A Vibration Of Internal Sound: Radiance Sutras Verse 15

For anyone who's new,

We are reading from the Radiant Sutras,

Which is an interpretation,

Translation of the Vijnana by Rava Tantra,

Which is an ancient tantric text.

And this is an interpretation by Lauren Roche,

Which I particularly love.

It takes very challenging concepts and puts it into poetic verse that allows our soul to hear it.

It's one of the great challenges of studying ancient texts is they're almost so cryptic,

You can't quite fit your head around them.

So you just,

We just discard them because we don't even have the context to understand where they're coming from.

And when Lauren put this book together,

I was at a retreat once,

And he was speaking there.

And he talked a bit about his process.

Part of it was meditation,

Part of it was deep study into the Sanskrit and various commentaries and things.

And,

And he came up with it all through like meditation.

And it's really beautiful.

So in today's class,

I will read the Sutra and today we are reading verse 15.

If you have the book,

It's page 50.

And then you don't need to have the book,

But it's a beautiful book to have at your bedside for sure.

And then we'll have a discussion about it.

And we'll go deeper into what it means and what it's all about.

And then at the end,

We'll do a meditation,

Explore what this Sutra is all about.

And then I'll reread it in Sanskrit and in English.

And you will see what the experience is.

So let's just close our eyes for a moment.

And let's just breathe deeply,

Totally releasing the world around you and allowing all of your focus to come inside.

The Tantric journey is an experience that we can't name.

So you might even hear words that stimulate thought or feeling or an experience inside of you that you cannot explain.

But it's still real.

And that's what we really want to do here.

We want to just allow the words to flow the words to flow through our consciousness and just trust whatever rises.

Even if it's just a warm feeling of connection,

Or love or peace,

That this is powerful,

Even though they're just simple words.

Bathe deeply in that ocean of sound vibrating within you.

Now as always,

Resonating softly,

Permeating the space of the heart,

The ear that is tuned by rapt listening,

Learns to hear the song of creation.

First,

Like a handbell,

Then subtler,

Like a flute,

Like a flute,

Subtler still as a stringed instrument.

Finally,

As the buzz of a bee,

Entering this current of sound,

The listening one forgets the external world,

Becomes absorbed into internal sound,

Then absorbed in vastness,

Like the song of the stars as they shine.

What feelings does that bring up in you?

Or what words stay with you when you hear that?

Peace,

Gentle,

Calm,

The ocean within us,

The peacefulness of laying on my in my yummy goodness after a shower,

Listening more for God,

Wonderment.

As soon as you started the first sentence felt like an like ocean waves pouring into my heart.

Stillness.

I actually feel a little frustrated with myself.

The listening one forgets the external world becomes absorbed into eternal internal sounds.

My internal sounds are screaming at me today.

And I just want that peace.

Being a connected part of the universe.

Shine.

It felt so familiar.

It's my truth.

What I experienced in Shavasana,

Then continued pouring like a waterfall.

And I was absorbing all the things you described into me.

The sutra is all about anahata.

Anahata means many things.

We often think about anahata because it is the name of the heart chakra.

But anahata means unstruck,

Or unstruck sound,

Or unbeaten sound.

And what that means is most sound is created.

Because you have two things,

You have an object,

And you have another object and you you hit the other object and that creates a sound current.

Anahata is the sound that exists with no striking,

With no beating of a drum.

It's the sound of the universe.

It's the primordial sound,

They would call it.

The point of this verse is that we want to learn how to tune in with this primordial sound of anahata.

The curious thing about it is it's beyond our auditory perception.

If I hear someone ring a bell out there,

Or maybe I hear the puppy rustle down there,

Or maybe I tune my ear a bit quieter because you're whispering something to me.

Or maybe you know I'm out on a field and I want to hear if I can hear,

I don't know,

The cows are out and can I hear a cow somewhere.

So you kind of quiet your ear even more to try to hear a more subtle sound.

But these are still all sounds that are coming from the outside.

And what we want to listen to is the quiet sound of the universe.

Some people call it the white noise of the universe,

Which I don't really like that phrase,

But I mention it just because maybe it makes sense to you.

Because white noise sounds very dissonant to me.

It's like a but to imagine that there is always sound,

Like there is always vibration,

But it's below our normal auditory perception.

And that this sound exists inside of us.

Specifically,

We can maybe hear it in the heart center,

Which maybe all is a little bit too ethereal and woohoo,

But to imagine that there is a divine sound,

A divine vibration inside of us all the time.

And so in Rivers' comment,

You know that so often our minds are so filled with,

It's almost like our minds are screaming at us or yelling or arguing or chewing on stuff and worrying about things.

And very often we hear this clamor inside of our heads and it drives us crazy,

Which is often why we go for bigger sounds out there.

It's like that great line in Good Will Hunting when Matt Damon's being,

He has to go to that one psychiatrist and he's like going,

You know when you go into a club and the house music kind of owns you and you're like,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom.

That's what we love.

We love being absorbed in big external sound because it drowns out the voices in our head that are arguing and that are driving us absolutely crazy.

And the hard thing is,

As long as we have these voices in our head that are just screaming at us,

We cannot access the subtlety inside.

We actually lose connection,

Not just with the primal sound,

Which is very hard to conceptualize and we'll talk more about that.

But when we can't connect with that primal vibration that who we are,

We've lost touch with who we are.

We've lost touch with our soul.

Somehow the world out there has gotten into our heads and it's created something.

And whether the world is battling with the programs we learned from as children or the programs of what those people want from me is battling my soul's desire and there's a war going on in my head.

The problem is,

Is that having to witness that argument constantly overwhelms us.

It overwhelms our experience as a human and we start to believe that that's who we are.

That we are this battle.

We are this frustration and this sadness and the anger.

But it's just part of our interface with the world.

That's just us sorting it out.

That's not us.

There is a me who is observing that.

There is a me who is experiencing that.

And the goal of yoga or the goal of tantra is to reconnect us with that soul space,

Which is why meditation and pranayama is so important.

Because somehow we have to quiet this madness that lives inside of us.

Like this is like literally the reason yoga,

Tantra,

All these things were ever created.

Because this is the human experience here on earth,

At least for the last few thousand years.

It isn't actually healthy for us to identify with the battle going on in the interface between us and the world out there.

Because that's not us.

We need to be able to step back,

Develop that kind of witness mind and say,

Wow,

Isn't this an interesting battle?

I wonder what this is all about.

And it's not that we have to stop it.

We can let it fly.

We can let it go.

We can observe it.

We can say,

Aha,

There is a real battle going in within me.

A week and a half ago,

I don't know,

I went through a couple of days where I was so angry.

I was just so angry.

And I just kept watching myself thinking,

What are you so angry about?

And so I kind of was,

I was able to sort of,

You know,

You deconstruct it.

I wasn't stopping the anger.

But you sort of sit and you observe yourself with love.

You know,

When you observe yourself really wrestling with something,

And you think,

Is this is this old?

Is this triggering something?

What is it?

But we have to know that we are not the anger.

It was just something that was going through me.

Yeah,

And to Melissa's point,

There was something in the air.

And it's true.

Like I have a yoga teacher training online.

And we gather every week.

And we just check in,

We talk about the yoga,

The practice and our experiences and how we're doing.

And that week,

Everybody came on going,

I am just furious.

I'm so frustrated.

I can't stand people.

It was so funny.

Like one person after another,

Like it was just,

You know,

And there were tears and there was emotions,

And there was all kinds of stuff going on.

And I thought,

Wow,

All of us.

Isn't that curious?

But if we don't have the ability to observe that,

We're going to think it's us.

And that's like being in a raging ocean.

And it's so easy to feel like you're just going to drown in it.

But that isn't us.

Maybe it was the placement of the planets or it was,

Who knows what it was.

But there was something curious that was affecting a lot of people.

So it's really valuable to be able to do whatever practice it is that works for us to quiet the mind.

Because the problem is,

Is what we're thinking about feels really important.

And don't get me wrong,

There's lots of things that are very important that we have to,

We have to chew on,

We have to solve.

This is a huge truth.

But it's not all of us.

It's still just one aspect of our life.

It's one aspect of us interfacing with the world,

Interacting with the world around us.

And so this is where we come back to our soul then.

So imagine we're sitting in a meditative posture.

And here is my soul running from my root chakra to my crown chakra.

And then imagine my arms are me interacting with everyone else.

And here's me interacting with that person in this situation.

But my arms are moving around my core.

But I am still in my core,

In my core,

Regardless of what I have to do out in the world.

And so this is where Tantra,

For example,

One of the great characteristics of Tantra is that the intention is that it transforms us.

That who we were is different than who we are after we do a practice.

And it could be something as simple as reading a passage from a sacred text,

It could be doing a meditation,

It could be having a daily practice of many things.

But the idea is that we're actually transformed.

We don't go backwards.

We don't just do the thing,

We don't expand and then contract back to where we were.

We actually do the practice,

Allow the transformation.

And now we're different.

So the part of this particular practice is understanding that there is a divine sound inside of us called Anahat.

And it is always flowing.

And it never ends.

And it is the basic vibration of life.

It's just life.

It's who we are.

And so what the ancient Tantrics would do,

And yogis,

You would sit and you would meditate on this primordial sound within the body,

Which of course you can't hear with your ear.

But you might think of things like,

Well,

If you imagine what if you could hear the blood flowing through your body?

What if you could hear the lymph fluid flowing through your body?

Because you figure there is water,

Liquid flowing through your body,

All the way to the tips of your fingertips,

Down to your toes.

Sometimes we practice listening to the sound of the breath.

Just listening to the breath inside.

Not this,

Not that,

But you close your mouth,

You close everything.

You don't close your nose,

You close your mouth.

And you kind of listen to the sound of the breath in the body.

But the practice is not listening outside in the world,

Not listening to the mental chatter either,

Because that is also external to our divine self.

It's just something that this human happens to be watching.

Like it's like a TV show.

Our own mental chatter,

Chitta,

It's just chatter.

I was reading a book last night on Tibetan Buddhism.

It was really interesting in the introduction.

Sometimes there's really interesting little pieces in introductions.

They were talking about how in the book,

If they use the word mind,

If it was a small m,

They were referring to what they would call the ordinary mind.

But if it was a capital M,

It was considered the essential nature of mind.

Isn't that cool?

Like the essential nature of mind.

And that's really an interesting thing to think about.

What am I listening to inside?

Because the cool thing too about whatever is going through our mind right now,

As an example,

And again,

This doesn't mean it's not real.

Like what I was chewing on a week and a half ago,

There was real stuff that I had to sort out.

And I'm really glad that the anger continued for a few days,

That I really got a chance to feel it through.

But it's going to change.

A few days later,

I had completely different thoughts.

And a couple days after that,

I had completely different thoughts.

It's transient.

All the battles in our mind right now are transient.

They'll keep changing.

They're not who we are.

Who we are is the one observing.

And the one observing has connection to that primordial sound,

That primordial vibration.

I remember one time I was down in Massachusetts in the States,

And we went up to this Buddhist retreat up in the woods.

And it was very interesting because we were wandering around this prayer garden.

You know,

I mean,

It was pretty simple,

But you know,

It had Tibetan flags and there was a few little shrines around.

But in the distance was the monastery.

And there was someone there pounding the drum.

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom.

And it just went on.

And it was so interesting because we were there for,

I don't know how long we were there,

A couple hours maybe.

But there was something about this boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

That just became this constant rhythm in my heart.

Like it was this so soothing to hear this boom,

Boom,

Boom.

Because at the beginning you listen to it.

I'm picking it up with my ear.

But all of a sudden,

My body just started feeling it.

Like if it had stopped,

It would have been very curious.

That's to me the best way I can describe this sacred sound.

There may not be a drum beating,

But there's a sound,

A vibration in your heart,

Maybe in the back of your heart,

You hear it,

You feel it.

That is the pulse of life.

And again,

There's no words to describe this.

The only thing we can do is feel it.

So we're going to do a meditation.

This is a meditation a classic Kundalini yoga meditation called Kirtan Kriya.

It uses the mantra,

Sa ta na ma.

Now the sound,

Ah,

Is a sacred sound.

So even right now where you are,

To say,

Sa,

Like I can just say it kind of with my mouth.

But if I say it in a way that allows it to vibrate through my body,

Like sa,

Like you can feel it vibrating in your body.

This ah sound is a sacred sound.

It's a bij sound,

A seed sound.

So it's very healing all into itself.

And every time we say sa,

We connect with that primordial sound.

The meaning of sa ta na ma,

Sa is infinity,

The universe,

God,

Totality.

Ta is creation,

Birth.

Na is death or change.

And ma is rebirth.

So sa ta na ma is the cycle of life.

And this is a meditation on the sound current.

It's not specifically about the heart chakra.

If you ever want to play with the sounds of the heart chakra,

They say that the sound of the heart chakra is yam.

So there's all kinds of interesting things you can do with that.

It's not really my practice,

But it's cool.

But in this meditation,

The key is to go inside and to listen to the sound current.

The first part,

We chant sa ta na ma with our voice in our normal speaking voice.

And we're listening,

We're listening to the sound inside of us speaking outside.

So this is all a personal experience of sound.

It's like in our group,

Someone asked me to do a talk about quality alone time.

And what does that look like for me?

And I've been thinking about it ever since I read it in the group.

And I realized that,

And I am going to do a talk about it,

But one of the primary parts of quality alone time is that I actually look within.

And I have time with me.

Because very often when we're alone,

We might watch Netflix or surf the web or even read a book,

Which is fine.

All of these things are fine.

But they're all external stimulus.

But to actually spend time with us,

To actually,

We are so wired to respond to the outside world,

Even healthy things like books and cool things like that.

But to actually quiet all of those things and go within and have time with us,

It's almost unprecedented.

Like we're not even taught how to do it.

We're taught how to just kill time with external distractions.

So this idea of doing a mantra and your whole focus is your inside experience.

It's all that matters.

And your inside experience is not something you'll necessarily be able to describe.

This is a huge shift in the spiritual teachings of things.

To actually allow ourselves to experience something in a dimension beyond the third dimension of sound,

Touch,

Feeling,

Whatever.

We actually want to be able to just have an experience inside.

So the first minute we're going to chant for,

We're going to chant in an outside voice.

But even though we're speaking outside,

We're going to chant in a outside voice.

But even though we're speaking outside,

We're going to listen inside.

So even right now,

As I'm talking,

I'm going to stop talking for a minute and just try saying sat na ma.

But be aware of the sound vibration in the body.

You're making sound out,

But be aware of the sound vibration in your body.

Sat na ma.

And then the second part is we're going to whisper it.

And again,

We can focus on the sound of the whisper that we hear with our external ear.

But this is where we start to become more subtle.

And we start to feel the vibration inside the body.

Same sound current as it being external,

But we're going to whisper.

Then we're going to do it silently.

And you're going to keep chanting sat na ma with your mind.

And again,

This is really subtle.

And we may not feel anything.

You know,

It's okay.

It's a practice.

That's why people would do kirtan kriya every day for 30 days,

Every day for 30 days,

So that they can allow their body and mind to have an experience over time.

And so we go voice,

Whisper,

Silent.

Then we go silent,

Whisper,

Voice.

And then we're going to sit in silence.

And I'm going to read the passage in Sanskrit and then in English.

But the point of doing kirtan kriya is to train ourselves or to allow ourselves to have an experience with sound.

That's all.

With inner sound,

With sounds other than the sounds of the world out there.

Different than the sounds of the voices in our head.

The sounds of our heart,

The sound of the universal energy flowing through us.

They often say that these different sounds,

That when we speak,

This is the sound of the outside world.

When we whisper,

This is the sound or the voice of lovers.

And then when we mentally do it,

It's the voice of the divine.

The other thing that is part of kirtan kriya is we have very specific mudra.

So with both hands,

I'm just going to show you one hand.

With both hands,

When we say sa,

We connect the thumb and the index finger.

When we say ta,

We shift to the middle finger and the thumb.

Na,

The ring finger and the thumb.

Ma,

The pinky finger and the thumb.

Then we go back to the beginning with the index finger and the thumb,

The middle finger and the thumb,

The ring finger and the thumb,

And the pinky finger and the thumb.

And you want to do a little bit of pressure.

Like you're actually creating an electrical channel,

An electrical circuit here.

So you want to put a bit of pressure,

Like you're squeezing something between your fingers.

The other thing I want to mention about kirtan kriya,

Which I highly recommend,

You know,

If you google kirtan kriya,

There'll be YouTube things.

Like this is a classic kundalini yoga meditation.

There'll be all kinds of great opportunities to play with this.

And if you do it in the future,

If you do it on your own,

You can basically extend it.

So what we're going to do is we're going to do one minute voice,

One minute whisper,

Two minutes silent,

One minute whisper,

One minute voice.

But you could do two,

Two,

Four,

And two,

Or three,

Three,

Six,

And three,

And three.

You know,

You could just keep on expanding it.

And so it's a very beautiful practice,

Especially in a group.

So kirtan kriya is very common.

But for our purpose today,

It's all about listening to the inner sound inside our bodies.

If you feel headachy,

Which you shouldn't,

We're just doing it for such a short time,

What you can do,

And you can do this anyway,

But you can visualize the sound coming down through your crown chakra and out your third eye,

Like an L.

And this will often alleviate any kind of headachy feeling that you might have.

Well,

What do they mean?

Sa is infinity,

The whole.

Ta is creation,

Birth.

Na is death or change.

And ma is rebirth.

All right.

So let's sit nice and tall.

You can be sitting cross-legged,

You can be sitting on a chair,

Sitting on your heels,

Whatever is comfortable.

Our hands are lying upright on our knees or near our knees comfortably.

And we start just with ingyen mudra with the index and the thumb tips touching.

Our eyes are closed and focused at our third eye point.

And let's just breathe.

Allow all of our attention to go inside.

Maybe even begin by listening to the sound of the breath flowing through the lungs.

Be aware of the blood flowing through your body.

Be aware of all the activity in the body.

As we inhale,

Make sure that you're expanding the belly,

The ribs,

The upper chest,

Contracting as we exhale.

The mantra is sa ta na ma.

On sa,

We press the index finger and the thumb together.

On ta,

We press the middle finger and the thumb together.

On na,

We press the ring finger and the thumb together.

And on ma,

We press the baby finger and the thumb together.

So let's begin out loud,

Listening to the sound current within.

Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na Na ma Now whispering Sa ta Sa sa ta sa Sa ta Sa ta sa ta Sa sa ta sa Sa ta sa ta sa Sa sa sa Sa ta na ma Then continue the chant mentally in your mind.

Sa ta sa sa sa ta Sa ta sa ta sa ta Sa ta na sa ta Sa ta sa ta sa ta Sa ta sa ta sa na ma And then with a loud voice.

Sa ta na ma Sa ta na Sa ta na Sa ta na ma Sa ta na ma Sa ta na ma Sa ta na ma Let's take a deep breath in.

Exhale.

Just sit quietly for a moment.

Still with our eyes closed.

Anahata patra karne abhagna shabde saritrute shabda brahmani nishnata brahman brahma adi gacchati Bathe deeply in that ocean of sound vibrating within you now as always.

Resonating softly permeating the space of the heart.

The ear that is tuned by rapt listening learns to hear the sound of creation first like a hand bell then subtler like a flute.

Subtler still as a stringed instrument.

Eventually as the buzz of a bee.

Entering this current of sound,

The listening one forgets the external world.

Becomes absorbed into eternal sound.

Then absorbed in vastness like the song of the stars as they shine.

Thank you so much for being here and we'll see you next time.