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Transparent Body Luminous World - Excerpt
Transparent Body Luminous World - Excerpt
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to culture. However, the form of its expression arises out of the culture
in which it is expressed. A teaching is conditioned, though not essentially
changed, by the local and temporal traditions of that culture. e Direct
Path is, in my opinion and experience, the one that is best suited to our
age and culture, and it is made most explicit in the Vedantic path of self-
investigation and self-abidance.
However, this turning away from the objective elements of experience –
thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions – for the purpose of estab-
lishing the presence, primacy and nature of Awareness still leaves a dis-
tinction between Awareness and its objects. In some traditional
expressions of the teaching, this distinction may inculcate a negative at-
titude towards objective experience, considering it a hindrance to Aware-
ness’s recognition of its own being. It is in this context that we find
expressions such as ‘the despicable body’ or ‘the filthy ego’ in some tradi-
tional and even some contemporary non-dual texts. For the full integra-
tion of this new understanding into all realms of our lives, the relationship
between Awareness and its objects must be fully explored, and eventually
dissolved.
Even after the recognition of our essential nature of eternal, infinite
Awareness, it is common for many of us to find a discrepancy between
what we understand and what we feel. We may understand that every-
thing appears in Awareness, is known by Awareness and is made of Aware-
ness, and yet we may still feel the body as something solid, dense, limited
and located. Likewise, and as an inevitable corollary to this feeling, we
may perceive the world as something that is separate and at a distance
from ourself. us, our thoughts may be more or less free of the separate
self, but our feelings and perceptions, and subsequent activities and rela-
tionships, may betray the residues of an apparently separate self still pres-
ent in the deeper, more hidden layers of experience. e yoga meditations
presented in this collection are aimed at dissolving this discrepancy.
is approach, which I call the Tantric Yoga of Sensation and Perception,
starts with the recognition of our true nature and proceeds from there to
fully explore the relationship between Awareness and objective experience.
Although this relationship is implicit in the Vedantic tradition, it was
made explicit in the Tantric traditions, particularly that of Kashmir
Shaivism. Ramana Maharshi would sit for many hours in silence with his
students, and the exposure and dissolution of these feelings would be
brought about in this silence. In the Tantric traditions, of which this Yoga
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e density and solidity of the body and the otherness of the world are
penetrated and suffused with the light of pure knowing, God’s infinite
being, and are gradually outshone by it. e body becomes impersonal
like the world, and the world becomes intimate like the body. At some
point, there is a feeling-understanding that there is only God’s infinite
being, and everything is that. As the Sufis say, ‘ere is only God’s face.’
e two paths of Vedanta and Tantra, in the forms in which they are pre-
sented in this collection, are not two opposing paths competing for the
ultimate truth. ey are complementary approaches which, divested of
the cultural packaging that has alienated so many people from the sim-
plicity and immediacy of the Great Tradition, provide our generation
with an experiential path that stands up to the scrutiny of reason and in-
cludes all aspects of experience. It is a path that is thus well adapted to
the requirements of the twenty-first century.
Rupert Spira
March 2016
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meditations
medi tat ion 1
e xplor ing t he t ru e ex perie nc e o f t he b o d y
With this simple recognition, the mind turns around – the ultimate rev-
olution – and it questions its own reality: ‘Who am I? What am I? What
is my essential nature? What is the nature of the knowing with which all
knowledge and experience is known?’
e mind recognises that thinking is not inherent in it. It is not essential,
therefore cannot be what mind essentially is. Feeling, sensing and per-
ceiving are not essential to the mind. ey come and go, but the mind is
always present throughout all these changes, therefore they cannot be in-
herent in what it is.
e mind asks itself, ‘What am I? What is my essential, irreducible, un-
changing nature?’ and this question triggers the inward-facing path.
When I say ‘inward’ I don’t mean inwards towards the body; I mean in-
wards towards the source or the essential nature of the mind.
is Direct Path of self-investigation has been the essential ingredient of
the traditional Vedantic teachings for many centuries. However, because
many people found it too difficult, the teachers in this tradition elabo-
rated other, more progressive approaches and, as a result, this direct ap-
proach fell into disuse and obscurity. It was only resurrected by Ramana
Maharshi and Atmananda Krishna Menon, amongst others, in the middle
of the last century. ey reformulated this approach for a new generation.
ey brought this Direct Path of self-investigation out of the esoteric
schools, where it was given to initiates who had done thirty or forty years
of preparatory practices, and made it available to everyone. ey felt that
our world culture had reached a sufficient level of maturity to enable this
direct approach to be made available to everyone, not just the initiates in
ashrams and monasteries. I feel very much the same way, that our age is
ripe for the Direct Path. We no longer need to go via an object to our
true nature.
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So, as the mind turns its attention, or turns the light of its knowing, upon
itself it embarks on what we could call the return journey, the return to
the source from which it initially arises. In doing so, the mind is, in most
cases, gradually and progressively relieved of its limitations. Occasionally
this happens suddenly, and we are all familiar with the few stories of cases
in which this liberation from the limitations of the mind happened
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then has to trace its way back home to discover its true nature again, just
as the spider has to extricate itself from the web in which it now finds
itself entangled.
is tracing back of the finite mind to its infinite source of pure Con-
sciousness is the inward-facing path, the path of self-investigation. ‘Who
am I? What am I? What is the nature of the knowing with which I know
all experience? What is it that is aware of my experience?’ All these ques-
tions are triggers that effect this turning around or revolution of the mind,
in which it gradually returns to its source and, in doing so, is progressively
relieved of its self-imposed or self-assumed limitations.
is return of the mind to its source involves a relaxation of the mind, a
sinking of the mind; it doesn’t just happen in a moment. As Jalāl ad-Dīn
Rumi said, ‘Flow down and down and down, in ever-widening rings of
being.’ Ever-widening, that is, as the mind flows down, or back and back
and back into its source, it widens: it gradually loses its limitations as it
sinks into its source.
As the mind sinks deeper and deeper into its source, it simply rests there.
What began as a process of self-investigation ends up simply in self-abid-
ance, mind resting in its source. It is in this self-resting that the mind is
relieved of its limitations.
If we want a metaphor for this self-resting or self-abidance, we could
imagine a dirty dishcloth. In order to clean the dishcloth we place it in a
basin of warm, soapy water and scrub it. e scrubbing removes much
of the dirt, but the deeply ingrained stains remain. In order to remove
these more deeply ingrained stains we simply leave the dishcloth soaking
in the warm, soapy water. It is this soaking that effects the cleaning of the
deeper layers of dirt. Self-abidance is the soaking of the mind in its source
of pure Consciousness.
e Sanskrit term atma vichara, which is normally translated ‘self-enquiry’
or ‘self-investigation’, has two parts to it. e first part is a process of ques-
tioning in which there is something for the mind to do: ‘What is the na-
ture of my self? Who am I? What is the nature of the knowing with which
I know my experience?’
In time, this activity becomes subtler and subtler until, in the end, there
is no more for the mind to do other than to rest its source of pure Con-
sciousness, which is the experiential answer to these questions. It is in this
self-resting or self-abiding that the mind is relieved of its limitations. at
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ere may be a few people like that – as Carl Jung said of Ramana Ma-
harshi, ‘He was a white spot on a white piece of paper’ – but most of us
are various degrees of pale grey spots on a white sheet of paper.
I do not say this to legitimise inappropriate behaviour in those who speak
or write about the non-dual understanding, but rather to make it clear
that the feeling of separation in the body outlives the recognition of our
true nature and, in doing so, to pave the way for the Tantric Yoga of Sen-
sation and Perception that we are interested in here. ere is a story of a
Zen master who was asked by one of his students on his deathbed, ‘How
are things for you now?’ e Zen master replied, ‘Everything is fine, but
my body is having a hard time keeping up.’
Everything was fine. His mind was open, spacious, clear, at peace, and
yet there was this beautiful and humble acknowledgement in him that
there were some corners of his experience, his feelings in the body, that
had not yet caught up with his great and genuine understanding. is
was not a failure on the part of the Zen master; it was just a very human
recognition that the body/mind had not yet been completely colonised,
saturated, permeated with his understanding.
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So the approach to the body in these yoga meditations comes from the un-
derstanding that there is a further step after the recognition of our true na-
ture, in which we encourage the body to be felt and the world to be
perceived in a way that is consistent with our new non-dual understanding.
ese yoga meditations, as I call them, are designed to do just this: to
help and encourage the body liberate itself from feelings of density, lim-
itation, location, heaviness, separateness. It is not a rational exploration.
In other words, these yoga meditations don’t use the clean, clinical lines
of reasoning that we use in our conversations or dialogues. ese lines of
reasoning are very effective at exposing, uprooting and dissolving belief
systems, but they do not touch our feelings. Our feelings lie below the
threshold of rational thought and survive even the most astute, intelligent
analysis.
It is for this reason that these yoga meditations proceed in non-rational
ways, using visualisation and feeling rather than reason. Let me give you
an example. Imagine we are a musician. We play the flute, violin, piano
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or guitar, and we prepare a piece of music for our teacher. Our teacher
asks us to play it for her, but before we play it she asks us to imagine that
we are performing it on our first night at Carnegie Hall, and to visualise
and play the piece as if that were the case.
If we are a pianist we are playing one of the slow movements from one of
Beethoven’s piano sonatas, if we are a flautist or violinist we are playing a
slow movement from one of the Bach partitas, and if we are a singer and
guitarist we are playing a love song that we recently composed for our
sweetheart. So we play the piece of music as if to an audience at Carnegie
Hall, and our teacher listens and at the end says, ‘ank you. You played
that perfectly.’
Now our teacher ask us to play the same piece of music again, but before
we play it she asks us to imagine that we are in a room with our dearest
and most intimate companion, and he or she is about to take a long jour-
ney, and we don’t know if or when we will see each other again. Our teacher
asks us to imagine that this piece of music is the last communication we
are going to have with our friend, and then asks us to start playing.
So, we play the same piece of music. In both cases we play them note-
perfect, but the quality of the two pieces of music is completely different.
All we did was first visualise playing in front of an audience at Carnegie
Hall and then in a room with our dearest and most intimate companion.
Just that feeling-visualisation was enough to profoundly change the qual-
ity of our playing. at is the power of visualisation, feeling-visualisation,
to re-orchestrate the body, to re-orchestrate our feelings, sensations and
perceptions.
ese yoga meditations work in a similar way. It is not necessary to
analyse why there is a difference between playing at Carnegie Hall and
to our most intimate companion. We don’t need an explanation. e fact
is that it works.
If we really want to be established in this understanding at all levels of
our experience, a further investigation of the body and the world is im-
portant. When Atmananda Krishna Menon was asked, ‘How do I know
when I am established in my true nature?’ he replied, ‘When thoughts,
feelings and perceptions can no longer take you away.’
He did not say when just thoughts can no longer take us away. It is not
just when our thoughts are clearly aligned with the non-dual perspective
but, more importantly, when our feelings and perceptions are fully
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aligned, that we can say that we are really established in this understand-
ing and that all aspects our life – thoughts, feelings, perceptions, activities
and relationships – are an expression of this understanding.
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I suggest, to begin with, that we keep our eyes closed. e only reason
for closing our eyes is that we are going to explore the experience of the
body, not the experience of the world. We close our eyes just to temporar-
ily shut out the vision of the world, which is not the focus of our attention
at the moment.
Allow the experience of the body to come to your attention. I want to
take some time to be sure that we all understand clearly what is meant by
the phrase ‘the experience of the body’.
First of all, think about your body. Now, that series of thoughts is not the
actual experience of the body; it is the experience of thought. Put those
thoughts on one side. We’re not going to be referring to them now.
Now take the image of your body, the image that you might see in the
mirror or a photograph, or looking down at your body. Again, that is not
the actual experience of the body. Put it on one side.
Now, what remains of our actual experience of the body? Whatever that
is, is what I refer to as the experience of the body. It is simply a sensation
or a network of sensations. By the word ‘sensation’ I mean something
very specific.
Traffic sounds
e sound of traffic outside is not a sensation; it’s a perception. Leave it
alone. A thought or an image or a perception is not a sensation.
Go to the experience of the tingling of your face. That is a sensation.
A headache is a sensation. e experience of hunger is a sensation. e
tingling of our hands or the soles of our feet is a sensation.
Simply allow the sensation of the body to come to your attention. One
way that sometimes helps us to be very clear that we stick only to the ac-
tual experience of the body is to imagine that we are a newborn infant.
e reason for doing this is that a newborn infant doesn’t have any
thoughts or images of its body. e newborn infant is like a bundle of
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