Holualoa class on Feb. 1, 2009

Mother is calling us....

[Babaji's introduction to our class began with a simple offering to Goddess Saraswati, whose puja (special worship) was the day before.  Saraswati is depicted as a four-armed Goddess.  In two hands She holds the Vina, representing the music of the spheres and the primal vibration, Om.  In another hand She holds a scripture and in the other a japa mala.  Behind her is a peacock representing the glitter of the world and in front of Her is a white swan, symbolizing the Atman, the stainless Self.  Candles, incense and sacred chants were offered to our SRV Ideals: Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Sarada Devi, and Swami Vivekananda.  Then flowers, a lei, and an ancient hymn were offered to Saraswati Ma, the Vak Devi, Goddess of the Word, which became the centerpoint of Babaji's class held at Morning Dew Farm in Holualoa.  The following are notes from a student's notebook.]

Name and form are never the Reality; they are Maya.  Reality is changeless, eternal, birthless and deathless.  Name and form are constantly changing.  All change takes place in Maya.

True ahimsa (nonviolence) is knowing that nothing can be destroyed, what to speak of the Atman (the Self/Soul).  Creation, preservation, and destruction do not actually occur -- they are only going on in Prakriti/nature.  What is happening is actually projection and withdrawal facilitated by the mind in a process called sankalpa (desire-based mental projection).

What are the mechanics of Sankalpa?  The first thing that must happen is to "separate" yourself from Brahman via that apparent mechanism called ahamkara (ego).  This ahamkara is a principle of creation; creation cannot begin without it.  Then, to engage in sankalpa (mental projection/creative imaginings that project all name and form) you need mind.

If your senses are purified you create a sacred space and perform ritual, sanctifying the atmosphere.  You feel peace.  In doing this, you have taken a few particles [see notes below on "particle theory"] and brought your concentration to bear upon them, and the result is that time stops.  Time stops in dreamless sleep, death and samadhi.  When mind stops vibrating, putting a stop to sankalpa (creation/projection), then time, space and causation cease.

If you believe Sri Krishna's statement in the Bhagavad Gita:
"Na hi jnanena sadrsham pavitram iha vidyate...Verily there is no purifier in this world like knowledge...", then you have to think about what the word impurity means.  In Tantra, Yoga, and Vedanta, we mean whatever is far from Atman, the Source. There is no moral or immoral judgment as in Christianity.  How far has a thing gotten from its Source? -- that is the criteria of impurity.

Saraswati is the Vak Devi.  [not the Vog Devi]  Vak means the Word, which means Om.  Om is very close to the Source, Brahman.  When something is not vibrating, it is cohesive.  That is Om.

Intelligence is the first compound from Brahman, and it is identical to Om, the Word.  Therefore we can make sense of the Vedantic idea that Reality doesn't create.  It is immutable, unchanging, birthless, deathless, ever-pure.  It doesn't go into different states and it doesn't transform.  If you accept this you are an Advaitist (nondualist), and you never stray from your Source.

This Reality is not a matter of intuition, but of realization.  You can't follow the path of pleasure and get there, for you would still be taking the senses, the breath, name and form, and the waking state to be real.

We are all good meditators in deep sleep, called susupti, but in that state we do not bring our consciousness to bear.  We are impeded by the impediments to yoga, such as dullness, restlessness, and ignorance.

The efficacy of the Mother Path

The Mother Path doesn't just mean Tantra.  There are Vedic goddesses too.  If you are following a Vedic Goddess, like Saraswati, you will see that She has a vina, representing the music of the spheres/Om, and also a japa mala, which mean's She's got a practice for us, and She's holding a book, representing the scriptures.  But notice that Her hand holds the japa mala above the book, signifying that spiritual practice culminating in realization is higher than mere reading of the scriptures. In the Mother Path, the Mahashakti is your Ideal.  She is the highest Shakti and can appear in different forms, like Kali, Durga, Saraswati and others.  Further, the Mahashakti is the progenitress of Om.

So if you are engaged in a spiritual practice and studying the scriptures; if you've put the peacock of the world behind and the swan (the pure Self) is coming forward, then you are following the Mother Path, the Mahashakti.  She exists in all of us undivided, but we have divided ourselves.  If you are kind, philosophically speaking, you would say we did this for Sport.  But nondualists would say, "Why would you do that? Your playground is birth, death, growth, disease, old age, and death -- is that fun?  You are mucking about with anger, lust, greed, jealousy, fear, and pride, all mixed up with the glass shards of pleasure and pain -- some playground!"

But Divine Mother, the Mahashakti, is waiting to call you from the playground.  I remember when I was a boy in Portland and we had just moved from Alaska.  My mother would call me using the  Eskimo mother's call, "Hoo-hoo!"  She would belt out, and no matter how far away we were we would hear her calling and immediately drop whatever we were doing and run home. This call from Mother is the Word; It is Intelligence that calls us.  It is heard as Om or seen as Light, depending upon one's temperament.  This is the most refined particle of all.  It is like a sugar cube that has melted in tea, becoming a uniform mass of sweet, homogenous liquid.  Everything is soluble into Brahman.  In actuality, all forms are already dissolved -- they aren't truly solid;  matter is changing at a billionth of a second.  So all we have to do is meditate by way of involution -- going back inside our Consciousness...dissolving particles of matter into life force, and particles of life force into thought, then particles of thought into Intelligence, then Intelligence/Om into Brahman.

Science, society, and conventional religion make us believe in name and form.  The Buddhists are telling us it is all impermanent.  Buddhism is not different from Vedanta; it is one line of philosophical development. Buddha was an Indian Rishi. Vedanta and Buddhism are one line, just like Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed are one religious stream.

A New Particle Theory

[Babaji next presented 2 of his charts, one on Aparinama -- non-transformation of Reality, and the other on the Advaitic "particle theory": from Atomic Particles to Atmic Particles.  This latter chart is a foundation for all mention of particles in these notes.  In brief, the idea is that matter and all physical bodies occupy physical space.  Scientists have discovered smaller and smaller objects that change at a billionth of a second and are so small it begs the question whether they have mass or existence at all.  What happens when particles become so small they "disappear"?  Babaji proposes that physical space "collapses" and one becomes aware of the space of prana, lifeforce.  There are several other kinds of "space", each more subtle, that one can enter into through the process of involution, and in these different kinds of space (lifeforce, thought, Intelligence) one traverses the realms of the ancestors, angels, saints, gods and goddesses, sages and illumined beings, and the Trinity overseeing creation, preservation and destruction of all realms - and beyond Them to the Ever Free.  The main point to keep in mind is that all these realms and types of space are states of consciousness existing within us. Name and form, gross or subtle, all come out of us. As Babaji is frequently pointing out these days, the brain is an organ connected to the senses; but the mind is more expansive, containing realms of consciousness.  "That is why the Christ said, "My Father's mansion has many rooms."

Whence comes the ability of my mind to make matter solid?  And whence comes the ability of my collective mind to create worlds of name and form in which sport my ancestors, the celestials, etc.?  Such is the power of the mind.

The Great Master used to say, "One ray of Light from the Wisdom Goddess stuns a thousand scholars."  What the scientists can't "cop" to is the disappearance of physical space.  They keep on "discovering" some new little particle of matter, and then become like hens clucking over the latest hatching of insects in the barnyard.

[Babaji presented a chart on the 5 Akashas (space/dimensions/atmospheres): Bhutakasha, Pranakasha, Chittakasha, Jnanakasha, Chidakasha]

These different akashas are like those Russian Dolls that are nested within each other.  One doll contains many increasingly smaller dolls.  Lord Vasishtha states, "The Ego projects the bhutakasha as if it imprisons the Chidakasha." The Chidakasha is the spaceless space of Pure Indivisible Reality, ever free, blissful, and the nature of pure Awareness.  In reality It can never be covered or imprisoned, but the Ego deludes itself in the process of sankalpa, desire-based projection of the different akashas, subtle to gross.  This is like blazing a trail without leaving breadcrumbs to find your way back...until the process of awakening commences.

Waking up means dharma, divine life, samadhi.  Sri Ramakrishna used the analogy of a small child who asks his mother to wake him up when he feels the call of nature.  But his mother tells him that he himself will wake up when that happens.  So when the urgency of our predicament in Maya dawns upon us -- this changing realm amidst the pairs of opposites like pleasure and pain, birth and death -- we get the urge to seek our Source.

Beings today have a death-grip on the atomic particle.  This is the 5th and worse of all hells according to Vedavyas.  This death grip is clinging to life or fear of death.  You, the birthless, deathless Self/Atman are like a snake in fear of a frog.  If you concentrate on physical objects you remain in samsara, the wheel of birth and death in ignorance of your true nature.  But here is the efficacy of the mantra.  The mantra contains Om and the name of a great Seer. Concentration on the mantra will loosen the hold of matter upon your mind.

The first great saying in Vedanta that you learn is: Sarvam Khalvidam Brahman, All this is Brahman.  But we know that Brahman doesn't change.  Therefore, to realize the import of this statement you should ex-out everything that changes; for all that is Maya.

The first samadhi one experiences is one of amazement when one perceives what is within oneself.  The next samadhi is when one is able to set aside the infinite expanse of knowledge within and concentrate on a single particle of this living wisdom. There can be no sense of ownership around this knowledge.  It is impossible to know all of it anyway.  One only develops the ability to move from one particle of knowledge to another in peace and bliss, ever aware of the Source of all this knowledge.  Then you reach a point where the mind makes a shift.  It is no longer a question of whether name and form is Maya or ignorance, or bondage.  You perceive that everything emanates from Intelligence, everything is a manifestation of knowledge, jnana -- and here She is calling you Home.

Om -- there are no particles in Om -- It is homogenous Intelligence.  "Om drsyam pratitam pravilapayan san, etc," which means to reduce everything you see into Brahman, which is an indeterminable mass of blissful Conscious Awareness.  Rendering the inside and the outside into one indivisible Reality -- where is inside and outside in this realization? -- meditate on That and pass your days in peace and contentment.  [quoting from the Vivekachudamani]

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