Vedanta Temple Experience





 

Christian holy
places and all of that with the Virgin, the Virgin had
disappeared ultimately, there was no Virgin.

Then there was
really no personal manifestation of the Shakti anymore at
this point. There was the force, but not this personal
manifestation. But when I entered the Vedanta Temple on this
first day, the personal manifestation, the personal presence
of the Mother Shakti in her infinite form manifested, which
is quite a different thing than other Shakti appearing as a
visual image. But it was a cosmic presence, an obviously
identifiable presence. The reason it could be identified as
it was because my own nature had also begun to take on the
form of this cosmic presence.

So there was a
period of weeks when I would go back and forth to the
Vedanta Temple as I have described in the book. I would ask
the Shakti to come with me, and then she would be with me,
there were all these games being 1 played. Then I thought
well I shouldn’t ask: the Shakti to just is with me, and now
she’s gone from this temple, or she’s just exclusively with
met I didn’t want any of that. So then she’d appear in the
temple again, and I’d see her in the temple. All kinds of
odd changes were going on, and it was simply the.
transformation of the lower life into (to) cosmic life. It
was a turnabout from the personal ego into the cosmic ego.
And it was also a period of time in which the tantric
sadhana was fulfilled in me.

So if you road the
experiences in the Vedanta Temple carefully, you will see
that they are a description of tantric sadhana, of the union
of, what is symbolically the union of the male and the
female yogis, their sexual union. And this is magnified in
their conscious states into a higher form of union. In this
case there was no physical symbolic form of it. I wasn’t
there with a physical woman, but I was dealing with the
Shakti as a woman, as a yogini, but as the cosmic yogini.
And I was participating with her as a cosmic manifestation,
myself. And so there was this play of energy, this play of
cosmic tantra that went on for several weeks, and it
culminated in this union. And it was the tantric bliss,
perfection of the tantric sadhana, in which the (ultimate)
duality of the cosmic manifestation is ultimately seen to be
one, and experienced as one. And once this tantric union
occurred, the whole aspect of cosmic yoga itself was
fulfilled, and en entirely new process appeared afterwards,
so that when I returned to the Vedanta Temple after this
experience of the tantric union, there was no longer the
person of the Shakti, there was no longer any yogic process,
no dualities, no activity, there was only the prior Reality,
intuitively realized, perfectly realized from that moment.
So in fact (this) this instant in the Vedanta Temple after
the tantric phase of the internal activity on a cosmic
scale, not on a personal scale any longer.

It was at this
point that in a certain real sense we could say that the
adventure of my sadhana came to an end. But it wasn’t like a
sudden mental realization or whatever, it was perfect
realization, it transcended the mind and the life. And so
its implications relative to the mind and the life had to be
grasped over time. It wasn’t suddenly I got. up and
understood from the minds point of view exactly what had
occurred, the mind dissolved, everything was resolved into
the prior principle. So the process of living what was now
the real condition took days, weeks, months to be recognized
and implemented at the level of life and mind. Shortly after
this time, I began to write The Knee of
Listening.

There are some
notes here that Sal had taken in our last discussion that
probably I should read. It says: “I did recognized the
Shakti as omnipresent.” in other words, the Shakti became
obvious as the very condition, the all embracing perfect
presence in Reality, beyond any personal manifestation. The
Person of the Shakti became infinite and my own presence in
relation to the Shakti became limitless, void, absolute.
“The experience of union transformed the lower. In other
words, this perfect union, tantric union on the highest
level transformed everything below it, all these manifest
functions were transformed by this fulfillment of sadhana.
And also the personal and individual existence was
transformed into cosmic existence. There was a, particularly
during this period of going back and forth to the Vedanta
Temple, a lifting out of the point of view of consciousness
from anything like personal sadhana, or witnessing of the
effects of sadhana in the body, and in the person to a
cosmic union.

But on this last
day after the cosmic union, the tantric union, even this was
transcended and perfected in the prior realization of the
Heart, of the Self-nature. And when, in this experience the
winter before in New York, when the sahasrar was severed,
there was a realization that, it was not a matter of being
in some encapsulated, descended, separated condition, and
looking up through stages like on a ladder until you could
grasp the Divine Light. It was instantly, priorly realized.
The Light was instantly perfectly realized, prior to any
sense of ascent or the need to ascend, prior of any sense of
obstruction, limitation. So the Light was realized without
obstruction, without prior conditions, as always already the
case at that time. Now at this tine, the source of that
Light, the source of which the Light itself is the
reflection was perfectly enjoyed. And the immediately
preceding incident that made the way for this falling into
the Heart was the cosmic union, the tantric union. But just
so, this was not an exclusive realization. It began to
reveal itself in quite another way as time went on. There
was not a falling into the Heart exclusively in which there
was no longer the generation of the conscious Light and the
participation in the manifest and cosmic process. But there
was a spontaneous regeneration of Amrita Nadi, or the
relationship between the Heart and the Light, or real God
and the Divine Light. So the dilemma was absolutely
dissolved from this point, and all the forms that the
dilemma takes.

Two peculiarly
interesting and important phenomena arose. The one was the
tacit awareness the Heart and from the Heart on the right,
this opening of the causal being. And another was this
dropping of the belly that I mentioned. Vow I’ve talked
frequently of the center on the right, but I haven’t spoken
a Great deal about the dropping of the belly. Cause as I
said, I didn’t want to get into this whole affair of putting
attention on the internal process until an appropriate time.
But without Getting into the whole affair that is behind all
of that, It was as if a connecting thread that goes from the
navel to the depths of the lower body were snipped, that
contraction or vital shock. ‘You feel something like a
thread that holds the navel in and gives you that little
cramp. It was just cut, and I began to feel full in the
abdomen all the tine, and walked around feeling that
fullness with the belly pressed out, that you may feel
sitting in meditation at times. At times this was stronger
than in others, and particularly for a period of time, at
this particular time, particularly for a few days, perhaps
weeks following there was this sensation constantly. Then
the pressure there became rhythmic, periodic, occurred when
it was appropriate, but there was the continuous sense of
fullness there, of a centering there. And that is a sign of
the internal spiritual process. There is perfect
conductivity when there is no longer vital obstruction, no
longer this vital shock as a principle.

A very long
section, it goes up from page 134 to about page 145, in
which I describe the various phenomena that I witnessed, in
myself, the implications, how I understood them now, what
the point of view was, what the stable sense was of the
phenomena of life. And I began to describe somehow the sense
of my relationship to these phenomena, and what this
generally amounts to is a description of Amrita Nadi, or the
description of conscious life from the point of view of the
full realization of Amrita Nadi, not the exclusive
descent-into or dissolution in the Heart, nor the exclusive
ecstasies of involvement in the manifest light or subtle
drama, nor of exclusive distractions in the descended
processes of ordinary experience and perception. It was not
exclusive in any sense, but a perfect ease relative to all
of these phenomena.

The form of enquiry
that had developed in my understanding seemed to be on
continually in the Heart, “Avoiding relationship?” And as
the enquiry penetrated every experience and every apparent
dilemma, I would feel the bliss and energy of consciousness
rise out of the Heart and enter the sahasrar. Whereas this
Amrita Nadi, this intuitive structure, which duplicates the
perfect structure or the Divine Reality was the form of
consciousness. not exclusive containment in the Heart. Not
exclusive distraction in the bright, or the light of the
sahasrar, nor exclusive involvement in the life
manifestation, but continuous intuitive relationship to the
entire process.

Bliss and energy of
consciousness rise out of the Heart and enter the sahasrar,
the highest point in consciousness, and stabilize there as a
continuous current. . to the Heart. I saw that this form,
the form of Reality, the structure of consciousness was
Reality itself. It was the structure of all things, the
foundation of nature and identity of all things. It was the
point of vies? of everything, it was blissful and free. That
form of consciousness and energy was exactly what I had
known as the bright. So this was simply the radical
realization in the body, iii the life and in every other
level of that condition that existed from the very
beginning, which is described in the first page of this book
even.

As I continued in
this way I remained stably as that form. There was no longer
any adventure, no longer any transforming sadhana. And all
things revealed themselves in Truth. The bright was that
ultimate form of Reality, the Heart of all existence, the
foundation of Truth and the yet unrealized goal of all
seekers. So Amrita Nadi then became the medium of the
intuitive form of comprehension and the stable state. And
thus even while living in the ordinary way, anticipating the
ordinary experiences, doing the same things, indulging
myself, and seeing the effects of that, disciplining myself,
seeing the effects of that, there was from this time then, a
transformation of all of my activities, and the writing of
the book began, teaching began. Various Siddhis of various
kinds relative to teaching began to arise. Transformations
and refinements of the external life began to arise. Moral
transformation of my life began to arise. A spontaneous
transformation that was appropriate to the stable condition
began to arise quite spontaneously over these last few
years, coincident (with my) with the awakening function of
teaching.