Uradiance: 1/1/16

Scripture Is Vibration, Not Meaning

Ancient scriptures were meant to be HEARD as healing sound, NOT INTERPRETED as meaning.

Energizing the nervous system as pure vibration, the sound of Vedic Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, and Qu'ranic Arabic is an objective power. But the "meaning" of the words is subjective, always reflecting the relative conditions and karmas of individual minds. You and I can hear exactly the same word, yet give it two completely different interpretations.

However, if we simply listen to the vibration of the word in its ancient language, our bodies are healed, our intellects stunned into silent beauty. This is the power of the mantras, the sound impulses of ancient scripture.

When we lose that original language, and our fickle intellect translates or interprets the sounds into mental images, doctrines, beliefs, they can be very dangerous. The so-called laws and commandments derived from scripture are really superimposed by the interpreter's mind, and may be used to justify all manner of oppression, prejudice, and violence.

The sound of the scripture comes from the text, but the interpretation comes from the reader. The reader's mind is changeable. But the original text is the subtle, unwritten, eternal structure of creation in boundless space (akasha).

The scriptures were not composed, but heard in deep meditation by the ancient seers. Their verses and mantras are the fluctuations of silence in the quantum vacuum at the source of creation.

If, instead of arguing about the meaning of scripture, we spent half an hour every morning and evening simply listening to the sound, bathing in the music of the un-translatable un-interpretable Veda, Torah, and Qu'ran, wars would cease, and humanity would blossom.

Majnoon's Story

I fell in love with Layla, the king's daughter, but she was betrothed to the Prince of Light. I did not yet know that she was my soul, cast up out of sea-foam, already lying unveiled in the shell of my heart. So I became a wanderer, and went mad in the forest. Every bursting bud was her mouth. Every bee, stinging the wildflower, drank from my kiss.

I spun seasons with my yearning, turned Winter to Spring with my desire, bled under a pine, praying to meet her in death.

Now listen, friend, when you thirst enough for the Gift of her face, you will comprehend a way of inebriation that imbibes nothing but the nectar of moonlight: a way to make love with the eternal Virgin.

I call this way "bewilderment," because it takes place in the wild, through the pathless discipline of the forest. But you may call it a gushing wound.

Yes, this practice of hopeless longing opens my chest, where a fountain of darkness effuses the great final sigh, signifying that I have surrendered to the purity of No Restraint.

I don't care if you are not understanding this! The gash in my heart encompasses your misunderstanding as well as perfect knowledge, sucking in the entire universe, and the space beyond, like a black maelstrom of un-created gravity.

Now I drop from my body, a swollen berry on a withered vine. Pan's feet press me through the sieve of the earth, into a barrel made of oak, rosewood, and other trees from the center of the Garden.

"You aren't juice any more!" says my crusher. "That was for children and pretenders. I turn you into wine, so that those who get drunk on your songs will remember everything."

This is my story, lovers and friends. This is how a drop of sorrow can sweeten the whole cup!

Gateh, Gateh, Para Gateh, Parasam Gateh, Bodhi Svaha!
"Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Beyond the Beyond: Hail the Go-er!"

At some point, images get in the way, even our favorite image of God: so we pass beyond it. At some point, words get in the way, even the divine name: so we pass beyond it. At some point, we even stop clinging to the dearest feeling: we pass beyond it. And at some point, the soul itself gets in the way: so we pass beyond it. This is the meaning of Gateh in the great meditation mantra of Tibet.

But breath never gets in the way. Breath remains, even when there is no mind. Thinking dissolves into pure Presence, then there is only this breath: not the previous breath or the next one. And this breath is never my breath.

Where does this breath come from? Where does it go? Follow it and see. Breathing is constant rehearsal for the moment of liberation.

This breath expires into silence. But this silence is no mere absence of sound. It is the heart's silence, rich with creative energy, luminous with love, yet free from any image or thought. Amma Karunamayi tells us simply, "In meditation, silence is the Mother."

Do not assume that this is simply an Eastern teaching. It is also the age-old practice of Christian mystics. In the early Church, these mystics were called hesychasts, which means practitioners of silence. In the 7th Century, St. Hesychius of Jerusalem wrote that the core of Christian mysticism is, "The heart's silence, undisturbed by any thought." The light of Christ can only be born in the womb of the silent heart.

To silence the heart may at first seen like a negation, yet this is the most positive experience possible. This silence is the soul and source of creation: the silence that was here before God said, "Let there be light." Womb-silence generates the world, yet ever transcends what She gives birth to. This also is the meaning of Gateh, beyond. She is the Causeless in whom all chains of causation are rooted. She is the groundless from whom all seeds spring. The silence of the heart breathes forth all creatures yet abides un-created. This silence has no edges; it is ever-expanding joy.

If only for an instant, between out-breath and in-breath, if I surrender and die in this eternal silence, I truly Am.

What remains after surrender cannot be spoken. To describe it would be another image, another word, another thought. One might say, Surrender and all that is left is Buddha-mind. One might say, Be crucified with Jesus in the still-point at the center of the cross of opposites. One might say, Become sat-chit-ananda: Divine Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. Yet each of these affirmations only creates another little thinker to affirm it. One calls himself a Buddhist, one calls herself a Christian, one says, I'm a Hindu. Better just surrender, and drop thinking for awhile...

"Be still and know that I Am God," advises the Biblical Psalmist. This beautiful verse shows us that Bhakti and Vedanta, devotion and non-dualism, are just concepts. They point to exactly the same experience. When conceptual thinking is still, there is true knowledge, or Gnana, without thought. Then the I Am, and the God that I adore, are one and the same.

Who is this God? The answer comes not as a thought, but as the energy of grace in the next inhalation. This energy is Shakti. She is the living Spirit, the supreme Mother of creation. Breathing Her is the answer: not a belief or a concept, but Shakti herself, the scintillating star-stuff gushing from the heart. Therefor the classic Tantric scripture Vijnana Bhairava declares:

Exhalation goes out, inhalation comes in. At the place where they merge, one experiences the state from which Creation comes forth and into which it is absorbed....

The supreme Goddess, whose nature is to create, constantly expresses herself as exhalation and inhalation. By resting awareness in the space of the heart, between the descending and ascending breaths, one experiences Bhairava, the source of creation.

We breathe the Goddess every moment of the day. We're just too busy to notice; too busy to notice the gift of this breath, and in the the stillness where the gift arises, the Giver.

Two Or Three

Jesus said, "Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there Am I." He didn't say, "two or three million."

Spirituality is not measured in numbers, but in depth of Presence. The 'movement' begins as a Family of the Heart, intimate, local, circular, rooted in the earth. Innocently, its vibration of love attracts others.

Then the movement grows into a corporate hierarchy. Technocrats take over, with glossy websites and busy words, advertising everything BUT the silent Presence. They measure their success in numbers, and the depth is lost. I have seen this happen in more than a few spiritual movements and it makes me sad.

If you want to get back to Presence, stop counting. You don't need to repeat the mantra a million times, just once or twice, for it to dissolve in the silence of infinite Being. In the same way, you don't need a million people, just a hug.

The Master Awakens Your Space

"Ano-raniyan Mahato-mahiyan." ~Upanishads
("The smallest of the small is greater than the greatest.")

God is awareness itself,
resting as mirror-like effulgence.
We don't need words to pray because God is already present
as the space in whom prayer arises.
Awareness requires no thought to know itself,
and is the answer to its own prayer.
Pure meditation is not suppression of thoughts,
but effortless repose in the space
where thoughts are not yet born.
She who sinks deeper than thought receives a new language
whose words are waves of boundless silence.
Listen to that song with your whole body -
this is the real meditation.
The deepest prayer does not ask for anything,
but celebrates the prior condition of non-arising.
At first, the space of awareness free from thought
seems like deep sleep;
but its self-luminosity awakens in proximity
to the Witness who is already awake.
This is the role of the Guru.
The Master enters your life for one reason: to awaken space.
The Guru is not our financial advisor or marriage counselor,
and does not deserve to be burdened by silly questions.
The Guru is there to awaken the boundless radiance
you actually are.
When the Master's grace awakens that space in you,
every atom of your body abounds with infinite light,
which is precisely the same expanse that contains
all the galaxies.
The veil between the microcosm
and macrocosm melts away.
Inner and outer are one seamless continuum.
The universe is your own consciousness,
and the farthest inter-stellar distance
is as near as the surface of your eye.
Now you are prepared to meet another human being,
to gaze into that face of fire and say, without a single word,
"I see you..."
This is how little children meet on the playground.

Listen

Listening engenders silence, and silence is the mother of creation. The problem is, we only pretend to listen. While others are speaking, we're already talking back inside our heads.

The art of listening begins with a mourning dove at dawn, or a peeper in evening mist, and the depth of sacred emptiness between their songs.

Listening makes the whole planet fresh and green. Your very very quietness gives birth to a new creation.

Cloudless

Be awakened space. Use thought when a specific problem needs solving, then settle back into dynamic silence, the wonder and emptiness of a vast blue sky.

People who are always thinking, but not aware, search for peace. People who are aware, but not always thinking, are peace.

Meditation is not thinking. Meditation is the choice to quit the search and repose in the primordial clarity of awakened space.

Realizing that 'I' am no-thing but awareness, the clouds of the past dissolve, the clouds of the future don't arise, and the clarity of Presence outshines every form.

No matter how many stories the world tries to impose, they are like a mirage in awakened space. They find no little "me" to cling to. I am not a victim, and I am not to blame.