Front Row Seat

Imagine you’re watching a play at the theatre. It is a vast spectacle and you have a front row seat. In fact, that play is a custom play, written and performed just for you. While the audience feels very large, there is only one watching. The play is called “My Life.” In spiritual parlance, this experience is called witnessing.

This play is unfolding simultaneously with billions and billions of other such plays and they’re completely interconnected. No play could go on without all of them. The actors on your stage are, at the same time, also at play in others plays. When they leave your stage, they enter the stage of others. Even death is just a change of act, a brief curtain call. As in the film Cloud Atlas, we begin the next act in a new but related role. And you, in your front row seat, are also on your own stage and the stage of everyone else in the play.

This play is unfolding at all scales. From galaxies to stars to animals to bacteria to atoms. The stage extends in all directions for eons. The billions of sets have an unimagined complexity. Plus, it is unfolding not just here in the vast physical world but on multiple layers of reality that interpenetrate each other, even in your play. In other words, there are actors you don’t necessarily even see. And there’s other universes as well.

Because there is only one watching, there is really only one play. In Sanskrit, they call it Lila. But because of the complexity on the stage itself and the diversity of perspectives, it has the appearance of many, many unique plays. Other beings experience your stage quite differently, be they bird or angel. The play has laws or rules of the game, though those rules may depend somewhat on what act you’re in and who’s present on stage.

While some may discount such ideas as “intelligent design,” creationism, and faith-based nonsense, what I describe is actually a direct experience at a specific stages of development. But this doesn’t discount evolution in the slightest. Notice I said stages of development. It’s both.

Whosoever thinks it’s all an accident has not yet seen the script. Or the author.
Davidya

Souls, Groups, and Flames

An interesting discussion came up in a forum and I thought it useful to touch on a few things around souls and soul connections. Not a topic I’d want to over-emphasize, but it’s useful to have some clarity.

Souls
I’ve discussed the soul on this site a few times, such as in Seat of the Soul or the Soul’s Past. There are other things people may point to and call the soul but to me, it’s the golden-white light in the heart space. It is connected to the divine with a silver thread out the top of the head and leaves the body when it dies. All life-forms have one to some degree.

The life force (prana, chi) expresses itself through various means, including energy centres and our physiology. As the first link above talks about, there is also a life-spark in the head. Yogananda called this the soul. To me, the soul is the larger light in the heart.

Name
Each soul has a name, an energetic or vibratory signal that may be heard or felt. It is quite unpronounceable with a mouth and is much more subtle than a spoken word. This has also been called the “true name” and our given names curiously often reflect phonemes from it. This is also distinct from different kinds of spiritual names but again, there can be a connection.

Soul Groups
While the karmic connections between souls are complex and intertwined, we typically will travel through lives with some people from a shared journey. Sometimes the connection is driven by resolving incomplete desires and feelings from prior time together. Sometimes, we’re brought together in shared purpose. Or both. We tend to feel a resonance or sense of connection with people in our soul group, like they’re familiar before we get to know them. But if not, circumstances pull you together until you do. If the connection is strong, it may bring with it expectations of who they are from the past. But their present life may or may not reflect that.

In his Essene Mirrors talk, Gregg Braden points out that attraction does not necessarily mean you should have an intimate relationship. It may simply mean there is something to resolve between you. Or they can bring you the key to the next step in your growth. Resonance with an awake person is also a great way to awaken spiritually.

Of course, there can also be relationships that show up to resolve karma that may not have a soul group connection. And you’re more likely to connect with your group when you’re living to purpose.

Twin Flames and Soul-Mates
I’ve heard a lot of nonsense and variability around these terms. Some use “soul-mate” to mean a good friend or wife. Or to mean our “one true love.” I use the term soul-mate to describe souls we have a strong, close resonant connection with. Someone we have a lot of ancient history with. As such, we can have several soul-mates. They may not become lovers. They may not be at the same point in life or even on the same plane of life as we are. But the connection will be strong. They may even push buttons for us and find us both attracted and repelled.

If we long for “the one true love”, I would suggest that is actually the Divine as no human can ever do more than be a vehicle for Divine love. A relationship based on that makes for a wonderful connection but we’re recognizing the Divine in each other, as the Namaste greeting represents.

Similarly, some describe our “twin flame” as the one true love. That is rather idealized, unfortunately. Love is boundless and eternal so is never limited by this or that form. Along with the twin flame concept is the idea that our souls were split in 2 and will never be whole unless we find our twin. Again, it is spirit that will make us whole, not a person. And the soul is a focus or spark of the Divine. It is never divided, spilt or broken. It may become lost to our awareness, but it is never lost to itself or the Divine. This is similar to the idea of “soul fragments”. We may certainly feel unintegrated, like parts of ourselves are spread about, our energy scattered through time and space. But the soul itself remains undivided. (“he who should not be named” included)

While I’ve not experienced this fully, the experience suggests your twin flame is born together with you as a pair and your lives flow juxtaposed and balanced. Just as there is a thread that rises out of your crown to connect you to the Divine, so too there is a thread from the heart connecting you with your pair. This does not however mean you’ll spend a lot of lives together. Only that you’ll balance each other. As another observed, we’ll usually be better able to serve apart from each other or we won’t be balancing. One fellow suggested you’d know each other in only about .3% of lives and have an intimate relationship in a fraction of those. Can’t speak to the accuracy of that and I’m sure it varies, but it gives you an idea. Another idea is that the twin flame shows up in your final human lifetime.

It’s worth noting that some people are “fallen” angels. As such, their twin may be an angel. That certainly limits the relationship possibilities. 

Again, this does not mean you cannot have profoundly intimate and loving relationships with a soul-mate or 2. But if we really want the eternal juice, we’ll only find that in the Divine.

Guardians
Guardian angels are other beings that we have a long soul-level relationship with. Friends Forever we can count on. They are themselves part of groups or teams with a hierarchical structure rising to the Divine. But their work is with us. Clearly, life is a sea of interconnectedness in a field of oneness.

How could it be otherwise? 
Davidya

Some Quotes

Ran into a small stash of good quotes today

“Even after seeing the pain and sorrow of people, merely saying, “I am  the Self. I am beyond all this,” instead of trying to console and help them, is not Advaita. Such people are neither Vedantins nor religious. Any Vedantic study or religious belief is meaningless unless it moves one to console the distressed, to wipe away their tears, and, forgetting oneself, to offer oneself as their support and shelter.” ~  Amma

“Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of their heart, and that depends upon how much they have polished it.” ~ Rumi

“Completion comes when we not just wake up from all form, from all identification, but when love causes us to re-embrace it all.” ~ Adyashanti

“Not all awakening is the same. There are different qualities of awakening. Not everybody awakens to the same thing. The idea that everyone awakens to the same thing is sort of a myth. A misunderstanding. It’s actually quite rare that someone awakens to the whole of Reality all at once. Usually we get a piece of it. Of course any piece of the whole feels like the whole. If you bump into any aspect of reality, every aspect feels complete, because in a certain sense, every aspect is complete.  So reality always comes with it. A felt sense of completeness. Of totality. That unequivocal sense of “This is it”. That’s how it feels. And also that can lead to certain misunderstandings. We often awaken to certain aspects of reality. Rather than awaken to the whole of it all at once. The deception is that each aspect feels like the whole. And so you may just get attached to an aspect and think it’s the whole. See what I mean? It’s like getting hold of a foot of an elephant and thinking you’ve got hold of the whole elephant.” – Adyashanti

Shadbhava

While people may speak of past karma or desire driving the form of this lifetime, the qualities of the life that unfold are found in various factors. Shadbhava is a term from Ayurveda meaning 6 houses or areas of life. It refers to the influences we have when starting this life. (it also refers to the 6 stages of life, but that’s another discussion)

Three or half of the factors relate to the body we’re being born into. The father, the mother, and nutrition during pregnancy. In other words, our bloodline and prenatal care. Many traditions honour their ancestral bloodlines and prescribe careful care of pregnant women.

Science has found that a fetus develops to prepare for the environment into which it expects to be born. If it is exposed to a lot of stress through the mother’s experience, it will tend to develop more musculature and less fore-brain (higher faculties). In a more nurturing environment, the reverse is the case. A woman who experiences samadhi (transcendence) during pregnancy will pass that experience to the fetus as well.

“In stressful environments, fetal blood preferentially flows to the muscles and hind brain, while shorting the flow to the viscera and the fore-brain. The development of fetal tissues and organs is proportional to the amount of blood they receive. Consequently, a mother experiencing chronic stress will profoundly alter the development of her child’s physiologic systems that provide for growth and protection.“
– Bruce Lipton
(On Bruce Lipton’s web site, select the Nature, Nurture article for much more detail.)

The other half of the equation are the aspects our soul (jiva) brings in. These are Rasa, Sattva, and Atman.

Rasa means flavour or essence and relates to the dosha or body type / constitution that results. (Vata, Pitta, Kapha) The flavour we bring to the bodies bloodline. (which is why you see some kids out of type in a family)

Sattva relates to the degree of purity and our karmic debt. The baggage or resistance we bring in and the unresolved desires. And this relates to Maya and the way we perceive the world.

Atman relates to our degree of infusion of spirit. Our spiritual history.

Atman and sattva in particular illustrate prior spiritual development and how we pick up where we left off. Their mix also illustrates the wide variety in ways people experience personal and transpersonal development. It depends on what we’ve taken care of and what is yet to open.

I found this an insightful overview. Our life and growth are not just about our own history but that of our family and community.

To quote John Donne (English clergyman & poet (1572 – 1631)):
“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

See also
Only together.
Davidya

Natural Solutions – part 2

<Part 1

Nature’s Support
Nature’s support is what some call synchronicities or coincidences or law of attraction. It’s the effect of devata being able to support what we have our attention on. There are 2 general types of devata relative to us. Those assigned to us and those attracted by the environment we offer them. The second kind have prescribed roles but flexibility where they perform them. They tend to be more experienced and thus more useful to attract.

There are others who are assigned to projects. They depart when the job is done. I noticed quite a few on the up-link left after awakening. Apparently, that was a large job.

If we’re energetically unpleasant to be around, those that can will leave or avoid us. Those obliged can be made more sluggish and ineffective. Others who like that stuff (often pests) may come instead. In other words, like attracts like and we get more of the same. Or what we put our attention on grows stronger. In general, our “nature’s support” is lower.

This doesn’t mean we get dumped when we have a bad day. It’s more about long-term trends – what are we feeding our team?

If we culture (favour) gratitude and higher emotions, the reverse is the case. We attract or “feed” the more highly skilled ones. We improve the working environment for the others. Life gets better not just because of what we put our attention on but because of what that attracts. As we progress further in sattva, our body begins to produce a subtle substance called soma or amrita, the “nectar of the gods.” With that on the table, we attract the best available.

Of course, this does not mean we should make a mood of feeling good. Faking it doesn’t work with these guys or ourselves. It does mean doing your healing work so you can have clear feelings, notice subtle feelings and intuition, and can choose to lightly favour the positive.

Note that we all have a small “support team” who are quite accessible, often called  guardians and guides. It’s mutually useful if you’re able to communicate so you can be on the “program”, for example. They’re more likely to have a sense of humour that’s not at your expense too. Some people, like singer Denise Hagan, do occasional workshops to help people connect with their guardians.

It’s also useful to note that asking for stuff a lot is what dependent children do. They want to give you support, not dependency. Surrender is a much deeper form of prayer that creates an openness for things to flow in.

Comprehensive
One of the things that will strike you about nature’s support is how comprehensive it is. What shows up is often far better than what we might have thought we wanted.

How they do this is actually much simpler than it appears. While there are apparently individual, locally-assigned devata taking care of this or that specific thing, this is not where their intelligence operates from. While the intelligence comes through the hierarchy, it is not the King’s either. Devata themselves recognize they are conduits and are thus naturally grateful.

The intelligence comes through the divine via the cosmic body. The cosmic body is the ideation of the divine and contains the entire creation, including our universe. It structures the experiencer and our mechanism, the physiology. The first layer of that is the devata body which structures the process of experiencing. This body is composed of zillions of light beings in close relationship, each managing a function in all manifest bodies simultaneously. Do once, done everywhere.

That activity expresses through creation into apparent individual beings doing things here and there, like the daisy devata. What the Celts and Bardic tradition call Elementals. While the expressed beings are highly coordinated, the true comprehensiveness arises in the devata body of which they are all composed. And that flows from the divine.

The higher devata or devas recognize their divine essence more fully and can thus be apparently in multiple places at once. Archangels, for example, can converse with thousands at the same time making them ever available.

Times
In the current time, not only are more people having spiritual awakenings but more of the devata have been awakening too. In this case, it means something a little different. We’ve come out of a dark period in global consciousness. During such a time, some laws of nature or devas go into a kind of hibernation. In the current time, such laws have been waking up. I’ve been told a few really big ones recently.

These laws awaken in the cosmic body and begin to express as devata in our experience. The dominance of others will also shift. Thus, the rules are literally changing.

Finally, there’s a good principle to abide by: Highest First. The lower emotional range aka the astral plane is where a lot of the crud is. This is not the best place to explore and is definitely not a place to get advice from. There’s an old Indian parable – Capture the Fort. Don’t go after the diamond mine or gold mine. Instead, go for the fort and capture it, then all the mines will be yours. The Fort, in this case is spirit or the divine. Stay out of the muck.

None of this is something you should believe. It’s just how I’ve come to understand this mode. But it’s good to be open to the possibility of it. We don’t have to experience them directly to interact – it’s simply in how we feel and focus that makes all the difference. Experiencing them is not something you need to seek although it can be useful to connect to your guardians. It will develop as a natural byproduct of spiritual development. It’s not something to spend a lot of time on. It’s rather another little something in a good spiritual toolkit for living the best life possible.
Davidya

Natural Solutions – part 1

In another forum, a friend of mine recently spoke about how ~150 robins had settled into his yard for some days, crapping on everything. He loved the birds but there were too many in that small space. He contacted the “Robin King” with a request and shortly afterward, all the robins departed.

The discussion brought up the following points:
- they don’t always cooperate but often will
- the Findhorn approach suggests you also offer a better alternative (over there, later, etc.)
- be “humble, natural, and take a direct approach.” Don’t fight them or complain
- supervisors have a job to do and usually have little interest in shooting the breeze with ol’ dunderhead
- just talking out loud isn’t useful. You have to make some sort of felt connection with their kind
- as energy beings, the best connection is via feelings. You feel them. And they feel you and know how you feel about them
- You don’t have to be able to see or hear them, just feel the nature of their kind, without judgment. That tunes you into their “channel”. With respect, you make a request
- people have cleared mice, rats, ants, birds, and scorpions but not fire ants.
They’ve settled bumpy plane rides or nasty weather
- it doesn’t always work – depends on if they’re playing or its routine or if there’s a need of the time

What the heck were we talking about?

Those that run nature, that do the doing, that enact the laws of nature. We’ve all heard faerie stories. Many of the popular ones are based on human imagination. Other stuff is supposed to be descriptions of real experiences. Some of that is hoax or drivel. The better stuff is much more specific and describes what they learned, not just appearances.

Another common issue for some who actually see them is not recognizing the personalization influence, ie: what they’re bringing to the experience in expectations and such. They thus can put way too much weight on appearances rather than content. For example, is it necessary for a light being not subject to aerodynamics to have wings? You may choose or be more comfortable with seeing them that way and there’s nothing wrong with that. But to make that their truth is to mask what is important.

The key thing to understand here is the difference between personal and impersonal. There are two distinct modes with which we can see the world. In the Impersonal, we see the world in its components with interacting laws or forces of nature. This is the approach of science, the intellect. In the Personal, those same laws of nature are seen as embodied, as light beings, as the doers that make the world happen. This is the felt way of the heart. History is rich with stories of such experiences. This article focuses on the personal perspective.

Devata
Deva or Devata are general Sanskrit terms for light beings. Broadly, the term Deva is usually used to refer to a higher form or god; Shiva, for example. Devata is used for smaller, more specific beings, like daisy devata. But the term is also used as the plural of deva, or for the more impersonal impulse of nature (point of light).

Essentially everything that is has devata to make it so, typically in a whole hierarchy. For the most part, all have prescribed roles. Thus, whatever the plant, animal, or function of nature, there is a devata or their supervisors that can be communicated with. You can tune into the feel of the object or life-form itself, the devata of them (the “group” sense), the supervisor, or the king of that group. Each is progressively more potent.

But out of respect, you don’t want to waste anyones time. Start with the front line. If they’re not in a position to make changes or are not interested in communicating, then step higher. It takes only a shift in intention.

While most devata have little interest in shooting the breeze, they may be open to brief consultation with a polite, respectful ask. They recognize we’re in this together. If you can feel them, you should also be able to feel understanding about them too (who they are, what they do) aka intuition. So you shouldn’t have to ask what they’d see as dumb questions. They usually have a name preference which may or may not match historical records.

(Note that on the subtle feeling level, there are no secrets. But neither is there judgement as everyone has their journey and the same struggles to pass through.)

For a fair number of people, such talk is considered delusional. Thus, those that experience such things tend to keep it to themselves. For many, such experiences are occasional and fleeting and thus easily doubted. But if you get to a certain point in trans-personal evolution, they’ll be as obvious as the wind and rain. You may ignore them most of the time but the option remains in the toolkit.

Most people are oblivious to those who make things happen, support their physiology, and manage their experience. We thus act out of sync and like apparent dolts to many of them. Not to mention our tendency to spew emotional dramas, polluting our mutual environment. Thus, it’s no surprise they can have attitude or be mischievous. To them, we can seem like bulls, crashing around in a china shop they created for us.

Part 2 >

Debbie Ford Passes

Debbie Ford passed away this week. She was an unexpected figure on the new age circuit, talking honestly about facing the shadow side of ourselves and healing old wounds. I wrote here about her film The Shadow Effect and have mentioned her occasionally around other films. I was surprised how similar her points were to how I spoke of the “shadow story“.

A great story about her from Tad

A conversation with Oprah last fall

Her Memorial site

Her web site, with a letter from her sister

From the Oprah conversation:
“Well, to me, the soul is a part of us that never dies. It’s what we come in with. And our soul is sometimes — I don’t think you can see it, but I think it’s who we are at our core. And it carries all the messages and the lessons that we’ve learned in the past — and will carry all the lessons and messages…into the future.”

The best of her goes on.
Davidya

PS: you can see it. 

Four Mayas

Awhile back, I wrote about the 3 forms of Maya described by Shankara. The way we perceive the world is dependent on the dominant guna or quality through which we experience it.

Guna means string or strand but abstractly, it refers to a quality or distinction. Triguna is used to describe the 3 tendencies or qualities of prakriti (nature). Broadly, they are creation, maintenance, and destruction. Much of what we experience as change is the gunas coming out of and back into balance again. Internally we experience them as clarity, movement, and inertia or sattva, rajas, and tamas.

In Ayurveda (Vedic medicine), they describe how we come into this lifetime with influences of 6 bhavas (houses). Half of these are from the bodies bloodline, the other half from our soul (jiva). Two of the second are Atman (Self, spirit) and sattva, the guna. Whatever development of these we cultured prior, we bring into this life and pick up where we left off. Hence, some seem to come in a little ahead of the game.

This brings us to a review of Maya. Contrary to popular translation, Maya means “to build.” However, how that “build”, creation, is perceived by us depends on our dominant guna. Maya stays the same but how we perceive it evolves.

1) The dominant way creation is perceived is through Tamas or inertia. The world behaves like a covering over it’s source. The physical world seems real and the subjective world unreal.

2) When Rajas becomes dominant, it has the effect of “burning” or purifying tamas. In this stage, the world is seen as an illusion, a common symptom of good spiritual progress and typical of Self Realization or Cosmic Consciousness.

3) When Sattva becomes dominant (and we’re speaking on inner levels, not necessarily obvious yet on the surface), the illusion is recognized as ‘created by’ and is now seen as Lila, the play. This is more typical of God consciousness or, if delayed, in unity.

Here, it’s good to differentiate clearly between sattva and atman. Someone can awaken and still be lower on the guna scale and thus not have refined perception. They’ll tend to describe a black and white reality of inner spirit/ Self and separate, outer, illusory world. This is dwaita or duality, not non-duality as some suggest. Someone more up the guna scale but lower on the Atman scale will not be awake but have many “spiritual” or refined experiences of subtle realities. The best for progress is of course both.

There are various prescribed ways to increase sattva but many edicts for living a pure life are difficult in our culture. The key ones are widely-held rules across cultures, like the golden rule and early to bed. The best way though is transcendence; a daily connection to source purifies the physiology & mind, and opens us to spirit (atman) as well. Transcendence itself or samadhi triggers the physiological production of Soma (Amrita), a refined product that much increases sattva. You may notice it as a sweet taste in the mouth during a deep meditation. It also produces a lustre on the skin via ojas.

4) So, what is the 4th Maya? No maya, the absence of maya. The recognition that nothing has ever happened. No creation, no you and I, nada. However, this is not the same thing as neti, neti (not this, not this), the illusion stage. Paradoxically, it is this and this but it is neither also. It is a wholeness more than everything, more than either being or non-being (which have become recognized as another subtle duality). It is Brahman, contemplating within itself but never creating, never doing.

So- not really 4 Mayas, unless we’re counting digitally from 0. 
Davidya

Father Thomas Keating

My first real exposure to Father Keating was in the film One, the Movie (2005). I bought the DVD and the extras DVD that included the entire interviews*. More recently, I discovered he played a key role in helping a contacts healing from a cult I knew of.

I recently had the pleasure of hearing a new interview with Father Keating. While a Christian Father, he is well-versed in the faiths and philosophies of the world, is active in Inter-spirituality, and developed and promotes Centering Prayer. The last is a practice that is surprisingly like Effortless Meditation that I recommend. (see also Jewish Sh’ma “meditation.”)

If you read the article What is Consciousness?, you’ll know the importance of the means to direct experience of our spiritual nature. Father Keating similarly emphasizes this. The interviewer has a background in the Vedic tradition of India but Father Keating has no trouble speaking to his terminology and questions.

Father Keating speaks of Unity without recognizing the full depth of it, suggesting the Isness aspect of God and the expressed God, or Father and Son, can never unite. As I’ve explained here, even the Holy Trinity unites in advanced Unity. However, the few minor points like this are just quibbles with the extent of it, not with the content. He is a remarkable example of the value of surrender and gratitude, common subjects on this blog.

1 hr 50 min

On BATGAP

Contemplative Outreach
See the link on the left for Contemplative Prayer. That page includes instruction documents and the workshops he recommends to help you establish the practice correctly. As I’ve mentioned here, it’s very easy to mess up effortless practices as it’s such a habit to try. And that small change is the difference between direct experience of Divinity and a headache.
Davidya

*They now sell the full interviews as audio files separately, probably due to the expense of mastering another DVD. My original purchase was burned, not produced, an early home-brew of the project that was later manufactured when the funds were raised.

Unity into Brahman

I’ve written a number of articles on the development of Unity Consciousness. In essence, the outer world of experience is united with the inner world of being. There is no longer an “inside” and “outside”. Put another way, the seer or experiencer is united with the seen or objects of experience. Only seeing remains. All becomes one, directly and intimately.

(see States of Consciousness for context)

The Veda of Unity vaguely describes the 10 stages of Unity. These correspond to the 10 mandalas (books) of the Rk Veda. If you look closely, you’ll note they also align with Atman, the 8 prakritis (5 elements, mind, intellect, & ego), and Brahman. Subjectively, certain stages will be more prominent or obvious than others.

Of course, the unfoldment of Unity is a nonlinear process of “experience and become” where all aspects of experience, memory, and all of space and time are united in one wholeness. At its completion, “Even the farthest reaches of the galactic universe which we can’t see are still concretely cognized and appreciated as an expression of the Self.” (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) Makes sense if you are the universe or that which contains the universe.

It is in this range when the Cosmic body and body as devata become apparent. We become aware of the cosmic nature of our seeming individual body. Not just the Self within is cosmic but even our physiology. Our finger is a city of light beings, managing the biological functions of that digit for all physical beings, concurrently. As you can imagine, it’s quite a different way of seeing life.

The entire unfolding process, from CC/Self realization to Unity is a development of Atman, the cosmic Self. But then, a surprising thing happens. (yet again) With the dissolution of the “faintest remains of difference“, we begin to transcend the Self. Soon, we find ourselves beyond all of the former notions of fundamental reality. We are beyond consciousness, creation, Self, existence, divinity, absolute, all space and time; including eternity and Now, everything. We are stepping into Brahman.

This next stage is known as Brahman Consciousness (BC) but is not a stage of development of consciousness or Self like prior stages as we’re transcending them. It is a natural progression from Unity. However, even someone in Unity cannot comprehend it, it’s that big a shift. Any attempt you make to conceptualize this will be a farce. The point of this article is to support people on the journey, not make goofy concepts.

Describing Brahman is like describing the Tao. If it can be named, it is not the Tao. There are no words to describe what is beyond existence, beyond creation, beyond all form. But please, don’t confuse this with the silence of deep meditation or Self Realization. While this is Brahman, it is only the very surface. To know totality, you have to plumb its depths.

This has been a rare stage of development; to be able to reach this within a human life has been uncommon until recently. In the last century, the seat of the Shankaracharya of the North of India had sat vacant for nearly 150 years as no one was qualified. Few translations of old texts on the subject will have the slightest clue. The Brahma Sutras, for example, cover the stitching together of Unity. Most translations read like a convoluted argument rather than a list of the recognitions of the intellect, stitching together oneness.

The BC shift seems to occur in 2 major stages:

During the approach, we may notice we contain all creation and the Self rather than being it.  Like the person may seem off in the distance after the CC shift.

Stage 1: In the first stage, we transcend all the development of Atman and the fullness and intimacy of unity. We find ourselves as nothing. This is not a nothing in the usual sense of the word. It is totality. A nothing more than everything.

It is neither full nor empty, neither exists nor doesn’t. It is beyond all such polarities. This can be a dry period with the intimacy and bliss of unity falling away. One person described it like pulling the plug on the fullness of Atman. It is giving up your prior enlightenment. It is once again returning to kindergarten.

In some ways, it’s analogous to the CC shift. In that process, some people experience losing the ego and becoming the no-self or emptiness. While they are then unbounded, free and peaceful, until the bliss kicks in it can be rather dry. The world is illusion and thus can have little meaning. Similarly, when Atman falls away with all its fullness and qualities, we can experience a dry period. We have gone beyond everything and found nothing. The world never was. All knowledge (Veda) is found to be cosmic memory.

Stage 2: In the second stage, we slip a step deeper and fall into a new intensity. Given the above, you can appreciate it’s very difficult to describe. Beyond the beyond? This is known as the Great Awakening. We become the causeless cause and now understand the origin of alertness and liveliness that lead to awareness and the creation we once knew.

The distinctive “quality” of the experience is that there is no creation and never was. Nothing has ever happened. There is no Maya or Lila. There is simply non-moving “flow” within That that gives the appearance of what we experience. Watching bees on a cluster of flowers, it is more like a fluid, like the surface of a large quiet body of water in motion but not going anywhere. The white light that once surrounded life is now all there is.

This profound recognition of reality in a new fundamental way brings with it an intensity of… happiness and bliss are not suitable words. Even the raptures described elsewhere here do not meet it. We have surrendered the bliss of all life for a satisfaction even more profound.

With time in this stage, the body is said to become very refined and capable of things we would have previously considered miraculous. The more overt physical abilities mentioned in the Yoga Sutras, for example. Shiva and Shakti together have come to ground to embody the awakening. Typically, we would then experience a final rise or decent to a location that would best support our role in the world thereafter, be it world teacher or shoe salesperson.

I have feedback from just a few people so little more can be said for now. But it’s an amazing sign that Joe and Jill Householder can enjoy it now.
Davidya