As we grow spiritually, there are several processes underway.
One is the removal of veils on consciousness. This is the process of purification of the means of experiencing.
In Sanskrit this masking is known as Chhandas, covering. Curving back on itself repeatedly, consciousness can become so concentrated, it becomes dense and gains a surface appearance. We may then confuse this appearance with reality, especially if we become identified with it.
Yet once we directly experience what is behind our experiences, we start to see through the veils. Often the shadows originate in some misunderstanding about the world. This causes us to fear or resist or grasp at what is coming up in life. And that gets in the way of smooth flow.
When we gain a better understanding, we begin to soften those shadows. When the direct experience arises, the light shines through.
Another process is that of refining. I used to think consciousness refined but consciousness itself is globally aware and requires no purification or refinement. It’s when we get caught up in the detail and resist life that we jangle the physiology and create discord. This distorts our vehicle of perception and takes a whole range of life off-line and out of our perception.
But when stillness becomes established within, the layers of our physiology settle and the mirror is as-if polished. The physiology produces more soma which nourishes the means of perception. Then more refined values become clear and our experience gains a richness beyond our prior imagination.
A key point is that it is the process of experience itself that is purifying and refining. It is in the interaction or relationship of consciousness with itself that discord arises.
We might point to the refinement of the physiology and suggest this is the refinement of the experiencer. But the experiencer is just a witness. The physiology is a vehicle of experiencing and is thus a vehicle for the process of experience and perception. Put another way, it is a vehicle for the doers or devata, a community of laws of nature interacting. If we bring balance and nourish the community, it flourishes.
In some ways, we can describe the unfolding of the stages in consciousness as the removal of major veils. And we can describe the Refined stages as major shifts in refinement in those stages.
As refinement develops, there are three primary perspectives of the world around us. It is one reality, seen various ways.
In the first of three perspectives, we see the world around us as solid and real. This perspective is dominant in the world today and indicates dominant tamas guna or inertia.
In the second perspective, the world takes on a quality of illusion. It seems ephemeral and unreal to various degrees. Only the inner reality seems real. This is the effect of the rising fires of transformation, rajas.
And in the third perspective, sattva becomes dominant and the world becomes Lila, the play of the Divine. we do not see the appearance of the world as real in itself but as an effect of underlying flows of life, consciousness, and Divinity.
All of these are perspectives in consciousness, in the dominant quality of our ability to experience. We could say the quality of the mechanism or means of experience.
As we shift beyond consciousness into Brahman, creation itself gets a new perspective. It is seen as uncreated, never having been produced in the first place. And yet here it is in our experience, filtered through the mechanism above. We can come to see creation as consciousness attempting to imitate what I described as a “brief musing” in the mind of God. Consciousness is seen to be mimicking the Divine.
But as we refine still further, a yet deeper perspective of Divinity can unfold. We can discover that this “brief musing” is a song. The Divine Mother sings a short song, shorter than a verse. And yet that song is so packed with profundity, the wave form can be stretched out across the vast space of infinite consciousness in ever-unfolding detail.
Consciousness responds to this song like Kirtan, a call and response, in devotional song to the voice of the Divine. Then creation is known as a vast celebration, a flow of love and bliss. It is imbibed with intelligence beyond comprehension, all contained in a simple song of love.
Davidya
Lovely, especially that last paragraph!
Thanks. I’ll be writing more on the topic. 🙂
This is very beautiful. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
Thanks, Aaron
Beautiful
🙂
Hi David,
Your last paragraph reminds me of how Paul Morgan Summers (see batgap https://batgap.com/paul-morgan-somers/) describes creation: as a gorgeous love song, an ocean of bliss beyond words. He spontaneously fell into “the ocean” of this realization as a young man. I wonder if you’ve ever heard him speak. He seems to live in what you describe as the deeper perspective of Divinity. Thank you for this, Michelle
Hi Michelle
Interesting. I’ve not seen that interview nor heard him.
It’s worth noting the ‘as above, so below’ principle. These dynamics are present on several layers. The reference to an ocean and it’s song is usually that of the celestial. The layer is also called the bliss body and the causal. The ocean is literally an ocean of bliss and is the universe becoming. This is also called the Pranava aka Aum.
The song I mention above is at the root of creation which contains all universes. But that song is reflected in each universe, and in fact each soul. Will be writing more on this.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank You David
So wonderful to read this.
Thanks, Paul. Good to hear from you. Enjoy the park.
Sooo poetic your last paragraph!
….looking forward to more of that!
🙂
Thanks, Michael
I had the experience, 20 years ago, of everything and every being that had ever lived…move through me….it cracked me open and left me in bliss for sometime…about 6 months….I remember the experience of contacting the allness….did not have the grounding yet to stay there. I can, on a small level now, appreciate your article here….I feel it to be true. Thanks, for bringing it back.
Beautiful, Deborah
Yes, sometimes the cycles of life bring us big openings that we then have to spend time catching up to before we can embody them. The later embodiment is even more full.
Some people would love to have an experience like that. Yet having the experience and losing it can be rough.
Thanks for sharing.
It was rough….and now, I know it was all just part of the process of being. I did drag the mind stuff out for longer then necessary! That has given me big understanding for what being stuck looks like. True surrender does not happen until we have grown so tired of trying on our own to get out of the pain.
Beautiful learning from the experience of losing it, Deborah. That letting go in surrender is far more important than the content of any experience. But it can be so foreign to a mind, we end up having loss experiences to get there.
And yes, mind really likes to spin things. I’ve been an expert at that. 🙂
Thank you for your work and website. It’s quite helpful. I found it a few days ago and have just come upon this entry. The Divine Song! This is exactly what I’d love to hear more about right now from your perspective(s). Please write as much about it as you can stand- I know it’s the flavor of a whole lot, lol. For example, how do you encounter its essence -and how does the laughter of it inform, reform and announce- from the levels you place your attention in? How might you focus on a bit of something so sweet and so vast?
You’re welcome, Anne. And welcome.
Well the song itself is short and yet infinite. It is beyond all means of hearing. And yet it is the world and it is ourselves. It is everything that has ever been or ever will be, all at once. It is the soul of all beings and the life that expresses them.
More practical perhaps is the song in response, the song of creation expressing reverence to it’s source. This is giving voice in all the myriad details of the world and in feelings and knowings.
Because of it’s vastness and because each of us has our own perspective of the whole, each of us will bring a different flavour, a different experience of this.
Here, this developed over many years of progressively deeper experience of the nature of Divinity. Many more expressed aspects unfolded prior.
Before all this, we deepen into our essential nature. That too unfolds in layers.
For a broader context, this blog has evolved as i have. Some of the recent stuff is pretty abstracted. While I do loop back to earlier themes, stuff about Self Realization, refined perception, and Unity were more dominant in posts a decade ago. (laughs) You can browse Key Posts (tab) for some of the highlights.