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Life of Understanding - Week 4 p.29 - 39 There was the force, but not this personal manifestation. But when I entered the Vedanta Temple on this first day, the personal manifestation, the personal presence of the Mother Shakti in her infinite form manifested, which is quite a different thing than the other Shakti appearing as a visual image. But it. was a cosmic presence, an obviously identifiable presence. And the reason it could be identified as it was was because my own nature had also begun to take on the form of this cosmic presence. So there was a period of weeks when I would go back and forth to the Vedanta Temple as I have described in the book. I would ask the Shakti to come with me, and then she would be with me, there were all these games being played. Then I thought well I shouldn't ask the Shakti to just be with me, and now she's gone from this temple, or she's just exclusively with me,I didn't want any of that. So then she'd appear in the temple again, and I'd see light in the temple. All kinds of odd changes were going on, and it was simply the. transformation of the lower life into (to) cosmic life. It was a turnabout from the personal ego into the cosmic ego. And it was also a period of time in which the tantric sadhana was fulfilled in me. So if you read the experiences in the Vedanta Temple carefully, you will see that they are a description of tantric sadhana, of the union of, what is symbolically the union of the male and the female yogis, their sexual union. And this is magnified in their conscious states into a higher form of union. In this case there was no physical symbolic form of it. I wasn't there with a physical woman, but I was dealing with the Shakti as a woman, as a yogini, but as the cosmic yogini. And I was participating with her as a cosmic manifestation, myself. And so there was this play of energy, this play of cosmic tantra that went on for several weeks, and it culminated in this union. And it was the tantric bliss, perfection of the tantric sadhana, in which the (ultimate) duality of the cosmic manifestation is ultimately seen to be one, and experienced as one. And once this tantric union occurred, the whole aspect of cosmic yoga itself was fulfilled, and an entirely new process appeared afterwards, so that when I returned to the Vedanta Temple after this experience of the tantric union, there was no longer the person of the Shakti, there was no longer any yogic process, no dualities, no activity, there was only the prior Reality, intuitively realized, perfectly realized from that moment. So in fact (this) this instant in the Vedanta Temple after the tantric phase of the internal activity on a cosmic scale, not on a personal scale any longer. It was at this point that in a certain real sense we could say that the adventure of my sadhana came to an end. But it wasn't like a sudden mental realization or whatever, it was perfect realization, it transcended the mind and the life. And so its implications relative to the mind and the life had to be grasped over time. It wasn't suddenly I got up and understood from the minds point of view exactly what had occurred, the mind dissolved, everything was resolved into the prior principle. So the process of living what was now the real condition took days, weeks, months to be recognized and implemented at the level of life and mind. Shortly after this time, I began to write The Knee of Listening. There are some notes here that Sal had taken in our last discussion that probably I should read. It says, "He recognized the Shakti as omnipresent." in other words, the Shakti became obvious as the very condition, the all embracing perfect presence in Reality, beyond any personal manifestation. The Person of the Shakti became infinite and my own presence in relation to the Shakti became limitless, void, absolute. "The experience of union transformed the lower." In other words, this perfect union, tantric union on the highest level transformed everything below it, all the manifest functions were transformed by this fulfillment of sadhana. And also the personal and individual existence was transformed into cosmic existence. There was a particularly during this period of going back and forth to the Vedanta Temple, a lifting out of the point of view of consciousness from anything like personal sadhana, or witnessing of the effects of sadhana in the body, and in the person to a cosmic dimension. But on this last day after the cosmic union, the tantric union, even this was transcended and perfected in the prior realization of the Heart, of the Self nature. And when, in this experience the winter before in New York, when the sahasrar was severed, there was a realization that, it was not a matter of being in some encapsulated, descended, separated condition, and looking up through stages like on a ladder until you could grasp the Divine Light. It was instantly, priorly realized. The Light was instantly perfectly realized, prior to any sense of ascent or the need to ascend prior of any sense of obstruction, limitation. So the Light was realized without obstruction, without prior conditions, as always already the case at that time. Now at this tine, the source of that Light, the source of which the Light itself is the reflection was perfectly enjoyed. And the immediately preceding incident that made the way for this falling into the Heart was the cosmic union, the tantric union. But just so, this was not an exclusive realization. It began to reveal itself in quite another way as time went on. There was not a falling into the Heart exclusively in which there was no longer the generation of the conscious Light and the participation in the manifest and cosmic process. But there was a spontaneous regeneration of Amrita Nadi, or the relationship between the Heart and the Light, or real God and the Divine Light. So the dilemma was absolutely dissolved from this point, and all the forms that the dilemma takes. Two peculiarly interesting and important phenomena arose. The one was the tacit awareness as the Heart and from the Heart on the right, this opening of the causal being. And another was this dropping of the belly that I mentioned. Now I've talked frequently of the center on the right, but I haven't spoken a great deal about the dropping of the belly because as I said, I didn't want to get into this whole affair of putting attention on the internal process until an appropriate time. But without getting into the whole affair that is behind all of that, It was as if a connecting thread that goes from the navel to the depths of the lower body were snipped, that contraction or vital shock. You feel something like a thread that holds the navel in and gives you that little cramp. It was just cut, and I began to feel full in the abdomen all the time, and walked around feeling that fullness with the belly pressed out, that you may feel sitting in meditation at times. At times this was stronger than in others, and particularly for a period of time, at this particular time, particularly for a few days, perhaps weeks following there was this sensation constantly. Then the pressure there became rhythmic, periodic, occurred when it was appropriate, but there was the continuous sense of fullness there, of a centering there. And that is a sign of the internal spiritual process. There is perfect conductivity when there is no longer vital obstruction, no longer this vital shock as a principle. A very long section, it goes up from page 134 to about page 145, in which I describe the various phenomena that I witnessed, in myself, the implications, how I understood them now, what the point of view was, what the stable sense was of the phenomena of life. And I began to describe somehow the sense of my relationship to these phenomena, and what this generally amounts to is a description of Amrita Nadi, or the description of conscious life from the point of view of the full realization of Amrita Nadi, not the exclusive descent into or dissolution in the Heart, nor the exclusive ecstasies of involvement in the manifest light or subtle drama, nor of exclusive distraction in the descended processes of ordinary experience and perception. It was not exclusive in any sense, but a perfect ease relative to all of these phenomena. The form of enquiry that had developed in my understanding seemed to go on continually in the Heart, "Avoiding relationship?" And as the enquiry penetrated every experience and every apparent dilemma, I would feel the bliss and energy of consciousness rise out of the Heart and enter the sahasrar. Whereas this Amrita Nadi this intuitive structure, which duplicates the perfect structure or the Divine Reality was the form of consciousness, not exclusive containment in the Heart. Not exclusive distraction in the bright, or the light of the sahasrar, nor exclusive involvement in the life manifestation, but continuous intuitive relationship to the entire process. Bliss and energy of consciousness rise out of the Heart and enter he sahasrar, the highest point in consciousness, and stabilize there as a continuous current to the Heart. I saw that this form, the form of Reality, the structure of consciousness was Reality itself. It was the structure of all things, the foundation, nature and identity of all things. It was the point of everything, it was blissful and free. That form of consciousness and energy was exactly what I had known as the bright. So this was simply the radical realization in the body, in the life and in every other level of that condition that existed from the very beginning, which is described in the first page of this book even. As I continued in this way I remained stably as that form. There was no longer any adventure, no longer any transforming sadhana. And all things revealed themselves in Truth. The bright was that ultimate form of Reality, the Heart of all existence, the foundation of Truth and the yet unrealized goal of all seekers. So Amrita Nadi then became the medium of the intuitive form of comprehension and the stable state. And thus even while living in the ordinary way, anticipating the ordinary experiences, doing the same things, indulging myself, and seeing the effects of that, disciplining myself, seeing the effects of that, there was from this time then, a transformation of all of my activities, and the writing of the book began, teaching began. Various Siddhis of various kinds relative to teaching began to arise. Transformations and refinements of the external life began to arise. Moral transformation of my life began to arise. A spontaneous transformation that was appropriate to the stable condition began to arise quite spontaneously over these last few years, coincident (with my) with the awakening function of teaching. Now one of the things (that was) that seemed important to me was to discover precedence for this whole process that had been enacted in me, and this fundamental enjoyment that was now alive in me. I thought it would be good to find a such precedence for very much the same reason that I previously decided that I would not teach for motivations of my own, but sought a traditional acknowledgment and traditional permission as the beginning of my teaching work. Just so I thought it would be useful to have a traditional justification or a traditional reflection to which I could point to corroborate my own testimony, and to align myself with the traditional literature in some way, because of what people would be coming to me with. So I began to look through the various things, and the various literature, and none of them in themselves represented it. But then in the case of Maharshi, I found a duplication of many of the fundamentals at any rate of my experience, the process that had come on in me. Just as it went on spontaneously in him, it essentially went on spontaneously in me. Except in my own case it was different function to be served in my own case. I have a different function than Maharshi had. And I exist in a different tire and place. There were different reasons for certain of the phenomena in my own case than there were in his. But in terms of the fundamentals, there was a real alignment between the two. First of all the fact that it was a spontaneous event, the whole adventure, all these 30 some odd years was a spontaneous activity in my own case. Just as in his case, (was) particularly his very brief thing was very spontaneous, his brief transformation. But just as in his brief transformation there was this death dramatization, in my own case there was also. And Just as he was aware of this center on the right, I was also, and just as who was aware of the Heart, or the Self Reality, real God as being the fundamental force of realization, I was also he spoke of Amrita Nadi , and he spoke very much in terms of all of the things with which I intensely associate myself and my teaching. There were of course some differences, because of the difference in his function, and the difference in his communication. And one of the fundamental ones is that he speaks of Amrita Nadi essentially as a path of descent, of movement down from the yogis region, subtle region of the sahasrar into the Self. And he sees that as the ultimate Coal of sadhana. In my own case there was also this movement downward through Amrita Nadi into the Heart. But there was also the spontaneous regeneration of Amrita Nadi. And Maharshi does not speak of this. Generally he speaks only of the Heart in more or less exclusive terms. Though in some conversations you find him trying to speak in some way of the other side of it. Of how this same Self that is realized in this exclusive way is also the foundation of our present life, the present manifestation. But he didn't really coordinate himself with that form of teaching that was not his function. Doesn't mean his realization was limited in any sense, it is his function. God manifests as the Guru for specific purposes, to form a specific function. And each Guru, true Guru is a manifestation of the Divine function appearing in a particular way and a particular time and place. And God is not Exclusively identified with that function, so that he can only be recognized in the form forever, or that particular Guru is the only Guru who ever lived, or the best who ever lived and all that sort of nonsense. The Divine is continually operating, and the Guru is a peculiar form of his operation.
Life of Understanding - Lessons on the Knee of Listening
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