Introduction to 40-Days
We are on Day 1 of our 40 - Day Retreat and we had a very nice day today. In fact for myself I enjoyed very much the beginning of the day and also yesterday evening’s session. So I’m very keen to know what you think, those of you who are joining us on the web and also those of you who are here. It’s the beginning of the journey and I tried to paint for you the perspective from which I’m going to speak throughout this series.
You have the opportunity now to speak with me and I’d like it to be related to the subject of today. Let’s take the subject of today and when you read through this or listened this morning how did it impress you? What did it create within you? If you have questions about it or comments about it, feel free to join in and ask or to comment.
It’s a new 40 day period, 2009 over the years some of you have been in the 40 day period with us, so what is different about this year – and even if you are new, some of you, what does it mean to be here and to listen to my words this morning? How did it impact you and what has it created within you perhaps that will inspire the rest of the 40 days?
What did you mean that Kundalini energy in us is the same as in the universe?
Question:
The energy that I feel is much stronger than it was when I was here two years ago, so that’s in answer to your first question. Today’s message was for me a message that showed first of all a perspective of hope, that there is a possibility for growth and becoming more aware, more conscious of my inner being.
You said that the Kundalini energy is a kind of mirror or it shows how the outer world is. You make a combination between inner world and outer world. Do you mean that we co-create our world around us or is it the same as “Your enemy is your best friend?” what we see in others is also part of ourselves.
Sri Vasudeva:
No actually what I was saying here is, that energy that is stored within us – that sacred Energy that is stored within the human being, when awakened begins to travel along the spine opening up the chakras – that sacred Energy within a human being which when awakened will cause an expansion in awareness as these different centers open up. That energy in a human is called Kundalini.
In the whole universe there is a stored energy. And this energy is called Maha Kundali. Kundal means coiled and so Kundali is the hidden energy at the heart of the whole universe and it’s called Maha which means great. But in the individual that power inside of us that sleeping power, is called Kundalini.
By extension I was also implying that the energy of the divine is also in the whole universe – not only within us but also in the whole universe because I said the Kundalini model allows us to see all the different qualities of energies that exist within us and within our world. That’s why this is such a perfect model in understanding our universe and our interaction with the universe, that we can also see the universe impacts us with energy.
For example we impact each other with different chakras. If we’re dealing with an animal for example, whatever different chakra the animal has, we impact each other based on that.
Whatever energy there is in the objects in the world, like the earth for example would have its own energy. So it will not have chakras like a human being would have but the earth chakra might just be muladhara, because the muladhara is just based on the earth, the material thing. But the energy of Kundalini in the universe is called Kundali (MahaKundali).
Thank you very much. I am happy that you said that the message is one of hope, that it gives the idea of achieving, that you can aspire to achieve things that can uplift you, make you happy and ultimately set you free.
How do I hold on to spiritual experiences?
Question:
You asked us to contemplate about the multidimensionality of life and to go deeper into the experience. When I want to go deeper,for instance in the energy of love, then thoughts come up and when I notice those thoughts and I come to analyze them then the experience becomes less. How can I go deeper without these thoughts that bring me off the experience?
Sri Vasudeva:
This means that your mind is pulling you away, that the mind is still influencing you powerfully. You need to learn how to stay in the observer and to be detached from the mind. You CAN be detached from the mind and you CAN control the mind. That is the possibility. That is the discipline of the mind that you need to learn because the mind is pulling you away from the deeper experience of the heart. So discipline of mind is required and of course a lot of things I’ve said about discipline of mind: the repetition of mantra; the power of focus and concentration; the use of the eyebrow center; the use of the breathing… I’ve said a number of things in how to manage the mind.
Training the mind is a foundation discipline, is a fundamental discipline. If you don’t learn how to train the mind, then it’s going to be difficult to advance. If you don’t learn the early stages of study, then it’s hard to study at the higher level. So you need to accomplish the lower task. That’s why sometimes we want to become completely free but it begins with the simple discipline of learning how to keep one thought in your mind. We need to cover the basic discipline.
Every day take time to learn how to manage your mind, to just sit quietly and just keep one thought in your mind. That’s a good discipline. When the mind is controlled and you’re having deeper experiences, you can detach yourself from the moving mind.
How can I understand such a difficult subject?
Question:
I’m relatively new to the subject of Kundalini so I noticed I found it difficult to relate to the subject because I have never experienced it
Sri Vasudeva:
Today’s message was not entirely about Kundalini. I spoke about Kundalini in it but I spoke about more than Kundalini. I spoke about an infinite source within us; I spoke about different qualities that manifest within us (energy) – mental energy, emotional energy, vital energy…and I spoke about the relationship between the Source Being, the relationship between the subtle energies that we feel and the physical world. I say that these are three levels that we exist in and that we need to understand them more and more. I said in the talk too, that we need to begin to observe what happens and try to go deeper into the awareness of each and their relationship. Kundalini has to do with the subtle energy field.
If you don’t know about Kundalini I’m sure that during the 40 Days you’re going to learn much more because during the first days I’m just creating a perspective, a view, an overview for people to see all the things that I’m going to speak about so the important thing here is to be able to see the larger view and then we’ll zero in on the smaller topics.
My interest is knowing “how much of the larger view have you seen or are seeing?” That’s important for me, the relationship between these different levels – and how aware you are of these different levels and their challenges.
How do we manage our fields of awareness?
Question:
When I’m meditating at a certain point during the meditation or during the healing the view becomes very large. How can I go deeper? It’s very difficult to focus then because the field is becoming very large.
Sri Vasudeva:
We need to learn how to operate at the same time in a large band of awareness where I can narrow my awareness to just thinking about the glasses and in a moment I can just stretch the awareness, shift it, as though I’m shifting my view and be aware of the whole room. So just at this moment I’m aware of my glasses and in another moment I can shift to the whole room. If I want I can be aware of both at the same time. I’m holding the whole room and I’m holding my glasses as well.
This is the training that we need when we have an expanding awareness field, the ability to narrow the focus or to open the focus as we choose to.
Question:
Is it a way of staying aware of the body and staying aware of certain feelings and at the same time being aware of the larger field?
Sri Vasudeva:
If you begin to give your attention to a number of things within you, you’ll find automatically that your attention is opening; your field is expanding. When your field expands then you’re becoming aware of everything. So let’s say I’m expanding my field of looking. I can see everything in the room – I can see everything, but I’m not focusing on anything in particular but I’m seeing everything. If I want to focus on something in particular, then I’ve not lost the complete awareness of the room but a larger part of my focus is on what I am focusing on.
I’m saying this is the ability we need to have, to hold a large view or to come into a more narrow view and can expand the view to any amount. For example, I can look at three people in this view, I can look at five people in the view, I can look at the whole room in the view. We need to learn how to change the view as we wish to.
There are no borders because you are held in a larger one and you have not learned how to come back into a narrow. When a larger one comes, you think “this is the greater one so let me stay here,” but the greater one is what YOU want to focus on and what is your objective.
Question:
That’s difficult.
Sri Vasudeva:
You have to learn how to do it. It’s like…someone floating and then feeling that, “Now I don’t know what to do. I’m just floating,” but if you begin to move your hand a little bit, if you begin to shift, if you begin to move your body a little bit then you can find yourself changing directions as you float.
Question:
How can you do that without losing the broad awareness?
Sri Vasudeva:
You have to decide whether you want to stay in the broad awareness completely without anything else or you want to also come into some narrow awareness. Sometimes I leave out the broad awareness, well it’s there inside of me – I can go back in a moment, but if I need to reach something here now, I can’t do what I’m doing in meditations. I’m not sending peace to the whole world, nor am I open to receive peace from the whole world because the states of being here is more important at the moment. I have the power of choice! In a moment I can go back to the whole world – and that’s the joy. The joy is that I can go to any one of the spaces and enjoy it but I don’t have to keep myself there. I don’t have to feel if I come back into the narrow that I have lost it.
Question:
Explains a lot because I had the idea that the awareness had always to be very large, no?
Sri Vasudeva:
It needs to be centered in a space that you can access at all times. It needs to be centered in a space that you can go back to in a moment. It means that you need to keep an open connection with that space, so you need to have your door open – you can go back anytime. And if the door is open, you can actually see the light that is on the other side.
You know it’s there. You can actually feel the peace from that space but now you’re channeling into a narrow space from that space.
Question:
If I am experiencing warmth and love in my heart. You told me “You have to deepen it” when it deepens in my experience and it spreads out more through my body it becomes larger – how do I go deeper?
Sri Vasudeva:
That is going deeper. That means the centre is opening up more. It means that if you’re directing now, if you’re focusing on anything in particular it’s going to carry that now; it’s going to carry more. Suddenly you open your space to offer more. When your bigger space is opened or when you go into that bigger space, you have more to offer when you bring your attention on anything.
Question:
In bringing love in anything you do or you say, it doesn’t mean that you have to feel that warmth all the time?
Sri Vasudeva:
You don’t have to… but it is there. When you have a chakra open, it is open. You can feel energy from it all the time. You just told me “If it gets bigger and it spreads in the whole body, how do you go deeper?” – well that’s going deeper.
Question:
The heart chakra closes more if I’m still trying to become more loving?
Sri Vasudeva:
It closes more when there are blocks that have been there from the past, patterns that are still strong. That’s how it closes. Some old pattern will bring it back into a dark space, or the limited space.
Is there a relationship between Consciousness and Energy?
Question:
Is there a relationship between Consciousness and Energy?
Sri Vasudeva:
Energy comes from consciousness. Energy is an emergent entity that comes out of the consciousness, that emerges from the consciousness and it may dissolve again into the Consciousness. Everything in the universe is energy – even the physical world. It is all particles vibrating and when they disintegrate they go back into the void, which we call the Consciousness Field. So energy is held in Consciousness, it’s inside Consciousness; it’s a part of Consciousness. It is resident in the Consciousness. That’s why we say that Shiva and Shakti are one. Shakti is really the Energy and Shiva is really the Consciousness so Shiva and Shakti are one.
In relationship to us it means that everything that comes out, everything that is manifest and visible and active, it’s actually coming from an invisible field – a field that for want of a better word we call the void, an invisible field. It is the Consciousness Field.
Is crying healing?
Question:
Is crying healing?
Sri Vasudeva:
Yes crying is certainly healing. Crying is an emotional expression and in crying we are actually letting go of certain built up feelings inside that need to be expressed and in crying we express that. It allows full expression of deeper feelings and when they’re expressed, we feel better afterwards. In that case it’s an emotional release. Sometimes in the crying, we actually feel a higher state of consciousness after. It’s an expression of the heart centre, so it’s a good thing.
How do you manage thoughts?
Question:
You mentioned the ability to control the mind. I have a bit of a dilemma there. When thoughts arise, do you let them pass, observing them? Is that considered to be control or how do you relate to the thoughts that arise – by boxing them in, by defining them or simply allowing them to pass this way?
Sri Vasudeva:
It depends on what your purpose is. When you begin to look at thoughts, are these things that you want to entertain or is your objective a still mind? So if your objective is a still mind you have to let them pass by and wave to them – let them go…let them come, let them go. But if it’s a thought that you want to entertain, (you say “Wow this is an interesting thought. I want to follow it,”) then you bring it there, you keep it and you stay with a certain train of thought.
Question:
“Allowing them to pass” is a form of control?
Sri Vasudeva:
Yes. The Observer allows you to see every thought that goes by.\]’;/.,
How do we know that the observer isn’t caught up by the thoughts?
Question:
How do you know which thoughts to keep which thoughts not to keep, how do you know it’s not your mind making those judgments and decisions and not tricking you into sort of another game?
Sri Vasudeva:
The one that is observing is the ego. The one that is observing also has the power to think. When we are observing thoughts, this is like the momentum of the mind. These are thoughts that come and go and the ego has no way of managing it, but the same one who is observing is the same one who is managing. They’re just different names we call them – one is observer, one is thinker. But they are the same – the ego in different roles.
You can switch to any role. [You might say] I want to observe, meaning “I don’t want to really think.” I’m observing and because there are so many thoughts in my mind that I have no control of that even though I’m trying to observe in my mind, all these thoughts are coming but the moment I go into a deeper state of observing and I really begin to look at them, then I find that they disappear because suddenly control comes.
All these patterns that have been there, they’re disappearing, they’re all being resolved or coming into the observer. What I’m saying is that the one who is looking is also one who thinks. He’s thinking “Do I want this thought or do I want this thought,”. It’s an advanced form of thinking that can deal with the patterns that align there like the momentum – after you pull away your attention, this momentum continues because it’s a pattern. Because you’ve been so conditioned, you don’t see in a moment when you begin to try to observe things that you have been weak to, things that you have been identifying with – they come up and the part of the ego that is trying to control everything, using its mind to control, it has big difficulty.
The observer is not the mind, the observer is somebody trying to control the mind. The Observer is the advanced part of your being with an advanced mind, a mind that is saying now, “I want to be the superior one here, not you guys.” It’s really a higher part of you trying to control a lower part of you.
How do you distinguish the source of emotions?
Question:
When you have emotions, at which point in time do you say, “This is an experience of the heart and this is an experience of emotions?”
Sri Vasudeva:
The two are related. When you are having a thought, emotions are also associated with thought. If you look at everything that goes on: you think about something, you feel it and so emotions and thoughts they are very closely related. So when you begin to feel things, thoughts come into your mind; when you begin to think things, feeling comes. So they’re both like brother and sister.
If you want to separate them then you want to think but you want to be emotionless, which is another kind of emotional state if you were to look at it – a state of holding the emotion. It’s the emotion of holding the “no emotion”.
I don’t think you should try to create a complete distinction between them. But in terms of distinction – one engages the heart centre and one engages the mind (the brow centre) but they are very closely related.
If you look, all the chakras are related too – so one influences the other. When you’re eating there is a feeling in the eating, there’s thoughts in the eating, there is body energy in the eating – so everything is involved. So that shows how all these things are part of one.
When you’re trying to control, it’s a higher part of you trying to control a lower part of you. One carries high quality – quality of mind and another has a lower quality of mind. So the observer that we speak about is at the higher quality of being (possesses mind too, possesses intellect) but it’s a higher quality. So we speak of higher Self and lower self. So the Observer is part of that Higher Self activity.
The whole idea is that when you start to draw in two dimensions, you miss another dimension. When you begin to think of things discreetly like mind and ego then you tend to not see the full picture, in fact all the chakras are so related, they are part of one. The whole channel of Kundalini is an open channel to any chakra. The human being has all these chakras and can use any one at any time.
When we say for example we are emotionless – really we are functioning at a certain emotion, one that we call “emotionless.” “No feeling” is also part of the spectrum of emotion. If you really do think about it, the heart is held /is withheld in a certain place but the heart is engaged – is engaged with a stopper. So the one who is looking from inside, they are aware of the heart centre but they have put a stopper.
When we read or listen we may think that “Oh ego is different” and “that one is different” and “that one is different,” but they’re all so, so intimately connected and related.
Comment: it’s easier to stay committed in the presence of high energy
Sri Vasudeva:
As you said, it’s easier to be committed and to stay in a better space when you are in a powerful energy field – whether it’s the Guru or it’s the group of people.
Can we tap into the Source while in activity?
Question:
I found the Day one message very exciting. I know it is possible to draw energy from the Source but is it possible to do this all the time, even when your mind is occupied other than in meditation?
Sri Vasudeva:
Well that’s the idea, that meditation allows you to open the doorway to the Higher Self (to the Source within you), and when the door is opened, even when you’re doing ordinary things, you are able to channel more. In meditation you open the doors so that you can channel more. You’re opening up the inner doorways so that more light can manifest in and through you to your world. That’s what meditation does. It opens up the spaces within you and leaves that connection to channel more energy to your world. In a very natural way, if you are engaged in thinking or whatever you’re engaged in doing, you’re bringing the connection of that infinite space with you in whatever you are doing and that’s highly powerful. That’s what I would say: In meditation you open up the space and you keep that connection as you go into the world and whatever you are focused on, you bring that energy of that space into what you are doing. That’s the goal.
What are the different kinds of ego?
Comment:
I heard you talking about multi-dimensionality of life and of self. And the second part of Self – I didn’t know what to imagine by that.
Sri Vasudeva:
The Higher Self within us or the Self within us, or our individuality (let’s say our individuality is self), that individuality is experienced in multi-dimensionality: I have a physical self, I have an emotional self, I have a mental self, I have a spiritual self, I have a vital energy self. Or if you take the seven chakras, you can say each one of those is an aspect of the self – each one of those is a self. If you connect with the Source, then you can say “I have a Cosmic Self. I have a Universal Self. I have a Higher Self. I have a Larger Self.” Everything, every aspect of our being is a self.
Summary of the key points
“We exist in the Source in every moment”…and it is one of the goals that is nice to have – the awareness of the existence of the Source in every moment. But of course we’ll speak more about that.
“The process of becoming aware of subtle energy” – that’s what I was hoping that we’d also discuss – the process of becoming aware: the lack of awareness of subtle energy and the process of becoming aware of subtle energy, I wanted to stimulate that discussion.
“To nurse the desire to experience the ultimate” that things don’t happen unless we nurse the desire. And I guess all those who are looking and who are here with me, you have a desire for higher awareness but how strong the desire is will actually tell how much you will receive or how much you will open yourself to receive – because it’s always there.
I know it’s the first discussion group but I want to as much as we can to keep to the message because I’m building the message part by part and every message I give has enough information to really discuss on that particular day.
For example I think the Source is important to consider in everything you do because we are so disconnected from the Source. I think the subtle energy field is something to be aware of in every interaction, in every reflection we should be aware: “How is my subtle energy?”
The different states of being as categorized by the Kundalini theory, that we have different chakras through which we interact with the world and so it’s exciting to be able to understand seven dimensions of existence.
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