Yoga Nidra Talk: Awakening Bliss & Turiya, The Sacred Source

Please feel warmly welcome to this third talk about the fascinating world of Yoga Nidra.

In this one,

We will be exploring Yoga Nidra as a practice for awakening bliss and for uniting with Turiya,

Which is Source Consciousness itself.

The modern understanding that Yoga Nidra's primary purpose is as a rest,

Relaxation,

And sleep aid is relatively new.

You could even say that these well-being benefits are the fruit rather than the tree,

A very welcome by-product rather than its goal.

There is something more ancient and expansive to yogic sleep.

The sleep of the yogis is infused with spiritual depth.

Sometimes we go looking for a solution to a problem like insomnia and discover something we have an even deeper need for.

If we include its spiritual roots and original purpose,

We find that Yoga Nidra is a profound way to skillfully develop our relationship with our own consciousness and Source Consciousness itself.

Yoga Nidra is possibly the very easiest way to awaken heightened and integrated states of being,

Primarily because it is so effortless compared to other meditation methods.

The deepest significance of experiencing heightened states of consciousness is perhaps that they confirm for us beyond all religious beliefs and dogma,

And indeed beyond anything anybody else has experienced,

That the ultimate exists.

This can make us feel completely different about our lives and about life itself.

The essence of existence is called by many names,

Including Source Consciousness,

The Divine,

The Ineffable,

The Sacred Feminine,

And in more personal terms,

The Beloved.

It can be directly experienced by us without any need for a human intermediary like a priest or other religious figure.

When I was in my early 20s,

I had a mystical epiphany in which I found myself completely and irrevocably in the presence of love itself,

The only place of true safety and belonging we rarely have.

It arose spontaneously.

When it happened,

I was sitting in semi-darkness at a small table in the cabin where I was staying on the island of Mole.

I wasn't meditating at the time,

But I had put in hundreds of hours of contemplative practices up until this point,

So it wasn't completely without precedence.

There were three distinct features of the experience.

It felt like a direct encounter with a tangible sense of other,

Which was also profoundly familiar.

This sense of presence was so strong it was as if someone had walked into the room,

So primal it could have been a polar bear ambling in.

The experience was physical and overwhelming.

It was ecstatic and blissful.

I experienced it as a small energy tsunami that came from the left side of my body and travelled across my whole face,

Like a ripple.

It also,

Above all else,

Felt like intimacy,

The deepest and most tender I have ever known.

I've experienced many heightened states of consciousness since,

Through meditation and yoga nidra,

But this felt like the defining moment of my life,

A reference point and anchor in ultimate meaning.

There are many accounts from seasoned yogis and yoginis and meditators describing similar experiences.

Their descriptions capture the essence of what many practitioners report as an overwhelming sense of peace,

Profound contentment,

Unity and ecstasy that seems to radiate from deep within.

Most experiences are also accompanied by a feeling of timelessness,

And indeed many of us who enjoy yoga nidra,

Especially when we are guided towards experiencing inner depth,

Will have experienced this timelessness and a feeling of our mind and body becoming one unified field of energy with something far bigger than ourselves.

One of the first references to yoga nidra in the Hatha Yoga Pradipka says,

For one who attains yogic sleep,

Time becomes non-existent.

Swami Sivananda describes it like this,

In the state of yogic sleep,

The practitioner transcends the mind and becomes one with the infinite,

Slipping into a blissful formless awareness.

Another perspective comes from Sri Aurobindo who said,

There is a sleep of the inner consciousness which reveals the universal and the eternal.

Sarana Devi,

A renowned tantric teacher,

Recounted her deep yogic experiences,

In yoga nidra,

I entered a state of pure radiant bliss,

Like a warm luminous presence filling every cell.

As with my own experience,

Many also note the presence of something ineffable but personal and intimate,

Rather than abstract or blissful energy only.

Contemporary meditation teacher Tara Brack has spoken about the sense of self dissolving into a vast ocean of compassion and bliss.

She had a profound feeling of being held by something infinitely kind and wise.

Most of what our western religions have to offer us in terms of our own inner spiritual development is very limited.

Mystical experiences are generally described as a rare gift from God,

Only visited upon special people,

Mystics.

This is why many of us turn to the east and to comprehensive systems like yoga which actually provide detailed guidance,

Instruction and training paths for experiencing non-ordinary states of consciousness.

After my early experiences,

I certainly came to feel that my soul needed to be nourished daily,

Not just once or twice in my lifetime.

Or to quote Indian mystic Guru Amma,

We need to continuously be fed by the knowledge that our true nature is the Atman,

The one source of divine love.

So how can we become more skilled with our own consciousness and stay in touch with the numinous in our everyday lives in a way we can reliably predict?

How can we steep our souls in subtle states?

Why does it matter?

Not just for our own spiritual satisfaction,

But so that we can be a more wise,

Loving and integrated presence in the world.

And where does Yoga Nidra fit in with this?

How does Yoga Nidra as a practice awaken bliss within us?

And do we need a different kind of Nidra to the ones that help us to get to sleep?

Without a doubt,

Yoga Nidra can give us stable and regular experiences of expanded consciousness.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this talk,

This was the original intention for Yoga Nidra.

In the yogic system,

Four fundamental states of consciousness are named.

The first three are waking,

The deep sleep state and the dream state.

The fourth,

Known as the fourth transcendent state,

Is called Turiya.

Turiya is a state of pure awareness where the individual transcends the limitations of the mind and experiences a profound sense of unity with the universe.

In a nutshell,

A Yoga Nidra session is made up of tailored relaxation and deepening methods which can guide us into ever more subtle states of consciousness.

The key element for experiencing Turiya is depth.

How deep the mind is taken is dependent on the guidance and the ability of the listener to follow along with it without losing consciousness and falling asleep.

We all experience this slightly differently but to give you a sense of the territory,

A narrative of the unfolding of Yoga Nidra and Turiya would go something like this.

When your body is relaxed and still and your mind has surrendered to the moment,

A sense of presence begins to settle in you.

Your muscles are invited to release tension and the weight of gravity anchors you through your body.

At the same time,

A subtle lightness and internal feeling of spaciousness begins to emerge.

Instead of drifting into sleep,

Your mind remains consciously alert which keeps your ever deepening awareness alive.

Time seems to slow or dissolve altogether and a feeling of unity and connection with your observing self and then your deep self emerges.

There is a moment when restful stillness and wakened consciousness interweave,

Each reinforcing the other,

Creating in you a space of calm,

Clarity and inner awakening.

When we reach this state of consciousness at the end of the process,

Our mind finds its deepest rhythm.

It becomes attuned to subtle vibrations of bliss that are a natural state of being for it.

And the spiritual bliss we are talking about here is the profound peace and an experience of the particular happiness which arises energetically when we touch the timeless and eternal.

You could say that bliss arises because if our soul loves anything,

Above all else it loves to return to the absolute self,

Its own source.

In this heightened state,

The sense of being a separate self begins to dissolve,

Allowing us to experience a deep sense of unity and connection to all that is.

The spontaneous joy that arises when this happens feels like a profound and beautiful affirmation of life itself.

So having explored it theoretically,

How do you have an experience of Turiya?

In my premium library there is a track called Yoganidra for Spiritual Awakening and in my free library there is one called Yoganidra Resting in Source Consciousness.

Both are 19 minutes long and will give you a taste of it.

To experience full immersion,

Sufficient depth is necessary.

In premium,

There is the track that accompanies this talk.

It is called Yoganidra,

A Conscious Journey to Awaken Bliss and Turiya.

It is 33 minutes long and takes you through all the stages of Yoganidra.

A word to the wise,

A mind with even subtle expectations can create blocks to your experiencing subtle states.

Trust the process and simply be open to whatever unfolds and be patient with yourself.

Without a good baseline of sleep and rest,

It is very difficult to awaken to the deeper states of consciousness without falling asleep.

So if you know that you have a sleep deficit,

It might be helpful for you to listen to the pre-sleep Yoganidra and other Yoganidra sleep tracks in my premium library.

My course Yoganidra Our Whole Nature is also very good if you want a complete overview of Yoganidra.

This talk picks up where that course left off.

Do leave me a review in the Bliss and Turiya tracks.

I would love to know how you get on and if the guidance takes you into the deeper states.

Thank you.