Meditation is the sadhana,
Of turning your attention towards the source.
It is, in a way, an endless ongoing process,
Of deeper and deeper establishment.
Fixed self in a changing world or changing self in a fixed world
How do you experience reality?
# Do you feel like a [relatively fixed self] in a [changing world]?
OR
# Do you feel like a [changing self] in a [relatively steady world]?
This relationship between self and world experienced,
Depends on the relativity of rates of change between the 2.
# A more changing world, unchanging self = fixed self in a changing world experience.
# A more changing self, and unchanging world = changing self in a fixed world experience.
Time is the creator, maintainer, and dissoluter of the self.
Time is the ocean, that pushes out the wave of self -> makes the wave ride through -> and reabsorbs the wave back into itself.
This process is however not a single linear chain.
There are multiple overlapping dimensions.
For instance, the biological cycle itself is one of the important dimensions.
There is the process from:
Childhood -> Teens -> Adulthood -> Old age.
So in childhood, the self is growing and changing much faster than the environment around.
Something similar happens in teenage years too, there is a lot of change and growth in other dimensions.
So in both these times, you are relatively changing much faster than the world around you which may appear to be more fixed/steady/cyclic of sort.
In adulthood, once the self is stabilized, there is the maintenance (more or less) steady stage, there might be an experience of:
# Being a fixed self in a fixed world
# Or fixed self in a changing world (if there are catalysts from the environ).
The other dimension I can think of is the astrological sign,
Whether it is: Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable.
# Cardinal signs not only maintain but also build/grow the self further.
They are like the rising wave.
They are equivalent of the Brahma creation principle.
# Fixed signs maintain the self, like the steady wave.
They are the equivalent of the Vishnu maintenance principle.
# Mutable signs are like the returning wave,
Merging back into the ocean.
They are the equivalent of the Shiva dissolver/redeemer principle.
Then there could also be the soul’s age as another dimension,
The larger cycle on which the subtle body rides in time.
From: Infant soul -> Child soul -> Young soul -> Mature soul -> Old soul.
So this is similar to the biological stages in principle but pertaining to the subtle body.
I have outlined 3 dimensions,
But there might be a plethora of such dimensions,
Determining the character of one’s experience.
Doors open, Doors close
When something looks possible/doable to you, that door is open.
When something looks impossible/undoable to you, that door is closed.
Every relation/person is also a door,
That is open or closed to you.
They in-turn open other doors to things,
And/or open doors to other people,
Who then act as doors to more things and people,
And so on…
Doors can open in a cascade, like dominos falling,
And open a whole new vista of experience for you,
And all of it could be from a single door (a person you suddenly made contact with).
The reverse can happen too,
That is, all of your current vast arrays of doors can also start closing up in a rapid cascade.
A bodily problem can do that, it can just shutdown your open doors rapidly in no time.
Similarly a single relation with an difficult person can bring so much destruction,
That most of your doors could close off from that.
A good time in your life is when doors were opening and opening for you,
Keeping fresh enjoyments piling over one another.
A bad time is when doors keep on closing imprisoning you further and further,
Giving you the grief of loss again and again.
Time gives and takes all
The cycle of birth and death,
Seems to have a very close analogy with the water cycle, in my understanding.
As the water vapor rises, the air gets colder,
Condensation happens, rain clouds begin to form,
It rains over the mountains,
Forming various river streams.
Various ice formations from the top of the mountains also mix into these streams.
The streams carry the ice along with them in their journey.
They slowly gather more and more material.
Some of these streams become mighty rivers,
Some of these streams remain fairly thin,
Some of these streams crash somewhere and stop.
Some streams go alone all the way.
Some streams confluence and form large rivers.
Finally, all of the water (from all the streams) evaporates,
And becomes vapor and rises.
In this manner, the cycle goes on and on.
Every incarnation seems like a unique path/stream.
It descends upon the point of birth(the mountains),
Gathering unique material along its path,
And in the end, the water leaves everything behind,
And rises out of all the matter gathered.
Whether the stream was abruptly brought to a stop,
Or whether it joined the ocean and then vaporized from there,
The evaporation eventually happens nevertheless.
Maybe the stream may end up in a hot place causing rapid evaporation,
Or the stream may end up in a cold place causing slow evaporation,
But that is only a difference in degree, not essence.
The essentially process whether shortened or lengthened is still going to happen.
Our spirit-energy I feel is like water in essence.
It can mix with the earth in all its 3 states – existing as ice, water, vapor.
It mixes with the earth and identifies with various kinds of solid, liquid, and gaseous material,
But all of the material can be distilled out to give back pure ice, water, or vapor.
Time gives all and takes all,
But nothing of true value is ever gained or lost.
Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists.
All loss is only loss of the illusion of taking the appearance to be real.
No thing exists, only ‘nothing’ exists.
Insights on time-stream
The stream of time, the flow of time,
Ascends and Descends.
Descends into this density of creation as birth in this plane,
Ascends back into a higher dimension as death from this plane.
In between the ascent and descent, it stays more or less cyclic,
Thus performing creation, maintenance, and destruction,
By descent, maintenance, and ascent.
When the time-stream or flow,
Brings you what you want,
It is essentially growing what it itself created.
It grows its own accumulated creation.
If the time stream or flow,
Changes its channel, frequency, or pattern,
Against the accumulation it has previously forged,
Then it resists on its old accumulation/creation,
And transforms it with input from the new stream,
And this ends with the formation of a new self,
Which may or may not complete itself,
Because the next time shift could happen before the process completes.
So a strong personality in the world,
Is created when the time stream is constantly maintaining its focus,
And growing the accumulation in a steady direction.
A chaotic suffering personality is created,
When the time streams are changing/shifting and always at odds with each other,
And thereby having all the different accumulations resist against each other.
When time ascends,
It fades and thins out its own accumulation,
And finally moves into a higher dimension.
A good analogy would be:
Lowering a pencil onto the paper = Time flow descent.
Starting to draw a thin line = Birth into this density.
Pressing harder on the paper = Increasing the accumulation
Maintaining the pressure more or less = Time flow maintenance/plateauing.
Starting to lighten the pressure = Time flow ascent.
Taking the pen off the paper = Death from this density into a higher dimension.
The pen (let’s say) still keeps drawing continuously,
But now since it is in the air, it does not leave a mark on the paper (this plane).
So there are:
Good time streams to be enjoyed ——– Difficult time streams to be weathered.
I could also as well call it the winds of time vs. streams of time.
One is created, shaped, and dissolved, by the resultant of these forces and their streams.
The ego is the internalization of other’s expectations from you, which you do for survival
We internalize, maintain, and forward the structures of all the others who loved us in whatever way, at whatever level, to continue to attract similar such people who will like and support us in future, and so on.
This is like a memory driven cyclic process, that strives to maintain its core identity, and expand and enhance it.
The relational-ego usually starts with the parents, and then extends itself from there.
The love for the offspring from the parents side and for the parents from the child’s side is biologically supported.
The wheel-hub is created from those primary relations, i.e. the core self-concept, and then it extends its spokes from there as more interaction and exposure to the world happens.
It is a sort of primary imitation and emulation.
I’d say deep devotion/admiration/respect evokes mirroring/imitation.
This may be happening naturally to an infant born into this world.
A deep and vast subliminal absorption takes place in the formative years.
Keeping the individual’s past (karmic memory) aside,
Even just observing the tangible transmission of genetics from generation to generation in the lineage,
I feel the blueprints (genetic memories) are transmitted through and across each generation.
For instance, all the people that loved and supported your grandparents/parents, those faces will look familiar and appealing to you too in some way,
And you may be repelled towards all those who hurt and rejected them in the past.
Literally, the word familiar, points to something to do with familial.
One perspective of all of this is that, this is all Prakriti/Nature.
And that it is all survival based.
Whatever enabled the survival of your ancestors for 7+ generations prior to you,
The memory of all of it is functioning as a blueprint.
Could this be a huge basis of all of our attractions/repulsions to things/people/places etc.?
It is as if this 7-generational worth memory is firing within your experience signaling all kinds of desires/aversions and so on, in experience.
Another aspect is that:
“Every action is propelled from its dual.”
Potential charge -> Kinetic charge.
It is like a battery discharge.
So in this context,
“One could be discharging the potential charges of the family lineage one was born into.”
For example:
Say, if generations have nurtured a deep desire for wealth and due to lack of opportunity they could only keep dreaming about it intensely,
It may happen that the new offspring born into the lineage may have a much better environment and loads of opportunities for wealth.
This offspring may then feel a massive desire to seek wealth with an unstoppable inner force driving it.
The deeper force could be from the imagination of the sheer enjoyment/pleasure of it and/or for the atonement of family/lineage shame (low status) about being poor/unworthy/undeserving etc.
It depends on the undercurrents that are running through the lineage finding expression through the offspring.
If the parent is already successful, then the child simply derives meaning and purpose from that. It would emulate that and try to get those same rewards.
If the parent himself/herself is seeking, then the child also furthers that search as the purpose.
So a settled parent begets a settled child.
A seeking parent begets a seeking child.
This may not be all in the open and articulated.
In fact very little of it may be openly spoken about and conscious to the parent.
The seeds even reveal their potencies only after they sprout up a bit after some opportunity to develop is present.
Else they are too feeble and will not be detectable except by the most sensitive person.
This genetic lineage can be at different stages of maturity and evolution.
The role you play here is an emergent one.
It builds over time as you deepen your relationship with it.
I’ll now try to fit in karmic memory (one’s individual past) into this equation.
This is how I understand it:
For a soul with karmic memory identity, it joins into the genetic memory lineage something similar to how someone with some IT work experience joins a new IT company.
The role/position/environment of this new IT company, I see as genetic memory and its conditions/forces/pressures.
The person’s prior experience (“transferable skills abstracted” as opposed to the concrete discrete knowledge he carried when in each of the roles in his prior companies) before he joined the job = karmic memory.
So just like one did not create anything in the new company one has now joined, the genetic lineage is something that you did not create.
You simply join into it at some role/responsibility and then figure it out from there and get familiar with it as time goes on.
So entering into a genetic lineage is something you become conscious of over time with exploration.
An analogy for this could be of: A mahout and an elephant.
The mahout is the soul (karmic body) and the elephant is the genetic body inherited.
So there are different dimensions of intelligence that work independently and interdependently.
For instance, the elephant can take care of itself without the mahout too.
It knows when it wants to eat, sleep, drink water etc.
It has a life, instinct, and intelligence of its own.
Even an experienced mahout, would have to learn about the new elephant he has been given, and then develop a good relationship with it, before he can direct it to his will.
In the order of identities therefore there are 3 dimensions:
The numinous -> The abstract -> The concrete/literal
Pure spirit/pure consciousness/pure intelligence -> Soul (karmic memory identity) -> Ego (genetics + person’s relational memories from interaction with the world – from the various time-space-people paths it has passed through).
So it is technically possible to transcend and go beyond the soul karmic identity too and move into pure intelligence/spirit.
In terms of dimensions in this realm, in my understanding:
6th dimension = The space of all genetics
5th dimension = The space of your lineage genetics
4th dimension = The astrological ‘time-path-trace’ for your lifetime
3rd dimension = The current space-time location you are in.
The changeless and freedom to change
The degree to which you root yourself in the changeless,
To that degree, you give yourself the freedom to change.
What will I do with a billion dollars
I can only sleep in 1 bed at a time.
I can only be in 1 room at a time.
I can only be in 1 place at a time.
I can only eat 1 meal at a time.
I can only sit at 1 table at a time.
I can only use 1 laptop at a time.
I can only use 1 phone at a time.
I can only live 1 lifetime of around 100 years.
I cannot sleep in 100 beds at a time.
I cannot be in 100 rooms at a time.
I cannot be in 100 places at a time.
I cannot eat 100 meals at a time.
I cannot sit at 100 tables at a time.
I cannot use a 100 laptops at a time.
I cannot use a 100 phones at a time.
I cannot live for 10000 years.
What will I do with a billion dollars,
If I can just be and do only 1 thing at a time, and live only for 100 years?!
The death process
The withdrawal of the projection:
The world falls back onto the Indriyas (senses),
The Indriyas (senses) fall back onto Manas (mind),
The Manas falls back into the Pranas (life energies/breath),
The Pranas fall back into Tejas (fire/heat of the body),
Lastly, Tejas falls back into Sat (reality).
What is ‘Vision’
From my contemplation and experience,
Vision is to “See through”.
Vision is the act of penetration through the phenomenology of the world,
So as to never lose sight of the essence,
Which is the “ineffable infinite mystery” that underlies all.
Vision comes from transcendence.
The greater the transcendence, the greater the vision.
Vision is the capacity to recognize emptiness (appearances) and no-thingness.
To see that no thing/form is real,
And that the reality underlying things/forms is not a thing at all.
It is to see that every point of perception in your experience,
Is a doorway or window into the infinite.
It is when your light passes through everything,
And is not stopped by anything.
Journey to the Abstract 