by Katrina Bos
During this session, we discuss Verse 141 of the Insight Verses from the 'Radiance Sutras', a translation of the Vijanana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Loche. A meditation follows our discussion. These sessions are recorded every week, and all are welcome.
Meet your Teacher
Toronto, ON, Canada
Transcript
So today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras. This is a beautiful book written by Lauren Roche and this is a translation and interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, An ancient tantric text. And the goal of this text is to help us experience our true essence. So we all have a body, We all have a sense of self and ego, Which is important. This isn't about about not living with an ego or something like that. I am Katrina Boss and that's important. That's why I'm here. This is why I have the thoughts I have. This is why I look the way I look. This is why I do what I do, What I want, What I want, What I don't like, What I don't like. This is the role, The opportunity that I get to play here on earth. This is important. Just like every single person here, You all have a very specific opportunity to play out this interesting personality. So the ego is really important. To transcend it while we're in it doesn't make any sense. It's like being given a car and saying, I'm not going to drive it because I'm above cars, But you really want to cross the country or something. It doesn't make any sense, Right? So here we are in this body, In this personality, But we are also divine. Like at the same time, We are divine energy animating this opportunity. But very often we forget that because life is busy and we were given emotions so that we could feel everything that's going on here, Right? We didn't come here to be a robot. We came here to experience this rich life, Which means we very often get really caught up in what we're doing. We get really caught up in love and loss and hope and success and failure and struggle and pain and pleasure. But this is the world. This is the point. But it often gets us very focused and we start becoming almost narrow-minded and not in a character flaw way, But it's almost like all these things start to happen and this is all we can suddenly feel. It's like when you're in pain and very soon you stop noticing anything else in the world and everything, Every single second of your day just gets focused on that pain. And you soon forget that there's a whole world out there. We just forget. And this is normal. It's completely normal. So what Tantra says is, What if we could embrace our full divinity and our full physical experience all at the same time? How would that change our life? And that's what this book is all about. This book is a series of sutras or verses that we read and they sometimes are practices, Sometimes they're meditations that help us sort of expand our consciousness. Sometimes they're just simply ideas and the idea goes into our thoughts and it changes us just by the very idea now living within us. So at this point in our reading, We're actually, Today we're doing verse 141 and the book has three sections. The first section are called the banter verses and it's sort of the conversation between the divine and the physical or Devi and Bhairava. And then there are the yukti verses which is 112 verses and those are the lessons, Those are the meditations, Those are the teachings. And now we are in the insight verses. So especially if you're brand new, Right now it's actually referring back to the meditations, But it's okay if you're new because just imagine, I mean we're here on Insight Timer. I'm sure you've done other meditations, Other practices, Other teachings, Yoga, Meditation, Tantra, All kinds of wonderful teachings. So just imagine all the teachings you've ever learned and then we're going to reflect in those. If you do want to go back and listen to some of the the yukti verses, I have a playlist here on Insight Timer called Radiant Sutras of recordings of past classes and they're all part of the free part so you can just go and listen to them anytime. So what we're going to do today is we're going to read the verse, Contemplate it a little, And then we're going to have a discussion and then we will do a meditation at the end. Okay you guys ready? So let's take a deep breath in, Let's close our eyes. We're just going to take a few breaths here just to release the world around us. Release the things we're thinking about and allowing ourselves to come into the nothingness, The void, The stillness inside of us. Part of us that is beyond our personality. The part of us that is exactly the same today as it was when we were six years old that is never changing. Delight in these meditations, My adored one. Play with creation as it plays with you. Playing becomes smaller than an atom. Travel through the expanse of space. Drink the elixir of immortality. Bathe in the stream of these life-giving teachings. Flirt with the tingling sparks of vitality surging through your body. Live your whole life as a festival, A celebration liberated in love and work. So what comes to you when you feel that, When you heal that? Are there feelings that rise or thoughts or particular phrases that roll through your mind? I love the idea of playing in creation. Play how we are played and how to reverse it. So I'm going to read another interpretation of this. I loved hearing adored one. Yes, Because it's Bhairava talking to Devi. It's the divine talking to us. Living my life as a festival is tricky some days. But it is part of our whole life. Play, Work, Because it is in us. So this is a direct translation of the Sanskrit. Oh goddess, By virtue of even one of these dharanas, Meditations, The sadhaka becomes free from old age, Attains immortality, And is endowed with siddhis, Such as enema, Etc. He becomes the darling of all yoginis and master of all siddhas. This is why we love Lauren Roche for giving us a different interpretation. What we're going to do is I'm going to talk a little bit about it and then I'm going to go back and we're going to reread the original one from the Radiant Sutras. But in this translation, It's very interesting because he talks about, So oh goddess, Oh darling one, By virtue of even one of these meditations, You can become free from old age, Attain immortality, And be endowed with siddhis, Such as enema, And become the darling of all yoginis and master of all the siddhas. So what is a siddha? So this is all about these siddhis. You know how sometimes they talk about how yogis can have supernatural powers and this person can control water and this person can control air and this person can make themselves big as a mountain and this person can make themselves small as an atom. You know that this is literally superhero stuff. These are the siddhis and there's officially there's eight that they talk about. And I'm going to read them to you, But I want you to it's almost like not to listen to them with your mind, To listen to them with your childlike heart. When I was young, I don't know whether I was in between dream state and waking, But I had this sense that I remember becoming small as an atom, Like small as a pin, And then sort of exploding and becoming super, Super big, And then getting really small. I haven't had this experience in a long time, But I have a memory of it inside of me. But it was a childlike thing. It was something that happened when I was little. And I think it's fascinating how much writing there is out there about superpowers, People who can do anything they want, And they can become small as an ant, And they can fly, And they can do all these things. What if we all actually do have the potential for these powers? What if that's why our culture is filled with superheroes? It doesn't even matter. It can be actual cartoons, It can actually be comic books, Or it's just simply movies where someone has a supernatural power. What if we like it because there's something right about it? Has anyone here ever experienced anything like that? Or even had flying dreams? Or had moments that you touched something that doesn't make sense? Does anyone have any sense of that? I've had a feeling similar as an adult, A feeling of expansion, Or a feeling of feeling tiny compared to the planet. Yes, I had dreams where I can fly. I wonder what sparked all those stories from Stan Lee. I've experienced the same thing as a child falling asleep, Becoming tiny and then big, And then tiny and then big. I've had quite a few flying dreams, Flying dreams as a child. When I was little, I used to have this experience of hovering over myself. What if these are real? What if this is somehow a part of us? So of course, Why am I saying this? Like, Why are we having this particular conversation in this particular sutra? Because the goal of tantra is to help us to expand to who we truly are, Which is our divine self, Which is our ultimate expansive self. So here are the eight cities or superpowers. And I'm going to include the Sanskrit just for fun, Maybe it means something in your soul that our mind doesn't understand. Anima. Anima is the power of being small as an atom. Laghima is the power of assuming excessive lightness. I'm just going to stop for a minute. Have you guys ever played that game? Let's say you're standing in a room and someone says, Okay, Imagine that you're heavy as an elephant and everyone tries to pick you up and you are so heavy. And then they say, Okay, Now imagine that your light is a feather and people literally grab you and just throw you in the air. Did you ever do that in school? I remember doing it in a drama class and it was the most surreal thing that literally, If I imagine myself light as a feather, I become lighter. Which again, Doesn't make any sense in our three-dimensional world. Yes. And at some slumber parties, We'd play light as a feather and stiff as a board. It's a thing. Like this isn't just some bizarre yogi enlightenment thing. We can do it at slumber parties. Okay. That's Laghima. Then there's Mahima, The power of making your body very large. Garima, The power to make the body very heavy. Prapti, The power to reach everywhere and obtain anything you want. Just like sit with that for a second. With the ability to reach out and get anything you want. And I know this feels very hard in a restrictive sense, But imagine your expansive self. Vasitva, Control over the elements and all objects. And again, Imagining the superhero thing or even telekinesis, The ability to move things with your mind. Prakamya, The ability to fulfill all desires. And Ishitva, The power to create and destroy the elements and material objects. Thinking about these things kind of tickles at our 3D experience. It's almost like there's some part inside of us that knows that there's something right about this. You know, There's something true about it. We can't put our finger on it. Don't know that we can necessarily figure it out tomorrow. But there's something important about this. And again, The goal of these teachings is to just tickle the edges of what our current reality is, Our current thoughts. We're going to shift gears a little. So again, In the direct translation, By virtue of these meditations, You can become free of old age, Attain immortality, And be endowed with siddhis, These abilities that we just talked about. Free of old age and immortality. So for a moment, Let's imagine that old age, To be free of old age, Doesn't mean that you don't get older. It just means you are free of the suffering of old age, Or the suffering of aging. So the question becomes, What ages us? What makes us tired? Worry? Overthinking? Feeling of impotence in our life? Attachments? What else? What do you think? When you think of, What are the things that age us? Attachments? Greed? Holding grudges? Belief systems? Fear? The need for control? Stress? Hatred? Delusion? Busyness? Depression? So when we think of all of these, Anxiety, Fear to want, Self-neglect, Worry, Where do all of these live? All of them. They all live in our mind. They all live in our brain, Our thoughts, The imagination. A lot live in the imagination. So this is the magic of the teachings, Of the meditations. So I was camping two weeks ago. The first couple days, I was telling everybody earlier that we don't bring our phones or anything. We have no electronics. And we camp in tents out in the woods. And it takes a couple days to actually stop my mind. I love being organized. As much as I teach Tantra and yoga and things, I also have a mathematical mind that likes sorting the day into the most efficient use of our time. And so it takes a little while for my brain to unwind. And what came to me in the first couple days while I was camping were the Tantric teachings of what the mind is. And so in the Kashmir Shaivism lineage of Tantra, The mind is made up of three things. Chitta, Manas, And buddhi. So chitta. Chitta is, There's a lot of meanings of the word chitta. This is just in this particular application. But chitta is all the memories that you've ever had in your life. And maybe other lives. But it's the repository of all the memories. Manas. This is the part of the mind that interprets the senses. This is when I look outside. I see something. That light is reflected back into my eye, Into my brain. And manas says, Green. Tree. Or manas, When I touch my arm, Manas says, Oh that's warm. Right? So manas is the part of the brain that's interpreting the world through my senses. So now imagine I see something, And I go, Ooh, I know that tree. Why? Because manas is now talking to chitta. And chitta says, That's an oak tree. I used to sit under an oak tree. So now manas and chitta are talking. Budhi. B-U-D-D-H-I. Budhi is the intellect. Discernment. And budhi might say, I don't like oak trees. Because, I don't know why anyone wouldn't like an oak tree. But let's say someone hits your arm. Manas says, Ow, That hurt. That was painful. Chitta says, I remember when people hit me before, Budhi says, I don't like this person. Because they caused this thing that happened before. And you can see how now budhi, Manas, And chitta are just having this triangular experience. And how those three things in the tantric world, These three things create the ego. This is what makes each one of us unique. Each one of us has a unique chitta, A unique set of memories to reflect on. We each have a unique manas that interprets the world. Everyone interprets the world differently. And we each have a unique budhi, Who then decides and discerns, Is it for me? Is it against me? Do I like it? Do I want to go towards it? And these three aspects of your mind create your ego. So as I was camping, I was sitting there and I was sort of giggling because my brain was just chewing on stuff. It was just working hard. And then I thought, What if in this moment, I completely released chitta? What if I no longer had memories? I just let them all go. And instantly my mind became relaxed. It was almost like, As I was sitting on a chair looking out over the lake. And we camp right on a lake. I was sitting there and because I had no memories, I was seeing the lake for the first time. I was seeing the trees for the first time. When I would think about somebody who maybe I was worried about or angry with or feeling judgment about, Suddenly without chitta there, I couldn't be judgmental anymore because I had no memory of them. And what does that mean? It means that I'm not playing in the past anymore. That's all the memory is. It's something that happened in the past, Which is an illusion. So I released chitta. And just imagine, You're sitting on the edge of a lake and you're looking and you no longer have any memory and you are sitting beside a lake for the first time. And then I decided I was going to let go of buddhi, The intellect, Judgment completely. So then suddenly I didn't even have an opinion as to whether I liked the lake or if thoughts came in about other people, I had no judgment about them either. They weren't right or wrong, Or they weren't doing things the way I would do or wouldn't do them. Or whether they said this or that, It didn't really affect me. And I played with this for a couple days, Living without chitta or buddhi. I'm not sure about getting rid of manas. Interpreting the world seems to be pretty important if we're going to play here. But of course, If I wanted to release manas, I could just close my eyes in meditation and shut out the world through pratyahara, To shut out the senses and go into that void. But I was camping, So I wasn't doing that. If you could live without chitta or buddhi, Do you think you'd be stressed out? Do you think you'd worry? Do you think you'd have anxiety? Do you think you'd have depression? Do you think we would feel any of these things? This is the true goal of meditation. I know at that point I would be a cat, Right? But honestly, Imagine this. I mean, Obviously, When you come back to the world, You need to do spreadsheets and drive cars and do stuff. You know what I mean? The tantric journey isn't about becoming a cat and staying a cat. But what a meditation. And if we can embrace that, It changes us. It seeps into all of the cells of our being. And then the next time something happens, We respond a little bit differently. Suddenly, Even our chitta, Our memories, Change. Our buddhi changes. Everything changes. The other thing I want to mention is, In the Western world, We have this idea of a hero. In many ways, I mean, I don't know, Maybe it's just my generation or beyond, But there's sort of that idea that Clint Eastwood weathered from the storm. He's been through so many fights, And he's got all the scars to prove it kind of idea. That we're meant to carry all of our suffering with us. And the more suffering we've experienced, The more medals we get. You know, So we can't let go of the suffering. We can't let go of the grudges and the things people did to us. We have to hold on to them. And we hold on to them in our bodies, In our minds, And we retell the stories, And we re-traumatize ourselves, Because we have to remember what we've been through. But in the East, Historically, Maybe not today, But historically, The goal was to release all of these things. And you end up with all these kind of baby-faced gurus. You look at like Paramahansa Yogananda, If you've ever seen pictures of him, He had no wrinkles. You know, Of all these gurus with these baby kind of faces. Can you imagine? Have you ever experienced that even in yourself or in other people? That when someone's gone through a big healing crisis of emotion or thoughts or whatever, That suddenly they look like they've lost 10 years? Or maybe you have. Maybe you've gone through something powerful, And then people start looking at you going, What have you done? You just look so youthful, Or you look different. And sometimes even losing wrinkles and bags under our eyes, And we actually just change. Imagine it's in our minds. And again, I'm not saying that what we are experiencing isn't real or anything, But just imagine. And that's what he's talking about. He's saying that if we truly do the meditations, And it doesn't have to be all the meditations, It could be one meditation, One contemplation, One focus that deeply changes you, You will become immortal. And not in a weird I the forever and I'm all powerful way, But in a you are perpetually living in the moment. You're not perpetually hurtling towards death or something. You're actually here, Right now, In this moment, Forever. Because this is it. Like, This is it right now. This is the whole life, Right now, What we're doing. There is no future, There is no past, There is just this moment. And if we can stay in this moment, We are eternally immortal. Because this is it. This is the eternal moment. And so the funny thing about the cities, We'll go back to the cities, The superpowers for a moment. The desire for the superpowers, Sure, There can be people that want them to do evil or something like that. But the truth is, They aren't endowed upon us. It's almost like as we become lighter, Like if you really think of the word enlightenment, It means to become lighter. That's it. But to become lighter, We have to let go of what's heavy, Or we have to process and meet what's heavy. So it just naturally is let go. This isn't some weird spiritual bypassing thing. We have to meet whatever karma, Karmic patterns we're working through. But we do it. That's the work, Right? When we talk about doing the work, We meet it, We resolve it, So that it can be let go. And we come become a little lighter. And so now imagine the joyfulness of that. Imagine in your deepest heart, You know that you're a superhero. Anytime, I can just become light as a feather. Yeah, That's right. That's me. Yeah. I could become big as a mountain if I want. Oh, Yeah. If I want, I can just manifest whatever I desire. That's right. That's me. And again, Am I saying that I can do that in this moment? No. But there's some part of me that knows I can. And that expands me. That expands me beyond whatever focus I have right now in my 3D life. And that's all that matters. I don't have to be all powerful. I don't even want to be all powerful. Or maybe I do. The things that we're not even allowed to say. Oh, No, No. I'm not so egotistical as to want to. What if we do? What if we do want to be a superhero? What if we do want to be able to do all these things? That's okay. What if it expands us? What if it makes us more entertained by the world? That's cool. So let's do a little meditation. You guys ready? Wherever you are, Close your eyes. Let's breathe deeply together. I would love for you to visualize yourself sitting on a park bench. And you are overlooking anything that you think is beautiful. Whatever comes to mind is perfect for you. Just breathing deeply. And in your mind's eye, Close your eyes. And imagine your whole being becoming small as an atom. Then imagine becoming big as a mountain. Embrace your inner superhero here. Okay? And then become small as an atom. And then become big as a mountain. And just play with that for a moment. Now coming back into your regular size, Imagine yourself becoming as heavy as an elephant. So heavy that you're wondering if the bench can even hold you. And then all of a sudden you're light as a butterfly. Feel the lightness. That you literally could float right off of that bench. And then feel your body filled with titanium, So heavy. And feel everything filled with air. Maybe even helium as your body feels like it's going to lift right off the earth. Coming back into your regular body, Your eyes are closed in your mind's eye. And imagine you desire something. It doesn't even matter. You don't have to name the desire. Just imagine you have 10 desires. And you effortlessly reach out into the world and achieve it. No problem. In your mind's eye, Open your eyes and just see a rock over to your right. And using your mind, Move it through the air to the left side. Play with that rock with your mind. Move it all around. And then release the rock. Just sit with yourself. Breathing deeply. Feeling the prana, The life force entering your body. Exhaling. Feeling your body renew with every breath. Ajara Amaratam Eti Sa Anama Adi Guna Anvita Yoginam Priya Devi Sarva Mela Agh Paka Adipa Jivan Api Vimukta Asao Kurvan Api Nalipyate Delight in these meditations, My adored one. Play with creation as it plays with you. Playing becomes smaller than an atom. Travel through the expanse of space. Drink the elixir of immortality. Bathe in the stream of these life-giving teachings. Flirt with the tingling sparks of vitality surging through your body. Live your whole life as a celebration, A festival, Liberated in love and work. Let's take a deep breath in together. And exhaling. I hope you have a wonderful day. We'll see you soon.
4.9 (11)
Keerthi
August 25, 2025
I felt my heart open to the inner divinity. Thank you, Katrina! ❤
