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States of Consciousness
We should validate our experiences at every level of our being.  Do not just leave your experiences with the Five Great elements in Bhur Loka; take them with you to the next level of consciousness.  You can "man" each station.  Just because we transcend one stage for another does not mean we dismiss the earlier stages.  We enforce them by extracting meaning from our experiences.  These are your experiences, so experience everything consciously.  Yogis and sages are present in the Eternal Moment with you.  They are extracting everything from their encounters with you.  You would be so benefitted by doing the same with them.

In waking and dream states you have two eyes, two ears, but in deep sleep you have one eye, and one ear.  That is the causal state.  This penultimate formless state is single-eyed, single-eared, but upon entering nondual samadhi, all senses — gross, subtle, and causal — disappear.  How Jesus expressed it, was, the Word was in the beginning, then was with God, then was God.  In the first two stages there were ears to listen.  But when it "was God," there was no ear left to hear it.

What do spiritual adepts mean when they say "the bell is struck?"  The Svacchanda Tantra says, "No one sounds AUM; It is ever unstruck, ever sounding."  So what does this mean?  Our consciousness "strikes" against AUM and begins to manifest everything.  And we do this at individual, collective, and cosmic levels of our consciousness.

Do not forget Lord Vasishtha's teaching of the Walkers of the Skies.  Are you alone here in the bhutakasha [physical realm]?  No, there are all these people here with you.  So when you enter another akasha, why shouldn't there be others there too?

In deep sleep the mind turns off and stops thinking.  Everything goes formless.  Therefore, everything is a projection of the mind.

It is marvelous how, by contemplating a higher duality like form and formlessness, one instantly transcends suffering.  We have the power to shift our consciousness.  If we do not develop this power, then we are at the mercy of Nature – the Gunas and Maya.

Anupalabdhi is a method of philosophical proof in India.  Something was there, and then it is not there. Its sudden absence is proof of its existence.  This is the answer behind the question, "What is the meaning of life?"  When people raise their consciousness to the intellectual level and begin to feel a great dissatisfaction, they begin to wonder, and to inquire: “Something is missing.”  But they would not feel that it is missing unless they had intuited its existence earlier.  Thus, deep down, everyone knows that God exists, and knows the eternal nature of Reality – even when It is invisible.

There is no spiritual life in Vedanta without viveka, discrimination between the real and the unreal, and this is the final separation.  When one realizes Brahman the unreal goes away.  All is Brahman.  Returning to consciousness of form, awareness of duality returns, no doubt, but such awareness is like a burnt rope that cannot bind one anymore.

The interspace is a junction between earth and heaven where the elementals live.  Its purpose, and the import of the beings that abide there, is to make the connections between earth-bound souls and higher realms of awareness so as to engender the possibility of freedom from matter and form.

All phenomena are in the mind.  The Soul goes nowhere – it is just dream life at all levels.  Gaudapada says we need to wake up – even from the waking state.

You say, "Life is a party!"  Well, heaven is just another party with your ancestors.  Sure, it has got more pleasure – you can eat and drink all you want and not get sick.  But the truth is that the seeker of freedom, of God, does not want to be limited to the three lower realms of eating, drinking, and procreation.  Do you want to know God, or do you want to enjoy heaven?  If the former, then leave off this eternal partying and take the teachings of the dharma....
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