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I don't think kundalini is sufficient to explain the difference between the two categories of siddhis. For instance the Six Yogas of Naropa - the most well known being inner heat or 'candali' - which is obviously kundalini - is really a type 1 siddhi boosted by kundalini. The six yogas are: inner heat (tummo; T. gtum mo གཏུམ་མོ་; Skt. caṇḍālī) – entails the manipulation of the subtle energy of the body, which produces states of bliss and clarity, as well as physical warmth illusory body (gyulü; T sgyu lus སྒྱུ་ལུས; Skt. māyākāyā) – entails realizing the illusory nature of ordinary experience clear light (ösel; T od gsal འོད་གསལ་; Skt. prabhasvara) – entails recognizing the luminous aspect of mind dream (milam; T. rmi lam རྨི་ལམ་; Skt: svapna[-darśana]) – developing conscious awareness in the dream state transference (phowa; T. pho ba འཕོ་བ་; Skt: saṃkrānti) – directing transference of consciousness at the time of death, for either oneself or another intermediate state (bardo; T. bar do བར་དོ་; Skt: antarābhava) – entails maintaining awareness during the intermediate state (bardo) between the death of one lifetime and rebirth into the next lifetime. So I would say these are advanced versions of type 1 siddhis. Yes - they can be seen as signs of development without dwelling on them very much.

I agree with your theory of not taking the risk. “A shot not taken, is a shot that’s missed.” At some point, one has to attempt to directly experience things, or else closure will remain a faraway dream.

No need to invest anyone in particular with the authority to decide about matters of truth or expertise. That would only lead to some form of religion or cult. Do you think that we need anyone to decide if there is or is not an internet site called The Dao Bums on which we are in fact currently having a discussion? And I don't mean as a question of absolute truth, because you could of course argue that maybe it was just dream, or an illusion created by a demon, etc. Those options are all irrelevant to our daily live in which matters are decided by common sense, observations, arguments, etc.

Let me see if I understand correctly. I started reading ZZ ch 6. 1 古之真人，其寢不夢，其覺無憂，其食不甘，其息深深。真人之息以踵，眾人之息以喉。屈服者，其嗌言若哇。其耆欲深者，其天機淺。 The True men of old did not dream when they slept, had no anxiety when they awoke, and did not care that their food should be pleasant. Their breathing came deep and silently. The breathing of the true man comes (even) from his heels, while men generally breathe (only) from their throats. When men are defeated in argument, their words come from their gullets as if they were vomiting. Where lusts and desires are deep, the springs of the Heavenly are shallow. Legge translation So, I am a regular Joe who likes to read stuff here and there and when I read this I understand each word and each sentence in English and I can see the original is about the same except that was classical Chinese. But wait, I read breath from his heels, WTH is he talking about? Then I checked one of the postings here in this site and I started reading all kind of stuff, some are made up by each contributor others trying to follow some tradition, but come on, the original text in itself doesn't tell me that much. So how I am supposed to understand the text in this specific section of this chapter? how it can possible 真人之息以踵 or is there a reference what it meant by the heel? I tried to imagine that but I don't see a physical evidence that can show me that is possible. I have tried breathing from the navel and yes, I can feel warmth through my knees and feel the warmth of my circulation on my feet. As you can see, I still don't understand what I read is what I get because I don't get it. Or maybe I am out of the target or I don't belong to those bright minds in their selective circle, who knows!

Have you ever chased a butterfly in your Dreams! Worship of the Immortal of Death is possible. The Lady of the Forest, the Excitement of Every Man! Being a friend to Dong Li, do you know the terror of not being Dong Li's Friend! If you do not join my Sect I'll make you all join anyways! Sadly my master has recently passed and I can no longer do this kind of thing Join my sect and I will even cultivate with you, I Bai Xi who am already worshipped by Trillions of Humans who do not exist. Yes, the old ways are still here and we are not Chicken Brothers here. We are a clean sect, we only practice Zhuang Zhi's Butterfly Dream ... This a cultivation Technique that reaches Dao Heart, Dao Heart can't even see the Emotional Realm I will brag in front of you all, indeed I look the way I do, but do you think laughing at an Immortal Severing Expert will save you forever? I've never seen a woman claim to have a larger size than me nor I have ever not been a Star Elf. If you prove I am not a Star Elf at least, I will refine Gu for you!

Lol, “ the Chinese mind” versus those who grew up thinking that: - “death is a curse”. Sure, that’s why the Chinese looove using the character 四 (sarcasm alert). - “heaven or hell”. Sorry to disappoint you but the Chinese also had/have the concepts heaven and hell. - “reach my dream”. Sure, the Chinese are renowned for being slackers (sarcasm alert).

So tell me, all the translations we read all over, the Watson, Graham, Meir, Féng yǒu lán 冯友兰, etc., are those translations directly from the original, whatever is consider original, or shall we read by commentaries as the one Ziporyn did? If I understand correctly, one has to read each chapter and try to make sense with the way of thinking and the way it is understood today by whichever arbitrary comment. Or is there something else I am missing? It seems that in each story of each chapter there is more to ponder and understand and many thoughts are already in the Chinese mind as opposed to those who grew up thinking that death is a curse or that we are going to heaven or hell or if I hope I maybe reach my dream, etc.

As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet as a savior," Sri Yukteswar explained. "It is called Hiranyaloka or 'Illumined Astral Planet.' There I am aiding advanced beings to rid themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from astral rebirths. The dwellers on Hiranyaloka are highly developed spiritually; all of them had acquired, in their last earth- incarnation, the meditation-given power of consciously leaving their physical bodies at death. No one can enter Hiranyaloka unless he has passed on earth beyond the state of sabikalpa samadhi into the higher state of nirbikalpa samadhi. 43-1 "The Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from earth must go at death; there they worked out many seeds of their past actions in the astral worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds. Then, in order to free their souls more fully from the cocoon of karmic traces lodged in their astral bodies, these higher beings were drawn by cosmic law to be reborn with new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the astral sun or heaven, where I have resurrected to help them. There are also highly advanced beings on Hiranyaloka who have come from the superior, subtler, causal world." My mind was now in such perfect attunement with my guru's that he was conveying his word-pictures to me partly by speech and partly by thought-transference. I was thus quickly receiving his idea-tabloids. "You have read in the scriptures," Master went on, "that God encased the human soul successively in three bodies-the idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of man's mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with his physical senses. An astral being works with his consciousness and feelings and a body made of lifetrons. 43-2 A causal-bodied being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is with those astral beings who are preparing to enter the causal world." "Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos." Though I had slightly relaxed my embrace at Sri Yukteswar's request, my arms were still around him. Treasure beyond all treasures, my guru who had laughed at death to reach me! "There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings," Master began. "The inhabitants use astral planes, or masses of light, to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and radioactive energies. "The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light and color, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos. The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the aurora borealis-the sunny astral aurora being more dazzling than the mild-rayed moon-aurora. The astral day and night are longer than those of earth. "The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial blemishes- weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes-are absent. Unlike the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers. "The ordinary astral universe-not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka-is peopled with millions of astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones can travel freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones. In the same way that human beings live on the surface of the earth, worms inside the soil, fish in water, and birds in air, so astral beings of different grades are assigned to suitable vibratory quarters. "Among the fallen dark angels expelled from other worlds, friction and war take place with lifetronic bombs or mental mantric 43-3 vibratory rays. These beings dwell in the gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma. "In the vast realms above the dark astral prison, all is shining and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than the earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. Every astral object is manifested primarily by the will of God, and partially by the will- call of astral beings. They possess the power of modifying or enhancing the grace and form of anything already created by the Lord. He has given His astral children the freedom and privilege of changing or improving at will the astral cosmos. On earth a solid must be transformed into liquid or other form through natural or chemical processes, but astral solids are changed into astral liquids, gases, or energy solely and instantly by the will of the inhabitants. "The earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land, and air," my guru continued, "but the astral realms know a happy harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize or materialize their forms at will. Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed, definite, natural law hems them round-any astral tree, for example, can be successfully asked to produce an astral mango or other desired fruit, flower, or indeed any other object. Certain karmic restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions in the astral world about desirability of various forms. Everything is vibrant with God's creative light. "No one is born of woman; offspring are materialized by astral beings through the help of their cosmic will into specially patterned, astrally condensed forms. The recently physically disembodied being arrives in an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar mental and spiritual tendencies. "The astral body is not subject to cold or heat or other natural conditions. The anatomy includes an astral brain, or the thousand- petaled lotus of light, and six awakened centers in the sushumna, or astral cerebro-spinal axis. The heart draws cosmic energy as well as light from the astral brain, and pumps it to the astral nerves and body cells, or lifetrons. Astral beings can affect their bodies by lifetronic force or by mantric vibrations. "The astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form. Astral beings retain the same appearance which they possessed in youth in their previous earthly sojourn; occasionally an astral being chooses, like myself, to retain his old age appearance." Master, emanating the very essence of youth, chuckled merrily. "Unlike the spacial, three-dimensional physical world cognized only by the five senses, the astral spheres are visible to the all-inclusive sixth sense-intuition," Sri Yukteswar went on. "By sheer intuitional feeling, all astral beings see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. They possess three eyes, two of which are partly closed. The third and chief astral eye, vertically placed on the forehead, is open. Astral beings have all the outer sensory organs-ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin-but they employ the intuitional sense to experience sensations through any part of the body; they can see through the ear, or nose, or skin. They are able to hear through the eyes or tongue, and can taste through the ears or skin, and so forth. 43-4 "Man's physical body is exposed to countless dangers, and is easily hurt or maimed; the ethereal astral body may occasionally be cut or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing." "Gurudeva, are all astral persons beautiful?" "Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality, and not an outward conformation," Sri Yukteswar replied. "Astral beings therefore attach little importance to facial features. They have the privilege, however, of costuming themselves at will with new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly men don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to bedeck themselves in specially designed forms. "Joyous astral festivities on the higher astral planets like Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral world through spiritual advancement, and is therefore ready to enter the heaven of the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him, materialize Themselves into bodies of Their own choice and join the astral celebration. In order to please His beloved devotee, the Lord takes any desired form. If the devotee worshiped through devotion, he sees God as the Divine Mother. To Jesus, the Father-aspect of the Infinite One was appealing beyond other conceptions. The individuality with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every conceivable and inconceivable demand on the Lord's versatility!" My guru and I laughed happily together. "Friends of other lives easily recognize one another in the astral world," Sri Yukteswar went on in his beautiful, flutelike voice. "Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of earthly life. "The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and observes human activities on earth, but man cannot view the astral world unless his sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands of earth-dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an astral world. "The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka remain mostly awake in ecstasy during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal sons, earthbound souls. When the Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike astral visions. Their minds are usually engrossed in the conscious state of highest nirbikalpa bliss. "Inhabitants in all parts of the astral worlds are still subject to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of the higher beings on planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in conduct or perception of truth. These advanced beings endeavor to attune their every act and thought with the perfection of spiritual law. "Communication among the astral inhabitants is held entirely by astral telepathy and television; there is none of the confusion and misunderstanding of the written and spoken word which earth-dwellers must endure. Just as persons on the cinema screen appear to move and act through a series of light pictures, and do not actually breathe, so the astral beings walk and work as intelligently guided and coordinated images of light, without the necessity of drawing power from oxygen. Man depends upon solids, liquids, gases, and energy for sustenance; astral beings sustain themselves principally by cosmic light." "Master mine, do astral beings eat anything?" I was drinking in his marvelous elucidations with the receptivity of all my faculties-mind, heart, soul. Superconscious perceptions of truth are permanently real and changeless, while fleeting sense experiences and impressions are never more than temporarily or relatively true, and soon lose in memory all their vividness. My guru's words were so penetratingly imprinted on the parchment of my being that at any time, by transferring my mind to the superconscious state, I can clearly relive the divine experience. "Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils," he answered. "The astral beings consume vegetables, and drink a nectar flowing from glorious fountains of light and from astral brooks and rivers. Just as invisible images of persons on the earth can be dug out of the ether and made visible by a television apparatus, later being dismissed again into space, so the God-created, unseen astral blueprints of vegetables and plants floating in the ether are precipitated on an astral planet by the will of its inhabitants. In the same way, from the wildest fancy of these beings, whole gardens of fragrant flowers are materialized, returning later to the etheric invisibility. Although dwellers on the heavenly planets like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from any necessity of eating, still higher is the unconditioned existence of almost completely liberated souls in the causal world, who eat nothing save the manna of bliss. "The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth, 43-5 as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed, more or less according to the development of new qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their new astral home. Because every atom in creation is inextinguishably dowered with individuality, 43-6 an astral friend will be recognized no matter what costume he may don, even as on earth an actor's identity is discoverable by close observation despite any disguise. "The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being's average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly standards of time. As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by millenniums, or as some yogis live several hundred years though most men die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live much longer than the usual span of astral existence. Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws them back to earth within a specified time. "The astral being does not have to contend painfully with death at the time of shedding his luminous body. Many of these beings nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their astral form for the subtler causal one. The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all. "Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which constitute the life of astral beings. At physical death a being loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a being thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir man's deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds." "Beloved Master," I asked, "will you please describe more in detail the difference between rebirth on the earth and in the astral and causal spheres?" "Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied," my guru explained. "That body is a matrix of the thirty-five ideas required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which He later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and the gross physical body of sixteen elements. "The nineteen elements of the astral body are mental, emotional, and lifetronic. The nineteen components are intelligence; ego; feeling; mind (sense-consciousness); five instruments of knowledge, the subtle counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; five instruments of action, the mental correspondence for the executive abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk, and exercise manual skill; and five instruments of life force, those empowered to perform the crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating, metabolizing, and circulating functions of the body. This subtle astral encasement of nineteen elements survives the death of the physical body, which is made of sixteen gross metallic and nonmetallic elements. "God thought out different ideas within Himself and projected them into dreams. Lady Cosmic Dream thus sprang out decorated in all her colossal endless ornaments of relativity. "In thirty-five thought categories of the causal body, God elaborated all the complexities of man's nineteen astral and sixteen physical counterparts. By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle, then gross, He produced man's astral body and finally his physical form. According to the law of relativity, by which the Prime Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the causal cosmos and causal body are different from the astral cosmos and astral body; the physical cosmos and physical body are likewise characteristically at variance with the other forms of creation. "The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the Creator. The dualities are ever-present on earth: disease and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Human beings find limitation and resistance in three-dimensional matter. When man's desire to live is severely shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The soul, however, remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. 43-7 The adhesive force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man's slavery. "Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The compulsion or temptation of sensory experience is more powerful than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal perceptions. "Astral desires center around enjoyment in terms of vibration. Astral beings enjoy the ethereal music of the spheres and are entranced by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light. The astral beings also smell, taste, and touch light. Astral desires are thus connected with an astral being's power to precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as condensed thoughts or dreams. "Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly-free beings who are encased only in the causal body see the whole universe as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they can materialize anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore consider the enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights as gross and suffocating to the soul's fine sensibilities. Causal beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly. 43-8 Those who find themselves covered only by the delicate veil of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation even as the Creator. Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture, the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of power. "A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires. 43- "So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body- containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings-astral and causal-still remain to prevent the soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Amplitude." I asked my divine guru to shed further light on the high and mysterious causal world. "The causal world is indescribably subtle," he replied. "In order to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers of concentration that he could close his eyes and visualize the astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness-the luminous balloon with the solid basket-as existing in ideas only. If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things- solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria-as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present only as an idea. "Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry spaces. But beings in the causal world have a much greater freedom, and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity, without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation. "Causal beings realize that the physical cosmos is not primarily constructed of electrons, nor is the astral cosmos basically composed of lifetrons-both in reality are created from the minutest particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by maya, the law of relativity which intervenes to apparently separate the Noumenon from His phenomena. "Souls in the causal world recognize one another as individualized points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects which surround them. Causal beings see the difference between their bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man, closing his eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, feel, taste, and touch; they create anything, or dissolve it, by the power of cosmic mind. "Both death and rebirth in the causal world are in thought. Causal- bodied beings feast only on the ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the trackless soil of perceptions, swim in the ocean-endlessness of bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars, spectral dreams of golden nebulae, all over the skiey blue bosom of Infinity! "Many beings remain for thousands of years in the causal cosmos. By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then withdraws itself from the little causal body and puts on the vastness of the causal cosmos. All the separate eddies of ideas, particularized waves of power, love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control, and concentration melt into the ever-joyous Sea of Bliss. No longer does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves-eternal laughter, thrills, throbs. "When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever- Existent. 43-10 Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God's dream of cosmic creation." "A free soul!" I ejaculated in awe. "When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions," Master continued, "it becomes one with the Infinite without any loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before he was born as Jesus. In three stages of his past, symbolized in his earth- life as the three days of his experience of death and resurrection, he had attained the power to fully arise in Spirit. "The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies. A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos. There a savior assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants' karma 43-11 and thus helps them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in the astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom." "Resurrected One, I want to know more about the karma which forces souls to return to the three worlds." I could listen forever, I thought, to my omniscient Master. Never in his earth-life had I been able at one time to assimilate so much of his wisdom. Now for the first time I was receiving a clear, definite insight into the enigmatic interspaces on the checkerboard of life and death. "The physical karma or desires of man must be completely worked out before his permanent stay in astral worlds becomes possible," my guru elucidated in his thrilling voice. "Two kinds of beings live in the astral spheres. Those who still have earthly karma to dispose of and who must therefore reinhabit a gross physical body in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather than as permanent residents. "Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only, conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross elements, and of their astral body of nineteen subtle elements. After each loss of his physical body, however, an undeveloped being from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere. After the astral rest, such a man returns to the material plane for further lessons, gradually accustoming himself, through repeated journeys, to the worlds of subtle astral texture. "Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth. Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet, reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma. "My son, you may now comprehend more fully that I am resurrected by divine decree," Sri Yukteswar continued, "as a savior of astrally reincarnating souls coming back from the causal sphere, in particular, rather than of those astral beings who are coming up from the earth. Those from the earth, if they still retain vestiges of material karma, do not rise to the very high astral planets like Hiranyaloka. "Just as most people on earth have not learned through meditation- acquired vision to appreciate the superior joys and advantages of astral life and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect pleasures of earth, so many astral beings, during the normal disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to picture the advanced state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on thoughts of the more gross and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the astral paradise. Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such beings before they can achieve after astral death a permanent stay in the causal thought-world, so thinly partitioned from the Creator. "Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go back there, does he remain in the causal world. Completing there the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the confined soul thrusts out the last of the three corks of ignorance and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles with the Eternal. "Now do you understand?" Master smiled so enchantingly! "Yes, through your grace. I am speechless with joy and gratitude." Never from song or story had I ever received such inspiring knowledge. Though the Hindu scriptures refer to the causal and astral worlds and to man's three bodies, how remote and meaningless those pages compared with the warm authenticity of my resurrected Master! For him indeed existed not a single "undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns"! "The interpenetration of man's three bodies is expressed in many ways through his threefold nature," my great guru went on. "In the wakeful state on earth a human being is conscious more or less of his three vehicles. When he is sensuously intent on tasting, smelling, touching, listening, or seeing, he is working principally through his physical body. Visualizing or willing, he is working mainly through his astral body. His causal medium finds expression when man is thinking or diving deep in introspection or meditation; the cosmical thoughts of genius come to the man who habitually contacts his causal body. In this sense an individual may be classified broadly as 'a material man,' 'an energetic man,' or 'an intellectual man.' "A man identifies himself about sixteen hours daily with his physical vehicle. Then he sleeps; if he dreams, he remains in his astral body, effortlessly creating any object even as do the astral beings. If man's sleep be deep and dreamless, for several hours he is able to transfer his consciousness, or sense of I-ness, to the causal body; such sleep is revivifying. A dreamer is contacting his astral and not his causal body; his sleep is not fully refreshing." I had been lovingly observing Sri Yukteswar while he gave his wondrous exposition. "Angelic guru," I said, "your body looks exactly as it did when last I wept over it in the Puri ashram." "O yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize or dematerialize this form any time at will, much more frequently than I did while on earth. By quick dematerialization, I now travel instantly by light express from planet to planet or, indeed, from astral to causal or to physical cosmos." My divine guru smiled. "Though you move about so fast these days, I had no difficulty in finding you at Bombay!" "O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!" "Ah, wherein did I die? Isn't there some contradiction?" Sri Yukteswar's eyes were twinkling with love and amusement. "You were only dreaming on earth; on that earth you saw my dream- body," he went on. "Later you buried that dream-image. Now my finer fleshly body-which you behold and are even now embracing rather closely!-is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of God. Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually burst at a final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda, between dreams and Reality!" This idea of Vedantic 43-12 resurrection struck me with wonder. I was ashamed that I had pitied Master when I had seen his lifeless body at Puri. I comprehended at last that my guru had always been fully awake in God, perceiving his own life and passing on earth, and his present resurrection, as nothing more than relativities of divine ideas in the cosmic dream. "I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death, and resurrection. Grieve not for me; rather broadcast everywhere the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed earth of men to another God- dreamed planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will be infused into the hearts of misery-mad, death-fearing dreamers of the world."

TESTIMONIAL: ---- Q: Hey mate, I joined yesterday's meditation and I just wanted to check something. I felt some sort of thought in my head say my spine needs to be worked on first. Honestly I have really bad posture and I'm full of aches and pains from sitting meditation. I started doing lots of movements, the kind you do when cracking your neck. That proceeded to some weird chiropractic-style twists and stretches. After about 20 minutes the thought in my head said that's all my energy system could take and come back tomorrow. I feel pretty pain free today, which is unusual for me. Honestly, the whole experience was strange, in a good way. I was wondering, is that normal, or did I just do a load of stretches instinctively, because it felt good. I wonder if there was an element of hypnotic suggestion - because I have been told about automatic movement, it gave my subconscious permission to get weird. I ask because from what I gather, that zifa gong normally only happens after initiation? ---- X: Hello. I'm glad you're having new and interesting experiences since you joined. I started the meditation group for several reasons: 1. To create a strong resonant pool of consciousness that would entrain to my energy and entrain to the vibration of our tradition, raising the vibration of all participants and aligning it to the devine. This would allow them to more easily expand their focus away from the physical and settle into the non-material realms with greater lucidity. 2. To encourage people to be consistent with practice. Meditation can be lonely and often boring and tedious. It is not always exciting. So having a sense of community and we're in it together-ness can help with consistency. 3. To use the established energetic environment to conduct treatments of people on a general basis for health and wellbeing, but also more personally for complex psychoemotional imbalances. So I use the environment as a sort of treatment room as its easier to work on individuals when they are entrained to me energetically. 4. Lastly, to connect practitioners interested in internal cultivation to competent and qualified guides residing within the immaterial realms who have traversed the path themselves and are recognised to instruct in the alchemical path of our tradition. In these instances, I will use my status and authority to invite Hu Fa Shen to temporarily pair with and guide uninitiated students during the sessions. This allows committed practitioners to get a taste of our tradition and to aid them in alchemical practice. This last point encapsulates some of your experiences last night. Whichever of those ideas the participant aligns to vibrationally, by choice, or whatever we have agreed upon before hand, will be what they experience and synchronise with during the sessions. As most traditional Daoist schools, we begin with realigning and fortifying the structures and condition of the body to stabilise and prepare the vessel for subtle work. This is what you're experiencing right now. It is called Xian Tian Shen Gong and is predominantly focused on movement and postural training. Once the body has been improved to a condition conducive to deeper work, the movements will gradually stop and you will be guided to seated meditation, Xian Tian Jing Zuo or guided breath and energy work, Xian Tian Qigong. While I understand that Zifa and spontaneous movement is what is most commonly attributed to similar phenomena, it's important to understand that this situation is not that and that the Hu Fa Shen guiding you in my room is an independent disembodied consciousness, different from you only by its discarnate state, the quality and size of its consciousness and its authority and rank in the immaterial realm. What you hear is the voice of the teacher that has chosen to work with you and the phenomena you feel are because of his interaction with you while you're immersed in the bubble of his consciousness and your energy is being entrained and your body, subtle energy and consciousness are being acted on and guided in the direction of the subtlest realms of the Dao. This is why our art is called Dao Yin Shu. If you look up the phrase, Dao Yin, nowadays, whether online or in literature, you will find pictures or videos or forms of movements akin to Ba Duan Jin or Yi Jin Jing, and the meaning of Yin there has been watered down to mean "stretching and guiding the Qi and limbs", but this is only because practitioners lost the connection to the divine over time due to the long-held cultural traditions of keeping arts within the family and behind closed doors. Often when a master died, his art died with him. If you go back far enough you will find that the Yin in Dao Yin stands for guidance, rather than guiding and Dao refers to divine existence. So together it means Guided by the Divine and Shu means art; hence, The Divine Guidance Art. To add to your last point. If you become formally initiated, it comes with particular things, such as an energetic signature in your aura that acts as a sort of uniform in the immaterial realms, so other spirits recognise your apprenticeship under Tai Shang and Xiao Yao Pai, authority to perform certain skills and your first Fu Fa Shen that is formally assigned to you, who will change only when you reach certain ranks or achievements in personal development etc ---- Q: Thanks! That's all really interesting. I was wondering what happens after death in your tradition? I asked this on the daobums forum and didn't get a reply. Does your spirit reside in a heavenly realm and become a fa shen for mortal practitioners within the tradition? Is that how spirits in the heavenly realms avoid transmigration? I'm assuming there's some type of karmic bond that is forged with the tradition? ---- X: Sorry, I must have missed it or maybe I was not in the mood 🤓 It is important to note that merely becoming initiated is not sufficient to ameliorate the condition of one's consciousness, qualitative speaking - to a degree that would allow vibrational synchronicity with a stratum of the fractal multidimensionality that corresponds to the idea of a "heavenly" experience. There are in fact many who become initiated, practice a couple of times and then never come back to it again. So aside from being assigned a teacher, one must practice Dao Yin Shu diligently in order to qualitatively and quantitative cultivate the consciousness in order to settle and abide in the realms of their preference. Any "spirit" in their discarnate state may act in the capacity of a "guide" to those other souls having an incarnate experience whom they have some affiliation with or have made agreements to assist them in exploring the themes they have chosen to challenge themselves with within the context of a particular experience of physical reality in the incarnate state. It is not necessary for them to have developed to degree equal to that of a Xian Shen, or for them to become affiliated with any heavenly schools - but merely to contain within themselves enough of what is lacking in another that they can execute the function of a guide effectively. Fu Fa Shen have a particular rank and are affiliated in a formal capacity with both the heavenly and earthly branches of our school. They specialise in particular things, such that under certain requirements of a practice phase, one teacher may be temporarily swapped out for another, just like in school on earth where u have your head of year, then you have your math teacher biology teacher, physics teacher etc. So, whether you become a Fu Fa Shen will depend on your degree of advancement. ---- Q: Thanks, it's just I wondered if there was a karmic debt incurred to the lineage that one must effectively pay off at death. I'm just thinking of the long term implications of initiation, and the ramifications of that after death. ---- X: "Transmigration" isn't a curse, it is a free choice and a desire of each developing soul, for it is in the incarnate state that the quality of the consciousness can be improved, especially the emotional quality of the consciousness, which is an essential condition for the experience of and vibrational synchronisation with the heavenly realms. The immateriality of existence beyond the density of the physical vibration is void of material form, thus the action of manifestation does not take any time or space nor does it need to issue by way of the actions of a physical body. Simply in your discarnate state, being only of mind and light, what you feel and instantaneously becomes a loved experience. Thus the existences of heavens and hella as described by traditional abrahamic religions are in fact simply various strata of the immaterial vibrational multidimensionality who are populated by souls of like vibrational quality who then pool together in collective consciousness to experience the realms project by their emotions and thoughts which constitute the creation of the abides they reside in. So there ate many many vibrational layers of existence pooled by populations of synchronistically aligned souls. They are all eager to incarnate and portion a part of their consciousness within the volume of their soul that is assigned to have a physical experience. Thus the experience of Taiji and duality or physical life, happens within the volume of the discarnate consciousness as an idea of reality. Where space time is separated from it's unity and split into the experience of one and the other bringing rise to process and the experience of things happening over time. It is in that incarnation that they can then work to improve the emotional quality and intelligence and wisdom of their soul in order to reside in realms deeper and deeper in the Dao that are subtler and more tender, up to the energy of the creator in his abode. So, incarnation is not something souls avoid, it's something they queue up to do with their friends. Each picking something to work on, a new perspective to explore that will help them balance one side of the scale of their growth against another in order to guarantee an healthy, even and holistic growth as a consciousness. When an discarnate being looks within its volume and assesses and energetic imbalance in their growth they desire to enter a physical experience in order to absorb the opposite perspective in order to balance themselves. "God" does not force anyone to incarnate or not incarnate, that would be a condition. How then could he be the unconditional all that is if he is conditional? Thus the Dao allows each spirit free will to develop in the direction of his choosing. Supporting all of its creation as parts of itself. So it is good to learn to look at incarnation from a more positive perspective. For it was your choice to come here to learn and play. X: "Transmigration" isn't a curse, it is a free choice and a desire of each developing soul, for it is in the incarnate state that the quality of the consciousness can be improved, especially the emotional quality of the consciousness, which is an essential condition for the experience of and vibrational synchronisation with the heavenly realms. The immateriality of existence beyond the density of the physical vibration is void of material form, thus the action of manifestation does not take any time or space nor does it need to issue by way of the actions of a physical body. Simply in your discarnate state, being only of mind and light, what you feel and think instantaneously becomes a loved experience Thus the existences of heavens and hells as described by traditional abrahamic religions are in fact simply various strata of the immaterial vibrational multidimensionality who are populated by souls of like vibrational quality who then pool together in collective consciousness to experience the realms projected by their emotions and thoughts which constitute the creation of the abodes they reside in. So there are many many vibrational layers of existence pooled by populations of synchronistically aligned souls. They are all eager to incarnate and portion a part of their consciousness within the volume of their soul that is assigned to have a physical experience. Thus the experience of Taiji and duality or physical life, happens within the volume of the discarnate consciousness as an idea of reality. It is a holographic experience and the experience of it is akin to a part of the soul falling asleep so to say and having a dream of being physical, much like we fall asleep and dream of many non-physical things, so too a portion of the soul sleeps and dreams of the physical. Within that realm, space time is separated from its unity and split into the experience of one and the other, this and that up and down, hot and cold, Yin and Yang, bringing rise to process and the experience of things happening over time. It is in that incarnation that they can then work to improve their emotional quality and intelligence and wisdom of their soul in order to reside in realms deeper and deeper in the Dao that are subtler and more tender, up to the energy of the creator in his abode. So, incarnation is not something souls avoid, it's something they queue up to do with their friends and it is a cause of great excitement. Each picking something to work on, a new perspective to explore that will help them balance one side of the scale of their growth against another in order to guarantee a healthy, even and holistic growth as a consciousness. Not skewing too far in one direction or the other and becoming disharmonious. So, when an discarnate being looks within its volume and assesses and energetic imbalance in their growth they desire to enter a physical experience in order to absorb the opposite perspective in order to balance themselves. "God" does not force anyone to incarnate or not incarnate, that would be a condition. How then could he be the unconditional all that is if he is conditional? Thus the Dao allows each spirit free will to develop in the direction of his choosing. Supporting all of its creation as parts of itself. So it is good to learn to look at incarnation from a more positive perspective. For it was your choice to come here to learn and play As for the karmic debts. No karmic debts. No strings attached. The only thing is that If you dissolve the apprenticeship you must wait until you decide to enter physical reality anew in order to be initiated again. Perhaps it's the cost of complacency or the swine not valuing the pearls for lack of a better analogy 😂 After death, depending on your degree of entrainment to the vibration of our school, you will settle in a realm affiliated to our vibration and may continue various forms of work there or reincarnate again if you wish to experience new perspectives of the absolute through your unique unique individuality, or you may simply abide in a the realms you're entrained to and exist until you are spurred into action. ---- Q: That's really fascinating, thank you for your insights. I suppose, coming from a Buddhist background, I tend toward a more pessimistic view toward the physical experience, so it's nice to have a new perspective. I'll keep going with the evening group practice for now. Will keep an eye out for the next initiation. Thanks again! ---- X: My pleasure. See you around 🙏🏽

I taught myself hypnosis from an encyclopedia article when I was eight or so. I had a friend at the time who was easy to hypnotize and I had a lot of experience. At a certain point I realized that hypnosis could be dangerous and stopped doing it for years. I bought a lot of books to learn more at some point, and in my late teens was quite good at it and wondered if it might be useful in spiritual training. based on my own experience with the training that I did and some later experiments with another good subject I decided that it may be helpful, but was not necessary, so I left it alone until the late eighties or thereabouts when I met people into Neuro-linguistic programming. From them I learned that the techniques of Milton Ericson had been assimilated into and refined within Neuro-linguistic programming and set about studying and practicing that, and those techniques for hypnosis. Again the bottom line is that while such techniques are useful they are not necessary, nor are spiritual practices reducible to them. I said all the above to make clear that I have a significant background in hypnosis and related topics. Now for a quick look at the history of hypnosis. Modern hypnosis began in the late 1700s with the work of Franz Anton Mesmer who developed a healing technique based on what he called "animal magnetism" and using it to heal people, a technique which also could involve trance induction. Skipping over a lot of history to the mid 1800s, the idea of animal magnetism survived and was very influential, Poe for example wrote a story called Mesmeric Revelation, the link provides a lot of good good background information as well as the story. In the middle of the 1800s the skeptical Scot James Braid said that mesmeric trance was all suggestion and created the alternative name hypnosis and after that the notion of animal magnetism and thus energy tranmission, qi, shen, whatever, was banished from the field of hypnosis, this link to the Wikipedia article is also more informative than I thought it would be, I looked at it to remind me who that Scotsman was, and I was reminded of exactly how much interesting history I was only vaguely remembering, but was leaving out. So bottom line, hypnosis is not directly involved but suggestion may contribute to some aspects of the phenomena. All of that said, Shadow training is apparently in important aspect of Daoist training and mastering and using one's own shadow as well as the shadows of others is part of Daoist teaching. Professor Jerry Allen Johnson teaches in it his books. I have all of his books and he talks about it in two of them at least. I picked up my copy of Daoist Magical Transformation Skills: Dream Magic, Shape-Shifting,Soul Travel, and Sex Magic and found a section on it beginning on p. 72. So I guess Naruto is not simply inventing Shadow Clone Jutsu. I hope this information is interesting and helpful, ZYD

That is a kind of strength which you will gain by your tummy here. When your mind is here or here, you know, it means you are entertaining them (images in the mind). If your mind is here, you are not concern—concerned too much about the image you have in your mind. So, try to keep right posture, with some power in your tummy. ("Practice Zazen With Your Whole Mind And Body", Shunryu Suzuki Transcript, Friday, September 8, 1967) You are right that Gautama never mentions the "hara", he doesn't deal much with anatomy apart from the cemetary contemplations. Nevertheless, in the description of the feeling of the first concentration (gathering the "bath-ball", which I quoted previously), he does mention that the ball is gathered in a copper basin. Is there a feeling to match his description, does the mind which is "here and here" settle in an area that feels like a basin? Hmmm? Chadwick finds it demeaning, that Mr. Suzuki referred to the hara as the "tummy" for his Western students. What is expressed in this sutra is a very daily thing, but not an ordinary thing. “Maha Prajna Paramita” is “great, complete wisdom.” Maha means “no exception, complete.” Right inside your skin this prajna fully exists. So the first thing is, we have to prepare to feel this sutra, not use our brain to understand it. ... When we are dreaming in very deep sleep, we have no sense of, “I am dreaming this.” Everything is so real we do not doubt it until someone makes a sound and we wake up. Then we wonder, “Where am I?” waking up from the dream to so-called “reality.” ("Kobun's Talks on the Heart Sutra", edited by Angie Boissevain and Judy Cosgrove; emphasis added) When I find my place where I am, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. The idea is to "make self-surrender the object of thought", such that "determinate thought" in action simply ceases--first in speech, then in deed, and finally in mind: …I say that determinate thought is action. When one determines, one acts by deed, word, or thought. (AN III 415, Pali Text Society Vol III p 294) And what are the activities? These are the three activities:–those of deed, speech and mind. These are activities. (SN II 3, Pali Text Society vol II p 4) …I have seen that the ceasing of the activities is gradual. When one has attained the first trance, speech has ceased. When one has attained the second trance, thought initial and sustained has ceased. When one has attained the third trance, zest has ceased. When one has attained the fourth trance, inbreathing and outbreathing have ceased… Both perception and feeling have ceased when one has attained the cessation of perception and feeling. (SN IV 217, Pali Text Society vol IV p 146) Herein… the (noble) disciple, making self-surrender the object of (their) thought, lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness. (The disciple), aloof from sensuality, aloof from evil conditions, enters on the first trance, which is accompanied by thought directed and sustained, which is born of solitude, easeful and zestful, and abides therein. (SN v 198, Pali Text Society vol V p 174; “noble” substituted for Ariyan; emphasis added) When I find my place where I am, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. No "seeing through" anything. Seeing through the identification of self in the skandhas helps with "making self-surrender the object of thought"--it's not laying hold of "one-pointedness". Right before falling asleep, that's one-pointedness. Meanwhile: No ignorance and also no extinction of it, and so forth until no-old-age-and-death and also no extinction of them; No suff’ring, no origination, no stopping, no path; No cognition, also no attainment. Helpful to me in making self-surrender the object of thought: When a presence of mind is retained as the placement of attention shifts, then the natural tendency toward the free placement of attention can draw out thought initial and sustained, and bring on the stages of concentration. (Shunryu Suzuki on Shikantaza and the Theravadin Stages; emphasis added) In Glenhaven, or Clearlake? Glenhaven would be across from Konocti, as in the picture below--most of my pictures are from Lucerne, which is farther north on the Glenhaven side of the lake.

"I should start a YouTube channel.... I really should have handled that grappling situation in jujitsu last week differently..... do snail's dream?...." after 30 seconds of meditation.

Agreed 100%. I'm skeptical, but open minded. Without skepticism you end up wasting money and time that you could have seeking out something genuine, or enrolling in a karate class. With a closed mind, you might miss something truly magical, to whatever extent it's possible in this world. I lucid dream and astral project, and while I'm skeptical about the experience being me actually leaving my body or just my imagination, if I was too closed minded about it, then I never would have trained myself to do it, and would be missing out on an experience that is real, even if the reasons behind it might not be what some people claim it to be. And if you're still feeling desperate to throw your disposable income at somebody, I can give you my paypal account, and say a prayer for you in my Qi Gong practice or something. It might work.

Hey, @Bhathen, let me try to answer your very interesting questions I'll do it in 3 parts: 1) Intro 2) Female Gods Predominant 3) What do these Gods represent? 1) Intro about time periods I personally don't know for sure, but I remember reading somewhere (or maybe it was a documentary I saw) that they've found yantras inscribed on rocks and stones all the way back to 10.000 years before Christ. Furthermore, if I remember correctly, it seems there was a worldwide trend of the cult of the "Divine Feminine" for many years in world history, in both Europe, Africa and Asia I believe they've found different cult objects etc., also in India of course. I do have a hypothesis of my own using the Cosmology of the Danish mystic Martinus as to why the Divine feminine was predominant in ancient times, whereas later there was a sudden worldwide shift more towards the masculine and patriarchal ways. 2) Female Gods Predominant According to Martinus, the microcosmos and macrocosmos idea is central to understanding reality, which he describes as "life within life within life". In his perspective the Earth itself is a living being undergoing its own spiritual evolution, similarly to us, albeit it at a macrocosmic level (from our perspective). Evolution happens via karma and reincarnation from minerals, to plants, to animals, to true human beings and beyond into the spiritual worlds. He says that we all carry both poles, the masculine and the feminine. As minerals and plants, we're double poled and therefore much more "at one" with the Divine. As animals one pole stagnates, and the other dominates completely. According to him, spiritual evolution as a human being is simply growing these two poles back into balance. That's what will take us from animal to human being. A man grows his feminine pole to match his masculine; when this happens he gets cosmic consciousness and is ready to move on to other worlds. Similarly with women, just the reverse. We're all living cells in the body of the Earth. I believe the reason Female Gods were dominant across the world in ancient times was because the Earth itself is a female. That's why the Earth was called "Gaia", "Mother Earth" and other feminine names when worshipped in many ancient cults. As cells in the Earth, we represent and follow the lines of feeling and thinking produced by the Earth. With the Earth being predominantly feminine in ancient times, feminine ways of seeing the universe and life predominated. That is, Feminine Gods. Some thousand years ago, the Earth entered from being mostly "one-poled" and feminine, into the phase of having to upgrade her masculine pole, in order to reach cosmic consciousness herself (which according to Martinus will happen in about 2000-3000 years in our time, however, it only feels as about 15 minutes for the Earth). When her maculine pole got activated, at first it's quite crude; it's about war, domination, power etc. That's when all the masculine values and perspective started to dominate more on a global scale, and we got the patriarchal religions (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam etc) (not to say these religions are crude, it's just highlighting the masculine aspect. I personally grew up very much revering all 3 religions, and still do to this day. It's simply to give an example of patriarchy focusing more on hierarchy, power etc). The "left path" or feminine path is more powerful and gives magical powers and material results much quicker, because feminine logic is simply more available in the atmosphere of this planet, due to having dominated for many Eons of time. The "right path" or masculine path is newer, is more strict, more about discipline and morals, and doesn't easily produce spiritual powers and material results. It gives more "an inner" result, e.g. patience, forgiveness etc, the virtues preached by the more patriarchal religions. Further, the patriarchal religions all in some way contribued to removing the "old ways" of magical powers from the world as best they could, e.g. through witch burning, the inquisition etc. All the above is simply my own personal hypothesis and analysis. 3) What do these Gods represent? Okay, so what do all the Gods and Goddesses in the Sri Yantra represent? Here are some of my own perspectives so far. I would say you can view these Gods in several different ways. How I personally see it: 1) A material, scientific explanation of the universe, 2) A both spiritual and scientific map of your body, the universe and God (the microcosmos and macrocosmos idea), 3) Different energies available to be used for different purposes Let's start with the first one: 1) A material, scientific explanation of the universe. In this perspective, the pyramid is grouped into 5 "Gods": Ganesha in the lower right corner, Surya in the lower left corner, Vishnu in the upper left corner, Shiva in the upper right corner, and Shakti at the top of the pyramid. In ancient times they cloaked science in religious terms to help lay people understand. Materially Ganesha is simply the physical Earth. Surya is the Sun. Vishnu is the universe itself, Shiva is God or awareness inside each being, Shakti is the interplay in between all these factors. In this perspective, each avarana is simply a scientific mapping of life: 1st level: physical everyday life, you go about your business, and you compulsively react to sense-impressions in 8 ways (anger, delusion, envy, lust, jealousy, greed, pride etc). You're like an animal impulsively being thrown around by life with no control. However, you can rise above this by self-development, by developing patience, kindness, forgiveness etc. 2nd level: the dream world. This was much more a factor in ancient times than today. You see both in the Old and New Testament, as well as the Qur'an, people often had very vivid and lively dreams. Tribal people to this day still do. So this level simply scientifically describes what goes on when you're dreaming; there are 16 factors present in a dream: 5 senses, sense of a body, of a self, of form, of name etc. They simply scientifically "mapped" what a person experiences while dreaming. 3rd level: deep sleep. This is when we black out and have no concept of time. We sometimes feel like we close our eyes, and 1 minute later it's morning, even though we've sleept 8 hours. Where did time go? You don't feel the passing of time in deep sleep. However, these great ancient yogis still mapped exactly what 8 factors are present during deep sleep in order to explain this aspect of reality. 4th level: there are more planets than just Earth in this galaxy. Some are on lower evolutionary stages than Earth, some are on a higher stage. Somehow the ancient yogis mapped which planets in our galaxy have life and described it. There are 14 worlds, Earth is no. 8. There are 7 planets below us, and 6 planets above us. Earth is in "the middle" in its evolution, but also physically if you look at the galaxy. We're in the middle between the galaxy center and the most outer periphery. The lower planets are further out from the middle than Earth, whereas the higher planets are closer to the center of the galaxy. Interestingly enough, this is exactly what Danish Martinus also says. 5th level: there are 5 action senses employed in daily living, and 5 knowledge senses. 6th level: there are 5 elements in this material universe, and these have 5 attributes. 7th level: everything at the base level is composed of energy and vibration, there are 8 basic forms of vibration as the foundational building blocks for this universe. 8th level: underlying creation are immaterial principles governing creation. 9th level: immanent yet transcendent, penetrating everything and everyone, yet above and beyond everything and everyone, here lies the great mystery responsible for creating, upholding and destroying creation. We could call it God, the Goddesss, the Divine, they called it Sat-Chit-Ananda. It's eternally mysterious, yet what you can say about it is that it contains truth, consciousness and bliss. 2) A both spiritual and scientific map of your body, the universe and God (the microcosmos and macrocosmos idea) If we go this explanation, we take the scientific and material explanation from above, yet now we apply the microcosmic and macrocosmic idea to it. Creation repeats the same principles at each level. This means that the Meru describes your physical body, your energetic body, nature and the universe, every level thinkable. Making it "spiritual" simply means you can awaken each of these divine powers of the universe within yourself as well. You can awaken the energies in your physical body, energetic body, mind and soul. You can become a "junior God" or miniature God. You can open your third eye, astral travel, control the weather, heal diseases, predict the future, command spirits, go beyond life and death and much more. In this case each "God" or "Goddess" represents the powers of the universe, and the Meru allows you to awaken those same powers in yourself. Instead of simply being a material, scientific explanation or theory, you can now spiritually experience each of these principles actively and practically. 3) Different energies available to be used for different purposes In a very pragmatic and practical perspective, the Meru is simply a tool for improving practical, day-to-day living. Using it you can channel the powers of the universe for whatever need you currently have. It's pretty similar to the above idea, however now it's seen from a non-religious lense, a simple, practical tool. You can "order" more money from the universe, health, success, love, the weather needed for your specific purpose and much more. It's a magical tool for "managing" and improving your life however you wish to. Conclusion These are some of the ways I personally view it so far. Feel free to comment or question more, if there are any specifics you'd like to dive into deeper, or maybe start to dive in to some of the individual Goddesses and what they can do

human being always lie, always, but a good movie portraying many dark truths of our society is Requiem for a dream. Highly recommended, one of my favourite movies ever

Dear Dao Bums, Let me share some of my experiences with the highest level of Sri Vidya: the Navavarana Puja done on the Sri Meru (3D pyramid version of the well-known 2D version Sri Yantra also known as Sri Chakra). I'll share in 3 points: 1) Intro to Sri Vidya and Sri Meru 2) My own path to Sri Vidya and experiences from each level 3) My experiences with the Sri Meru Navavarana Puja 1) Intro to Sri Vidya and Sri Meru Sri Vidya translates literally as "auspicious knowledge" and is related to Goddess Worship. Sri Vidya has been kept secret for millenia because of its unique methods allowing the accomplishment of both yoga (spiritual liberation) and bhoga (material enjoyment and success). Sri Vidya has several origin stories: 1) It was given by Shiva to his most beloved consort Shakti as the ultimate means of acquiring everything both spiritually and materially, 2) It was given to saint Agastya as a boon by Vishnu's Hayagriva form, because Agastya asked for a way common people could easily and quickly reach ultimate liberation without renunciation and multiple-life spiritual practice, 3) It was given directly from the joint incarnation of the Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva) Dakshinamurti to a student, who then passed it on to Parashurama (Vishnu's 6th incarnation out of 10 incarnations). Adi Shankaracharya a very famous preacher of advaita vedanta & an unparalleled yogi personally installed Sri Yantra in temples all across India. Sri Vidya gives unique methods of reaching both bhukti (material enjoyment and success) and mukti (spiritual liberation) in this current incarnation. What is then the Sri Yantra / Sri Chakra? It's a 2D version that is called "Yantra Raja" or the "King of all Yantras". The 3D version is called Maha Meru and is in a pyramidal shape. The story is that this yantra holds all other yantras in it, it contains all Gods, all Goddesses, all Gurus, all spiritual powers (siddhi) as well as all the necessary means for complete fullfillment of purushartha (dharma, artha, kama and moksha, the 4 goals of human life). 2) My own path to Sri Vidya and experiences from each level I was exposed to Hinduism from early childhood, and it was always a big part of my life in early childhood as well as my teenage years. This was due to family. In my twenties I followed along the footsteps of my family and got mantra diksha (mantra initiation) and performed a "maha-purascharan" which in my case took 4 years of daily mala japa (mantra chanting with a rosary) to complete. At the completion of each purascharana, like clockwork, that very night I got a dream of the form of Almighty God I was worshipping. I would get life guidance. After performing 6 purascharans and getting these dreams I was quite content spiritually. At that moment I came into contact with SKY (Simplified Kundalini Yoga) which is a direct energy and transmission based meditation system. SKY blew my socks off; on top of deep meditation, I felt it gave "tangible benefits". By meditating on the chakras I got much better health, sleep, energy levels, mood and even better meditation than before, whereas with mantra japa I got a dream once or twice per year, but other than that it was adrishta-phala (unseen fruit) for me. No visible, tangible result. The tangible benefits of SKY reeled me in, because it seemed to give much more much easier and with lesser effort, so over time I slowly tapered down my japa until I completely stopped. After several years, my hindu family member sent me an invitation to an online Sri Vidya workshop with mantra diksha. It had no impact on me whatsoever - inside myself I thought "I've already tried mainstream religious hinduism with my years and years of mantra japa. It's a great way, but it seemed that SKY was simply superior in all ways. However, for some reason I read a bit on the webpage over a few days, just to give my family member and Sri Vidya the benefit of the doubt. At that point I saw a photo of Bala Tripura Sundari (the teenage form of the Goddess) and something deep in my soul stirred. I couldn't say what it was, but I felt something very deep and profound stirring. I felt a kind of attraction unlike anything I've ever felt before. After a few days of this deep feeling I decided to give it a go. Since then I've completed the rituals and mantras of each level of the Sri Vidya given by Parashurama and freely shared with the public by Guru Amritananda Natha. It's taken me several years of blood, sweat and tears to complete, it's been quite tough and demanding to be honest, but worth it. Level 1: Removal of Obstacles, Starting the Worship of the Goddess, Protection Ganapati the elephant God removes obstacles from your spiritual and material path and grants stability Bala Tripura Sundari is the teenage version of the Goddess, so you start your approach towards the Goddess Chamunda (Durga) gives you material and spiritual protection Level 2: Attraction, Joy, Love & Acceptance By worshipping Raja Shyamala Devi, the feminine side of the Goddess, you become enormeously attractive. In a group of the opposite sex, at least one from that group will be attracted to you after you've worshipped Raja Shyamala. It gives you profound pleasure in meditation. Further, it attracts more goodness towards you, materially and spiritually. In the end, this attraction and pleasure is said to actually be the Goddess' way of attracting you further towards her! Level 3: Healing, Protection, Destroying Bad Here you worship Varahi Devi, the masculine side of the Goddess. You heal your physical body, destroy black magic, protect yourself from enemies and spirits. You destroy and push away badness and bad energy from your spiritual and material life. Level 4: Here you finally worship Tripura Sundari in the Sri Meru with Navavarana Puja with her panchadashi mantra. Level 5: You get a higher mantra for Maha Tripura Sundari called Maha Shodashi, it's simply an add-on to the Navavarana Puja, and a big level up spiritually when you meditate with it (japa) I've detailed some of my personal experiences with each level in this thread here: https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53122-sri-vidya-yantra-mantra-tantra-mudra-guru-karunamaya/ 3) My experiences with the Sri Meru Navavarana Puja I've recently started my first mandala (41 days) of Navarana Puja. I'm blown away! There are 9 layers or levels in the Meru, each called an avarana. The first 3 levels are one group and represents you as a seperate individual Level 1 represents the waking state and the feet. By worshipping it you're no longer helplessly thrown around by 8 negative feeling as a spontaneous and uncontrollable reaction to what you see and experience in the world, namely anger, lust, delusion, jealousy, greed, envy and possesiveness. Furthermore, it gives the 8 siddhis. Level 2 represents the dreaming state and the thighs. By worshipping it you eventually gain control of your dreams and get guidance in your dreams. You get aligned to cosmic cycles, namely the cycle of the moon. It is also said to satisfy all desires when worshipped. Level 3 represents the deep sleep state and muladhara chakra. It is said to end all agitation. The next 3 levels are one group and represents the powers working in the universe Level 4 represents the 14 worlds (chaturdashi loka), where we live in the 8th world (Bhu Loka or the Earth), as well as the swadisthana chakra. It is said to bless you with all auspiciousness. Level 5 represents the 5 karmendriyas (action organs) and the 5 gyanendriyas (knowledge organs) and the manipura chakra. It is said to bless you with all wealth. Level 6 represents the 5 elements and their 5 attributes and anahata chakra. It gives all protection. The final 3 levels represent Almighty God and his powers Level 7 represents the 8 most basic constituents of energy, the first outpouring from transcendent reality into primal, material existence, as well as the vishuddi chakra. It gives all healing. Further, it gives astral powers (seeing the past and the future, seeing every on planet Earth through your third eye, and later it gives the power of astral travel, i.e. leaving your physical body behind and travelling freely in the universe with your astral body. Read more here https://forum.amritananda.org/d/349-spiritual-reality-meditation-journey-within-by-guruji) Level 8 represents iccha (will), gyana (knowledge) and kriya (action) shakti, as well as agnya chakra. It gives all siddhis. Level 9 represents complete, pure bliss, God, sat-chit-ananda and the sahasrara chakra. It gives God realisation. When you add the Maha-Shodashi section on top of the regular puja, also on the same level of the Meru, it also opens dwadasangham chakra (above your head), allowing you to reach Thuriya-Teetha or the state even more beyond. My Personal And Tangible Experience The Navavarana puja takes between 1.5 and 2 hours to complete, so it's really, really long compared to the earlier pujas, where the longest (Varahi puja & Varahi tarpanam) took me about 50 minutes. The very first day I tried it, I got kind of tired because there are so many preparatory steps, new and unknown mantras as well as parts of the vedas and much more. However, the higher I reached on the pyramid, the higher I found a feeling of bliss and pleasure increasing at the corresponding chakra. When I reached the throat chakra, it was so intense that I could only describe it as a mix of deep meditation, ultimate sex, explosive orgasm and feeling drunk. When I reached the agnya, sahasrara and dwadasangham chakra, I was so slow in moving the spoon to give the Meru milk, because I was so incredibly blissed out. It isn't like that every day, but the more days of the 41 day mandala I complete, the stronger and more intense it grows, and stabilises more and more from day to day. I'm so incredibly surprised! I really feel "it was worth it" to go through years and years of blood, sweat, tears, rituals, mantra japa, purascharana and much more to get here. So far my feeling is that they weren't just marketing when they said the Meru is the ultimate.. I feel they were right! All the best! Sri Matre Namaha (salutations to the Goddess)

*realistic version: I wake up in the morning before work from a dream where Elmo was my best friend and he was confessing to me the truth about his eating disorder. I spend the next seven minutes hitting the snooze button while googling the dream interpretation. While doing so I see an ad for some new leggings on sale at Target and hate the model for having a perfect body and knowing damn well I'll never look like her in those leggings. By this time I totally forgotten about my dream interpretation project and get up to go look in the bathroom mirror at my legs from the side to see if I could rock those leggings. Well in the midst of that I think my profile looks a little bit like Miley Cyrus which causes "flowers" to pop into my head. I pop my head out into the living room and tell Alexa to play Flowers by Miley Cyrus while trying to imitate the little dance she does in the video and when it gets to the part where she's working out I remember I need to make breakfast and stop goofing off so I actually have time to do Pilates before work myself. While making some tea and toast as I'm getting ready for work I contemplate the irony of having to work so hard to pay bills just because my parents had sex and now here I am. By this time I finished my breakfast and it's time to unroll my mat and begin some light yoga for a warm-up. This morning I happened to remember to light some incense and bow before the Buddha before beginning and now I'm feeling pretty spiritual and then I check out my legs on the mat and wonder if I could rock those leggings from Target after all. In the middle of my pilates workout that I'm doing from YouTube I start to think maybe I should just start my own YouTube channel because this looks way easier than what I'm doing for a living. Then I finish my pilates workout and I lay there on my mat staring at the ceiling and then it suddenly pops into my head that the comeback that I had to that bitch Becky in high school was pretty badass and I wonder what she's doing for a living now and I reassure myself that she has three kids lots of stretch marks and probably has a fat ass. That I remember I'm on my mat and I'm supposed to be acting spiritual so I lay there and close my eyes and focus on my breathing for about 5 seconds before I realize it's time to actually start getting ready for work.

Share whatever art, qoutes, scripture, music and so on as you feel like. The key is that it speaks to you. It is allways nice if you write a sentence or two on how you interpet it and what it means to you. So, to be completly honest, i intend this thread to «document» beautifull writings i have encountered, but by all means: feel free to share stories meaningfull to you aswell: Greeks on love: Cleanthes - hymn to Zeus (early seconds century bc) The myth of Narcissius, reminagined by Oscar Wilde and recounted in «The alchemist»: Odins «mystic initation, Runatal 139-149: Odin: Death of Balder/Balders dream, poetic Edda So, some context before i continue. You can think of him as some sort of norse Jesus or Apollo. Beloved, beautifull, heart of gold etc. He was also asscociated with spring. His death marks sets in fimbulvintr, a winter lasting three season and marks the beginnibg of the end: ragnarok/twiligt of the Gods. I find it quite poetic. If we see Balder as the personified good, being killed shot by a blind man with an arrow tippes with an mistietoe, a plant so ignificanr that that Fraya overlooked it, kills the ideal man asscociated with spring, witch sets in a tree season long winter. So thats how the world end, the ideal killed by his blind half-brother, tricked by the envious Loki (the tricster). Just as a fun fact, the blind god who shot Balder, is named Hothr, and is who the GoT character is based on. Fimbulsvintr, Voluspa: (Just as a side note, this is belived to have been a real event. An islandic, volnaic erruoprion took place in 550, witch blocked the sun for a significant period. I think this correspond well with the migration she as well? Ragnarok (Translated by Jackson Crawford(Völuspá Stanzas 43-56).)

Considering that everything is precievied, analyzed and interperted in our own mind, is anything at all objective, or is it just a dream?

Perhaps my dream of becoming a lead singer isn´t as unrealistic as I thought.

I'm open to it, but have doubts about its reliability, ie the ability to do it consistently or on demand. Almost like it's a percentage thing, some people will have a higher percentage of hits, but nowhere close to 100% reliability. Such inconsistency makes study maddening. I was hoping by now we'd have greater proofs in the astral or dream state fields, not that I've researched it lately, in the past, there were amazing clues but nothing consistent. Certainly lucid dreams, dreaming while knowing your dreaming and gaining control is considered possible and learnable. Astral projection kinds of stuff, has tantalizing anecdotes but as far as I know, no easily lab reproducible on demand, proof.

Just last night I had a dream about riding a bus. I can’t remember ever having a dream that I was riding a bus, despite having ridden the school bus during my entire public schooling. Immediately before going to sleep I was a little bummed out about something. I had randomly run into a video related to Authenticneigong.com on Youtube, and went and checked on the site. There is a 2-day workshop coming up in just a couple weeks! My automotive insurance payment is due at the end of the year, and it is almost the exact same amount as the entry fee for the training. I don’t have enough money right now to pay for both. I’m at a point in my life where I only use my car a few times per week. First this morning I pulled up the local transit routes and see stops right at most of the places I drive to. Plus whatever extra walking or skateboarding for the last mile to and from the house is surely worth the exercise. Might be time to finally shake up my transportation paradigm. I am stubborn as hell though, so even there’s room for procrastinating until the February work shop.

Santinhos! Tenhas doces para mim? The way I was thinking was this. While Dream Yoga etc. concentrate on realising the dream state - that is the nature of mind as revealed in the state of dreaming - the actual content of dreams are information which we could use to unlock energy and also as a guide on what to concentrate on - or which direction to develop in. This does happen a little haphazardly in many traditions where the mystic has a dream which causes them to change their path - but you don't hear much about using it consistently as a main practice. I think potentially any dream, but particularly recurring or very luminous or vivid dreams can be important. I have had, at one time in my life, numerous precognitive dreams, very accurate and specific. These too seem to point to some kind of significance - although it may be simply they demonstrate a connections to non-linear time (which was an idea I was going to talk about in the Khonsu-mes thread but haven't got round to it yet).

I've mostly taken reassurance from some of the dreams I've had. Lost a friend back in the early days, and yet she was there in a dream, as a waitress, offering me a meal--then everyone was there, all my family and friends, a celebration of something. Now so many decades later, I see that the dream was about love absent "doing something", or "going somewhere", and that I can practice the same. A dream from a few days ago, as I wrote to two friends of mine: "I dreamt we three were about to have dinner, a mid-afternoon affair like Thanksgiving. I was putting on a good shirt, and slacks. I realized the things in my visual field seemed to be a bit more patterned than usual, and figured that we must have ingested an entheogen of some kind, although the patterning was still just subtle." Never had a dream like that before, as far as the patterning, in my life! I went to the dentist that day in my waking life, and I realized that the patterning was my latest writing playing out. Hope you've read it, Apech--you know I value your opinion, and find it inspiring (the piece is in the signature, the one with "Shunryu Suzuki"). As usual, the dreams I describe above were the last ones before I woke up. Those tend to be the most organized for me. I wonder, is that the same for you? I always search for parallels in my daily (and spiritual) life that may be represented in these dreams, and I usually find them.

I think that an interesting thing to explore is the information regarding the future that dreams bring us. I would say that at least 70% percent of our dreams are premonitory. What can be a positive aspect of experiencing this is an increase of detachment and concern towards our personal life and future. You realize that if events are somehow pre-written it makes no sense to "tense and struggle" that much. Paradoxically this releases more energy to be applied in a positive way. You even get more tolerant regarding your personal imperfections. An example to ilustrate this: one morning, some 20 years ago, I wake up and the last dream image that was on my mind was of a Capoeira group performing their acrobatic martial art. I remember that it was a tense morning with my at the time girlfriend. We're having a quarrel that gets worse and worse untill we start shouting at each other. To avoid things to escalate I leave the appartment furious and decide to take a bus to a park of my preference which is calm and soothing. During the bus ride I'm feeling bad for what had happened and especially that circumstances made me lose my self control and explode in rage. I get to the park... there on the lawned open apace what do I see? A group of Capoeira people performing their acrobatic martial art... Spent quite some time, untill this day probably, 🙂 thinking of what had happened. One thing for sure, it was easier to forgive "my" (?) bad temper after this experience.