the Absolute that is without form or activity. This is where freedom or liberation truly begins. When we realize our nature is Satyam (eternal love), Satyam without the need for any other person or activity or anything, this liberates us. First, it liberates us from the idea of incompletion and the idea of separation. These ideas of incompleteness and separation will always have us seeking someone or something outside of our self to complete us, to help us feel connected. Ironically, as long as we are seeking fulfillment, connection, or a sense of fitting in externally, we will never attain those things. The realization of our nature as Satyam then also liberates us into the continuous experience of Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. This is the meaning of the poem “it is better to call out to Divine Mother in your aloneness than to seek shelter in someone else’s arms.” It is better to call out to the God Consciousness to try to experience this Satyam Consciousness. Once we do this, freedom begins and we are now on the path to ecstasy, and joy, and ultimately liberation.
Now that we have the Satyam, have experienced God that always has been, is now, and forever shall be, we come back, and realize it is also our nature. This state of pure Satyam is the greatest ecstasy, the greatest joy we can ever have. As we come back out to our unique soul or self, we come under the influence of the mayac sheath, the idea of separateness again, which allows us to see the dualistic nature of the creation. We can call it the cosmic play and delight in it, but there may also be the feeling of two again. We realize that in reality there is only God, but we have also accepted the illusion that we are separate again, and the ecstasy is not there. However, we also realize that we can still experience joy and delight in the creation. There is the absolute God Consciousness without form (ecstasy), and then there is the absolute God Consciousness with form (bliss), manifested all the way through the creation (joy and delight).
As we come back out from transcendence, we come out to
prayer. Now we have appreciation or thankfulness.
We see divinity, the Om Satyam,
Samadhi is when we experience Satyam or God Consciousness (without form) in our meditation. Then we come back into the cosmic play and fulfill our interests, desires, or the dharma of the soul, the expression of God through the creation of the unique soul. This is the Royal Path, a complete inhalation and a complete exhalation. We do all we can to be in harmony, to enjoy, delight, and work to be a pure, healthy, and happy vibration while on earth.
This is also the process of Tantra—Sex, Love, Prayer, Transcendence, and Transcendence, Prayer, Love, Sex. It is incomplete if you only go upward, or only inhale. To make it complete is to come back outward with bliss-bestowing hands, with joy, delight, selfless service, and compassion. This becomes the goal of living. The soul, once born, lives forever, on a daily basis of inhalation and exhalation, and also on an incarnation basis of inhalation and exhalation, and including a creative day of manifesting out and then back to a creative night of absolute peace. How much appreciation we have will depend on how large our vision is of the inhalation and the exhalation. How much we will enjoy and delight in life depends on how large our vision, our understanding, how much harmony we have, and how much love we feel.
[1] Yuga (Sanskrit): Age; cycle of approximately 24,000 years. This cycle is made up of the Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga(s), Dwapara Yuga(s), and Kali Yuga. The Satya Yuga is the most enlightened age.
Tantra and the
Royal Path
Part II
The process of Tantra is—Sex, Love, Prayer, Transcendence, and Transcendence, Prayer, Love, Sex. It is incomplete if you only go upward, or only inhale. To make it complete is to come back outward with bliss-bestowing hands, with joy, delight, selfless service, and compassion, or to exhale. This becomes the goal of living. The soul, once born, lives forever on a daily basis of inhalation and exhalation, and on an incarnation basis of inhalation and exhalation, and including a creative day of manifesting out and then back to a creative night of absolute peace, and also beyond, depending on how large our vision is of the inhalation and the exhalation. How much we will enjoy and delight in life depends on how large our vision, our understanding, how much harmony we have, and how much love we feel.
At the minimum we need to practice Pranayama (breath control), which is the fourth step of yoga. We start with diaphragmatic breathing, with a complete inhalation and a complete exhalation. We do this until we have retrained our self so that we are continuously using diaphragmatic breathing in everyday life. Deep, diaphragmatic, and calm breathing allows for a longer and healthier life. It also prepares one for samadhi. Samadhi can actually change your karma, and will give you a larger vision to change your life. It will prolong your earthly life. After that, the clock winds down depending on the length of your breath. Shallow and incomplete breathing will result in a shorter life, more discord, mental distress, and disease.
The amount of prana, calmness, health, and balance you receive while doing diaphragmatic breathing is phenomenal. The most important nutrient for the body, spirit, and soul, is prana (life force). Prana comes in through the air we breathe, and also comes in directly through the medulla oblongata.[1] The next important nutrient for the body is water. Following that is food. We need to understand the importance of breath and Pranayama.
The yoga tradition says that if you know prana, you
know God. Prana is the Word, the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, the first
manifestation all the way to the physical. The Christ/Krishna Consciousness
is prana; prana is intelligence, harmony, and bliss. To harmonize with our
wholistic Self depends on how much prana we can utilize and identify with.
Communion with God is not done in English or Sanskrit, but is done
with vibration. This vibration is the life force, the Word. God
Consciousness is vibrating as the manifested creation. The Word,
The Royal Path is about living a balanced and wholistic life. We enjoy the physical, but do not limit our self to the physical. We enjoy the physical and astral (senses), but do not limit our self to the senses. We enjoy the physical, astral, and causal (mental), but do not limit our self to getting caught up in the knowledge or truth. We also dive into the God Consciousness.
We live a natural life. We follow the longing of the soul’s calling out for more by adding more. We seek fulfillment at the physical by living a balanced and healthy life. We seek fulfillment of the astral body by adding the enjoyment of the arts, music, beauty, and the delight of the senses. We seek fulfillment of the causal body by including and appreciating the harmony, by understanding the harmony of the small will and the large Divine Will, by understanding how Shiva and Shakti are ever in union. We experience harmony and live harmoniously at the level of the soul in a state of pure Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. We also experience the Holy Stream, the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, and the pure God Consciousness. The experience or realization of each of these qualities reveals what it means to be created in the image of God. At the physical level, the chakras regulate specific functions and organs within the body. They also correspond to the realms of the seven levels of creation. The knowledge of the chakras and levels of creation helps us to understand that we are created in the image of God.
To practice the Royal Path is to continue to increase our awareness of what already is, being inclusive of what we accept in life, but without getting stuck or stopped at any particular place along the way. We practice non-attachment when it is time to continue on our journey of learning and growing. As Swami Rama says, the goal of life is to touch and perfect the inner life, and to touch and perfect the outer life, and this is how we can delight in life. This is the Royal Path. The goal of every devotee is to realize their wholistic nature, not just realize their unmanifested nature. The unmanifested without the manifested is incomplete, and the manifested without knowledge of the unmanifested is also incomplete.
The realization of the inhalation and the exhalation starts with Self-awareness, Self-realization, with the practices of the yamas and niyamas. It starts with taking control of the small ego. There cannot be any real progress as long as we are only working on our small self. We need to work on the wholeness of our life and existence. This means that instead of saying, “I need to feel love. I need to purify” we think instead about Om Satyam, “I would like to experience Om Satyam.” Then we begin to work towards the experience of Om Satyam by focusing on Om Satyam in association with all life. We do this practice until we are saturated with Om Satyam. We work on experiencing our higher nature by focusing or concentrating on the harmony and Satyam of life around us. We don’t think about what we don’t have, or what we would like to have because this is all about the small ego, which will keep us locked in or imprisoned in the idea of incompleteness. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge we gather, as long as we are thinking about our self, it is a prison, and the soul will continue to call out for more.
We need to focus on the virtues during our active times, and focus on Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram during our quiet times. Real spiritual progress comes at those times we go beyond our small self. When we are thinking about our self, we only have self-awareness, and then we are not progressing towards God. We need to see the difference between whether we are aware of and appreciating beauty, or whether we working on how to possess or own something for our happiness and security, and this difference can sometimes be very subtle.
The process of appreciation will help us to go beyond the small self and begin to be more inclusive. The more inclusive we are the more joy, happiness, beauty, love or Satyam we will experience. It will take our willful effort, especially with most of humanity still caught in “I-centeredness,” and this consciousness makes it more difficult to go beyond the small ego and expand our vision to include the whole.
We must look to understand that the most precious thing we have is the moment. No matter how enlightened, realized, rich, poor, angry, pleasant, demanding, or charismatic, no one can ever get back yesterday or even last hour. It is gone. You only have so much time on earth. You can spend it chasing after false illusions, or you can spend it seeking your wholistic nature (Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram), seeking God. No matter what your motives may be, you can’t get the past back, you cannot get the moment back. It can’t be bought or recreated or resurrected. The past is gone. Knowing this, we can work to be aware of the moment, and what we give to life, to others, and to our self in thought, word, and deed. Each moment of the day we are attracting more of what we are vibrating out, so our thoughts, words, and our actions are what we use to create a better day and a better tomorrow.
If you want more love, beauty, and joy, you have to begin looking for it. One must quit thinking, “I want to have more love and joy and beauty, but I don’t have the time because I have to go to work.” Everyone has to go to work. The physical body cannot live without some basic necessities, and it takes work to provide for the survival of the physical body. Whether someone is gathering nuts and berries, or is punching a time clock so they can buy nuts and berries, everyone has to work. Working has nothing to do with whether you are looking for love, joy, and beauty.
“Well, it would be easy to have Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram if everyone loved and appreciated me. Then I could feel at peace.” This isn’t likely to happen. To truly appreciate people, you have to be beyond the ego, to a state of Love and Prayer, which most people are not living in. Waiting until someone else appreciates you before you can feel the love and joy is another limited idea that we need to go beyond. We must go inward and begin appreciating that we are created in the divine Image, and that love, harmony, and the beauty of life are also our nature.
To be inclusive means we begin to add the divine qualities. We begin to repeat the name of God (mantras), or identify with the qualities of God (utilizing the sacred vibrations). We begin to identify with our divine nature. We begin to go beyond the four primal instincts of food, sleep, procreation, and self-preservation. These instincts can be healthy and divine qualities for the nurturing of a baby or a young person. These qualities are needed so we can survive long enough to realize that there is more to life than just being a body, and that beauty, joy, love, and divinity are what truly nurture our whole self. The four primal instincts are not bad, just limited. Even when they are natural and healthy, they only nurture our physical body. However, if we only work on the four primal instincts, we will not get to Love, Prayer, and Transcendence.
We must be inclusive. We include the four primal instincts, but we don’t limit our self to the four primal instincts. We include love that is for others, but not love that is only limited to others. Our very nature is Love, and we need to experience our nature of Love with or without others. We can experience Love (Satyam) deep in meditation, when we are alone, when we are peaceful. Our Prayer becomes the expression of our appreciation. Our reverence for all life, both manifested and unmanifested, becomes a state of Prayer. We make each step of our spiritual journey more inclusive. We include more joy, more beauty, more understanding and harmony with all life, and more Satyam. To do that, we simply let go of our limited ideas and beliefs, and begin to make the effort to expand and experience a larger vision. We must be willing to look for the Divine will that permeates all life. When we are looking for the divinity, we will be learning, growing, and enjoying. Seeking Self-realization and God-realization needs to be an ever-expanding, learning, and realizing experience.
If you do not feel a personal relationship with God, you can still be inclusive by having a personal relationship with Love or Satyam. Work to feel love at all times and in all situations. If you truly pay attention, you will notice that the feeling of love comes in many situations, sometimes with a child, a puppy, a lover, a friend, with an idea, while watching a movie, or while walking in nature. The feeling of love will be there in all different situations. The feeling of love experienced in different settings or situations is proof that you don’t need a certain type of love or a certain type of relationship. It is proof that love is your nature and you are simply experiencing it in different kinds of situations. Now the goal becomes to experience it in all situations at all times. We start with the goal or desire to experience more love, more happiness, or more God in our life. Most people want more joy, happiness, and love, and we can have more by having constant remembrance of our Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram nature.
The main thing that will take away the joy, happiness, and love is the ego (I-ness, I-centeredness). The mind may rationalize the I-ness of the ego, but we can control the mind to go beyond the ego. The ego will limit spiritual progress and the amount of love you feel. The ego will limit your experience of life. As soon as you are thinking about your self, you have left love behind. Constant remembrance of Satyam is the desire and the practice of wanting more love in your life.
The goal of the Royal Path is to be more inclusive in life. “More inclusive” includes the physical, astral, causal, soul, Holy Stream, Christ/Krishna Consciousness, and God Consciousness. We strive to spend more time being inclusive until it becomes a continuous process of being open to life. This process of experiencing Satyam is one that can be experienced going into meditation, and coming out of meditation, being active all the way to the physical, and calming all the way to the formless. The delight in this inhalation and exhalation is traditionally called Tantra. The awareness and control of the life force that one gains in this delight is not only Tantra, but is also referred to as Mastery and the Path of Mysticism.
Namaste
[1] The medulla oblongata is located at the base of the skull, where the skull and spine meet. Prana directly enters the body through the medulla, in association with the breath and samadhi.
Tantra and the
Royal Path
Part III
“The realization of our nature” is a term you hear from all realized souls. They say we must realize our nature, realize who we are, and realize what we are. In order to understand what they mean by “our nature,” we need to start from the beginning…
In the beginning there was only God (Satyam Consciousness), who always has been, is now, and forever shall be. This is the source or nature of all things. From this source the Word, or creation, begins to manifest. This Word is the Satyam Consciousness manifested (Shivam), the Christ/Krishna Consciousness. As it continues to manifest, it becomes the Sundaram, the Holy Stream of consciousness that manifests all the way to the physical. This Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram is the building block of everything that is created.
The Satyam Consciousness is the essence of everything. When the holy ones say we must realize who we are, they are talking about realizing our nature of God Consciousness because we are created in the image of that. They are talking about realizing that we are the Satyam Consciousness without form, the Shivam Consciousness, the Sundaram Consciousness, the soul, the causal body, the astral body, and the physical creation/incarnation.
The realization of who we are is the realization of our wholistic Self. However, most people get lost along the way because of Original Sin or the mayac sheath, which is the idea of separateness. This brings with it time and space, the higher mind and lower mind, an idea of individuality, and the feeling of separateness from the rest of life. To realize who we are, we must go all the way to the source so that we can look through the eyes of God. We can go beyond Original Sin, beyond the ego. What we see with the individual ego and the cosmic ego is an illusion, or an incomplete view of reality. When most people work on who they are, they think in terms of philosophy, theology, psychology, or self-definition. The proper way to work on who we are is to go beyond the limited and experience the whole.
Meditation is the one tool that will take us to our eternal nature, the source of all. Meditation is defined as calming down the body, mind, breath, and ego and experiencing our oneness with God. In today’s society, you hear about people who take meditation walks, or say their work is their meditation, or say their lovemaking or sex is their meditation, or their child rearing is their meditation, or their contemplation is their meditation. This is not the definition of meditation that the realized souls are talking about. Meditation is when you calm the body so it is still, when you calm the mind so it is quiet and is not bombarding you with either conscious or subconscious thoughts, when you calm down the breath, which is what links the body to the spirit, and when you calm down the ego, which is the idea of individuality. When the body, mind, breath, and ego are calm, then you experience God Consciousness, and this is meditation.
Once we get to the state of God Consciousness without form, then we have reached the state of pure meditation, samadhi, the oneness or union with God. We then come back out of meditation with a new perspective or awareness and try to let “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We try to see the harmony, the Shivam aspect, the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, the truth that permeates this God-conscious essence all the way to the physical. We try to be aware, and we look with the eyes of God as we come back. This brings us from Transcendence to Prayer where we are appreciative and thankful of all that we are aware of. We see the beauty, the harmony, the love, and the joy that permeates everything.
As we continue to come back from Transcendence through Prayer, we experience Love, love for others. It comes through the cosmic ego, like through a prism, and reflects into different vibrations or unique souls. We begin to appreciate the diversity. We don’t just acknowledge that there is diversity, we actually feel delight because we see it as another aspect of God, or of our wholistic Self. We delight and are in love with the other, with the diversity. Then we come all the way back to the physical and keep the remembrance of Transcendence, and continue to have the appreciation of Prayer, and the Love for others, at all times. It will take our focused effort to do this, but the awareness of our nature is possible and can be attained.
Once at the physical, we once again become aware of the idea of separateness or incompleteness. At the physical are the four primal instincts, and it takes discipline to not again identify with the individual ego that wants what it wants, when it wants it. The lower ego is only concerned with itself…self-fulfillment, self-growth, self-satisfaction, self-pleasure. “I want what brings me security, what brings me joy, what brings me happiness.” The lower ego is about the “I” and “me.” We are able to keep Prayer and Love while fulfilling our goals at the physical by utilizing self-discipline, and by doing the practices that enlarge our vision.
When the holy ones talk about realizing our nature, they aren’t talking about just the formless nature. They are also talking about the nature of the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, the nature of the Holy Stream, the nature of the soul, the nature of our causal body, the nature of our astral body, and the nature of our physical body. If we pay attention, we can see what nurtures us, what is healthy for us at each of these levels. Although the chakras correlate with the seven levels of creation, the chakras are also about the seven aspects of the unique spirit and physical body.
The process of the spiritual unfoldment or journey begins when we leave behind the small ego, and begin to think of others rather than our self. The spiritual journey begins with the desire to know about God. The Sufi[1] tradition talks about the five steps, and the desire to know God is the beginning or first step. The second step would be finding a competent teacher or guru to help us unlearn the idea of incompleteness or limitation, to help us go beyond our self-centered identity. Unlearning is about Nahum—“Not this, not that. Don’t dwell on this issue, don’t dwell on that problem.”
The third step is the actual putting into practice the guidance or instructions of the teacher or guru. This is not the same as the unlearning of step two. Practicing the guidance is about dwelling on the positive and uplifting rather than dwelling on the limited. It is about looking beyond the small ego to identify with Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. At a minimum we are looking to identify with the soul. We will be aware of things along the way, which is our nature because we do have a causal mind. We will enjoy things along the way, which is part of our nature because we have the five senses. We will be active along the way, and this is part of our nature because we have a body. We still have to nurture all our bodies, but we don’t get stuck dwelling on the negative or incompleteness. We practice the guidance of the satguru in order to identify with our unlimited potential.
The fourth step is when we become one with the teachings and begin to experience Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. We begin to experience our self as completed in the image of God, and we are able to do this through our own efforts. We begin to experience Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram in our meditation, in our time by our self, and also while interacting in our everyday life. When we do this, we become self-realizing. We realize that we are eternal Satyam, Shivam, and Sundaram.
The fifth step is the enjoyment of our oneness with God. The fourth step would be considered the transcendent state, realizing and experiencing in meditation our nature of pure Satyam, of Shiva (essence) and Shakti (form) being ever in union. The fifth step is the coming back to the physical and enjoying everyday life. We are able to enjoy life because we have awareness of our wholistic Satyam nature.
The only thing that will add to our Satyam nature would be Satyam in motion, or the sharing of the love, harmony, and beauty. This is done through selfless service, without any thought of getting something in return, without any thought of individual self. We are only thinking of God, we are only thinking of the Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram that we are experiencing. We are sharing something we truly delight in, and this delight is the Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. This sharing is done through Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Karma Yoga, or more simply put, through the enjoyment of everyday life.
Now we have become one with God. We have become the Shiva and the Shakti. We have become the inhalation and the exhalation. There is no longer any struggle with individual identity. We are only identified with the cosmic wave, the Christ/Krishna Consciousness. In the beginning was the Word, the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, the pure prana. The Christ/Krishna Consciousness is the beginning and the end, the Shiva and Shakti principle. We become one with the God-consciousness. This is the Royal Path and the Path of Tantra.
Tantra is Sex-Love-Prayer-Transcendence, and Transcendence-Prayer-Love-Sex. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh talked about this process of growth that humanity goes through. They start with sex, with just awareness of the material and the lower ego…”I want what I want. I want self-gratification. I want self-pleasure.” This is what he defined as Sex. He said it was legitimate, just not complete. When we are no longer satisfied with the lower ego and the material world, we want more. We then go to the higher nature, that of Love, where we think of others first, rather than our self. There is no concern for “me” or “I” when it comes to love. Love is always unconditional. Most people can experience love and throw conditions around it, but once again, the problem comes not from love, but from our definitions of love and the conditions we place on it. We have gotten used to accepting our own definition of “love,” just as we have for “meditation.” People have gotten used to saying “meditation” for everything they do because it pleases the mind to think they are meditating. Most people want to think they have love, but are unwilling to give up their conditions.
The nature of the four primal instincts is to keep us alive while we learn and grow. The nature of the procreation instinct is to keep humanity alive. It is a drive for completion. Most of us have felt this as a need to feel completed by another person in the sexual union. We have had the idea or belief that this connection or intimacy we may feel with another person would somehow complete us. The nature of the procreation instinct is that it will complete us in the sexual union by bringing the sperm and egg together to allow a soul to come down through pregnancy and birth. It is for the preservation of the species. This is a very strong desire.
Many people confuse the nature of the procreation instinct with their own nature and think that is who they are. “I need to have offspring. I need to feel connected with another person so I feel worthwhile, or so I feel good, or so I feel love.” This is an incomplete view. This is what Bhagwan Rajneesh meant by sex…the material world. It is something we all go through, but at some point it is not enough and we want more. We want more than just a connection through sexual sensual pleasure, more than just an idea that the small biological family should be enough. We want to experience love at all times for we have discovered that love goes hand-in-hand with happiness.
We have all noticed that we can experience love, not just in an intimate or sexual union, not just in a small biological family, but have also felt it with strangers, in our thoughts, with animals, with sunsets, in meditation when we think of the holy ones. We have felt it in all different situations. We must take this awareness of love at all times and in all situations and use it to re-educate ourselves with the knowledge that love does not come from a relationship, the proof being that we have felt it in all kinds of situations. We begin to affirm that love (Satyam) is our nature, and we begin to see that our ideas about relationships are what limits us in how much love we can experience.
We begin to undo our ideas and beliefs. We begin to be more inclusive of life, God, and especially love. We move from the second chakra, which includes sexuality, to the third chakra, which is expansive and includes harmony with all life, including the causal and astral. We begin to feel more love, and want to feel even more love without conditions. We stop putting conditions on love. However, we do put conditions on relationships, because we need healthy boundaries in order to have healthy relationships. We don’t allow people to say and do whatever they like and still be associated with us. Neither do we expect others to accept unconditionally all that we say or do. We can experience Love unconditionally; we just have healthy conditions or boundaries on our relationships. We need Love in order to truly enjoy Sex, but pretty soon even Sex and Love will not be enough for us. We will then move into Prayer.
When Sex and Love are not enough, we need Prayer. We need thankfulness and appreciation. We need to understand how to have Satyam at all times. To do this, we must go beyond our individual identity, because somewhere in our superconscious we know that our individual identity is limited and temporary. Just like the body has a birth and death, the ego also has a beginning and transformation. Prayer becomes the seeking after the larger Self beyond the ego. This becomes the journey to the fourth and fifth chakras, and even up to the sixth chakra. This is where we begin to realize that we are created in the image of God. We begin to identify with Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram as our nature, rather than something we would like to experience externally.
Then at some point we get tired of being active. Until now we have been active— active with the beginning of new patterns, the ending or the tearing down of old habits or ideas. Now we want to experience the stillness, the Satyam without form or activity. This becomes Transcendence. We reach this state of ecstasy when we are able to calm the mind, body, breath, and ego to experience pure Satyam, pure God-consciousness without form. After spending time in peace, we will go back out again, through Prayer, “seeing through the eyes of God,” or appreciation, then through Love and the delight of the diversity, and finally to Sex or the individuality/material creation. However, instead of identifying with the lower, self-centered ego, we identify with the higher Self, which is still individual and a unique vibration of Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. It is an individual vibration of the God-consciousness. Now it is the expression of the Divine Will. We begin to live the inhalation and the exhalation of our wholistic nature.
Everyone has heard the expression that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We know it isn’t enough to just have good intentions; we must also have the right practices. Having good intentions may be “enough” in the astral realm where all you have to do is think or have a desire in order to manifest or fulfill something, but what is natural in the astral realm does not work at the physical. To manifest our desires at the physical, we need sustained willpower for concentration and focusing on our desires. Whether we want to build a business, create music, or realize our nature, it will take our willpower. We use our individual willpower to begin to develop our desires. It will take willpower and focused energy to fulfill our desires or karma.
When our individual will is in harmony with our higher nature, we then have universal willpower for the collective good, so it will have a greater strength added to it. When our individual will is harmonized with the universal will, we are able to accomplish almost anything because we have the power of the universal higher nature helping us. When we do things that are beneficial for the international community or other infinite spirits, we will be in harmony with the universal will. The universal will is that which is associated with Love and Prayer and with our own divine nature.
We then come to the Divine Will, which is the manifestation of the God Consciousness, which is the Shivam Consciousness. Obviously, the most powerful is when the focused individual will includes power of the universal will, and the Divine Consciousness or Will. Now, we not only accomplish our goals, but we delight in our work because we can feel the harmony and the Satyam. Regardless of whether it takes several years or several incarnations, we can feel the delight in this fulfilling of our goal or dharma (purpose).
Most people do not think in terms of a lifelong accomplishment. Satya Sai Baba says he is going to take three incarnations to prove the power of: 1) the messenger of God, 2) the master, 3) and the prophet, which are three levels or steps of service of a realized soul., and he is going to do it all quite rapidly. He is now in his second incarnation. He says that after he leaves the body, he will come back six years later for the third phase of his desire or dharma. He has chosen to spread the project he undertook over three complete incarnations.
Once we decide to harmonize our individual will with the universal will and the Will of God, there is unlimited potential for what we can accomplish. When we do our practices, we must recognize that if we want to grow, develop and even become enlightened, it is through the individual will. If we harmonize with others through being virtuous, kind, and considerate, then we are utilizing the universal will. If we are able to calm down and experience the God Consciousness in meditation, then we are utilizing the Divine Will, and all things can be accomplished. As much as most people want love and happiness, they sometimes get stuck at their individual ego and do not harmonize with the universal will.
To utilize the universal will on the spiritual path, to get help, we must attain the help of the Satguru or the realized teacher. It is difficult for people with a strong ego to accept guidance from anyone. But when you experience a realized person, you can feel their vibration, you can feel the truth of the teachings, and most importantly, you can feel your own divine nature.
An initiation becomes the powerful reinforcement of the initiative that we have to grow and learn. Being in the presence of a realized soul is equivalent to sabikalpa samadhi. To realize how important this is, stop and think…how many times in your meditations do you attain sabikalpa samadhi, awareness of your superconscious state beyond the senses, to the point you no longer breathe and your heart no longer beats? The equivalent of this state of super consciousness, sabikalpa samadhi, is what is possible in the presence of a realized soul. If you have the opportunity to spend time in the presence of a realized soul, utilize your opportunity to experience super consciousness, or sabikalpa samadhi.
Your guru may not be on the planet, but there are realized souls on the planet to help humanity. I had visions of holy ones, communion with God, even experiences with God, and still I struggled. I felt there was a ceiling I couldn’t get past. When I went into the presence of Sri Chitrabhanu, a realized soul, I felt the Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram Consciousness both deep in meditation and while I was active. This was an initiation. I felt like I was always striving to have that experience of my nature. Had I not met Sri Chitrabhanu, I would not have received that initiation. I know this because I had had visions of holy ones, but they didn’t come with the same superconscious awareness that I got in Sri Chitrabhanu’s presence. I saw him several times, and also saw Swami Rama, and these experiences reinforced the awareness that my nature was Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. Initiation is important, but it is not enough. For ten days after seeing Sri Chitrabhanu, I was in a state of ecstasy, Om Satyam. On day eleven, I found my feet back on earth wondering what happened, why the state of ecstasy was no longer there. So I began working to get back to that state of ecstasy that I felt with the initiation.
This process of Sex–Love–Prayer–Transcendence, then Transcendence–Prayer–Love–Sex is Shiva (essence/unmanifested) and Shakti (form/creation) that is ever in union, and is what the holy ones mean when they talk about realizing our nature. It also takes a harmony and fulfilling of the body, which needs activity because it was made for motion. This is the asanas and the postures, which is the third step of the Eightfold Path of Yoga,. We need healthy motion or activity in order to then calm down the body. If we have a restless body, we will not be able to calm down. Where there are aches and pains, it is hard to calm down the body. After we have calmed the body, we calm the mind by adding the pranayama, the diaphragmatic breathing. This allows us to work in a harmonious manner and not just be agitated.
Christ, and the other realized souls, talked about living in the world, but not of the world. How do we do this? We do it by looking for the essence of Divinity in everything within the creation, including the world around us. When we look at people, we look to see the essence, the soul, the Satyam, the beauty radiating through them. In the beginning it won’t always easy to see. We must be more disciplined so that we can see Divinity at all times. Just because others may have a limited understanding, it does not mean that we have to go back and have that same limited understanding. We can attain a wholistic view and then enjoy everyday life, including the children.
Just as we must nurture the physical body, we must also nurture the astral body or spirit. We do this with beauty, love, and joy. This comes through the arts, music, and the delight of what is inspirational and uplifting to humanity. Humanity has a natural desire to appreciate and enjoy what is beautiful. We are naturally attracted to beauty. We are more attracted to the butterflies than we are to the cockroaches, even though the cockroaches do a phenomenal amount of work by eating dead and decomposing material.
The appreciation of both the cockroach and the butterfly comes from the causal. We must nurture the delight, beauty, and joy. I write poetry, to express this beauty and delight. I also listen to music, because music is an expression of the universal spirit. You don’t have to understand or speak a language to enjoy the music. The appreciation of harmonious vibrations helps to nurture our spirit.
For the causal, we need to develop a larger vision. We need to see and understand patterns of living energy, including war, death, disease, and come to accept that it is all part of the perfection of God. Disease occurs when we are living out of harmony and the conflict manifests at the physical in the form of disease. When we have pain, it means that we have discord somewhere in our three bodies, it means we are out of harmony. If we say karma is true, then it is also true that the people being abused, killed, and suppressed around the world are also part of this truth. We have to see that both a justice and an injustice are happening, but we also must realize that karma is not locked in, or carved in stone. We can work towards making a better life for everyone. It will be very difficult to be blissful when your neighbors are being beaten, or are starving to death, or dying of diseases or malnutrition. When we understand karma, we realize that we can make a difference, because our efforts and attitude will help to remove the problems. We can attain awareness of our wholistic nature. We can delight in the music. We can learn to work towards a better world without getting drawn into the conflict of the war or disease, or lose our peace and joy. When we are drawn into the conflict, we become part of the problem and are no longer part of the solution.
The causal nature, the Prayer, is about understanding and being in the harmony of life. This is the appreciation of life, and life more abundantly. Working towards this understanding should be part of our daily life. Physical selfless service, right activity, good music, good art, nice surroundings, and an understanding of karma or the yuga system will not bring us to Transcendence. It will give us a sense of peace with life because we will have a harmony with our self, our growth, and life around us. Then we must calm down the body, the mind, the breath, and the ego to go into samadhi or Transcendence.
I always made the effort to put the experience of God or samadhi first when I sat down to meditate, but if I heard my child crying, I would get up to see what was going on and make sure they were safe and everything was okay. Then I would go back to my meditation. God first, not just in transcendence or the formless, but also in form. We need to have both in our life. It isn’t like we are born, then explore Sex, then feel Love, then get to Prayer, then die and go into Transcendence. We need to do Sex–Love–Prayer–Transcendence daily.
When I say “Sex,” I’m not talking about sexual intercourse, which is part of the procreation instinct, part of the small ego. To enjoy the act of sex, you have to also be thinking about yourself, “How is this pleasurable to me?” To have an orgasm, you not only have to think about how it feels pleasurable, you also have to focus on what you find pleasurable and exciting. Sex, as in sexual intercourse, is of the small ego and can be enjoyed, but must be balanced in a wholistic way. Most of the realized ones suggest moderation in sexual activity. Moderation means sex along with Love–Prayer–Transcendence.
We can have Sex–Love–Prayer–Transcendence; daily we can go to the formless and then come back out. Ideally, when we do the practices and lead a healthy and disciplined life, we will reach the point where we only need three to five hours of sleep or rest a day. In the eight-hour block of time that we normally set aside for sleep, we would then have four to five hours for meditation where we could be in transcendence. This time spent in Transcendence allows us more time during the day to fulfill the Prayer–Love–-Sex aspect of our life. It allows more time to nurture the physical, astral, and causal bodies. Then we once again go to Transcendence. Most people don’t believe that they have enough time to become enlightened because they have to spend so much time sleeping, working, meeting family obligations, and doing their desires. The Royal Path says you make these desires fit or harmonize in a healthy manner, into your wholistic journey. You will then have time to either fulfill and/or go beyond the desires at the physical, at the astral, at the causal, and still have time for Transcendence. You will have time to fulfill the desire for your incarnation while living in harmony with your nature.
When I was younger, I had time to play, study, go to college, to go out for athletics. Now I have time to work, listen to music, write poetry, interact with people, and to see the Divine Light vibrating in people. I have time for the enjoyment of the physical, for the enjoyment and delight of the astral, and have time for the enjoyment of learning and growing of the causal nature. However, I do not think that any of those activities will fulfill me or make me happy. Only identifying with the God Consciousness will bring me happiness. The rest is the “all else.” As Christ said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all else will be added.” “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” is the discovering that your nature is Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. The “all else will be added” is the enjoyment, appreciation, and delight in the diversity of creation, all the way to the physical. The attainment of our wholistic nature is a willful process that we must undertake.
Just as “meditation” has taken on improper definitions, so has “nature.” “Nature” has come to be defined as physical nature, as in evolution, or the rotation of the planets, or the need for food, sleep, procreation, and self-preservation. We do our self a disservice when we define “nature” only as the physical. When the holy ones talk about nature, they are talking about our wholistic nature. Our wholistic nature includes the physical, astral, causal, holy stream, Christ/Krishna Consciousness, and most importantly it includes our God-like absolute nature of Om Satyam. We need to experience our wholistic nature beyond the ego and the cosmic mayac sheath in order to see clearly. Before we go beyond the ego and mayac sheath, we are caught in the illusion, the idea of incompleteness.
The Royal Path allows us a complete and wholistic life. However, we have to make sure it is actually the Royal Path, and not just a case of indulgence of the mind, which we are calling the Royal Path. Indulging in sleep, food, money, romance, sex and materialism is not the Royal Path. Today there is much talk about holistic health. This holistic health does not start with meditation, but with herbs, which is legitimate, but only works with different elements of the body. Let’s get back to redefining “wholistic” as our whole nature. If we do that, the Royal Path will be a complete path.
We accept the guidance of the holy ones, but we do not
depend on their presence. We utilize initiation to experience our wholistic
nature. Then we practice their
teachings to help us to live in our wholistic nature. Each of us must strive
to attain realization of our divine nature, strive to attain the state of
enjoyment of everyday life. .
Namaste
[1] Sufi tradition: A path of mysticism. Hazrat Inayat Khan and Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan are of the Sufi tradition.
Part IV
Retreat : Friday Aug. 17,
2007 – 6:30 pm
Lee Timmerman
the moon and the stars
have taken their place in the sky
fulfilling their destiny
As much as people don’t like to think about it, patterns have patterns of fulfillment. They have a destiny. Once a desire has been set in motion, the desire will move to be fulfilled. Only a higher consciousness can change a pattern or destiny. The rocks and moon and stars are fulfilling their destiny. They have been set in motion with creation. Their destiny is to continue with the patterns until an outside force intervenes. If human beings do not accept responsibility for their life, they will go along in whatever pattern or destination they have set in motion from their last incarnations, or the sum total of their past interests and desires. They will continue on in that pattern. People rebel against destiny because they want to be done with the old and start something new, because they want to believe they have freewill. Freewill is the choice, and destiny is the result of that choice.
and that ancient river is running tonight
carrying my soul along
Here the ancient river, the Holy Stream, the manifestation of the Christ/Krishna Consciousness is the Om Satyam that permeates all life all the way to the physical. carrying my soul along is acknowledging the nature of the oneness. The soul is Om Satyam and the essence of divinity is Om Satyam, and if I my soul is being carried along, I am identifying with Om Satyam.
the orange
blossoms have stolen the night
like the tide steals the shore
When I took my dog Max for walks in the spring, the orange blossoms were so strong for about ten days that it was all you could do to not be carried away by the fragrance of the orange blossoms. This is acknowledgement of the power the mass vibration may have on your life. It can influence your life, like the rising and falling of the tides has on the shorelines.
and the
mockingbirds are singing those songs
that were written in the dark
The beauty of mockingbirds is that they sing at night. If you listen to the mockingbirds, you will begin to hear some of those secret thoughts, things from Pandora’s Box that you have been trying to avoid. If we allow our self to get quiet, thoughts and feelings will rise up from the subconscious. Once we are aware of our “past destiny,” we can change it, resurrect it to something greater.
where i kept all my secrets from you
Everyone likes to think they have secrets that they can keep from life. The law of karma is such that whatever we think, feel, or do will vibrate out and will therefore attract a similar vibration. About karma, Swami Rama says there is no escape… “Pay me now or pay me later.” Karma can be changed once we are aware of it, if we have a greater vision than when we put it into motion.
and here i stand
naked and bare at the edge of eternity
When you calm down you can go beyond, stand naked and bare, beyond the illusions, the ideas, fantasies and stand at the edge of eternity, the edge of the ego or the cosmic sheath and be ready to dive into samadhi. From this state of super consciousness, you will have the vision to change your karma, your life.
the saints
they have all gathered
to raise the chalice
and sing hallelujah
to dance on the grapes
of next year’s wine
If you do make that journey and go beyond the ego, there will be a celebration. You will feel the bliss and intoxication. You may even see the saints and sages that are beyond that and join them for a short while. to dance on the grapes of next year’s wine– obviously you have to crush the grapes and ferment them and allow them to age into wine. One must make the effort to transform the old into a new consciousness. The saints and sages are always planting seeds. When you go to that place you will have the experiences, and those satories will turn into the wine and enjoyment next year, or somewhere down the road. New patterns of living energy will sprout.
and as i
drink from that cup
of all that is beautiful
all of my sins
are being laid out before me
like a feast at the devil’s table
When you get to that blissful state and everything is beautiful, it is a state beyond the lower ego, a state of the soul where everything is truly divine and beautiful. All your sins and all of your past are revealed. all of my sins are being laid out before me like a feast at the devil’s table. the devil’s table is the idea of separateness, the illusion, the idea of incompleteness. Enlightenment is greater awareness, including the greater awareness of illusion, greater awareness of everything you have done in thought, word, and deed up to today, up until you leave it behind. It is not a removal of your past, or less awareness. It is greater awareness opening into your future, into your moment, and also your past. This is all my sins are being laid out before me like a feast at the devil’s table. Once you can see both your higher nature and lower nature, you can choose. The old habits will remain until you change the to new habits. You don’t have to remain chained to the past.
oh take me down to that ancient river
and bathe my body and soul
wrap me in all that is holy
for tonight you are standing
naked and bare
at the edge of my desire for you
My desire was to dive into the God Consciousness. I didn’t want to dwell on the limitations, or all my past sins. I didn’t want to do penance for all my past sins. I just wanted to leave them behind and dive into that ancient river, that Holy Stream. oh take me down to that ancient river and bathe my body and soul wrap me in all that is holy. wrap me in all that is holy symbolizes me making the conscious willful effort to not get caught up in Pandora’s Box, not to get caught up in my past. It is the conscious willful effort to dive into the Holy Stream, or the mantras until I was able to immerse into the Holy Stream. for tonight you are standing naked and bare at the edge of my desire for you is the ability to calm the body, the mind, the breath, and even the ego and see the formlessness or Christ Consciousness. You are standing right there, but you still have to dive in. for tonight you are standing naked and bare at the edge of my desire for you—at this point you have to surrender and dive in. You identify with your divine nature and let go of your limitations.
tonight we will dance on the water
to the rhythm of that holy song
and drink from the nectar
of a thousand golden flowers
all gathered beyond the moon and stars
for tonight we will dance in eternity
The dance on the water is the Christ/Krishna Consciousness, the Holy Stream, the God Consciousness; about going beyond the ego and the mayac sheath. to the rhythm of that holy song is that divine vibration. and drink from the nectar of a thousand golden flowers. a thousand golden flowers symbolizes the tiny golden net of the soul. It also symbolizes the perfection of striving to attain the fulfillment of your dharma, or the soul. all gathered beyond the moon and stars this makes it the dharma rather than the worldly desires. for tonight we will dance in eternity means that tonight we will go beyond the cosmic ego, beyond the mayac sheath to that place where there is no beginning and no end, to a state of realizing we are Satyam Consciousness.
This next poem is about a different perspective, that of coming back.
SOMETIMES IT seems we walk
towards that far horizon
This symbolizes our journey from birth to death.
chasing the wind
like it was a holy shrine
a pilgrimage to sun devils and dust
We chase our illusions, our beliefs, our desires just like they were a holy shrine or the truth. This is about striving to fulfill some aspect of our incomplete nature. a pilgrimage to sun devils and dust—sun devils are made up of the sun and the dust, a combination that creates an optical illusion. Then there is actual dust, the earthy part or pull, that creates even more of an illusion that seems real, like a mirage. a pilgrimage to sun devils and dust—we even rationalize it, say it is our right, our nature, the fulfillment of our desire. This is what our limited nature does…it perceives the unreal as real.
off in the distance
ride the four horsemen of the apocalypse
racing the sun to the edge of my days
We’ve reached a time when there is a lot of talk about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the end of days, Armageddon. This was the time of prophecy when Christ said he would come back. The difference was whether he was going to come back to destroy the world, or come back in another incarnation at the end of an age. The four horsemen of the apocalypse is a figure of speaking for the results of living your life with the four primal instincts. It will bring about destruction. It will bring about pestilence, disease and death. This is the nature of the four primal instincts. They are limited. If we focus our life on it, we will then have these four primal instincts, which are natural and help us to survive, but if we don’t continue to develop wholistically, it will also become the death of us.
i knew their names for a while
they were friends of mine
when we were all so very young
we prayed that the heavens would open
and grace our days
Everyone must deal with the four primal instincts. To continue to
struggle with them is to not accept their natural place in our evolution,
their natural place in the protection of the body.
The body must be protected because it hosts the spirit and the soul
during our journey here on earth for growth.
we prayed the heavens would open and grace our days—when we
are young we pray that something external, God or the heavens, will make us
complete or happy—open and grace our days. The New Age is full of
this prayer for miracles to bring about the fulfillment of our desires, to
grace our days.
but somewhere in our youth
something innocent was lost
and we drifted apart
maybe it was that dance of Salome
and the ghost of the Baptist
maybe it was written in the stars
or maybe we just wanted more
something innocent was lost and we drifted apart…this innocence was lost at puberty. maybe it was the dance of Salome. Salome was the daughter of a woman who wanted John the Baptist quieted because he had said the mother was living in sin, doing bad things, and trying to control the country’s ideals. The woman asked her daughter to dance for the king, knowing the king lusted after her daughter, and knowing that he would be pleased with Salome’s dance and offer her a blessing or request. The mother told Salome to ask for the head of the Baptist on a silver platter. This is symbolic of what happens when lust, greed, and coveting come into our life. And they usually come in at the time of puberty. The procreation instinct is legitimate and can be beautiful, but we need to find a way of harmonizing with it because the procreation instinct is for the preservation of humanity and is very powerful. Most human beings will be caught up in this instinct if they don’t rise above their lower ego into the superconscious. These instincts are planted in the causal mind. maybe it was that dance of Salome and the ghost of the Baptist—something beautiful is always sacrificed when you give into the limited. maybe it was written in the stars or maybe we just wanted more. The soul calls out for our higher nature, which is the more that brings fulfillment, harmony, and peace.
we were singing and dancing and praying
and trying to see beyond tomorrow
This is trying to see there is more to life than just the physical, more to life than what the five senses tell us. This is the actual study of life from a body, mind, and spirit perspective.
living for today like it was
some sacred place of the heart
but with the coming of the sunrise
we let go of those ancient ruins
and went looking for a new day
Coming to the moment will give us a glimpse of our soul. During the 1960s a generation of children felt this Dwapara Yuga, this calling out. They were willing to let go of the traditions that had been around for hundreds, even thousands of years, and break away. with the coming of the sunrise, the coming of the Dwapara Yuga, we let go of those ancient ruins. The ancient ruins were the traditions that kept us locked into the Kali Yuga mentality and the material world and the limited ideas of the ego. and went looking for a new day—this is the willingness to change, to become a more wholistic person.
we were drunk with last year’s wine
when we stumbled upon
some old hope for lost poets
something about God and nature
and
things to come
some old hope for lost poets is symbolic for faith. Faith is like the archer who releases the arrow. Not knowing where it will land, the archer releases the arrow and allows it to go to a place without preconceived ideas of what “should be.” With faith, you allow your self to unfold into the mystical experience—some old hope for lost poets something about God and nature and things to come. It doesn’t mean we know, or that anyone will know. It seems like a risk, a leap of faith into your higher consciousness. You leave behind the old beliefs and habits, what you are familiar with, and you allow your self to experience Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.
but we could not wait for heaven
hell was knocking on our door
but we could not wait for heaven is about the old teachings. “Wait. Do your best. Be righteous and moral and you will get your reward in heaven.” You can’t wait for heaven because hell is knocking on our door. Armageddon is there—the crisis of consciousness is here and can be seen in the current political turmoil around the world. In every community there is fundamentalism, the old Kali Yuga ways and ideas. They are bringing their beliefs, their ruin, with them and demanding that we accept the old traditions.
We can’t wait for heaven. We can’t just lead a nice quiet monastic life and wait for heaven because hell is knocking on our door…in Darfur, in Bangladesh, in the Middle East. It has been knocking on the door for a while. Everyone, and especially the warrior class, needs to step up and say, “Enough!” Society has to be willing to support the warrior class. War and violence should be a last resort in self-defense, or in defending those who cannot defend themselves. It is self-defense because our identity is that of a human family, and when women and children are being raped, tortured, enslaved, and killed, then something has to be done. hell is knocking on our door.
we didn’t want our fortunes told
we were just looking for a better way
We didn’t want to be told what to do or what the future would bring if we conformed. No one does. We didn’t want to be told what our life should be. We wanted to create a new life for our self and others. We were just looking for a better way—a way to live wholistically in a more open and wholistic society.
it didn’t have to be a sacred heart
just something we could keep
beyond our days
it didn’t have to be the sacred heart…It didn’t have to be liberation. just something we could keep beyond our days—something beyond gold and materialism and the small ego, beyond the small ego of this one incarnation.
still there is shadows on the mountain
and the sweetness of summer
an eagle’s cry of freedom
and big clouds in the sky
the fragrance of wildflowers and weeds
with butterflies and hummingbirds
a little closer to the earth
All of this awareness was happening one morning while I was sitting out on the deck of a cabin in the mountains. There was an eagle screaming. There were big clouds in the sky and butterflies and hummingbirds. If one comes to the moment, to our own nature, we do not have to wait for the arrival of a New Age; we merely begin to see with new eyes.
it all seems like it could be
a satori in the morning sun
with that distant horizon
seemingly a long way off
and the edge of my days
has unfolded into
the sunrise of another day
With any satori, the moment enlarges to include your wholistic nature. This enlargement which includes your wholistic nature also comes back to include the moment. It is greater awareness, not just of the heavens above, but also of the earth and the nature surrounding you. It is not a withdrawal from life; it is inclusiveness into life. My life is interesting because I take time to appreciate life, take time to smell the flowers. I make the time to learn, grow, and experience my wholistic nature, including when I am active.
Part V
Retreat : Friday
Aug. 17, 2007 – 6:30 pm
Lee Timmerman
and in the valley below
the thunder reminds me
of a drum i need to mend
Another day up here in the mountains. It was raining all day. When I left the desert it was raining, I drove up the mountain in the rain, and it continued to rain up here. the rain is falling on the mountain and in the valley below. Somewhere in the trip, the thunder started reminding me of this drum that has been broken for several years, that I had been meaning to fix, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. a drum I need to mend—the drum that needs mending is symbolic of my dharma, this calling out for love and freedom. I don’t want to become too complacent in the enjoyment of the morning satoris and forget that there are people suffering, or that I have a message that will help people transform their suffering into the enjoyment of life.
like an iron dinosaur
standing alone in the field
that old rusty windmill
has got me thinking of the past
Windmills usually trigger some thoughts of the past, of another time, of another incarnation. .
old gypsy poets
and the message of the ages
ancient warriors and golden slaves
silver idols and lust and illusions
old gypsy poets is a symbolic and poetic way of saying messengers of God, the holy ones, the realized souls. and the message of the ages is the universal vibration of being created in the image of God, of realizing our oneness with God, and realizing the message that each of the realized one gives. ancient warriors and golden slaves—the warrior class must be allowed to fulfilled its dharma because that is their fulfillment. Their dharma is to protect and serve the community, the country. The warrior class’s soul has evolved to the point where it wants more from life than it’s own personal needs. They must protect and serve their family and community—ancient warriors and golden slaves. golden slaves is our self that is imprisoned by our desires. They are golden slaves because we romanticize them as the pleasures and desires of “Yes, this is limited, but is also beautiful and legitimate.” This is enslavement to the procreation instinct, to the greed for materialism, to the illusion of the temporary. “I am enslaved by my needs for pleasure, greed, and possessiveness. silver idols and lust and illusions. silver idols is the worship of money, jewelry, gold and diamonds, the blood diamonds that have caused the death of so many children and slaves. lust is just wanting what our ego wants. illusions is the worship of our beliefs when we want what we want, when we don’t question whether the beliefs bring the real or the unreal.
honeysuckle vines and long stemmed roses
youthful bodies in the sun
and a rebirth of love and beauty
that is beyond our heart’s desire
honeysuckle vines and long stemmed roses are both plants that
need to be taken care of.
long stemmed roses implies more than just water and sunshine and
nurturing. They take someone
for us to give them to. They take desire in the fulfillment of some idea of
separateness. youthful
bodies in the sun and a rebirth of love and beauty that is beyond our
heart’s desire. Who doesn’t
appreciate youthful bodies in the sun?
and a rebirth of love and beauty that is beyond our heart’s desire
is about once we truly focus on beauty, not on the possession of it,
but the appreciation of it, we will get to that point where we will
have the satori, the mystical experience.
We go beyond the ego and truly begin to see the Satyam, Shivam,
Sundaram, the nature of God. It
is the love and beauty beyond our heart’s desire, or beyond our desire of
what we want for our soul.
you know the sea remains the same
with the rising and falling of each wave
but the waves are the dance
that fills the heart with love
the sea is the Divine Consciousness. It does not change with birth and death. It does not change when we take an incarnation or don’t take an incarnation. We are part of the ocean, the divine-consciousness, but the rising of the wave (the incarnation) is the wave’s enjoyment. It is the dance that allows us to delight in being alive. This incarnation, this journey of the soul has been sent out as an expression of Divinity. Our journey should be a delight. It should fill the heart with love and joy. Each wave, each unique soul and each unique incarnation should be working towards this fulfillment.
earth, wind, fire, and rain
can not sustain heart nor soul
You have to realize that nothing material or tangible can satisfy us, neither the heart nor the soul. We have to quit looking for our fulfillment in the activities, desires, or the relationships of the world, and begin to look for our wholistic nature.
the essence of love alone
will cause the flowers to bloom
It is this Divine Consciousness, the Holy Stream that causes all life to be beautiful.
the hanging gardens of Babylon
and the angels singing above
the beauty of the sun
is in the song of the soul
the hanging gardens of Babylon are ancient gardens that are considered part of the eight Wonders of the World. and the angels singing above is about hearing the angels singing, appreciating the beauty of their voices and songs. and the beauty of the sun—the beauty of everything under the sun, within this cosmic play, cosmic dance is in the song of the soul. If you do not have the identity of Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram then you cannot appreciate the true beauty of the creation by looking through the eyes of God (2006 poem). You must get to transcendence to truly hear and feel the song of the soul and then you can appreciate the beauty under the sun, and hear the angels singing, and appreciate the hanging gardens of Babylon.
this old gypsy heart needs to remember
to laugh with the children
and dance with the dervish
and why we are here at all
This is getting back to that drum that needs mending. We need to remember that we are not here to have relationships with limited ideas. We are here to appreciate and enjoy and help provide a better world where people can learn and grow and enjoy on their journey To be able to laugh with the children. Children laugh 400 times a day. They truly have a delight that most adults have lost. When you laugh with the children, you try to regain that innocence, laughter and joy of living. and to dance with the dervish, and the only way to do this once the innocence has been lost is to regain our wholistic consciousness and then to dance with the dervish or the realized souls. and why we are here at all simply goes back to the basic questions: Why we are here? What is the purpose of our life? What is our journey all about? What are we going to do with our life?
thunder rolling across the mountains
sunshine breaking through the clouds
rainbows beginning to form
like a promise of days to come
To be in the moment—thunder rolling across the mountains. If I had not been in the moment, I would not have paid attention to the rolling thunder across the mountains, I would have not have noticed the beauty of the sun rays breaking through the clouds. I might have noticed the beginning of a rainbow, but if I needed something for my happiness, I wouldn’t have given it much time. like a promise of days to come—this is what the rainbow symbolized…the promise that if I come to the moment, if I come to my wholistic nature and live wholistically, then I will have days to come that would be enjoyable. If I am looking for more love and beauty, I will see more love and beauty.
The next poem is simply about hope, faith, acceptance, and the beauty and delight of the soul once born, living forever looking through the eyes of God, living in your wholistic nature.
ONE MORE
night looking up at the stars
another full moon shining on me
and lighting up the night
and still in love with you
There’s a full moon every 28 days. It’s very redundant. It’s the destiny of the moon and the stars. My appreciation of that full moon, which means that each night I am out looking at the moon and the stars, means that I am out appreciating the sky. I am always striving to experience more love and beauty. A few years ago I suggested that people buy cameras and begin to take photographs of beautiful things in order to retrain their mind and thinking towards looking for the beauty in life. Many people are so busy trying to get their beliefs met, or are so caught up in everyday life that they don’t have time to look for the beauty. If you have a camera to take pictures of beautiful things, you make the time to look for beautiful things in your busy life. It is a retraining, or a shifting of our attention. and still in love with you…the love of love.
with
that feeling of a young heart
and its first taste of love
Everyone knows what that first taste of love is, that first taste of ecstasy that comes when love just starts overflowing.
and a yearning for that freedom
that i know will be mine
when
I give everything for love
Here comes the risky part. yearning for that freedom, for the liberation, the freedom of not being concerned about the ego and getting our needs met, not being concerned about the opinion of others and what they think of us. and a yearning for that freedom that i know will be mine when i give everything for love. When you totally surrender to love, not for anything you might get, but for love itself, the freedom, the exhilaration can take you beyond the physical into the mystical, and beyond the mystical into the ecstasy and the God Consciousness. This is what will happen if you allow your self to follow the Holy Stream of love.
like a warrior in an ancient world
or Jesus walking on the water
that cry for freedom
comes from every soul
The warrior is fighting for freedom, for himself, his dharma, and for others. Jesus walked the earth and tried to help others be free through sharing knowledge of how they could realize their wholistic nature. that cry of freedom comes from every soul— no matter what age we are, there is that cry from the soul for freedom, freedom to be in love, freedom to fulfill our dharma.
whether you have a gypsy heart
or you want to till the soil
that song of
freedom
and the love in your heart
becomes the bride
and the grace of God
the
honeymoon
It really doesn’t matter what our station in life, or what our interests are—that cry for freedom is there. This is why communism and dictatorial regimes are such a violation of the human spirit. Those of us who live in a free democratic society should not say it is simply our good karma and ignore the people who are under the rule of tyrants and dictators. We should be vibrating out that cry for freedom to inspire others to want more. Freedom isn’t limited to just physical freedom, but freedom to learn, study, and express your true self, which is the nature of the heart/mind and soul. that song of freedom and the love in your heart becomes the bride and the grace of God the honeymoon. The groom is symbolic of our consciousness. Once our consciousness has union with the love of our soul, our Satyam nature, then the grace of God is the honeymoon. You have then reached the kingdom of God and all else can be added.
the embrace of bodies
the beauty and joy
and the rhythm of souls
and
like every lover before me
i will dive into your ocean
It starts with sex, the embracing of bodies. The procreation instinct is part of the perfection, the completion in the union between two people. Then it goes to the rhythm of the souls, to the Satyam-consciousness, and then it evolves to diving into the formless. This is the evolutionary state of each person. In the beginning they are satisfied with the love and union with another person. Pretty soon they want the universal union with the whole consciousness, that of the soul…Om Satyam, Om Shivam, Om Sundaram. After that they want to dive into the formless, the pure Satyam-consciousness.
the moon dances tonight
with the grace
only angels could imagine
in the garden of light and shadow
the garden of light and shadow is the duality, the cosmic play. with the grace only angels could imagine is when you can see the purity and beauty, and overlook the darkness and limitations. Angels have that innocence. They have not yet had an incarnation at the physical. They are little baby souls who are still innocent.
and while the music plays
some come to say hello
and some will say good-bye
some will give blessings
and some blame the stars
In the cosmic play, in our dance or journey, we will meet people. Some will be new friends, some will be friends that are leaving or parting ways. some will say hello and some will say good-bye. some will give blessings, means some will be more highly evolved. The realized souls will give their blessings and give something that is uplifting and inspirational. and some will blame the stars, some will say it is someone else’s fault. They will blame the external. We need to accept responsibility for our own happiness.
and the moon will dance through the night
with grace and perfection
The moon and the starts are perfect.
They are part of the perfect oneness or the perfect God.
We work to remove our samskaras so we can experience the grace and
perfection.
will dance
with the mountains
and dance with the trees
will dance with the tides
and dance with lovers
dance to the rhythm of
heaven and earth
The moon is the reflection of light. It is the Sundaram-consciousness. It isn’t the Satyam-consciousness, which is the light itself. The moon symbolizes the delight and enjoyment of our wholistic nature and the cosmic play. It is interacting with, and has union with, the mountains, trees, tides, and lovers. dance to the rhythm of heaven and earth, meaning the dance is a dynamic interaction or wholistic relationship. This union enjoys, appreciates, and delights in the divinity or essence of love that permeates everything from the heavens to the earth. It doesn’t get stuck by wanting to possess or own.
and i long to embrace you beneath the light
of that beautiful moon
Even with all this beauty, the soul is still calling
out…and I long to embrace you, We long to have union with that
Satyam-consciousness. If we
pursue all that is beautiful, it will never be enough.
It may be delightful, beautiful, blissful, and we will enjoy it, but
it will not be enough.
and dance one more time
dance across the
water
maybe even dance across
eternity
to the other side of night
No matter how beautiful life on earth is, there is a desire to dance with God, dance with Satyam. dance across the water is the union with the Divine Consciousness. maybe even dance across eternity is the realization that even if I dive into the formless, into eternity, that I will come out again–maybe in an hour, a day, in 100 or 2000 years, transformed. I will come out again to the other side of night, into the creation again, come out once again…transformed.
The soul, once born lives forever. The realization that we are eternal Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram is the liberation into life, the liberation into God. This is what this stanza is all about. This ecstasy, this joy, this freedom comes with the realization that we are infinite and eternal Satyam (love), Shivam (harmony and virtue), and Sundaram (bliss, joy, and happiness). This freedom and ecstasy allows life to be delightful, with no need to limit it. We were created to go out, explore, experience, and delight in this cosmic play, or in the divine essence within the cosmic play. Then come back within to the peace of the pure Satyam Consciousness without form. We don’t worry about annihilation. We don’t worry about losing loved ones or material objects because we have realized there is a coming and a going—the waves rise and they fall every incarnation, every day, even every creation.
The realization of mukti (freedom) is the realization of our divine nature, or our wholistic nature. This is what this poem symbolizes. Once again, this poem is simply about the hope, faith, acceptance, and the beauty and delight of the soul, once born, living forever.
Namaste
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