Friday, July 24, 2015

Volume 3 Issue 6

And Then the Spirit Recognized the Spirit in Matter

Andreas Tille CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Hello everybody.
Well I’m the storm.
Acknowledge blue group,
Which means I would be straight.
Primitive house perspective. [Vision of Lydia smiling sweetly, as the young adult she is now, one of the children we partly raised.]

What is the nature of the soul from the standpoint of house evolution?
Discuss the ramp.
I don’t know if you recall it.
It’s direct and it’s personal;
I would say pageantry.
This is transformation.

Can we go burning in the house?
You were probably correct in the course of the Law.
However,
Some Gods are missin’.

Soul evolution is our operation.
It can be their focus for the future,
Their laid in next life. [This line and preceding one came at the end of a dream and were describing a pride of lions, what the dream was about.]
Daddy, [voice of Mugu, the youngest in our house, 16]
I wanna tell yah,
Yesterday not late.


I advance students
In this yoga,
Providing actually
A flashlight.
Do you wanna block
Detergent?
I got it clean,
No kidding.
[vision of a fixed-type chair in front of an open bedroom door in the small living room of our home, with a copy of a VAK reduced format edition of Questions and Answers by the Mother on the seat of the chair, 1957-1958, though I couldn’t actually see the title and volume, just knew them because that’s the one I’m reading now. Our late housecat Toni was eating in her bowl on the right side of the chair facing it.]
Give everyone a book:
The Mother’s
Art Teacher.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

An Audience Song

by Donny Duke

Poetry enhances
Our little corner of life’s room.
It’s what we splash on our faces
To get the stories out.
You would contradict this song.
That’s the mystery.
And we look at an iceberg.
It roses from the ground.
Underneath it stalls in light.
A brief ocean
Has rounded in our ears
The equity
Of a larger see than ours.
Alimony this payment
To that stuff in us
At noontide’s sing.


I’ve rounded poetry.
You hear the contradiction?
It’s a blistery see
With what ails yah,
The exuberance
Of a state of being
Laughing at the stars.
It’s a transaction
Between you and sight
That calls all what you don’t see
Into play.
I measure my life by it
One poem at a time,
A poet in my room
Attended by verse itself.
You are my audience
Lines of poetry.
What people there
The contradictory note,
The flowers of which I speak.


From First From Within

A column dedicated to exploring the role of dreams, voices, and visions in the integral yoga. 

by Douglas M.

The dream I want to share is very similar to the one in my last article because it features a contemporary spiritual teacher, offers specific guidance and had a strong connection with an outer event.  The spiritual teacher in this one though is the Mother.

In this dream I’m in my bedroom.  There are other people and dogs there including Rosie.  Everyone leaves but Rosie.  I want to be alone so I walk her to the door and send her out closing the door behind her.  But when I turn around she’s standing there again.  So I send her out the door a second time and turn around and she’s standing there yet again.  This clues me in that this must be a dream so I try passing my hand through the wall but it won’t go.  So I see if I can jump higher than normal and I do with my hands passing through the ceiling a little bit.  The dream starts to break up so I close my eyes and ask the Mother to take me somewhere beautiful.  I’m in blackness but I feel myself traveling.  At one point I can feel something wrapped around my leg that feels kind of wiry for lack of a better word.  After a time I feel whatever it is unwrap and when it is gone I open my eyes and I’m in a beautiful area with open spaces and trees with big beautiful flowers.  White flowers if I remember correctly.  Then it starts getting dark and I start to get nervous but then decide to just let it get dark.  Then the stars come out and though it’s dark I don’t feel anxious or afraid.  I start walking around and I see an apparition that looks like the Mother come out from behind some trees.  I call to her and try to touch her and I start crying.  And then she’s fully there.  We’re on the ground on a blanket and I ask her if I can ask her a question and she says, “Of course.”  I ask her “How do I find my soul in a dream?”  She looks up and says something like “Follow them.”  I look up to see some white birds resting up in the tree above us.  While wondering what this means I wake up.

The day following the dream I went for ride in my kayak.  At one point I came out of a little side creek that was roofed in by mangrove trees and decided to just let myself drift for a minute and rest.  Looking up at the sky I saw the biggest flock of turkey buzzards I’ve ever seen.  Usually there’s no more than ten or so but in this flock there were at least fifty.   They weren’t circling either like they usually do but flying around pellmell in all directions.  Then I saw there was a small flock of eight or so white pelicans flying in formation amid the chaos.  They maintained their formation despite the horde of buzzards swooping and veering around them.  The birds seemed very tranquil in the midst of all this and I felt a soothing sense of peace enter into me as I watched them.  That peace lasted for about a half an hour or forty-five minutes afterwards I would estimate before it started to fade.  If I remember correctly a little bit still lingered as I was sitting on the dock and mentally made the connection between what I had seen and the Mother pointing up at the birds in my dream.

So now I guess I’ll move on to saying what I took from this but don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to my conclusions.I think what’s most important in the dream is the question I asked and the answer which was actually revealed in waking reality.  Though the question was “How do I find my soul in a dream?” at the time I looked at the answer more in terms of negotiating the waking state and cultivating a ripeness for reaching the soul in a dream.  Put simply the message I see here is “Stay in formation,” or you could say keep your focus or your concentration or your aspiration, amongst the buzzards of disturbing outer events trying to provoke a reaction in you as well as the chaos of your own unruly thoughtsand emotions which are always trying to carry one away.

The same idea though could be applied to maintaining concentration in the dream state because it takes concentration to maintain that traveling state in the blackness that I described in the dream above.   Usually I wake up or enter dreamless sleep though sometimes, like in this case, I was able to make it consciously to another dream. Another possibility though expounded on by my fellow Chipmunk Press contributor Donny is that you can arrive at your soul through that traveling space as well.  If your interested to read more about that then check out Donny’s essay on http://www.shift.is where he describes that experience.  Following that line of thought I should point out that in Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri the title character has to pass though numerous realms of inner experience before she reaches her soul.  In light of that it seems possible to me that in my journeying in the dream experience above perhaps I was headed toward the soul, completed a leg of the journey so to speak.

And then of course there’s Rosie and the thing that was wrapped around my leg.  Dogs seem to often represent lust and sexual desire though I’m not sure if that’s the case here.  I can’t remember what was going on at that time in my life to say for sure if I was trying hard to throw sexual desire “out of my room” so to speak.  Regardless it’s something I’m trying to get out of my room that keeps coming back.  I would wager the thing wrapped around my leg represented the same issue and it’s a good sign I got free of it and was able to reach the dream sequence with the Mother.

I think I’ve dissected the dream enough and should now address some other questions the reader might have.  You might be asking, “Well what is the soul anyway?  And why would I be looking for it in dreams?”  The truth is can’t answer the first question since I don’t know.  The reason I asked the Mother that question in the dream is because Iwas and still am looking myself.  Still though without making an ass out of myself I think I could state generally that the soul, or psychic being as it’s called in the integral yoga, is the divine or eternal portion of a man.  Beyond that I’d refer the reader to the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.1 As for why one would look for it in the dream state, my belief is that the soul is more accessible to us in dream because you’re already one step closer to it than when you’re awake and completely externalized.  In fact, a whole system of Tibetan dream yoga was created in order to take advantage of the sleep and dream states in order to access and dwell in ‘primordial consciousness’.2

The next question the reader might be asking is why would finding the soul be desirable?  Well in the integral yoga one of the goals is for the soul or psychic being to ‘come forward’ so to speak and govern the mind, life and body, turning them toward and making them pure instruments for the divine life.  Here I’d like to share a quote from the Mother about how this can happen:

Generally one has a series of experiences of identification, very intense at first, which later gradually diminish, and then one day you find that they have disappeared. Still you must not be disturbed, for it is quite a common phenomenon. But next time—the second time—the contact is more easily obtained. And then comes a moment, which is not very far off, when as soon as one concentrates and aspires, one gets a contact. One may not have the power of keeping it all the time, but can get it at will. Then, from that moment things become very easy.  When one feels a difficulty or there is a problem to be solved, when one wants to make progress or there is just a depression to conquer or an obstacle to be overcome or else simply for the joy of identification (for it is an experience that gives a veryconcrete joy; at the moment of identification one truly feels a very, very great joy), then, at any moment whatever, one may pause, concentrate for a while and aspire, and quite naturally the contact is established and all problems which were to be solved are solved. Simply to concentrate—to sit down and concentrate—to aspire in this way, and the contact is made, so to say, instantaneously.

There comes a time, as I said, when this does not leave you, that is, it is in the depths of the consciousness and supports all that you do, and you never lose the contact. Then many things disappear. For instance, depression is one of these things, discontentment, revolt, fatigue, depression, all these difficulties.  And if one makes it a habit to step back, as we say, in one’s consciousness and see on the screen of one’s psychic consciousness—see all the circumstances, all the events, all the ideas, all the knowledge, everything—at that moment one sees that and has an altogether sure guide for everything that one may do. But this is bound to take a very long time to come.3

If you’re like me and you’ve reached the point where you realize how lost and ignorant you are and what a blundering instrument even the most sharpened human reason is then the soul coming forward starts to look pretty desirable.  Finding the soul in a dream isn’t the same as it coming forward but it seems to me that making a first conscious connection with it in dream would help to facilitate that process.

But one of the problems I have not just with finding the soul, but with accomplishing anything in the sadhana is getting the vital to come on board in a sustained way.  As you might imagine after I had this dream I had a short sadhana rally and I also had another in the process of writing this article.  For me though the vital enthusiasm in rallies like this fades away or is engulfed in some kind of upheaval after a while

So this brings me back to where I ended my last article with the problem of how do you get the vital to commit itself fully to the spiritual endeavor?Here I’d like to share a quote from the Mother on that subject.

Naturally it is very difficult to establish a constant contact between the most external physical consciousness and the psychic consciousness, and oh! the physical consciousness has plenty of goodwill; it is very regular, it tries a great deal, but it is slow and heavy, it takes long, it is difficult to move it. It does not get tired, but it makes no effort; it goes its way, quietly. Itcan take centuries to put the external consciousness in contactwith the psychic. But for some reason or other the vital takes ahand in it. A passion seizes it. It wants this contact (for somereason or other, which is not always a spiritual reason), but itwants this contact. It wants it with all its energy, all its strength,all its passion, all its fervour: in three months the thing is done.

So then, take great care of it. Treat it with great consideration but never submit to it. For it will drag you into all kinds of troublesome and untoward experiments; and if you succeed in convincing it in some way or other, then you will advance with giant strides on the path.4

Like I pointed out last time you can ask the Divine to change the vital and be patient with the process meanwhile doing your best not to let it drive your thoughts and emotions in negative ways.  Here though the Mother brings up the idea of convincing it.   That would mean persuading it and that’s something everyone does at times.   I’m sure everyone has had the experience of the vital getting into a panic and telling ourselves to calm down the same way you would with another person who’s in a tizzy.  Everyone has probably also had the experience of getting fed up with the vital and telling it to shut up.  So I think it clear that a person could get more proactive about convincing the vital.  But how should one go about it?  I’m not sure but if I have any success I’ll be sure to share the insight.

Notes and References
     1. A fellow named A.S. Dalal has put together some great compilations of the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother one of which is titled The Psychic Being
     2. There are a number of books on this subject but one I like is Dreaming Yourself Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga for Insight and Transformation by Alan Wallace.  The term ‘primordial consciousness’ is what he uses in his book.
     3. Collected Works of the Mother Volume 6: Questions and Answers 1954, pgs 33-34.
     4. Collected Works of the Mother Volume 5: Questions and Answers 1953, pgs 257-258.




Help You From the Rearview Mirror
(This article was originally published on the website  The Awakened State to an audience unfamiliar with either Supermind or the Integral Yoga.)

By Donny Duke


Who’s Driving the Dreambus? (2009) That’s an insightful and inviting title for a film that interviews some of the people in contemporary non-duality spirituality (Advaita) who say or are said to be Awakened: Tony Parsons, Jeff Foster, Timothy Freke, Genpo Roshi, Gangaji, Toni Packer, Amit Goswami, and Guy Smith. It’s described by the filmmakers as “a feature-length documentary exploring life’s most profound mystery, ‘Who am I?’”

Explore that mystery it does, and from an extraordinary perspective: a rare station of consciousness experienced by people from all faiths and all cultures down through the ages, hence panhuman, one considered spiritual or elevated because it’s beyond the ego, a state ontologically hard to define and equally difficult to divine who’s actually there and who’s just able to sound like they are, difficulties that have been a major source of debate and division in spirituality since the beginning I’d imagine because we’re talking about realization, here called Awakening.

While the film does explore the ontological question, the latter question of which of those interviewed is in that state and who isn’t this film does not bridge or even discuss. Only the title suggests it, asking, from one possible interpretation, which one of those interviewed is driving the dreambus, that here meaning something in the neighborhood of the bus to Awakening, in other words, who is Awakened? And when you interpret the title as asking is there anyone driving the dreambus (if anyone’s really there in the driver’s seat at all), dreambus here meaning this dream of a body and a world, neither does the film bridge existence, nor, in my view, even the spiritual path.

According to those interviewed there is no spiritual path (or anything else: you, I, or the world) because everything is one, or it just ‘is’, some mystery we cannot hope to penetrate. For us staring fruitlessly at that impenetrable mystery, it boils down to a nullity of everything in oneness or ‘isness’, and in fact when your consciousness is seated there you experience that nullity, and you no longer have a self-reflective consciousness, no I or inner chatter, hence Silent Mind and no-self it’s also called, and it’s as though you live in the infinite vast because there are no objects in your consciousness and no boundaries between you and everything else save the body and some little sliver of something never in view.

It’s quite a shock to go into the Silence, what it’s called in other circles, and if you visit that place if only for a moment your whole view of things shifts to that ‘nullity in oneness’ when you return to normal mind, so convincing is the experience, like you know it’s the background of everything, or so it seems, a pure undifferentiated consciousness, basic raw awareness and nothing else, the One, who doesn’t from that perspective even appear aware, since all sense of God and soul vanishes too with the loss of a self and a center.

If this really were the ultimate place in consciousness and oneness we can get to and dwell in, in all infinity and beyond, in all the universes and what’s bigger than universes, then I’d say mainstream science is on the right track with its reductionist materialism, reducing everything to material process, meaning that everything is the result of that, consciousness too just the interaction of chemicals in the brain and spinal column. And I’d say that because it amounts to the same thing as science in saying consciousness has no higher purpose, no intent in it or beyond it except that which hapless creatures such as ourselves put in it, creatures that in reality do not even exist: in other words, meaninglessness, where nonexistence is supreme.

However, in that station itself, and here’s the difficulty of seeing beyond it, there is that peace that passes understanding and in most cases, not all, an unbounded joy not dependent on outer circumstances. Attachment and desire are no longer a problem because they don’t arise. Contentment in nothing and the sheer freedom that entails makes not only ego consciousness but also any other possible station appear a state of bondage, and so it’s understandable if you’re there or have been there to feel that there’s no station beyond (because there’s nothing here in the first place!).

Experientially, though, at the fullest manifestation of the station described above, at its deepest in emptiness and silence, which none of those interviewed seem to have experienced or to even know about, not only the mind shuts off but the respiration and heartbeat too, and, if conditions are right, you feel at the base of the spine something like a rocket blasting off (the kundalini smote stark awake), a rocket that appears to take the seat of the consciousness up out the top of the head. I say appears because I aborted the ascension when I experienced that deepest state of Silent Mind (you can read a brief description in a published essay here: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/03/winged-information-a-peer-into-the-mountaintop-donny-duke/)

Based on that experience and ones where I did go into the regions (or chakras) overhead, though not from the Silence, and what I’ve read of others’ experiences, it stands to reason it’s from that deepest emptiness that you go up out through the crown chakra to either leave phenomenal existence in Nirvana, if that indeed is the case (I suspect it’s not so final), or go up into the higher self, or Supermind as it’s called in an Indian yoga. It depends on where you’re orientated to go, on your soul’s orientation, not your mind’s choice.

Like being in the emptiness, this is not iffy business, and there’s no guessing involved. It cannot be confused with an out of body experience because you remain very much within You, though an overhead extension of you you're probably not aware you have. You go out the top of your head, all your awareness, the seat of your consciousness, and see from there, hear from there, have no feeling of being in the body below you other than seeing it down there inhabited by the little self shut up in its little prison, though this describes an unmanifested Supermind several meters above a little self on the earth plane. What position it has in relation to the body when it’s manifested is beyond my knowledge, but, according to the Integral Yoga, the full manifestation would mean a divinized body and earth too, what the hope of the New Age and of the kingdom of heaven on earth hint at, though Supermind is beyond heaven and the cosmic Gods, beyond the confines of the cosmos. You can find a detailed description of that experience here: http://www.shift.is/2015/03/whats-bigger-than-the-universe-hang-on-whats-bigger-than-everything/

 

In that higher self you do experience an individual existence, though it’s egoless like the Silence, know yourself as the true individual that is evolving little selves through time, that line of many lives you ride above, bringing them to it, an individuality based on oneness, the One, but here it’s aware, not a nonexistence as it seems in the emptiness, though it’s still an ever impenetrable mystery. You know yourself as a symbol of That, as if it has impossibly provided a driving car of timelessness in time to bring all to it.

One in the essence of consciousness means, if you really are, that you see and act at multiple poles of experience at the same time, have an all-vision of everything happening and all-being of everything that exists, or have some concentric degree of that like in Supermind, and you can see through anything you look at, for example see through whatever roof or ceiling separates you from your little self, seeing the essence or nature of anything that meets your gaze. The utter stillness, peace, joy, and compassion for all are no longer grounded in emptiness but in fullness unimaginable, fullness of being.

Nor is this the ultimate station of consciousness, what you know seeing from Supermind because you’re pointed more up to the regions above than down to the little I, unlike the cosmic Gods, who are primarily concerned with little lives like ours. There’s no end to the evolution of consciousness. From Supermind you go to ever more all-encompassing stations of consciousness all the way to the One, to express in a linear fashion what isn’t linear, which, as it appears from this ‘one pole of experience’ at a time existence, you can never get to but only are always becoming. In Supermind itself, however, you are the One, and that there is an ever more all-encompassing seeing of the ‘all at once’ does not negate either your being or becoming, contrary to non-identity described above where you aren’t the One or anybody else for that matter.

In no-self you only see oneness and live in its vast store content with your see, and, also in contrast to Supermind, you’re both in the body and in the one pole of experience existence, though without an ego or any other sense of self and identity. Another contrast is in the emptiness you’re in a blissful ignorance unaware and unconcerned with either life after death or the past and future, as those interviewed repeatedly point out. According to the Integral Yoga, that has as its foundation a knowledge based on many experiences of the higher self and not only on one as I have, in Supermind, however, nothing is unknown to you, though you might have to bring something into view if it’s not, and you live in the now of the eternal moment, in undivided time, which is a seeing of the past, present, and future at the same time, what can only be possible when you move, live, and have your being in multiple poles of experience simultaneously, naturally.

I’m not a fan of New Age spirituality, but I give it credit for keeping this hope alive, this ancient and hidden knowledge of who we are up top, albeit confusedly. Contemporary spirituality as a whole laughs at New Age thought, but it cannot see out of that box of emptiness, due to such an influence of Buddhism, particularly Zen, on spirituality today. In fact, it’s often said, by those interviewed and others similarly minded, that seeking is fruitless because you’re already there (but ask yourself this: is it manifested yet?), and so spiritual practice, if it’s admitted at all, is centered on mindfulness and/or meditation, stilling the thought, not identifying with the I or any separation or distinction.

If you practice Avaita, or non-duality spirituality, you may or may not think, read, eat, exercise, or whatever, in a way that’s conducive to that mindfulness, but chances are you probably do. You don’t, however, as rule accept divine or spirit aid, the guidance of your soul, the help of your animal powers, use sequent number, synchronicity, power spots, and significant calendar days such as full moon, your birthday, the solstices and equinoxes, or even give serious attention to dreams, visions, and inner voices (all of which I use avidly). Here too New Age spirituality saves us from putting to sleep completely the ways and means of ascension, although at the same time it has everything thrown together in such a pell-mell fashion it’s not easy to choose between what helps and what definitely doesn’t.

Even to go into that place at the top of mind I’ve called the emptiness and the Silence (there are so many names for it, attesting to its panhuman existence) you need all the help you can get, and so how much more so to get to Supermind, or, to say it differently, not only to get to that emptiness but through it to the fullness of Supermind, to be orientated there. The trick is to be able to discern what help is natural to our individuality and humanity as whole in a divine transformation and what is not or frivolous. It’s tricky, like walking a razor’s edge, because when you begin to open the inner consciousness so many things come flooding in it seems pointing to your heights, not only the all too plentiful purposeful distractions orchestrated by powers hostile to divinity, but also “distractions in gold cuffs” my muse (the muse of poetry) calls them, because they can also be divine distractions, like getting sidetracked from your own divine transformation with Jesus, Krishna, some other divine name, or a divinely inspired book, though avoiding all the distractions, divine or undivine, in no way precludes an indispensible, integral, and unconditional surrender to the Supreme, without which a divine transformation isn’t possible. Nor does it preclude using and adoring some divine name as your guide to get there. They just wouldn’t be the goal.

If, however, you are content with gold cuffs and the cosmic Gods (“the story Gods” in my muse) and want nothing more than to draw ever nigh to some divine person, have no drive to exceed the human formula and go up into Supermind (who would also be coming down to you), then you’ll be in good company and on hallowed ground, but just make sure it’s your soul’s choice. A good question: where would aliens or channeled entities fit into all of this? Or, I should ask, do they?

So far this may seem like just a bunch of philosophy, but shot through it are brief descriptions of my personal experience (which is by no means exhaustive), else I couldn’t describe what I’m describing, and so it’s more the result of experience than thought, hence engaged philosophy. Though we all have our personal truth, our uniqueness in Spirit, that silent empty station of consciousness is at the top of everyone’s mind, since it’s truth in its most basic sense, meaning simply what is, not a name or ideal to believe in, and everyone has a higher self above them, as both become visible when you reach them with the seat of your consciousness, your awareness. In other words they exist independent of belief.

You don’t have to take my word for it; see for yourself if you are able. I didn’t believe in Supermind before experiencing it, had no idea it was even there. I did know about the emptiness, but upon experiencing it I found it to be as ineffable and hard to describe in language as mystics for thousands of years have said it is. Nothing really prepares you for its hard to bear intensity. For reasons that probably has to do with enabling me to see out of that box of emptiness, seeing something’s beyond it, I first experienced Supermind and then a year later the Silence (several times since that initial supramental experience I’ve gone overhead some distance, though not yet again to that height). Even having seen what’s above it beforehand, that emptiness was still overwhelming. I greatly needed spiritual aid.

After the Silence I was devastated. I had seen that the world is an illusion and a cheat, myself included, and so there was no reason to continue spiritual practice, or even school for that matter (I was studying Classical Greek in the university at the time). In fact, there was no reason to do anything except wait for death as comfortably as I could. If I would’ve stayed in the Silence, while adjustment to it would be difficult, it would’ve been much easier, since you are like I said content, and so the meaninglessness is just that, nothing at all. It’s hard to give the picture of my utter despair because it wasn’t depression; the peace from the experience lasted weeks.

About two weeks after the experience, as I was on the verge of stopping everything, sadhana, school, what have you, I flung myself on my bed one afternoon and was enveloped in flaming vision. It happened without any trigger. All was in storm at sea at night, and a purple sky was sending down lightning bolts on water just a slightly different shade of violet than it, water that was mad with waves. Riding on the waves not the least bothered by the storm was a young Caucasian woman on a white horse dressed in traditional American Indian buckskin, not as a squaw but as a warrior. As I looked into her eyes I found myself looking through innumerable eyes at the same time, hers included, not all eyes there are but saw as she saw through all the beings like her, and it was as though they were one being seeing and experiencing existence through all those many eyes, though each one was its own distinct personality acting on its own scene, which was in identity-unison with all the rest. Just a flash that seeing was, and then I was back behind my own eyes looking at her again riding so expertly that storm. She looked at me and gave me a smile that held within it all I hold dear about love, and she said, in a line of poetry I lost, something like, “Nirvana expresses itself through the forms.”

The vision vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, but it put my whole world back in place. It used the word Nirvana for That because I was studying Buddhism at the time, and voice and vision uses what you know and believe in. To interpret what she said I was told that existence is not meaningless because the One, or whatever you want to call the Absolute, expresses itself through existence, or samsara as the Buddhists would call it. In other words, these symbol lives and worlds are real because That is behind them, what they are in reality. So the world and its inhabitants and all above it are a living symbols and not illusions, and that makes all the difference in the world.

That woman on the horse was a representation of my Supermind, what became apparent to me afterwards, whose nature is expressed in the symbols of the vision, i.e. a rider of storms, feminine in a masculine role, and ‘Western’ or ‘White’ but dressed in the life of native or tribal culture, all of which is proving to be my basic nature also, of this little self too. Though at the time I called her (them) the Nirvana people, because I was using the symbols of Buddhism, all those many eyes were the one Supermind, something I only glanced at when I was in Supermind so briefly I was there and such a shock it was just to see through everything as I did. At the time I had no name for it, as I was years from encountering the Integral Yoga, and I just called Supermind ‘who I really am’.

When I was able to integrate the experience of the Silence with that of Supermind, in my understanding, I left Buddhism’s ideal behind, though its thought and technique to get to the emptiness are unparalleled, which I yet use, since that no-self is a way station on the way to the Truth Consciousness (Supermind) and must be experienced and surpassed. Also a good question: where does God fit into the picture? I think I might venture to answer that one. Supermind is the first rung on the ladder of God above or beyond the universe, in other words, God from there on up.

Now, after saying all this, I can go back to the beginning and say that there is no spiritual path, not because all is one and therefore negated, but because all is One and at the same time the path to return there, and that’s a supreme positive. So life itself is the spiritual path, afterlife too. Existence is that whether we realize it or not. We evolve despite ourselves, although we can certainly speed things up conceiving of for convenience sake a spiritual path. And while on that path there are check points, like emptiness and Supermind, as well as other things, the soul change (surfacing the soul) for one, they aren’t the destination, just take you closer to it, and so they hold no all-importance, and making them the goal is as much of a trap as ignoring them altogether, believe me, but it is good to know of them, since your understanding and not only your heart take you forward on the path, and what the mind sees it can identify with, like what the soul envisions creates a world or a universe.

So relax, though you are God like many think, maybe even yourself, you’ll only know yourself God when you can see through innumerable eyes at the same time, and you would also have superpowers.

As far as the question of being Awakened or not, I think the film in question gives a good picture of how different that is from being in ego consciousness when it shows that not as a philosophy but as a radical change of consciousness on the part of those interviewed. Are you there?

I'll finish with poems from my Twitter feed https://twitter.com/donnyduke7/media

(note: about the possibility of using one such as I to 'see' Supermind, I would refer you to a French writer, seer, inmate of the ashram, and teacher at the ashram school, Archaka and his Images of the Future, the English translation.)