Solidity

Solidity

Cracked Concrete - Astro by Io Fidelion
Cracked Concrete – Astro by Io Fidelion

Our perception of and relationship with the world changes on the spiritual journey. One shift is the sense of solidity.

Most people experience the world around them as solid and real. This results from the tamas guna being dominant.

As we make spiritual progress and the guna balance evolves, that sense of outer solidity fades. What we experience as real and sustained shifts within.

The second solidity emerges after the Unity shift. When the world is seen to be the same eternal Self as within, it can take on a concreteness greater than it ever had before. That’s the sense of absolute leaking into perception.

This too fades as we move into Refined Unity. Refined perception shifts the world into an experience of flow. Everything becomes fluid, made of flowing light.

A similar process occurs later in the Brahman stage. Shankara’s verse describes this:

“The world is unreal
Only Brahman is real
The World is Brahman”

In other words, the world isn’t real in and of itself. That’s just an appearance. But it’s an appearance of Brahman, so again can take on a sense of solidity as we recognize this.

Again, this softens with Refined Brahman.

Yet Brahman is also the integration of apparent opposites and all prior stages. Thus, world as real, world as appearance, world as flow, and world as absolute all become simultaneously true, each in their own way. One or other dominates, but all are present.
Davidya

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18 Comments

  1. Bernie

    Beautiful!! In one stroke, I feel this post puts all your past posts on this subject of outside solidity –> inside solidity + outside appearance –> inside solidity + outside solidity –> everything as flow –> world is Brahman –> Refined Brahman –> ParaBrahman in one cohesive package, including the links. Whew! Small package of wisdom dynamite! Love it

    1. Hi Guru
      I’d suggest thats not a good understanding. We can certainly have tastes of later stages that don’t last, but an actual shift in permanent. There’s no going back if the body is ready to embody it.

      Once the shift is seen clearly, it can’t be unseen.

      The presence of separate selves pulls us back only if that identification is still present. Once the identification is broken, small selves are overshadowed by Atman, the comic Self. Then there’s no return. In fact, it can be hard to remember what it was like to be ego-identified.

  2. “…world as real, world as appearance, world as flow, and world as absolute all become simultaneously true, each in their own way. One or other dominates, but all are present.” Simultaneity – yes indeed! You are able to put words to experience in such an exquisite way.

  3. Harrison Snow

    Thanks Davidya – your words from the mountain tops do keep this aspirant humble offering a vision of what can be sensed and even occasionally glimpsed when the mists thin out a bit

  4. Jeff May

    I am glad to hear your descriptions of Brahman and beyond. Maharishi did not talk much of evolution beyond unity. I have always been unsatisfied by descriptions of Brahman by others feeling they are always incomplete. I am in the camp that thinks evolution never ends. And I agree with a statement by Maharishi that experiences are best with a body. As he was a big fan of immortality.

    My own experiences are of silence in dynamism and dynamism in silence. Both in program and in activity. One is in and compliments/enlivens the other. Yes, life is a flow and is extremely blissful.

    1. Yes, he had to wait for us to catch up. And I’d agree. The stages I describe are the way humans in the current time are commonly experiencing the process. There is so much potential after this. Like the ancient sages who remain in cosmic form, or the celebrants at the start of creation, or the administrators of the universe.

  5. Bojan

    Hi David
    “The ancient sages who remain in cosmic form”… Are they the ones who completely merge with ParaBrahman and yet remain as a cosmic memory to help others?
    Who are the “celebrants at the start of creation”? Do they set in motion the Vedas?
    ” The administrators of the universe” are those enlightend ones whos Work is on the causal level. You’ve said that will be your role after the end of your life (if i understand that correctly).
    And where do the avatars “fit in” in all this?

    1. Hi Bojan
      Well, they merge with source (not source of the source). And yes they remain a cosmic memory. We experience them like we would have when alive or like devas.

      Experienced creation starts with Agni, a kind of cosmic starburst. (fire is the 3rd element, where things start to manifest) Directly under that is a giant lotus flower full of light beings that celebrate creation. They don’t manage it, just enjoy it. (that’s a sustaining influence)

      There are administrators on/ of every level. Several levels of creation, our universe, our solar system, our planet, etc. It appears I’ll have such a role further along. I don’t think it’s directly after this life but we’ll see.

      Avatars (the way I use the term) are divine beings who express directly into form. Seems they generally show up at the transition of Yugas to help smooth the transition.

      There are many, many kinds of beings in our universe and there are many universes with more kinds. Plus all the devas, etc etc. The tree of life is massive.

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