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Christian holy places and all of that with the Virgin, h
e 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 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.
o
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 rind. Shortly after this time, I began to write
The Knee
of Listening.
1
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 thee manifest functions were
I
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
saharsar 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 Amriti 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 a=s 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 Co on continually in the Heart,
“Avoiding
relationship?” And as the enquiry penetrated every
experience
and every apparent dilemma, I would feel the bliss and-
t
. F
energy of consciousness rise out of the Heart and
enter
the saharsar. 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.
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