Transcending the Cosmic Mandala – Easy Death


Originally published in The Dawn Horse Testament (1991 edition)
by Adi Da Samraj (The Dawn Horse Press)

All copyright materials are used under authority of the
Fair Use statute and United State Code, Title 17

The Cosmic Mandala

The Entire Cosmic Mandala, Including The Divine Star, May Be Perceived Even In gross internal vision. The Divine Star and The Cosmic Mandala Are Tangibly Projected Even Into The Structural Pattern Of the gross body, including the brain, of every human being, Just As They Are Also Projected Into every body-mind, plane, or realm of experience In The Cosmic Domain. Therefore, those who Practice Meditation In The Way Of The Heart May, Before Long, Have some visionary experience Of The Cosmic Mandala and Even The Objective White Star.

The Great Mandala Of The conditional or Cosmic Domain May Appear In Vision, Both during life and after death. The various Cosmic planes or worlds May Be perceived, As In a dream, or More Concretely, With Varying Degrees Of Clarity, Detail, and Completeness, With all their kinds of beings, forms, and events, and With Varying Degrees Of Your Participation.

Just So, The Great Cosmic Mandala Itself May Be Perceived In Vision. It Appears As A Circle. The Circle Is Itself A Gathering Of Circles, Each Set Within The Other, Concentric, Formed As A Radiant Wheel or A Well or A Tunnel Of Great Formative Lights. The Outer Ring Is Narrow and Red In Color. The Next Ring Is Yellow, and It Is Wide. Then There Is Another Narrow Ring, Of A Moonlike Whiteness. Then Another Narrow Ring, Apparently Black, or The Color Of Indigo. And The Last Ring, At The Center, Is A Radiant Blue, Wide As The Yellow. In The Center Of The Radiant Blue Is The Brilliant Clear White Five-Pointed Star.

Each Ring Of Color Is An Energy-Field Of A Certain Range Of Vibration. Within Each Ring, There Are Countless worlds and beings, each Characterized and limited By The Vibratory Field In Which they appear. The Outer Rings Are Grosser, or Of A Lower Vibration, and Existence In Them Is Brief and Difficult. Those Closest To The Center Are Subtler, or Of A Higher Vibration, and Existence In Them Is More Pleasurable, More Prolonged, Less Threatened, but Nonetheless conditional, Changing, Temporary, Made Of many limits, and Moved By A Necessary Struggle. The Radiant Blue Is The Most Subtle, and Existence There Is limited By Great Powers and Great Longing For Divine Love-Bliss, Which Is Finally Realized Only In The Exceedingly “Bright” Feeling-Domain Of Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Divine Love-Bliss. And the human world Is Also Within This Cosmic Mandala Of Lights, In The Outer or Grosser Fields Of Red and Yellow.

The Vision Of The Cosmic Mandala May Be Perceived As A Whole, or In Part, Either Enlarged Or Reduced To A Point. Therefore, A Point or A Spot or A Circle May Be Perceived, Made Of Any Color, or A Group Of Any Of The Rings Of Associated Color. In any moment, A Sudden Spot Of light May Be Perceived To Fly Out Of the eyes, or one of the eyes, or Else Flash Before the internal vision, Attractively.


The following is an EXCERPT from a talk published in the book, EASY DEATH (1983) –
Part IV: Transcending the Cosmic Mandala, chapter 31 – The Cosmic Mandala

by Da Free John, July 11, 1982
Which can be purchased at The Dawn Horse Press

All copyright materials are used under authority of the
Fair Use statute and United State Code, Title 17


The Cosmic Mandala

 

MASTER DA FREE JOHN: If attention were free to simply see the universal mechanism in which the phenomena of near-death experiences are arising, however, what would be seen is a Mandala of light, or light-energy, made of concentric circles.

When we view this Mandala of light-energy, at first a dark field appears. That dark field may show signs of patterning-golden-yellow lightning flashes, or a geometric composition of lines made of bluish yellow or silvery-gold light. Then, toward the center of this dark field, a golden-yellow field will appear. Further toward the middle of that golden-yellow circle or field is a brilliant blue field, and between the golden-yellow field and the brilliant blue field, surrounding the central blue field, is an aura of dark indigo light. If the vision continues even further, at the very center of this blue field is a white brightness. It may be visualized as a very clearly defined star with five points, or it may be just a brilliant whiteness, flashing out of the center of the blue.

If people talk about seeing down a tunnel when they are entering into the near-death state or the after-death state, generally the tunnel is the indigo field that surrounds the blue. As they enter into the blue, they seem to pass down a long tunnel made of the indigo field. Then they see into the blue field itself, and if they do not become involved in the blue field, they will see beyond its possible visionary phenomena or apparitions. The blue field itself will seem like a tunnel that moves into the distance and may even curve slightly to the right, so that the white brightness seems to be directly ahead of them, but just slightly around a curve. The light even looks as if it is shining against the left wall.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead , it is said that after death a person will immediately enter into the clear white light. This is the white brilliance, the primary light from which all colored light comes prismatically. The curve is the sign of the crystalline prism that is manifest existence, which breaks up the whiteness into colors. Just as a rainbow is red and yellowish at its outer edge, then blue toward the center, the outer field of the Mandala is golden-yellow with reddish or pinkish colors at its periphery and blue toward the center. But at the most distant central point is the white brightness.

In death, attention moves directly into the white brightness. That white brightness is not merely objective to attention. If its State is truly Realized, it is Realized to be the Native Radiance of Transcendental Being, or the Transcendental Divine Self. Only if it is Realized as such will attention enter into the Domain of Whiteness and stay there. That is the state of Liberation or entrance into the Transcendental or Divine Domain.

But we are controlled by the mechanics of attention. We are already identified with lesser states by virtue of the habit of attention. Thus, as it is said in the Tibetan Book of the Dead , if there is no ability to remain in the white brightness or the clear white light, other apparitions will immediately appear. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes a developing sequence of apparitions, at the end of which occurs re-embodiment in the gross plane. This text is in fact a record of the real investigations and real experiences of highly spiritualized individuals who had the capacity to enter into all of this freely. What they describe as the return from the white brightness or the clear white light to embodiment is in fact a process that is inevitable in nearly all cases.

Each of the levels of this Great Mandala represents a quality of energy or light. In each of the rings or portions of this Mandala that move out from the central whiteness are infinite numbers of possible worlds and kinds of embodiment. In this world, this gross plane in which we now exist, we are manifesting, in visionary form, a portion of the golden-yellow field of the Mandala. We are at the outskirts of the Great Mandala of the Cosmos at this present moment. There are grosser conditions of awareness, grosser possibilities, than the present one, which may be called hells, or degraded states, or states of embodiment less than human. They may be represented as forms of worlds other than the present one, as well as states in the plane of this gross world that are not necessarily apparent to vision.

We are presently existing in the outer frame of the Great Field of the Cosmic Mandala. Unless there is responsibility for attention, there will be no movement closer to the center. Unless there is Enlightenment, there will be no permanent residence in the Center, or the Source, and there is no permanence anywhere but in the Source. All possibilities, all forms of embodiment and experience in the planes of manifest light, the rainbow of blue and yellow fields of the Mandala, are temporary.

It is possible to live a long time in any plane. It is even possible to live a long time in this gross world under certain conditions of yogic transformation. It is possible to appear as an ordinary human being in this world for hundreds or thousands of years. Typically, people live just for a few years, but they could live longer. To live longer is not to Realize Enlightenment-it is simply to live longer. It is possible to realize a state of relative equanimity in this world or any other world and to live more peacefully, more happily, more pleasurably, more sensibly, more sanely. Even so, so to live itself is not to be Enlightened, nor is it a permanent condition. Sooner or later life comes to an end.

Subtler worlds exist closer to the center of the Mandala. Even in the golden-yellow ring there are subtler worlds closer to the center. In the blue field, there are all kinds of worlds. In general, to live in any of the worlds closer to the center is to live in a condition that is more benign, with greater powers and with a greater range of phenomenal possibilities than the usual life. But to live in these worlds is not to be inherently Enlightened, free, or immortal. Nor would immortality be desirable in those planes, because there is no ultimate Happiness even in the state of equanimity.

Equanimity is simply the “sattvic” or balanced condition in any realm of possibility. Equanimity is not an end in itself but simply a ground on the basis of which attention is relatively free. What you do with attention on the basis of equanimity is the means for the transcendence and transformation of destiny.

DEVOTEE: Master, you have mentioned that there were worlds for each color in the rainbow. People have said, for instance, that they have gone to green worlds.

MASTER DA FREE JOHN: Yes, every kind of possibility exists. Everything that mind can be can also be objectified as a world. You could say that this is a yellow world. But all the colors appear in it as well. It is yellow or golden-yellow by virtue of the portion of the cosmic structure out of which its particular vision is made. But in each realm, each stage in the Mandala-in the blue realm, or the yellow realm-all the colors are potential.

I mentioned to you that when the Cosmic Mandala is visualized as light, it may be seen as a dark field, and then a golden-yellow circle, and then a sort of indigo field leading to the blue center, and then at the center of the brilliant blue a white star or a white flash. This vision is evident even in our own brain mechanism. When we enter into the subtler energies or mechanics of the visual system of the brain, we may visualize this Mandala. That visualization is not the same as the viewing of the Cosmic Mandala itself. Under certain conditions of relaxation and dissociation of attention from the body, it is possible to see this Mandala by pressing the eyeballs and concentrating toward the center of the brain. What you see then is the Mandala, but it is the Mandala represented at the level of the structure of light associated with the brain and nervous system. It is a kind of personal version of it, therefore. Because the Mandala is duplicated in every fraction of all appearances, it can be visualized in the structures of our own brain. But after we pass through that limiting structure, we see the same representation of light beyond the brain, through other media of phenomenal appearance.

In vision we pass into the larger cosmic domain of this Mandala by concentrating on and passing through the Mandala represented in our own brain. People near death, or having a low-grade mystical experience, will see the Cosmic Mandala in, and limited by, the plane of the brain. It would not appear if the brain were not still active, or if we were not still bodily attached. But if we see that representation (as we do in certain mystical states and in the transition to death), if we Concentrate upon it and hold to the center, then we will also pass beyond the brain into the cosmic dimension of light outside the brain. By concentrating on this representation of the Mandala in the brain, we can move beyond the brain, even while alive, to see structures beyond the brain, in the realm of mind or psyche that is cosmic in scope.

End of excerpt

 

The following is an EXCERPT from a talk published in the book, EASY DEATH (1983) –
Part IV: Transcending the Cosmic Mandala, chapter 31 – The Cosmic Mandala

by Da Free John, July 11, 1982

Which can be purchased at The Dawn Horse Press

All copyright materials are used under authority of the
Fair Use statute and United State Code, Title 17