The Crystalline Light

I find this light by first quieting my mind, by using the cranial vault technique that is found in the skillful means handbook and is taught on site and online by Rudy and Sharon Bauer.  This is one of the methods I use.  You may have your own way that guides you into meditation, the expansive and vast space of openness or pure consciousness within.  Using a mantra like Guru Om, or the Boddhichitta Mantra, for example, can effortless lead one into the state of meditation.  Another effective means is to “Identify with the Guru” (teacher, master) that Swami Muktananda teaches in "The Play of Consciousness."  You can use this technique with any human being with whom you feel represents the embodiment of divinity for you, ie., from any religious or spiritual tradition.  Nature is also very conducive to finding stillness or a peaceful place in which to meditate.

The following is an experience, and is not meant to be a technique. I’m just describing what happens for me and where I am now in my practice.  My meditation practice has evolved over the course of the past 38 years.  The  health and life challenges I've had have at times been the catalyst, the beneficiary, as well as the motivation, behind the discipline and committment to continue on during times of difficulty.  It definitely has brought comfort, clarity, and inspiration during times when hardship and aloneness were front and center in my life.

My personal and spiritual evolution greets me when I sit to meditate. Everything I’ve been through is present; the path I’ve taken, although invisible in the present, unfolds.  My body is my ship and I navigate using the winds and my intuition to guide me.  There is no part of me that is not involved in this inner pilgrimage.  I am grateful for the steps and the grace, the difficult times and struggles, the tears of pain and tears of joy, that have brought me here, now.

After finding a meditative place of openness and stillness, I begin the process of refining my attunement to bliss, consciousness and knowledge, Satchitananda, or simply put, pure light.  This light is deeply penetrating and all encompassing.  It is within me and all around me.  It is everywhere and is the source of all.  It is the spanda, the shiva lingam. the buddha nature, the holy spirit. It’s the energy of pure creativity, or the sunlight of one’s spirit.  It is a continual and eternal combustion of Shiva and Shakti, in yogic terms, the divine union of the male and female;  Samatrabhadri and Samatrabhadra, or Vajrasatva. It is givenness.  It is a movable feast; nurturing, sustaining, completing;  recreating, birthing and destroying, all contained within the vase of my body.  Ultimately, when all is said and done,  this light is nothing, save the essence and wellspring of pure compassion.

In the most subtle and most infinitesimal movement, I lean a little forward, a little backward, like the distance between two specks of dust, as I investigate a deeper alignment of my relationship to this divine light, or the source of my own true Self, i.e.., the Self that existed before I entered this world.  I move to merge completely, to fully unite with my own inherent divinity.  This is the space of the heart essence, the pure and vital essence of the heart.  Here, I find the opening and then explore a little further into the soft center, the soft column of radiant and luminous light moving down into the earth through the perineum and up through the crown center and beyond, this ever expanding experience of a realm of light, of sambhogakaya, or Crystalline Light.  As I continue to align myself  using grace and self effort skillful means, I open and surrender and soften into this light, and allow it to infuse me on it's own accord.  I surrender bit by bit, this individual identity of me, myself, and mine.  Then, in a magically timeless moment, I am fully engulfed by this light, as a combustion of humanity and divinity occurs.  I remember Swami Muktananda saying as he guided us into meditation once, "Go ahead, lose yourself.  I will find you."  It is like an ambrosia filled fountain of the most pristine and divine love in which I am simmering and floating.  It is elemental, like air, like ether, like space, but I am earth, I am sound and water, and I am connected with all elements within my body.

There is no endpoint to this pure potential space.  One can only become more and more infused, and this play is seen, this Play of Consciousness, embodied, ever openning , as the whole world, as Nirmanakaya, and finally as the all embraced, pure space of Dharmakaya, of God.   As a great being I know said, “Buddhahood is the whole world”.  ”God Dwells with you as you”, Muktananda , or as Jesus Christ said, “ I and my Father are one” and "Never be afraid to be alone, for I will always be with you".  "The Heart is the Hub of all Sacred Places, Go there and roam." Bhagawan Nityananda.

Oneness.  This is an invitation to bathe in this fountain of love, this exquisite Crystalline Light of the Heart.  My path to enlightenment in this lifetime is my life as it presents itself to me.  The truth of my life, like the planet Saturn which beckons one to use the reality of one’s own life to focus on the highest truth, leads me home.  Sometimes, it’s eating an ice cream cone sitting on a park bench on a gorgeous summer day.  And, sometimes, it’s taking whatever else life has in store.  Possibly, Realization doesn’t wait for a sunny day.



written by Karen Ferguson

View

Everything is method!!! Method to refine our cosmosal view of reality.  That view is like a lens on a camera.  It limits what we see.  The view that everything is made up of reality, or actuality, or being, is the view we are striving for.  That is, all methods are designed to attain  the view or lens that sees the truth of what is and our perception of the truth of what is , is determined by the lens we use.
Here's the view.  Everything is made of the divine bliss that creates and energizes everything. Nothing is left out and everything is made up of, or permeated with, divine bliss.   When we see that,   there is no place to go, nothing to do, just be what we are.  Be awareness that sees and acts from this view.. Just be being. This view is very natural and can be attained by everyone of us  regardless of our circumstances ( Karma) .  We are already ( and have always been)  it .  When I say attained  I mean we are able to open our individual subjectivity (lens) to the fullness of the view that all is divine bliss. We are able to see it within time at this moment.  We may not be able to see it in the next moment but that does not mean it is not there.  It just means it is hidden in time at that moment from the view of our particular lens.
One more thought to carry the lens metaphor a little further.   My wife Carol uses a new process in her photography called HDR.  It takes 3 shots for each photograph .  One with much light, one with medium light and one  with very little light.  It then merges all three to create the photograph.  (they look great, more like a painting).   One effective method for attaining the full  view is , like HDR does, to look or gaze with a combined lens that includes and merges the three levels of being simultaltaneously ( the dharmakaya, the sambhogakaya and the nirmanakaya). I like to call this the 3kaya gaze. Lama Wangdor calls it the svabhavikaya, the fourth kaya.

Written by Tom Walsh

"You're In Paradise"

Friday night in July, I was outdoors listening to a neo soul concert.  The lead singer’s grandfather had died that day.  She dedicated her next song to him and began singing a lovely song she had written years earlier when her mother and grandmother had died (close together).  “You’re in paradise” she sang with deep love and connection.

Well, her grandfather had died from a slow deteriorating illness and when I tuned in to him, he was not in paradise.  He was surrounded by thick energy and murky colors and was only vaguely aware that he had died.  As her song reached him, amplified by an audience of 2,500 people, his murky energy field was gradually surrounded by this light from her and by her love.  The warmth, light and love in her energy field begin to shift the thick energy and murky colors of his energy field.  As his energy began to clear and turn more transparent, he emerged from the thick cloud and saw clearly that he had died. Surrounded by her love and light, he awoke to the clear radiant light that is available at death and his face shown in radiant glory.  My heart burst open and tears flowed from my eyes, yes, indeed, he was now in paradise.

Mary Kay Parkinson

A Bit of History

Beginning of The Washington Siddha  Meditation Center

It was the summer of 1976 and we were at the Deville Hotel in SouthFallsburg,New York. It was the week after the Bhakti intensive which was so moving for so many people as Baba spoke about his love of Bhagavan Nityananda and his pain at the loss of his beloved Guru.
We had asked Baba’s secretary if we could speak to Baba about the opening of a Siddha Meditation Center in Washington DC. She told she would let us know if such a meeting was possible. After a few days the message came that a meeting was possible with Baba at 2 pm that afternoon.( We were told about the possible meeting at about 1:30 that day) The meeting was to be held in field in Deville Hotel. We remember running and running and trying to gather all the Washington people to be there on time. Some of the people who were there were: Jorge, Arturo, Alexandra, and Muktabi as well as Sharon and Rudy.
We ran across the field and there in the middle field was Swami Muktananda and Malti his translator. We ran  to Baba and knelt before him and asked Baba could we have a meditation center in Washington DC. He paused for long, long endless time. And then he said..Do you see that pony over there.?  And there not too far away was this beautiful little pony  standing quietly.  And then Baba said “The pony is very small and yet filled with great Love. Many people will benefit from the presence of the center. The center will be like that small and yet filled with love and that it would last for a long time”.The energy at that moment was so beneficent and with that we thanked Baba and returned  to Washington and so the center was created in love and through love.
Sharon and Rudy Bauer
August 22, 2012

SKIPPING

Standing still, like a flamingo in a shallow pool, gazing down at a quiet reflection of space, my mind finds repose.   Fullly present, embodied in the flesh, fully contained, I now take my seat.  As I sit, peace finds me.  I recognize it as myself and bow to it.
I find my old friend once again.  Take a seat beside me and rest awhile.  I will take over from here, peace says.

As a child skips down the sidewalk, fully focused on perfecting the hop in the middle, a shift occurs, a natural extention into space, and the child takes flight.  When the mind is satisfied that the hop is quite fine, and the rhythm has reached an easy cadence, the real skipping can begin.  Like a smooth stone skipping over the water, the motion itself is the doer.  The stone rides on the motion, on the momentum.  Inside the whirl that propels the child, fully engaged in the act of skipping, is a point of stillness from which all movement arises.  The child knows this point well, seeks it, and finds it over and over again.  This point is pure potential space, the bliss of freedom , the spirit of creativity or life itself.   Herein is the spanda, the now and the how.  Finding this point is how one can take flight into this creative momentum.  Releasing into the moment, stepping into this void, one can extend into awareness and fly.

A child twirls for the sheer joy of embodying energy, this vortex within.  It is the ecstatic dance of the Sufi.  Tiny little beings of light, twirling to find this free space inside that extends into the still point, the pure point of potential, the blue bindu.  Consciousness from which all arises, like a wheel spinning out of control, spinning off in all directions, sparking billions of universes within universes, from here to infinity.
What is seen is seen as light.  Sambogakaya light.  Jewels raining down into tiny, open eyes, drinking in the nectar of love and compassion.  These eyes blend into one.  The eye of God, the eye of wisdom, the eye of the divine.

Once opened, this eye of divinity shines forth onto the world of appearances, revealing the space of oneness.  The truth of equality vision, the ultimate realization that God dwells within you as you.  Once again, Muktananda, the bliss of freedom, extending this freedom into nirmanakaya, the day to day experience in and of the world.  Dharmakaya is the still point.   There is a verse in the Bible about becoming a child again to enter the kingdom of heaven, here on earth.  Children sit naturally in meditation, if given enough time to be alone. They are natural yogis.  Watch them skip down the street.

Written by Karen Ferguson

Beach Note

At sunrise, the absence of activity on the beach is a natural time for meditation or gazing.  It is pure dharmakaya.  Nothingness.  Emptiness.  But, full of life.  So soft, these sweet smelling breezes, ocean sounds, all the senses mingling, sand beneath, water all around, and sky above.  Nothing to cling to...nothing to abide by, nowhere to go.  Just sitting and embodying everything at once as the mind’s boundaries merge with the limitless scene extending in all directions.   There is a support that is so gentle but so strong, to go inside, suspend the mind and glide on the light of the dawn.  It is so easy to drink in the nature of compassion here.  It is on my face as this gentle wind brushes through waves, through the wings of the single sea bird flying in to catch the first bite of the day, through the toes resting in the cool sand. The reflection of the water is in my soul which is oceanic this morning.  My soul is full of this water which rocks me and lulls me into a certain atmospheric peace with beauty as it’s essence.  My eyes are soft and drop to the ground gathering diamonds in the sand.  Wherever my eyes go, there is a piece of God’s body, standing naked in the pastel hued expanse.  Wet, soft, breeze, warm, lovely, ocean, sand, shells, sky, and all the unseen life in the ocean and in the sand is the appearance.  Where I sit amidst this pristine golden light, I am a reflection of love, reflecting love.  An endless circle of reflections, a mandala of this moment, stretches out beyond my toes, into the space where the sea meets the sky.
As the moments pass, more activity appears on this scene..and the sound of OM is taken deeper into my being.  Resonating in the cave of my heart, the music of the day begins from this primal note.

written by Karen Ferguson

Meditation as Becoming Aware of the Field of Awareness

1. My first meditation teacher, Swami Muktananda,  would  say meditation teaches meditation….so let ‘s begin with a brief  meditation…..since meditation teaches meditation.
Close your eyes and focus within…resting in awareness.  I will give you meditation instructions by Dudjom Rinpoche who was a great Dzogchen Tibetan master .His instructions are so simple and yet contain everything.
By simply relaxing in this uncontrived, open, natural state, we obtain the blessing of aimless self liberation of whatever arises.
2. I am going to read you a poem.  It is called The Song of Awareness…do not worry about the words…let them be in the background of your meditative awareness.
Song of Awareness
I pay homage to the Enlightened Ones of the three times… the past, the present and the future
Who abide in the vastness of the ocean of enlightenment, which is consciousness itself
The qualities of those who practice awareness cannot be measured.
Whoever is able to become aware of the nature of their own awareness, even only for one moment, is so fortunate and on the way to becoming liberated… once they taste the experience of their own consciousness, they can never go back, never again close up so completely… so darkly.
Therefore, experience your awareness in its essence. True enlightenment lies in the essence of your own awareness.
If even for an instant one sees, glimpses, the essence of one’s own awareness field
It is like meeting all of the Enlightened Ones of the three times.
So… who can say you do not know this experience….
It is the same consciousness that thinks, remembers and feels
Just like the miracle of the moon appearing in several bowls of water

Any thought, of all the thoughts that arise, is not something other than that single primordial all encompassing awareness field… so infinite in its horizon
That single state is beyond the limits of a center and its related directions
It is beyond arising, beyond interruptions; it is beyond coming and going, beyond appearing and disappearing
The essence, self originated from the very beginning, is completely pure… completely untouched
The awareness, which is like the sky has no base or root, it is completely pervasive… completely vast
This awareness field is the source of both transmigration and enlightenment
 To be in this awareness is beyond the mind, and so it is very difficult to express in words
 If one wants to explain it, it is like an endless ocean of knowledge
Pure from the very beginning, it is beyond names and explanations
Yet there are unending names and explanations pointing to it
Whomever has not experienced this primordial awareness may think, may really think that each of the innumerable names defines something different and
That all of the scriptures are marvelous, but some are really better than others
If one were to spend their entire life writing, this great subject would not be exhausted and will never be exhausted
This naked state is the clarity and the light of one’s own awareness
Knowing this, tasting this experience, out of oneness one knows the whole of existence and is intimately connected to everyone and everything….out of oneness
Just like the eagle, King of the birds, leaves all the mountains below
When it flies into the sky…the wide open sky
If you can realize the knowledge of your own awareness field, there is nothing else to meditate on, nothing else to do

If one can come to know this experience precisely, knowing this everything becomes
liberated….every thought, every experience, every condition
This all happens in the context of your own life and your own situation… Just As It Is!
Then whatever of the various visions and experiences manifested by your own mind arise
It is like the trail of a bird flying in the sky, or drawing on the water with your finger tips
Without any goal, without any aim, without any target, in the great all pervading limitless state
Remain in the Great Joy, which is liberation from the beginning, beyond transmigration and beyond enlightenment
In that nature of the awareness field, which is innate dharmakaya
Remain in sky –like awareness… remain in luminous spaciousness which has no root and no base
Remain in that nature of the awareness, which is uninterrupted sambhogakaya… that is the experience of the qualities and dimensions of the field of consciousness experienced as the Divine Deities and Divine Dakinis
Remain in the condition of clarity which is the wisdom of recognition of your own state, your own state of being…your own light
Remain in the nature of unfolding awareness which is nirmanakaya, which is this awareness field manifesting in different forms…..including your own form, your own mind, your own body, your own situation, your own karma
Remain in the condition of the great vastness of all-pervading space….extending the horizons
Remain in the luminous clarity that is beyond thoughts and affects and fantasy
Remain purposeless in the completely pure condition…so subtle …so present…so simple …so silent
Remain in this space of self liberation where there is no dualism of transmigration and enlightenment…..remain in this space life after life …death after death

Remain in this space beyond observer and observed, beyond subject and beyond otherness
Remain in the Oneness of the energy field
Remaining in the condition where there is no doubt
Through the power of this text, the Song of the awareness field as the nature of Existence, may all beings obtain the benefit of natural enlightenment
The meditation practice of becoming aware of awareness is found in many traditions, including Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism as well as western Phenomenology. Namkai Norbu, a contemporary master, says Dzogchen does not belong to any religion, it is the very nature of human awareness to become aware of its own self (both within our self and within the self of others) This naturalistic and experiential understanding is expressed By Dudjom Rinpoche this way although hundreds of thousands of explanations are given, there is only one thing to be understood; know the one thing that liberates everything…awareness itself, your true nature.
4. To become aware of awareness you must suspend your mind a little and free your awareness to rest within its own self…Often we are located in our mind so we pause or suspend our mind or a function of the mind in order to refocus awareness within awareness itself. When you begin to become aware of your own awareness, you may experience and discover that your mind is not your awareness; there is a difference between being in your mind and being within awareness. Awareness is not a thought; awareness is not an affect, or a sensation.  Awareness is not a fantasy or a memory, but rather awareness is simply open knowingness….a non conceptual knowingness…a gaze of direct perception, gnosis.
5. Often our first step is to shift out of our analytic mind, and by suspending being located in the mind or specific function of the mind, we can become aware of our mind. We gaze at thoughts, gaze at feelings, gaze at sensations, gaze at memory, gaze at otherness, and the world.   At this moment we are experientially near, closer to experience, to the felt sense. We are not in the mind but are aware of the mind .This very powerful practice is the basis of many experiential therapies and meditations.
6. But if you wish in time you can make one more suspension, you suspend your awareness of the mind and objects of the mind, and turn your gaze back on itself, you gaze into the gaze...You gaze into awareness itself. And in so doing, you enter into awareness and even become awareness itself, you embody awareness...In gazing into awareness, the qualities of awareness begin to manifest; including the quality of

spaciousness or openness or emptiness, the quality of the energy or qi or shakti, vibrancy, the quality of the light - clarity, radiance, lucidity, the quality of oneness, the oneness of the field, the oneness of great compassion. As the qualities of awareness manifest , you may discover that this awareness is a field and awareness has field characteristics, it opens and closes, contracts and expands, it has depth and breath, and goes beyond the body. It fills the in between.
7. This awareness field has power. The first power of the awareness field is that it becomes the base of your experience, rather then the mind or even a particular function of the mind. The awareness field and the qualities of the awareness field spaciousness, energy, lucidity and oneness become the base of our experience…the container. The mind and the functions of mind can be integrated into this base of awareness, this base of oneness. And so our mind begins to experience itself in the oneness of the field, and the functions of the mind are infused by the awareness field. You begin to live in and through the field. This is a Path of natural liberation.
8. The second power of the field is that a person can more easily dissolve negative states of mind and negative states of experience into the awareness field. The field has a metabolizing or dissolving capacity or assimilation of experience. This allows a person to enter into various experiences and metabolize them. When one has little awareness, the metabolizing capacity is greatly limited and one lives with much unresolved experience and much unresolved unformulated experience. Unthought but known.
9. A third power of the awareness field is the field can become not only the base within a person; the field can become a base between two people or even a group of people. When the field of awareness is between two people, the field gives a base and support for the relatedness of the two people. The field assists by providing base and support for conflict resolution, the dissolving of negative states of mind, and just as important, the offering of potential space for new experience, new views and new contactfulness. In essence, the awareness field is potential, potential space.
10. A fourth power of the awareness field is awareness can be given or extended or transmitted. There is great statement by the ancient Buddhist master, Bodhidharma, who says, “beyond words and letters, there is a transmission that does not belong to any tradition, it is the very nature of human awareness, and that is the Buddha.” Human beings consistently and relentlessly transmit their minds to each other, from person, to person, from generation to generation, from group to group. Human beings are also able to transmit their own awareness field to each other…This is the great compassion.
11. The great compassion or the bodhichitta, is not simply sympathy, or simply empathy or the internalization of others pain and suffering, but is our capacity to transmit or

extend the inner heart essence which is light, and energy, the pure love of awareness itself. This capacity of extension or extending into others and into this world, both to those whom we love and those whom we do not love is the power of healing and transformation. The bliss of compassion dissolves suffering.
12. The source of primordial awareness is within the human heart. This extension brings forth the bodhichitta (compassion) within ourselves and within others. In meditation when people extend the field to each other, the field grows in intensity and in light. Two awarenesses are really better then one and the field is never bound by locality.
13. Let us practice extensions…..the art of the inner heart essence.

Meditation
14. I would like to describe one more important and mysterious quality about the nature of becoming aware of awareness. Primordial awareness  is ultimately  our personal awareness. As Husserl said, “What is the wonder of all wonders? Pure consciousness and the doorway is our own subjectivity.” As you and I experience the innate dimension of the awareness field, we will find that we are both in duration (in time) and at the same time (timeless). The primordial innate awareness field is both in time and also in timelessness. Awareness is in duration and is in timelessness. We can experience timeless awareness.
15. When you and I are in the field, deeply in the field of awareness, we can experience both duration time and within the background of the meditation field is this vast unbound timelessness, pure presence, timeless awareness without reference without boundaries, infinite in its horizon. This experience can be stunning and not easy to hold.
16. This sense of timelessness is an unbound stillness and this timelessness can infuse our sense of time…from the immediacy of the moment, to the immediacy of a day, to the immediacy of a year, to the immediacy of a life time. Timelessness is the base and source. Within this timelessness of our own awareness is a grounded stability and grounded continuity of awareness through time.
17. This timeless awareness provides for the person a large and vast universal sense of ones being in the world, a world that is both in duration and beyond duration. Timeless awareness opens for the person the sense of unbound potential space of manifestations ready to come forth….timelessly.


This timelessness is the state of potential spaciousness that opens up possibilities of manifestation for bringing forth that which has not yet come forth in duration. Timelessness is the state of potential space, the unbound voidness of creativeness. Being in timeless awareness helps dissolve the fear of death, the fear of annihilation anxiety and the fear deprivation anxiety.
Let us meditate and discover this timeless dimension of our own beingness.

Written by:  Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.
Edited by:   Mimi Malfitano