The Call Of The Dark One: Radiance Sutras Verse 64

For everyone who's new,

We are reading from the Radiant Sutras.

This is a beautiful book by Lauren Roche,

Who went through quite a process to interpret the Radiant Sutras,

Which we're actually going to talk about in our discussion today.

The Radiant Sutras is a series of practices,

Sometimes they're practices,

Sometimes they're philosophies,

That gently shift the way we look at the world.

It's really important to know that yoga,

Tantra,

Any of these ancient traditions,

Sometimes we imagine that it's like a lightning strike and we find the one exercise that changes our life and we're forever kind of in this joyful enlightened state after that.

But it's not really like that.

We are so intriguing as beings.

When you think of,

You know,

Are there past lives that are still within me that I am nurturing and maybe slowly healing and releasing patterns?

Do I have ancestral training that is in my DNA?

Memory,

Epigenetic memory within my DNA from my mother,

Who got that memory from her grandmother,

Who got that memory from her grandmother,

And so on.

We are so interesting and maybe we're also multi-dimensional.

What if this soul is actually having experiences in many dimensions all at once?

What if there's no such thing as time at all and this concept of time and space is just a construct of maya,

But actually all the lifetimes we've ever experienced are actually all happening right now in this moment.

What would it take to really bring ourselves from this place of confusion that we often find ourselves in,

Maybe we we live in,

I do,

What would it take to actually gently turn the dials to get us into a place of clarity?

I often think of us that our consciousness is a lot like a Rubik's Cube.

We kind of turn one dial and then we play for a while in this new consciousness and then it becomes obvious what the next dial is and we turn that dial and then we play for a while and that's what the Radiant Sutras are like.

Maybe there's an aha moment that makes us think,

Oh how interesting is that?

For example,

I finished this book last night called Human Heart Cosmic Heart by Dr.

Thomas Cowan,

I think.

He was talking about what happens when people have heart transplants as opposed to people when they have kidney transplants or liver transplants.

You know sometimes they might desire different food or something like that,

That there might be some continuation from the donor,

But when someone has a heart transplant they often experience an entirely new personality.

For example,

There was one guy who he had always been kind of rough around the edges,

He was very racist,

You know he wasn't,

You wouldn't call him cultured,

For example.

He had a heart transplant from an anonymous donor and all of a sudden he started befriending all of the people at work who are people of color and he felt really comfortable with them.

He started listening to classical music,

Specifically violin concertos,

And he was really wrestling with this.

He couldn't quite understand it,

But when he embraced this love of classical music,

When he started embracing,

You know,

Black culture in America,

He was very happy.

And of course eventually they found out that the man who donated the heart was a young African-American who was shot on his way to school,

And of course what was he studying?

Classical music at this conservatory of music,

And his specialty was violin.

And what he found was this happened with many,

Many people who had heart transplants,

That they actually took on not only the tendencies of the person who donated the heart,

But actually their life path,

Their passions,

Almost what made us human,

What almost they took over almost someone else's life journey almost.

And he said what he noticed was that the people who fought against this new reality had a very difficult time for the rest of their life.

A lot of anxiety,

A lot of struggle,

A lot of self-worth,

A lot of,

You know,

Just really,

Really struggled.

But the ones who really embraced this new consciousness flourished.

They absolutely flourished.

And it's very interesting,

Like when we think of that,

Like in our spiritual journey,

How often do we hear something,

An idea,

That is actually quite an aha moment?

Maybe it brings us to tears.

Maybe it makes us just stop,

And it makes us have to kind of stare at our belly button for a day and think,

Wow,

That changes everything.

If I were to embrace this change,

That would change everything.

Now imagine what happens if we work really hard to hold on to our old attachments before we had the aha moment.

Our life would become even more annoying than it was before,

Because before we didn't even know that this peaceful place existed.

But now we know it exists,

But I don't want to let go of my attachments,

And now I feel like a bigger loser than I did before.

And that may sound like really harsh,

But sometimes that's how we talk to ourselves.

So it's like,

Imagine as we go through our spiritual path,

And we read something like the Radiant Sutras,

And we read a specific sutra that really touches us,

And it shifts us,

And we meditate on it,

And we ponder it,

And we take it out into our life,

And we practice it.

Our only journey is to let go of the person we were before.

That's the only journey.

And if we really want to come into almost communion with ourselves,

We just have to embrace this new self.

That is the journey of the Radiant Sutras,

Is that idea that you take a sutra,

You take it into your heart,

You go out into the world,

You play with it for a while,

And you allow it to let you release all of your old ideas.

And so often,

The journey of Tantra is really to release the constructs that society has given us,

That restrict us.

And when we can let those go,

We experience ecstasy.

And that's what's so interesting about Tantra,

Is it's not,

It's like,

We're already Tantric.

We just have to let go of everything that keeps us from that joy.

So,

In our class today,

We are going to read a sutra.

Specifically,

If you have the book,

We're going to read number 64.

Then we're going to have a discussion about it.

And then we're going to do a meditation.

So,

You guys ready?

You can sit,

You can lie down,

Wherever you are right now is awesome.

So let's close our eyes and breathe deeply.

Just release everything all around you,

Thoughts you were having five minutes ago.

Anything that is in your mind,

Allow your breath to empty your thoughts.

As you inhale,

Imagine a beautiful spring breeze.

And as you exhale,

Just feel all of your thoughts float out with the breeze.

Secrets are hidden in darkness and difficult nights.

You awaken into a pang of aloneness,

A howl of separation.

This is the call of the dark one,

The roar of life seeking its source.

The union you long for is within reach.

Throw off all hesitation,

Become one with the fear.

Plunge into uncanny blackness,

Eyes wide open as if there were no other choice.

Vibrating with fierce tenderness,

Breathe intimately with the Lord of infinite space.

What does that bring up for you?

What emotions or thoughts or what words float through your mind?

Fierce tenderness.

I get the feeling of falling.

Mm-hmm.

Plunge into blackness,

Eyes wide open.

The howl of separateness.

Breathe with space.

Become one with the fear.

Embrace what frightens us and go with it.

It reminds me of that Rumi quote,

Go to the source of your fear and there you'll find courage.

Exactly.

Dark nights of the soul can be my guide.

Floating in water in the darkness.

Jumping,

Flying downward and over the earth as if a bird while the volcano is erupting.

Purification,

Yes.

Feeling fear and doing it anyway,

Yes.

I realize it's an illusion that we've been scaring ourselves about.

Yes.

Being free from the chaos around oneself.

Diving into the motions of fear breeds rhythm.

I don't have to suppress it and act like it's not there.

Embracing all without judgment.

How powerful is that?

We are all dark and light energy.

So what for you would be the benefit of diving into the darkness?

For all of us,

What is,

What is that?

Katrina,

What is meant by the call of the dark one?

So the dark one in this instance is Krishna.

I'm going to read from the back.

Even the dark one seeks to find the light.

I'm going to read from the back.

Even the dark one seeks to find connection.

You know it's funny that when you read something and it and it clicks something in your brain but now you don't know whether you actually read it or you just knew it.

I'm having that moment right now.

I'm like,

Wait a minute,

Where am I getting this from?

Okay so what's interesting is in this sutra they talk about Krishna and this is how Lauren describes Krishna because again it's always interesting when we're using Sanskrit because Sanskrit has every word has 500 meanings.

Even words like Krishna,

Vishnu,

All these words that we normally use to describe a god or an aspect of god.

So Krishna,

Black,

Dark blue,

Wicked,

Evil,

The dark half of the lunar month,

From the full to the new moon.

The fourth or Kali Yuga,

A crow,

An avatar of Vishnu,

Blackness,

Iron,

Lead,

The black part of the eye,

The black spots in the moon.

There's something really interesting about understanding that we come from the void.

That it's not evil,

That kind of thing,

It's not like that,

It's just darkness.

And it's almost like if you were to sit in a room and slowly remove all the things from life,

All the things,

The books,

The tables,

The chairs,

You have now emptiness.

Well now imagine you have emptiness and then you turn off the light and now you have darkness.

And imagine you open your eyes and now you're sort of transported to a place where there is nothing all around you but blackness.

Well this can be quite terrifying because we've been taught that security comes from the things and security comes from the ability to see with light.

But that's not all of life.

There are many dark places within us,

There are places we don't want to look,

There are places that we struggle with.

And if the only thing we want to look at are the things that are kind of above the ground,

How much of us are we ignoring?

That somewhere deep inside of us we are the void and everything here is this beautiful illusion of maya.

Just because maya means illusion or a trick of the light or whatever you want to call it,

It doesn't mean it isn't real and it doesn't mean it isn't a wonderful place to explore this human experience.

But at its core it is void.

Tantra is about experiencing reality.

Tantra isn't a path of light.

You know it's not about having rose-colored glasses and focusing on the good.

It's not like that.

It's about focusing on reality.

That reality is everything.

Every single thing.

It is birth and it is death and it is health and it is sickness and it is kindness and it is cruelty.

It is everything.

That is life.

And when we experience all that life is,

We experience God.

We experience Bhairava.

This book is called,

This is a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

Vijnana,

The wisdom,

The truth,

The real experience of Bhairava.

And one of the interpretations of Bhairava is terror.

The terrifying aspect of life.

So imagine that for a moment.

Imagine that we actually lived on the edge of ourselves.

This is one of the most difficult parts about our current society is that we believe that comfort is the goal.

We believe that as soon as we find the perfect partner we can relax.

As soon as we find the perfect job then I can relax.

If I can find the perfect version of myself then I can relax.

And I can live out my days in blissful comfort.

And I'm not saying that we need to suffer or anything like that.

But that's not living.

That's not exciting.

That's when your body and your brain and your spirit atrophy.

That's when you kind of just,

It's the fat cat syndrome.

I don't know whether it came from centuries and millennia of suffering that comfort is actually what we need to balance so many years of suffering.

I don't know if it's fat cat syndrome that we've been ruled by an elite class for so long all we want to do is become that unemployed elite that lives with someone putting grapes in their mouths or something.

I don't know where it comes from.

But the illusion is that living in a state of comfort is interesting or it's worthy of this epic multi-dimensional human being that we are.

Like when you really think about who we are like that you really embrace the idea that we have these lower three chakras that define us here in maya.

This interesting incarnation that I am.

The second chakra playing with other people.

The first chakra playing in the village in nature really experiencing everything the senses have to offer.

Then we have these upper triangle chakras our epic connection to the galaxy our intuition our voice and then we have this beautiful heart center that experiences the void.

The epic infinity of life.

And yet we fear the dark.

We fear the darkness.

But what if we didn't?

What if we got past the training that said comfort comes from things.

Comfort comes from relationships.

Comfort comes from money.

Comfort comes from security.

What if comfort came from realizing that we are everything?

That within us we have all the darkness of the infinity of space.

What if we are all the light of the sun?

What if we are all the love and all the everything in the world?

What would that feel like?

It's almost like every cell of your body is now awake.

Every organ is alive.

Every part of you is alive saying yes let's live this life.

Let's live all of it.

Let's live the darkness,

The lightness,

The void,

The wild,

The crazy.

Let's do it all.

Let's enjoy the countryside and enjoy the busy cities.

Let's enjoy all of it.

So Lauren Roche who wrote this book he talks about part of his journey and I want to read it to you.

He talks about this in the back.

As part of preparing to translate the Bhairava Tantra I live outdoors on retreat in Hawaii for a year.

For months I camped out in an area of black lava,

Miles from anyone,

A few feet back from the ocean.

When it rained I would sleep in my jeep because I had no tent.

It was uncomfortable so sometimes at night in the storms I would stand outside in the warm rain in the middle of the night.

I came to love being immersed in pitch black,

Black lava,

Black sky and the howling wind and the swirling roar of the storm and the crashing surf.

And then he goes on to say notice this sutra has Bhairava again,

The terror of facing the unknown.

It is strangely liberating to go through the fear to the other side which is indescribable.

Beyond and inside the wildness of nature there is intense friendliness.

Isn't that wild?

It's dark and raining in Hawaii right now.

It's a powerful feeling.

So part of what this sutra is all about is in Tantra where did that reading come from?

It's from the back of the Radiant Sutras.

Every sutra,

This is Sutra 64,

He has a meditation in the back where he focuses on a single word of the sutra and kind of got dives deeper into it.

And in this this time he focused on the word Krishna which is like the nature of that darkness.

So Tantra also honors the cycles of the moon.

So this is a practice where you go outside and you actually,

Eyes wide open,

Stare into the darkness.

And ideally you do it either on the night of a full of a of a dark moon of the new moon or any of the three days before that.

And it'd be really interesting to like mark it in your calendar that as soon as a new moon is coming that as soon as a new moon is coming any of those days to go outside and to sit somewhere far away from city lights or anything like that if you can and actually sit and stare into the night sky and allow the darkness to envelop you.

And even if it's scary can you step into that fear?

Like what are we afraid of?

What is it?

Is it even real?

What is that?

I want to read another quote here that I really like.

That I really like.

When one contemplates over darkness for long one is filled with a sense of awe and uncanny mystery and easily slips into mystic consciousness.

Isn't that the goal?

Imagine mystic consciousness isn't looking into a crystal ball or divining the future or being psychic.

Becoming a mystic is to have direct communication with the divine.

That's all it is.

It's you having a personal experience with the divine.

And then you hear the guidance and you live this way.

How important is that?

But of course imagine trying to explore mystical consciousness without being comfortable with darkness.

Like it's not possible.

Like it's not possible.

The darkness is the void that the messages come through.

It's not negative.

It's just part of reality.

Let's do a meditation.

So wherever you are,

Maybe you're sitting,

Maybe you're lying down,

Maybe you're in the tub,

Or if you're driving please pull over.

What book was the mystic consciousness quote from?

Vijnana Bhairava or Divine Consciousness by Jai Deva Singh.

The next part of that quote was,

It is at such an hour that the light of Bhairava makes its appearance and one acquires the nature of Bhairava.

Are the changes we witness during changes of the season the same as communication with the divine?

Not for me,

But that doesn't mean it's not true.

Connection with the divine for me is like having a friend inside of me that I can sit down on my comfy chair and ask questions.

Is this right?

Is this my path?

How do I go forward from here?

What are the words that I can use?

And it's like,

Yeah,

It's like my best friend inside that sees the big picture,

That understands all the dimensions.

And when I can become clear there,

You know,

This is satya.

This is where Gandhi taught satyagraha,

To stand in one's truth.

That what we hear there is so,

It's so in alignment with who we are.

It's easy to stand in truth.

That's what it is for me,

But it might be something very different for someone else.

I'm personally not wired into nature like that.

So someone who is very wired into nature may connect very differently with the divine than I am,

Than I do.

Because for me,

It really is communication.

Like it really is a question and answer.

I asked because of the rebirth in spring,

Similar to the rebirth of honouring Easter.

I don't know.

It's kind of like,

You know,

For me,

I'm not clairvoyant and I don't see spirits and I don't see auras and I don't see anything like that.

So I have to define the world based on how I experience it.

But that doesn't mean that clairvoyants don't see spirits.

And so if there is something about the rebirth of spring and all these kind of things that really bring you to centre,

And there is a communication and a communion with nature and God,

Then go there.

This is only how I understand or how I experience things.

It has nothing to do with anyone else's truth on the planet.

So it's really important to find the way that really resonates inside of you.

So we're just going to do a very short meditation because we're close to the hour.

And let's close our eyes for a moment.

And let's just breathe deeply,

Expanding the belly as we inhale,

Contracting as we exhale.

And I want you to imagine yourself on top of a mountain.

And you're sitting comfortably there.

And it's the night of a new moon.

So the night,

The sky is perfectly black.

And you can feel the air all around you.

And you're breathing deeply and your eyes are open.

It's like the more you stare into the darkness,

The darker it becomes.

And you start to feel something inside of you.

You start to feel where you came from.

You start to feel the infinity of the darkness.

The beginning where it all began.

For a moment,

You close your eyes and you think of where you live,

Your home,

With all the things in it that you can see with the light on.

And then in that room where you live,

Watching all the things that have been created for you,

Seeing them all disappear.

And then you are back on the mountaintop in the darkness.

And you start to feel how creation happens.

And you start to feel how creation happens from this darkness.

And grass is created and trees are created and books are created.

And people appear and all these interesting parts of your life appear.

And then you can return to the darkness.

And an appreciation starts to rise for all the interesting moving parts of maya,

Of our lives that we get to play with.

But then we can also set them aside and dive into the darkness,

The void,

That is also who we are.

To imagine that every cell of our body is 99% darkness,

That this beautiful dark sky we are the same.

But when lit up,

We are these beautiful people.

So in that space,

Breathing deeply,

Gazing out into the darkness.

And allowing whatever feelings to rise to rise.

And to let them go as you breathe out.

And sitting on your mountaintop,

Let's close our eyes for a moment.

Ivam Iva Durnishayam Krishna Paksha Agame Kiram Taimiram Bhavayan Rupam Bhairavam Rupam Eshyati Secrets are hidden in darkness and difficult nights.

You awaken into a pang of aloneness,

A howl of separation.

This is the call of the dark one,

The roar of life seeking its source.

The union you long for is within reach.

Throw off all hesitation,

Become one with the fear.

Plunge into the uncanny blackness,

Eyes wide open,

As if there were no other choice.

Vibrating with fierce tenderness,

Breathe intimately with the Lord of infinite space.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

Exhale.

Let's come back together.

Thanks,

Everybody.

We'll see you soon.