Journey Of The Senses: Radiance Sutras Verse 9

So today we're doing a reading from the book The Radiant Sutras and it is a translation or an interpretation of an ancient tantric text the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

You know I was thinking this morning about what we call ancient texts and I feel like I might write a book about this one day but why we're so intrigued with ancient texts?

Like what do we even mean by ancient?

And what's interesting is I believe and this is just my belief and I'm still sort of gathering information about it but I believe something interesting happened 4,

000 years ago.

Something happened that began this curious domination paradigm this shift of reality from perhaps a more peaceful spiritual existence to one where our primary reason to exist was working.

That became the fundamental thing that we did that we just worked in a very strange cycle of perpetual exhaustion or something.

So we've kind of lived in a very strange world for the last 4,

000 years and when I think of the things that existed before that like this text the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra it's almost like it comes out of a time before the madness,

Before the fall,

Before something.

And again I don't have anything concrete to talk about that today but it's really in my mind these days and I was even writing about it this morning which is probably why I'm talking about it with you today.

Why we're so intrigued with these ancient writings because I think they teach us something about our true existence which is different than what we were raised to believe is the point of life.

For many of us the point of life was to get the perfect job and to make a lot of money which might be a fun game to accomplish interesting things but it doesn't always nurture our soul.

It kind of becomes something we're a slave to as opposed to something we choose to do out of joy.

So these radiant sutras almost bring us back to a time before money,

Work,

Suffering,

And all these things were sort of the core of our existence.

So here we are on Insight Timer we're studying the ancient like we're trying to get back to that spiritual self that eternal connection with ourselves,

With the world around us,

With God,

With consciousness,

With the universe.

That's what we're doing when we when we do a spiritual study it's like we're returning to something and it's really interesting because we're returning to it after having lived in this curious world and maybe carrying the ancestral patterns of this world.

So when we read the sutras,

When we read an ancient text our intention is to access that part of us that existed 4,

000 years ago,

5,

000 years ago.

That part of us still exists like when you even think of our DNA.

Our DNA we carry the DNA of our ancestors.

We carry the energetic imprint of those that lived way back when and depending on how we understand the world and reincarnation and all that kind of thing it's very possible that a part of us lives there right now.

If we release the time-space continuum and all of that maybe we have full access to these ancient teachings.

The teachings before this really curious world we live in sort of hijacked perhaps what it really is to be human.

That fully actualized peaceful happy person.

It's very interesting and again I speak of this not from a wisdom place but from a real personal curiosity.

This is really something I that I think about a lot these days.

So what we do is we're going to read a sutra out of this.

For anyone who has the book and you don't have to have the book I highly recommend it.

I have nothing to do with this book.

I have not an affiliate or anything but I have great respect for Lauren Roche who did this beautiful interpretation so that we can bring ourselves back to that place and if we can almost plant the seeds of that deep human truth then that seed can expand in our current life and I believe that that seed is so potent and it's so connected to truth and it's so connected to reality.

It just will grow.

It's almost like when something is real it so outshines anything that's false.

The falseness just disappears.

It just dissolves in the light of this truth and so this is why when we read this it doesn't matter what I say.

All that matters is what lights up inside of you.

So we're gonna close our eyes and we're gonna listen to this passage and then we're gonna talk about it and we're gonna discuss it and do all those cool things and then actually we're gonna read this and then actually I want to do a meditation with you guys about this and then I'll read it in Sanskrit and then we'll read it again in English a couple times to just sort of really integrate it but especially the first time to almost just release this personality,

Release all the ideas in our heads that are easily the beliefs and ideas of our ancestors.

The beliefs and ideas of our school systems and our churches and all these man-made things that all weirdly cropped up in the last 4,

000 years.

Did you know that,

I'm sure as I do more research we'll do more talks on this,

But did you know that the first empire on earth was born 4,

000 years ago?

This beginning of I am greater than you and I will tell you what to do all started 4,

000 years ago.

There's just something interesting that must have happened then that something shifted.

So a lot of our belief systems are based in that power struggle mode.

A lot of our suffering,

A lot of our pain and sadness and anger comes from this power struggle that we've lived with either with our parents or the schools or churches or jobs or all that.

I hypothesize that energy began 4,

000 years ago.

So it's interesting to read things that came from before that time.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read this passage and I invite you to just close your eyes even if you have the book.

If you have the book we're reading Sutra 9 on page 44,

But let's just close our eyes right now and just breathe deeply.

Let's just allow our soul to listen to this for a moment.

The senses declare an outrageous world.

Sounds and scents,

Ravishing colors and shapes,

Ever-changing skies,

Iridescent reflections.

All these beautiful surfaces decorating vibrant emptiness.

The God of love is courting you,

Light as a feather.

Every perception is an invitation into revelation.

Hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching,

Ways of knowing creation,

Transmissions of electric realization.

The deepest reality is always right here.

Encircled by splendor in the center of the sphere.

Meditate where the body thrills to current of intimate communion.

Follow your senses to the end and beyond into the heart of space.

I know that's quite long and we're going to go into some fun detail looking at it,

But I'd like to read it one more time.

The senses declare an outrageous world.

Sounds and scents,

Ravishing colors and shapes,

Ever-changing skies,

Iridescent reflections.

All these beautiful surfaces decorating vibrant emptiness.

The God of love is courting you,

Light as a feather.

Every perception is an invitation into revelation.

Hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching,

Ways of knowing creation,

Transmissions of electric realization.

The deepest reality is always right here.

Encircled by splendor in the center of the sphere.

Meditate where the body thrills to currents of intimate communion.

Follow your senses to the end and beyond into the heart of space.

Which words or which feelings stand out for you?

Stand out for you?

Or how does that make you feel?

It feels like spring.

Decorated surfaces of vibrant emptiness.

An explorer's journey in and outward.

The God of love courting you.

It felt really positive and vibrant to me,

Really alive.

Sensual.

I'm thinking of when Nelda,

How she said there's romance in all of our relationships.

Light as a feather,

Intimate communion.

So in the back of Lauren's book,

He has a little study for each sutra.

And the study today,

I'm actually not sure how to say this word,

Hrdaya.

And it means the heart.

But it's not just like the physical heart.

It could mean the physical heart.

But it actually means,

You know when we say getting to the heart of something.

The heart of a person's passion.

Or it's like the essence of something.

Or the dearest part of something.

Or the best part of something.

This is the truth of something.

We've gotten to the heart of it.

And what's interesting is it also means true and divine knowledge.

So when we think of the brain,

We often think of knowledge as coming from the brain.

But if we like bring all of our attention into the heart center,

That place in your chest that if I said to you,

Who are you?

And you pointed at yourself,

That's the heart center.

Like it's fascinating that that's where we point.

The essence of who we are.

The heart of who we are.

In Hindu ideas,

All the world is Brahman.

All the world is God.

All the world is is consciousness.

But the individual experience of God,

Atman,

Lives right in this heart center.

So this is our divine center right in the heart.

This is the source of our truth.

The source of our knowledge.

And the idea of Hridayah,

The idea of a lot of this Sutra,

Is that if we dive into any sense,

We go all the way in,

All the way through it and into it,

We will come right to the heart of it.

I'm going to read what you said.

Humans became so numb and forgot how to be in touch with ourselves as the world is modernizing and not being able to hear Mother Earth,

Right?

The idea of being intimate with everything that our senses connect with.

Exactly.

So imagine for a moment,

The first word of this is actually Shikhipaksha.

I'm not a Sanskrit scholar,

As you can tell.

But what this means is peacock feathers.

And the peacock is a very important bird in India.

And when you think of the peacock feather,

It's iridescent and it has all of these beautiful colors and shapes.

And they're very phenomenal.

So if you imagine getting out of our head,

And you just see something beautiful,

And you allow yourself to see what's on the surface of that beauty.

But then you allow your eyes to go even deeper into it.

And you go deeper into the color and you go deeper into the textures and you go deeper into even what do you see here?

What do you see there?

The size and you go deeper and deeper and deeper.

And you can even go as far as to visualize the elements that make that up,

The molecules that make up the sight before you,

That you see.

And as you go deeper and deeper and deeper into that sight,

Eventually you get right down to the elements that create it,

Which is air,

Ether,

Earth,

Water,

Fire,

The very elements.

And it's interesting because this is one of the lines in there,

That what we see is just a beautiful decoration of infinite nothingness.

We always talk about how Maya,

We live in this illusion that if we look into ourselves,

Our cells are essentially made up of atoms and the atoms are just electrified energy held together by magnetism.

So for all intents and purposes,

This world we live in is truly electrified,

Air quote,

Nothingness.

And so sometimes we can look at that and think,

Wow,

That's depressing.

We live in a world of illusion.

We're just here to,

You know,

Whatever,

Work out karma or something very depressing.

But look what we were given.

We were given these incredible senses to see such beauty.

And the deeper we allow ourselves to look,

So if we just use the vision sense,

The deeper we look into something,

It will bring us to the heart of life,

The essence,

The energy.

And the thing is this,

In the Western world,

We understand the nothingness,

The electrified nothingness to be nothing,

Which is why our Western mind misinterprets Maya.

That this illusion,

Oh,

So it's just nothing.

It doesn't even matter.

Life isn't even real.

Because again,

We don't understand the feminine.

We don't understand the unseen.

We don't understand the mystery.

We don't understand the chaos that life really is.

But then when we can really harness that energy that creates this miraculous experience that we're all having,

That's when we actually harness life.

Like we harness the energy of creation,

But the energy of creation is energy.

To the naked eye,

It looks like nothing.

And it's everything.

These are the paradoxes that break our mind,

That our mind can't conceptualize it,

And which is brilliant.

I think it was France,

Pearls,

Or someone who said,

We have to lose our mind to become sane or something like that.

So this idea kind of breaks our mind.

But imagine we walk through life and using our senses,

We experience the true essence of life,

The true power of life.

So imagine,

Let's go to our hearing,

And you close your eyes and you're sitting outside,

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

That's literally what we're talking about right now.

Coming to our senses.

Coming to our senses.

What are we experiencing with our senses?

And it's not even like,

Oh,

That's so boring in 3D.

This is the this is the essence of life.

This is the essence of our experience here as a carbon-based life form on earth in a time-space continuum,

However we want to explain it.

The senses are so pivotal.

So let's imagine it's a spring day,

And you go outside and you close your eyes,

You're sitting in a comfy chair,

Breathing deeply.

And what do you hear?

Everywhere,

We're from all over the world here.

Maybe we all hear different birds of spring.

Maybe we hear a river trickling or the ocean,

Or we hear the wind going through the trees.

But if we just listen,

Just listen to this sound,

We can listen deeper.

And instead of our mind saying,

Ah,

That's the sound of a robin.

Oh,

That's the sound of a chickadee.

That we actually go deeper into the sound without our mind.

And the more we go into the sound,

The more we go into it,

We hear the vibration of the energy creating the sound.

Imagine tasting something delicious,

And you put it in your mouth,

And you allow it to roll around in your mouth.

And you go deep into the experience of taste.

We don't analyze it.

We don't say,

Ah,

There's a quite a sharp tannin taste here.

We just allow the experience to roll around in our mouth.

Like when you repeat the same word over and over again,

And it completely transforms.

Exactly.

And as we go deeper into this taste,

Suddenly the food disappears,

And we're left with a sensation.

Sensation.

And it's almost like we experience life,

Love.

This is in the sutra when they say the intimate communion in life.

We have an intimate communion with the food.

We have an intimate communion with the sound of the bird in our ears.

We have an intimate communion with the sight of that mountain before us.

Even smell.

I remember the first time I ever smelled jasmine.

And I was walking through this little town in Greece,

And I'd heard about jasmine.

I'd heard about how amazing it was.

So of course,

Jasmine flowers at night.

And I was walking through this alleyway,

Getting to this B&B we were staying at.

And there was this vine over top of the alley,

And over top of the overpass,

The archways.

And all of a sudden,

This smell of jasmine.

I had no idea what it was.

All I knew is it completely overwhelmed me,

And my whole body went into this bliss state.

It is the most truly erotic,

Evocative,

Sensual smell I've ever smelled in my whole life.

And if you stay there in that smell,

And you allow that smell to vibrate through your whole body,

Eventually you become the vibration.

You become the energy.

So cool.

So this morning,

I started,

I was reading about this,

Because the other book I look in when I'm studying this before our class,

Is this interesting book called the Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

The Ascent,

By Swami Satya Sagananda Saraswati.

But when their focus was on this,

And I've never heard of this before,

So I'm going to share this with you.

It's from a place of,

Hey,

Check out this thing I read.

Not from a place of something I deeply understand yet,

But I'm certainly thinking about it now.

So there is a teaching that I've never heard of before,

But it's all about,

They call them the tan mantras.

And the tan mantras,

They're essentially the tatvas,

The elements of life,

Earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

And ether.

My understanding of it,

Which is very limited,

Because I just read about this this morning,

Is that they're not exactly the elements.

They are the energy that creates the elements,

And then these elements mix together to create the life that we understand.

And the way we experience these primal elements are through our senses.

What they talked about was the connection between each sense organ,

And our ability to experience a certain aspect of the world through that sensory organ.

Which gets even more interesting when we really realize how all of these elements are interconnected,

And something isn't necessarily just earth.

It's earth and water and air.

So for example,

Air,

The element of air,

Is actually predominantly experienced through touch.

And this is interesting to me,

And I open it to you as a personal question,

Not as something that I understand,

But something for you to ponder with me.

That touch is the sense that connects us to the element air.

Which is so interesting,

Because when you think of how do we really experience air,

We experience it on our skin.

We experience air moving through our lungs.

This is all the element of touch,

Right?

The experience of anything touching our skin,

Or our esophagus,

Or the inner workings of our lungs.

It is the touch sense.

So as we walk through the world and we experience air,

We are actually predominantly experiencing it through touch.

Smell,

Or the ability to smell,

Mostly comes out of the earth element.

We only smell things that are form,

That are earth.

We smell ground.

We smell a flower.

We smell blossoms.

We smell.

.

.

Everything we smell arises out of the earth element.

Taste,

All taste arises out of the water element.

And this is all very new to me.

I'm really thinking about this.

I'm just really intrigued.

Sound,

What's really interesting is the sound is actually ether.

And this is really interesting to me,

Because,

And I'm just throwing this out there as seeds of thought that I haven't put together yet myself,

But ether is what we hear when we listen.

And ether is to me like the real primordial foundation of everything.

And when you think of we hear,

We receive the ether,

Like we experience the ether through our ears.

We hear the vibrations in the ether around us.

And we change the ether with our mouth.

What we speak through chanting,

Singing,

How we speak is through.

.

.

We affect the ether.

And what this is very interesting,

Because very often they'll say that the sound,

OM,

Was what created the earth,

Or is what created reality.

And so even the sound of AH,

That we are affecting the ether with our sound,

And we hear it through our ears.

And sight is connected with fire.

And this is so interesting,

Because when you think of what we're actually looking at,

It is the perception of color,

Of difference,

Of like,

What are we really looking at?

It's the light from the sun,

Which is pure fire.

So through this fire,

The fire bouncing here in the eyes,

Interacting with everything around us,

Sight is about light,

Is about fire.

Like it's so interesting.

So now you imagine the world is created by a combination of all of these primal elements,

Earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

Ether,

Everything.

So therefore,

To experience the world,

We experience it through a combination of all of our senses.

And when we go deeply into any experience through our senses,

We eventually get to the energy that created life,

To the heart.

Like suddenly this world is so absolutely mind-blowing.

So then,

Here's another fun thing.

Imagine,

So in Ayurveda,

Ayurveda is an eastern way of understanding the body and health,

And it's fascinating.

I don't know a lot about Ayurveda,

But I know some.

So in the Ayurveda,

There are three energies that make us up.

There's kapha,

Which is sort of the energy of reserve,

Its form,

That kind of thing.

There is pitta,

Which is the fire element.

And then there's vata,

Which is the energy of doing and all that kind of thing.

Super simplification in my mind right now of this.

And so if you look at people,

For example,

We're all made up of each one of these three,

They call them doshas.

Sometimes people are predominantly one dosha,

Or they're two dosha,

Or all three.

So for example,

I'm extremely kapha.

I'm a typical kapha woman.

I've got huge hands,

I'm shapely,

I easily gain weight,

I tend to be kind of slow and peaceful and quiet,

Like I just am naturally that way.

People who are very pitta,

They're very fiery,

Very passionate,

They tend to be very solidly built,

Very acute intellect,

That kind of thing.

And vata people tend to be very slim,

They kind of are,

When they run,

They're like gazelles.

They also tend to sort of pick up things,

They tend to get sicker.

Whereas people like me,

Like kapha people,

We never get sick.

And it's not because we're good to ourselves,

We just have so much reserve,

We just don't get sick.

One day we just die.

It's not,

We're just super,

Whereas vata people tend to pick more things up and whatever's going around,

That kind of thing.

Oh,

What's really interesting about that is kapha people,

Our predominant elements are earth and water.

You can imagine that,

Or the kapha,

It's the kapha energy in all of us.

But if you took someone like me,

Who's an extreme kapha example,

Earth and water,

I'm very earthy,

Like I'm very physically sound.

My joints are very fluid,

Like I'm very fluid,

I have a lot of water in me.

And even if I go out of balance,

I will end up with water on the knees,

I'll end up with extra fluid in the body,

That kind of thing.

So this is how it all works together.

Well,

What's interesting is when you think of earth and water,

And then the senses,

If you have a lot of kapha energy,

Earth and water,

You will be most resonant with.

And earth is all about smell,

And water is all about taste.

So it's like a double whammy for like kapha people like me,

Because smell and taste like drives us like crazy,

And we already gain weight easily.

But we experience food and stuff maybe in a heightened way.

So what it means is very often,

If we have a lot of kapha energy,

If you go on an experience with,

You know,

If you go on a picnic,

Or you go out for dinner with someone,

A kapha person will say,

Oh,

That food just tasted fantastic,

And that kind of thing.

Pitta people,

They have a lot of fire,

A lot of fire in them.

So what is the strongest sense in them?

Their eyes.

They'll notice what they see,

They'll see every little thing,

Every little detail,

Stuff like that.

And vata people,

People who have all kinds of energy,

And they tend to be lighter people,

They tend to be slimmer,

All that kind of thing.

Air and ether.

So the air and the ether are touch and sound.

It's just fascinating that these elements all fit together.

And again,

We all have all of them so that we all experience everything.

But this was my little dive this morning into the elements and the senses.

So we're just going to look at the different sutras.

And then we'll do our meditation.

There's three parts to it.

Meditation.

There's three parts of this.

The senses declare an outrageous world.

Sounds and scents,

Ravishing colors and shapes,

Ever-changing skies,

Iridescent reflections,

All these beautiful surfaces,

Decorating,

Vibrant emptiness.

The God of love is courting you,

Light as a feather.

And it's so interesting about that because my favorite definition of love is connection.

So imagine the world is love and all we need to do is connect with it.

And we will be in love all the time.

We walk outside the door and no matter what we see,

Maybe we see puddles from the rain or we see sunshine or we see a puppy or we see whatever and we fully feel it.

We pet the puppy and we feel the sun on our face and we smell the lilacs or whatever.

And we're in love.

And the next part,

Every perception is an invitation into revelation.

Hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching,

Ways of knowing creation,

Transmissions of electric realization.

The deepest reality is always right here.

Everything we hear,

Everything we feel right now,

There's nothing to learn.

There's nothing to go out there for.

The deepest reality we can experience is right now inside of our senses,

Encircled by splendor in the center of the sphere.

Meditate where the body thrills to currents of intimate communion.

So imagine us in our center,

Encircled by splendor all around us in the center of the sphere.

Meditate where the body thrills to currents of intimate communion.

Follow your senses to the end and beyond into the heart of space.

So we're going to do a meditation and then I'm going to read it again one last time in Sanskrit and in English.

The Sanskrit is very interesting because Sanskrit,

The sounds of Sanskrit speak to our soul.

We don't even have to understand what it's saying,

But the vibrations of it,

It's like what we talked about,

About ether.

That what we hear,

It connects us with the ether around us and the sound we make vibrates the ether.

So perhaps that's how Sanskrit works,

That it just flows into our being.

All right,

Wherever you are,

Let's sit nice and tall.

Or if you want to lie down,

Or if you're lying in the tub,

Or wherever you are right now,

Is awesome.

Let's just close our eyes and let's just breathe deeply,

Expanding the belly as you inhale and contracting as you exhale.

On your next inhale,

Expanding the belly,

The front,

The sides,

The back,

Exhaling,

Releasing.

Beginning by feeling this air element inside of us,

Moving through our lungs as we breathe,

Being aware of the air flowing in our nostrils,

Cool air.

And then as we exhale,

Feeling it warm coming out of our nostrils,

Or warm coming out of your mouth if you can't breathe through your nose.

Be aware of your body,

The earth that the air is moving through.

And then be aware of the liquid,

The water element flowing through our whole body,

Our blood,

Our lymphatic fluid,

Even the liquid around our eyes,

In our joints.

If you swallow to hear the sound of the swallow,

And even what do you taste in your mouth right now?

Feel the water element flowing through your mouth.

So I'd like us to imagine we're going to go on a journey,

And we're going to begin to walk through a beautiful,

Peaceful forest.

And as you walk through the forest,

You're aware of the earth that you're stepping on,

The sound of the twigs snapping under your feet,

The sound of birds around you,

The wind flowing through the trees.

Be aware of the smell of the forest,

The smell of the moss,

The water,

The earth,

The animals,

The leaves.

Allow your breath to become deeper as you take all of this wonderful smell of the earth into your body.

And as you look around you,

Seeing all the colors,

See the light shining,

Dappling through the leaves,

Making each leaf many colors of green.

See the color of the wood,

The colors of the rocks.

Imagine the interplay of the light coming from the sun,

Playing with your eyes,

And this beautiful forest around you,

Allowing you to see its life,

Its different vibrations.

We get to see them in color.

And I want you to come to a beautiful place.

Maybe it's a clearing in the sunshine.

Maybe it's a little spot by a bubbling brook,

Or even by a lake.

Wherever you would love to be in this moment.

And make yourself comfortable there,

So that you can close your eyes and become completely lost in your senses.

To feel the air element on our skin,

To feel a light breeze go by,

To feel the hair stand up in our arms,

And to feel the air flowing through that hair,

Awakening our skin,

Awakening all of our senses.

Maybe you hear a beautiful sound and a chill runs through your body,

Feeling this amazing experience.

And what do you hear where you are?

Whatever you hear,

Imagine this sound is a vibration,

Vibrating the inner part of your eardrum,

Vibrating down into your body.

That these magical muscles and the creation inside our ear,

Such a miracle,

Translating the sounds of the world into our body.

And as you sit or lie there,

Just allow yourself to breathe as if you're being bathed with sound,

Light,

Touch,

Smells,

And allow yourself to be overwhelmed.

And then very gently,

Keeping your eyes closed,

Come back into your current place in time.

What do you hear right now?

There is no beautiful sound or unbeautiful sound.

What do you hear?

What do you smell?

How does your body feel?

And allow yourself to just dive into those sensations.

You know,

The infinity of reality exists right here.

Bhavet.

The senses declare an outrageous world.

Sounds and scents,

Ravishing colors and shapes,

Ever-changing skies,

Iridescent reflections,

All these beautiful surfaces decorating vibrant emptiness.

The God of love is courting you,

Light as a feather.

Every perception is an invitation into revelation.

Hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching,

Ways of knowing creation,

Transmissions of electric realization.

The deepest reality is always right here,

Encircled by splendor in the center of the sphere.

Meditate where the body thrills to currents of intimate communion.

Follow your senses to the end and beyond into the heart of space.

Let's just stay silent where we are just for a minute.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

Exhale.

Let's open our eyes.

So thank you guys so much for being here and I will see you later.