DEEP FIELD
DEEP FIELD, HIGH MOUNTAIN, DARK CAVE
Sacred Journey, Grounding, Meta-Syn and Rebirth
by Iona Miller, 10/2006
[email protected], http://ionamiller.weebly.com
CONTENTS: Hidden Ground * Splendid Isolation * Deep Field * Luminiferous Ether * Tibetan Peaks * Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation * Retreat Cave * Alchemy of Enlightenment * PART II * Entering the Earth * Fractal Embryogenesis * Pitch Black * Clear Light * Bardo Retreat * Buddha Fields * Conclusions.
Waning Moon and Yeshe Tsogyel Tsog-khorlo Envisionment:
"From within the Lucid Shining Emptiness of my own Being,
I instantly arise in the Iridescent Form of the Great Enlightened Dakini;
Khandro Chenmo Yeshe Tsogyel. My Gaze is at once Soft and Penetrating;
Compassionate yet Playfully Wrathful, in token of my ability [to]
infuse all circumstances with vivid opportunities for Realisation.
My Wide Open Eyes Sparkle with the Electricity of Existence
and Non-existence and communicate the immanence of Liberation
for all Yogis and Yoginis."
"My mouth is open and my tongue is flickering.
My Strong Laughter overpowers all dualistic conceptions."
"My hair is wound up in a Yogini's bun on top of my head
and ornamented with a golden takdrol topped with a flaming skull.
I am naked in token of utter lack of pretension and complete fearlessness.
I am open to the entire universe and the inescapability of what is."
Sacred Journey, Grounding, Meta-Syn and Rebirth
by Iona Miller, 10/2006
[email protected], http://ionamiller.weebly.com
CONTENTS: Hidden Ground * Splendid Isolation * Deep Field * Luminiferous Ether * Tibetan Peaks * Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation * Retreat Cave * Alchemy of Enlightenment * PART II * Entering the Earth * Fractal Embryogenesis * Pitch Black * Clear Light * Bardo Retreat * Buddha Fields * Conclusions.
Waning Moon and Yeshe Tsogyel Tsog-khorlo Envisionment:
"From within the Lucid Shining Emptiness of my own Being,
I instantly arise in the Iridescent Form of the Great Enlightened Dakini;
Khandro Chenmo Yeshe Tsogyel. My Gaze is at once Soft and Penetrating;
Compassionate yet Playfully Wrathful, in token of my ability [to]
infuse all circumstances with vivid opportunities for Realisation.
My Wide Open Eyes Sparkle with the Electricity of Existence
and Non-existence and communicate the immanence of Liberation
for all Yogis and Yoginis."
"My mouth is open and my tongue is flickering.
My Strong Laughter overpowers all dualistic conceptions."
"My hair is wound up in a Yogini's bun on top of my head
and ornamented with a golden takdrol topped with a flaming skull.
I am naked in token of utter lack of pretension and complete fearlessness.
I am open to the entire universe and the inescapability of what is."
Submission: Sacred Journeys Anthology, 2013 http://neosalexandria.org/bibliotheca-alexandrina/calls-for-submissions/crossing-the-river/
projected release date of June 2013: Crossing the River Call for submissions for Crossing the River: An Anthology in Honor of Sacred Journeys, edited by Literata. Submissions close 28 February 2013 with a projected release date of June 2013. Please send your submission either in the body of the email or as a .doc/.docx attachment with “Sacred Journeys Anthology” in the subject line to [email protected].Submissions close 28 February 2013. Everyday people face transitions both literal and figurative. How is the person or power changed by the experience?
– What makes specific journeys important for those who experience them?
– What causes sacred journeys, and what comes out of them?
– Is everyone who goes through such a journey changed? Why or why not?
– Is such change always for the better?
– Can journeys be undone, or can one “go back” in any way?
– What does it mean for us as polytheists if we think our deities experience change?
As individuals, how do we recognize when we are on the verge of or in the midst of our own sacred journeys? How do we prepare for them, recover from them, or learn from them? When we’ve experienced a journey, how is “here” different from “there” — have we really crossed a river? Examine the differences between the many different kinds of journeys. While the theme of initiation as an experience of a sacred journey is relevant, submissions should not be primarily about initiation per se.
projected release date of June 2013: Crossing the River Call for submissions for Crossing the River: An Anthology in Honor of Sacred Journeys, edited by Literata. Submissions close 28 February 2013 with a projected release date of June 2013. Please send your submission either in the body of the email or as a .doc/.docx attachment with “Sacred Journeys Anthology” in the subject line to [email protected].Submissions close 28 February 2013. Everyday people face transitions both literal and figurative. How is the person or power changed by the experience?
– What makes specific journeys important for those who experience them?
– What causes sacred journeys, and what comes out of them?
– Is everyone who goes through such a journey changed? Why or why not?
– Is such change always for the better?
– Can journeys be undone, or can one “go back” in any way?
– What does it mean for us as polytheists if we think our deities experience change?
As individuals, how do we recognize when we are on the verge of or in the midst of our own sacred journeys? How do we prepare for them, recover from them, or learn from them? When we’ve experienced a journey, how is “here” different from “there” — have we really crossed a river? Examine the differences between the many different kinds of journeys. While the theme of initiation as an experience of a sacred journey is relevant, submissions should not be primarily about initiation per se.
CONTENTS: Hidden Ground * Splendid Isolation * Deep Field * Luminiferous Ether * Tibetan Peaks * Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation * Retreat Cave * Alchemy of Enlightenment * PART II * Entering the Earth * Fractal Embryogenesis * Pitch Black * Clear Light * Bardo Retreat * Buddha Fields * Conclusions.
Introduction: Hidden Ground
The hidden ground of our experiences is the deep source of our inspiration and transformation. Conscious experiences belong to slipstreams of consciousness, and these streams are part of nature’s process. They can be described in physical and psychological terms as our sacred journey.
Experience is a process rooted in the stream of consciousness and happens “to” a person in that stream of consciousness. Each person is an aspect of nature’s process whose stream can flow forth like a fountainhead to quench and nourish many over the course of time.
Phenomenal experiences, including altered states, happen to specific people in specific places, perhaps never to be repeated. The mythic soulscape of a place is formed of these personal events and the holographic memories they infuse in that place, particularly in the case of sacred ground. They condition the way we think about that place from such a time forward.
The archetypal field of illumination encompasses the All and Everything. It is the soulscape of The Journey, the Pilgrimage to the sacred heights and depths, which is more than a symbolic or metaphorical journey. It is a journey to the center of the earth, our earth, our own spiritual Ground of Being, whether we conceive of it in eastern or western terms.
As described by Dr. Maila Davenport (2005), pilgrimage is a primal, embodied prayer, a reiterative pattern of spiritual movement in the physical world. It is a ritual to root a being into a specific sacred field, a deep field. Without rootedness, we remain aliens in our own world.
Pilgrimage or the SACRED JOURNEY as an archetypal motion need not be literalized. We can be pilgrims of the heart and mind, moving from profane to sacred space by directing our attention inward. The internal journey into the deep field carries its innate metaphoric form into the verticality and expansion of transpersonal and imaginal realms.
Ritual pilgrimage opens limitless soulscapes--imaginal and terrestrial, simultaneously inner and outer, esoteric and sensual. The soul finds its home in personal practice, and ritual within the imaginal world. At the cultural level, shallow ground and the bowels of the earth transform into the luminous world of the seeker, uniting inner and outer life.
As Wanderer we hunt our place in the cosmos. We seek our place in the Heart of the Wilderness. Classically, this has meant staying on a mountaintop, in a hidden cave, perhaps even deep in the harshness of the Himalayas. But what do these hinterlands offer that no others provide? Is it “space” or the sense of absolute space? How about the direct experience of absolute space?
The Wanderer seeks the hidden, the mysterious, the wild. We know the changes we go through while searching are as important as finding what we seek. We are not in a hurry. Wandering is as valuable as anything else we might do. We wander through both psyche and nature until we can no longer tell them apart. As seekers, we adopt a meandering style as our way of life. (Davenport, 2005)
In much the same way we can meander through the furthest reaches of the transpersonal imagination, purposefully seeking that which as yet remains unknown in the depths. Mankind has wandered in the fields of reality seeking its true nature since the dawn of time. Science is on an essentially spiritual quest. Both science and mysticism are searching for Unity.
Splendid Isolation
Happiness and misery are both transient states. Incubation and emptying the mind are part of the cycle of creative withdrawal and return. To create, to find passion and divine inspiration, mind must withdraw upon itself for a time to focus its forces and then project an image of itself onto an external medium.
Connection to Source is the basis of creation, which manifests something unique from formless nothing. We draw apart from our fellows, whether up the mountain, into the desert or shore, or away to our closet, but always into a solitary silence. Being creative requires a capacity to be reborn anew every day. The will to be, the emergent property, the unfolding of self-in-reality is always potential, until the moment of existence - then, there you are!
Nature and wilderness invite flow between spirit, soul and ego. We go for expansion, to feel more than our puny selves. Nature’s threats are not to the ego or self alone, but to the entire organism. They require instinctual, intuitive and visceral responses involving the whole person.
Being in the wild is an opportunity for ego and instinct to cooperate in a dynamic balance that paradoxically challenges and fosters ease. We lose our small personalistic view in expansive vistas, glimpsing the eternal now.
The nature mystic experience is one of the most awesome and easily accessed non-ordinary states. Every landscape resonates with soulful stories. Untainted wilderness is possibly one of the least realized yet most valuable healing resources we have, particularly pristine areas of desert, water or mountains where we can enjoy solitude as clock time and concerns seem to melt away.
The Response Experience is called a nature-mystic, oceanic, or a peak experience. It opens us to the numinous element. We may begin with spiritually invitational procedures such as pilgrimage, creativity or meditation, but numinous experiences appears as grace states.
Grace exemplifies emergent qualities or degrees of expansion, which are glimmers at first that later may stabilize as intimacy or compassion, generativity, integrity and self-actualization. The integrated person is open, empathic, spontaneous, expressive, effortless, and innocent.
Our experience of the numinous transforms from a dreadful and uncanny mysterium tremendum to aesthetic arrest and expression, and finally to a transpersonal, universalist or integral perspective. Our spiritual voltage rises culminating in greater degrees of existential freedom. The transformed becomes a transformer.
Deep Field
Tibet is a land of both shamanic and meditational “power places,”: mountains, valleys, rocks, caves, springs, rivers and lakes are identical with sacred Buddhist shrines. The sacred caves deep in the Siltrom Snow Mountain in the Holy Dzogchen Area are among the most highly revered pilgrimage sites, globally. This rugged and legendary land inspires challenge, awe and reverence in those of all religions. To move about its landscape is to be moved in one’s core.
The “Tibet of the mind” represents echoes of the hinterlands of our primordial consciousness. Finally, we move beyond all local landscapes into the holistic or holographic field. The Bardo Thodol, (Tibetan Book of the Dead), said that in the Fifth Stage of the world's development, a stage not yet actualized, "Ether" will dawn in the consciousness of man.
An ether is a propagation medium. The bardo is the threshold between the formless and manifest, the virtual body and the “real” body. The template of life resides in the primordial ether, the fifth element. This Ether is correlated with spirit and relates to the change in consciousness from dense to subtle body, during the period between death and rebirth. This also applies to the ego death and rebirth of daily meditation. The all-pervading luminiferous ether is synonymous with consciousness.
The void is a plenum. Any momentary state of consciousness can be considered a bardo, as are our lacunae, our empty places. Lacuna means a resonating gap that describes a space of missing or formless information. This liminal state lies between our past and future existences. It provides us with the opportunity to experience reality, which is always present but obscured by the projections and confusions due to our previous unskillful actions.
This Bardo Thodol metaphysical statement about the ether conjures up woolly Theosophical abstractions and outmoded 19th century science theories of a universal medium. But new physics confirms this modified “ether” theory of the DEEP FIELD, hyperspace. It is a revisioning of the nature of deep space itself as infinite energy and potentiality, absolute fullness that propagates all pattern and form.
Creative Physics is based in the negentropic potential. In plenum physics, this primordial creative field of Zero-Point Energy (ZPE) is the dynamic vacuum of scalar physics. It is a virtual condition. The vortices of space itself carry the electromagnetic oscillations or vibrations. Light is basically information emanating from the void. We can learn to wrap our minds experientially around this quantum reality that we are not separate from the ongoing process of creation, even if a universal energetic field of information defies detection.
Scalar ether is being seriously reconsidered as the medium of electromagnetic and light waves. It is the dynamic basis of the subquantal and biophotonic energy body in integral medicine and healing. The subquantal realm of quantum physics is every bit as awe inspiring as any earthly landscape. Just imagine subspace as a luminous ocean of ceaseless virtual photon fluctuation, popping into and out of luminescent existence in every instant.
In this dynamic model there are no “things”, just energetic events. Light and sound (acoustic cymatics) modulate all matter. This “holoflux” includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and all possible forms. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. This is the guiding matrix for self-assembly, and manipulating and organizing physical reality. It is how our DNA creates and projects our psychophysical structure.
Our brains mathematically construct ‘concrete’ reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension. This information realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality transcends time and space. Thus, the brain is an embedded hologram, interpreting a holographic universe. Supernal light emerges from this ground of being, both in the cosmos and our human brains and bodies.
All existence consists of embedded holograms within holograms, fractally embedded waves within waves of clear light. Their interrelatedness somehow gives rise to our existence and sensory images. When we embody this intimate wisdom, our bodies become temples of the living spirit.
Absolute space is the womb of creation and the physics of virtual photon fluctuation reflects not only Nature, but also our nature. Only now are we learning just how literal that experience of Light is, and the interactive mechanisms it engages in our holistic psychophysical Being.
Luminiferous Ether
Is this “process zero” of the Mother Luminosity what the Lamas see when they look deeply within in their meditations? Is what is true for subspace true for superspace? It is a fact of physics that at the subquantal level the fabric of reality and our bodies flicker in and out of existence each nanosecond at a phenomenal rate.
In music theory, a lacuna is a contrasting period of no music, which acts like “negative music,” inducing a state of serenity, experiential silence. This is likewise true of the space between our breaths, particularly in meditative states when we recalibrate our consciousness to the baseline of Ground Zero.
All “things” arise from the vacuum potential, including the three great illusions of space, time and personality. This mystical realization means release from the triple prison of personal isolation and illusion. We are all simply connected: self, others and cosmos. Superspace is a virtual-state hierarchy of infinite contextual and potential fractal levels on a fine gradient from 3D into higher dimensions from which all creation manifests; and it is, of course, also zero-point energy.
Space is not empty, nor is the relatively vast empty places between our atoms in the body. Modern physics theories recognize space or the vacuum as a very active medium saturated with quantum energy fluctuations. It has been described as a turbulence of particles, miniblack and miniwhite holes, and a sea of bubbling foam.
The psychical attributes of "Ether" as conceived and defined by the Lamas are, in modern terms, precisely those of the Deep Unconscious, seamlessly welded psyche and matter. They believe, in fact, that what we call the Unconscious is a "transcendental" consciousness, an undeveloped higher than normal awareness, where imagination is reality.
The Heart Sutra says the Void is all forms and all forms are void. The formless field gives rise to itself. Both the vacuum and the psyche are expressions of the virtual plenum of ‘in-form-ation,’ the virtual photon flux.
The gist of the holographic paradigm is that there is a fundamental reality that is an invisible flux not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information. All potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns constantly bombarding us.
In the quantum world, everything is in self-organizing flux, including the subquantal virtual photons popping in and out of existence. The foamy Zero Point fluctuation of subspace perturbs and determines the behavior of quantum systems theoretically through radiant EM fields. Radiation is absorbed from the zero-point background. The stability of matter itself is mediated by the zero point fluctuation phenomena.
Mindfulness and pure awareness is the active consciousness of the next stage of the world's development, which the Lamas estimated would begin in the twentieth century and flower in the twenty first. It is not passive absorption in the collective state, but empathic psychophysical engagement and active participation. It is certainly more foresighted to prevent the onset of problems than to resort to supernatural heroics as a last resort.
The process of mind-expansion produces unusual byproducts and powers called siddhis. Seldom seen naturally, they are said to be "developed" by yogis and others as a result of spiritual training. Siddhis include life extension, healing, ESP, telepathy, precognition, prophecy, time distortion, healing, pain anesthesia, psychic heat, clairvoyance, levitation, OOBE’s, psychokinesis, and autonomic control.
But the compassionate aspirant remains unattached to these potentially hazardous powers and egoic power traps, in general, continuing toward enlightenment, the Buddha fields of the ground state.
Ervin Lazslo says, “The interaction of our mind and consciousness with the quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us, as well as with the biosphere of the planet. It "opens" our mind to society, nature, and the universe. Mystics and sensitives, prophets and meta-physicians through the ages have known this openness.”
Biophysicist and leading proponent of the theory of quantum coherence in living organization, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, postulates that, "a pure coherent state for the entire system would be a many-mode quantum electrodynamical field with a collective phase over all modes. It may be attainable only under very exceptional circumstances, as during an aesthetic or religious experience when the ‘pure duration’ of the here and now becomes completely delocalized in the realm of no-time and no-space.”
Specifically, the amygdala, parietal, temporal and frontal lobe circuits which orient us in spacetime quiet down. Our sense of self goes offline and “we” dissolve in openness, connectedness and transparency.
Tibetan Plateau
Is there living proof of these mystical scientific theories, or are they simply mythopoeitic concepts? If so, how can we access that state with those anomalous phenomenal experiences? Each culture has its means, but at their core they share common elements. From shamanic times onward it has required an inward Journey into one’s own depths.
A fiercely lived life is an artform -- illumination in action, based on discipline, practice and service. The specific “Art” is alchemical, a merger of inner and outer reality in One World. The Hermetics had a formula from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes for this realization, encoded in the anagram VITRIOL. It is a formula for visualizations which take one to a precise location in the inner landscape, for the specific purpose of uniting body, soul and spirit.
The formula, a call to meditation, is Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. These seven words relate directly to the seven chakras, whose activation is the key to making the Philosopher’s Stone, wholeness. When the chakras function correctly, a ray of incomparable coherent light is created that is more than metaphorical.
Roughly translated, the alchemical formula means, “Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectification you will find the hidden stone.” Rectification implies alignment. It relates to inner practice the same way in Tibet as it does in Egypt. It correlates with Illumination and activation of the Third Eye, which allows us to “see through” and beyond. It means all truth is found within our own human consciousness, and the lives of great saints and mystics reflect this Truth.
The chamber of reflection is literally the cranial cavity, a holographic resonant chamber which can read out the cosmic sourcecode from the void. In a hologram all the information is contained in each part of the energy dance, just at lower resolution. There are enfolded potentialities inherent in each moment of time. Physical reality is a potentiality for an experiencable event. Conscious experiences are real and they have tangible effects.
What is true in physics holds in mysticism. Individuals enter the theory in a manner similar to actual scientific practice. They are experimenting agents that set up conditions, observe and perceive outcomes. These people are not ghosts, nor mystical figments, And their conscious choices are highly efficacious.
All the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly the Diamond Way, are contained in the exemplary life story of Yeshe Tsogyal, (later 700s-800s), a Tibetan princess who became enlightened living in the wild with her Guru, Padmasambhava. Moving from sophisticated palace life into stark wilderness caves for contemplation must have produced quite a perceptual contrast.
Buddhism had just arrived in 8th century Tibet, in the fertile Yarlung Valley, home to Tibet's earliest Kings. Tsogyal was one of the first disciples. Teachings whose time was not yet ripe were hidden in the landscape by the dakini. Many of these were instructions she received from Padmasambhava on retreat in places to the east, like Terdrom, and above all in the caves of Chimphu above Samye, where the first monastery of Tibet had just been established.
In Tibet and the Himalayas there are thirteen Karmo Taksangs, or Tiger lair caves - meditation caves of Guru Rinpoche. One of these caves is to be found near Dzongsar Monastery in Kham. Guru Rinpoche consorted here with Yeshe Tsogyal, in their visionary manifestation, meditating on Dorjee Telpa for one month.
This founding mother of Tibetan Buddhism consciously decided to tell her spiritually erotic story in sacred biography. Her Chemical Wedding with Guru Padmasambhava inspired future aspirants. The tale of her enlightenment is one of Tibet’s greatest, male or female. This dakini or “sky dancer” lived with her Guru at the yogi's cave of Langlesho, above Parphing.
She is one of Padmasambhava's (Guru Rinpoche) two mystic consorts, former wife of King Trisong Detsen. This yogini is one emanations of Vajra Varahi. She had a perfect memory and recorded the teachings faithfully. Tsogyal is an emanation of the Goddess Sarasvati, who cuts away ignorance and attachment with her hooked knife. Tsogyal hid Guru's spiritual treasures, which were to be found in the future when the time was ripe.
Padmasambhava also took another princess Mandarava, daughter of Shastradhara, the king of Zahor, as his consort. They went to the mountain cave of Maratika, presently known as Halesha, Nepal. There they performed rituals of longevity for three months and actualized the Immortal Vajra Body which marks the attainment of an Immortal Life Awareness Holder.
The name Yeshe, which Tsogyal received later, refers to unending primordial wisdom. Her whole name means Victorious Ocean of Wisdom, or Ocean of unending Primordial Wisdom, which implies she is one with the subquantal ocean of virtual motion, known in physics as ghe Dirac Sea. This historical being became a Buddha in her lifetime. The spiritual child of this union is that of the reborn soul symbolically reliving embryogenesis and birth. Yeshe Tsogyal's residential cave is in Drikung Terdrom, which has a hot springs.
A recent translation of the life story of the Tibetan yogini, states that she and her young male consort (chosen for her by the Guru Padmasambhava) went to a cave that no one had ever found before (now known as the Secret Cave of Tsogyal in Drikung Terdrom). There for seven months they devoted themselves to the tantric cultivation of the Four Joys.
This concentrated tantric yoga practice, which included sexual rituals, allowed her to cultivate powerful siddhis. “The Lady Tsogyal could pass through any kind of object, and her body was no longer subject to the phenomena of aging, sickness, and decline.” It would seem that the Medicine Light of meditation had worked its alchemical magic as an elixer of life.
Later, she took up various solitary ascetic practices in order to develop her spiritual consciousness further through the generation of tummo (inner or psychic heat), stabilizing her yoga attainments and having the following vision of VajraYogini:
“A woman, red skinned, naked and without the ornaments of bone, appeared and pressed her bhaga to my mouth so that I drank deeply of the blood that flowed from it. My whole body was suffused with bliss, I felt as though my body had become as strong as a lion, and in my meditation I realized the ineffable truth.” (Changchub & Nyingpo)
TLRM
Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation
There is a tantric meditation on certain dakini symbols synchronized to phases of the moon cycle, designed to add 'soma' to the body. The times of optimal practice are two alternating phases of nine meditation days, yielding 18 resonant trigger points in each cycle. Though the nature of soma has been hotly debated, most agree it produces optimal spiritual growth.
Less well-known is that the moon may be used as a means of spiritual regeneration and accelerating the growth of the "diamond body," or spiritual vehicle. Psychologically, the ritual for absorbing soma is designed for relating oneself properly to the feminine principle -- what has become popularly known as the Goddess. It is likely rooted in reproductive cycles.
This Goddess not only confers 'immortality,' but also wisdom and inspiration. She is our medium, mediator, inspiratrix and intercessor with the divine. Soma is a universal life power dispensed in great abundance during the waning moon. It is absorbed directly in meditative states without having to ingest any substance to experience this mysterious psychic energy.
Through communion in the meditative process, an individual becomes acquainted with his/her own limits, depths and ultimate reality. The highest incarnation of the divine feminine confers the deepest revelation.
The higher arc of Lunar consciousness is a more diffuse awareness, a dark-adapted Third Eye, an ability to penetrate the Void by discerning the dimly lit regions or 'Dark Matter and Energy' of the deepest layers of the primordial unconscious to the Ground State of Being.
The veil is part of our spiritual nature; it epitomizes the blocks to our enlightenment as embodied in our personalities and our souls' attachment to our minds, and to Universal Mind. To raise it means to dis-identify and deconstruct ourselves until we find our fundamental unification with divinity. It means to transcend the limits of individuality and become consciously immortal (or, conscious of our inherent immortal nature). The soul is released from the constraints of time, space and ego-orientation.
This inner marriage of intentionality and inwardness, of masculinity and feminine components gives birth to the inner child and release from the power of death. In a sense, in meditation one learns to "die daily." But this also means to be reborn daily.
Death becomes a familiar guest, and brings Grace in its wake. Ego-death is induced by withdrawing the external focus of the senses and focusing attention at the Eye Center. Successful accomplishment of this process, this child, is the Self in embryonic form, ever renascent, the fruit of psychic development.
Soma is also associated in yogic practice with the "inner moon" chakra, which correlates with the pituitary and pineal glands. This "inner moon" is said to shower subtle secretions, or soma drops, which nourish the psychophysical organism. These glands directly influence physiological processes. The pituitary regulates, among other functions, sex hormones, metabolism, and growth and development of the individual.
The pineal develops from specialized tissues and is flooded with cerebrospinal fluid connecting it with crucial emotional and sensory brain centers. It is separated from the hypothalamus and visual and auditory relay stations only by a resonant cavity -- one of the brain's fluid-filled ambrosial 'lakes' or ventricles.
The pineal hangs from the roof of the ventricle or ‘inner cave’. Certain practices, such as intense fine-tuning of attention and awareness, can amplify or prolong its chemical effects, making us see, hear, feel and think differently.
Stress as well as meditation activates the pineal. So does immersion in darkness. The ancient Indo-Iranian lunar traditions ascribe the "holiest power" of the month to the dark of the moon. In terms of this tradition, the soma (energy for spiritual regeneration) most fully saturates the earth during the waning moon, when the "invisible" (or higher) light is brightest.
The dark of the moon is associated with maximum life elixir flow. The new moon is the period when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction. This symbolizes the alchemical Coniunctio, or Divine Marriage. Immortality teachings state that growth of the higher body during life allows full consciousness to remain even after physical death. (Miller, 1981)
Retreat Cave
It is a wisdom cliché that the aspirant to enlightenment meditates exhaustively in deep caves in the desert or snowy realms. Yeshe Tsogyal's cave in Drikung Terdrom is terrible, dark, and freezing rains blow through it when blizzards rage outside. This unsurpassed practice cave of Yeshe Tsogyal is called the Secret Accomplishment cave. In the dark caves, pilgrims are challenged by several high ladders and slippery ropes. They confront their fears on the precipice even before entering the cave mouth.
The deep and dark labyrinth complex, Drak Yangdzong, is a secret meditation cave of Guru Rinpoche and Yeshe Tsogya. Another of these caves in the snow is found near Dzongsar Monastery in Kham. It is said that in this cave Guru Rinpoche meditated with his consort Yeshe Tsogyal.
This Tibetan princess became the tantric consort of Guru Padmasambhava. Her miraculous life story describes the ideal path for a female practitioner, providing a blueprint for every woman who aspires to Buddhahood. In the Mother Essence Lineage, Yeshe Tsogyal and her incarnations and emanations are of primary importance, because she is the Mother of Vision, Bliss Queen and Mother of non-dual experience. In Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, Dzogchen - the Great Perfection, Maha Ati - is considered the ninth and highest “vehicle” of the Buddhist teachings, the Diamond Way.
While living alone in the wintry cave of Nering Senge, her mate having retreated to warmer climes, Yeshe Tsogyal began to face all the demons of her mind. Visions rose up before her in the process of her meditations, equal to those of Buddha Sakyamuni beneath the Bodhi-tree, or Christ in the throes of his Temptation, or St. Anthony in the Desert, full of hideous and terrifying intensity.
Hordes of phantoms advanced upon her: fearsome, seductive, malignant, and evil. With these, the product of her own traumatic passions, she wrestled, while remaining unmovable in her vajra-like samadhi, the immutable poise of impartial contemplation. For days the onslaught continued, until finally she was left in peace. This was the ordeal of her final spiritual catharsis.
Afterwards, at the lonely cave of Paro Taktsang in the highlands of Bhutan, with her consort Atsara Sahle, she disciplined herself through vigorous fasts and long meditation. In the spiritual practice known as karmamudra, she blended the refined positive and negative seed essences (bindus) of her heart nerve-plexus (chakra) and branch nervous-systems (nadi).
The five major and five secondary bio-energies (vayu) of the living body emerge, crystallizing the whole of her Presence as the basis of an inner vajra-body – the Diamond Body. This rigorous blending together of refined nerve substance (the white and red seed essences), and the undoing of the last psychological knots of the heart center, pertains to the final stage for winning Buddhahood in a single lifetime. Yeshe Tsogyal's retreat at Paro Taktsang would be the last austerity practiced for her own benefit. (Davenport, 2004)
In Paro Taktsang after pursuing her goal with incredible diligence, Yeshe Tsogyal attained the level of world-encompassing insight. Thus she gained the basic stages of Enlightenment. Later she traveled all over Tibet with her Precious Guru, the Lord Padmasambhava, blessing particular locations and depositing Treasure texts for the benefit of future mystics.
She went into an isolated Meditation Retreat in 796 and did not come out until 805, after her great Guru had already left Tibet. She finally emerges as a fully Enlightened Buddha. Possibly in 837, but perhaps later, she transcended worldly existence, ascending bodily to the manifest pure field dimension of the Sacred Red Mountain, the luminous sphere of her Guru, the Lord Padmasambhava
Yeshe Tsogyal Tibetan Buddhist Dakini is called Lady of the Lotus-Born: The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal embodies the Journey theme. There are the archetypal aspects of her pilgrimage and the places and symbolism, and then there is her PRACTICE and its alchemical results. Just what happened to Padmasambhava and Yeshe in those caves?
The Alchemy of Enlightenment
Enlightenment is a neurological and biochemical process also connected with the energy body. So is tantra, which modulates dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin levels of “feel-good” neurotransmitters. Consider the complex biochemical symphony of engaging day after day in meditation and tantric sex in complete darkness.
Tantric sex prefigures the union of personal and universal. The transcendent is perceived by contact as well as active imagination and vision. The activity is sacramental in essence, a ritualized union of male and female in sitting position with little or no movement, and alchemical retention of charged sexual fluids. Carnal contact becomes ineffable contact, love awareness.
Buddha Hero of Pure Pleasure, do as you will.
Guru and Lord of Pure Pleasure,
With true energy and joy, I implore you to inject
The seed into the inner mandala.
And I will guard the secret of the method with my life.
Lovers become symbolic, shedding the ego to unite with the divine in existential nakedness. United as a hermasphroditic being, they no longer live in time but in the eternal present. They become hyperdimensional embodiments of archetypal God/Goddess in the primordial generative act. Depth of knowledge transmutes into Being. Outwardly, they are potential, but inwardly they are a cosmic dynamo, dynamically and energetically radiant with creative intentionality.
This oceanic union balances the opposites, and manifests pure consciousness, which is the experience of primal cosmic potential. Sexual intercourse is probably the clearest simile of complete and pervasive spiritual union that most mortals understand. Mystic rapture, as a vastly enlarged domain, exceeds it.
Different states of consciousness produce different psychophysical phenomena. States of consciousness are supported by patterns of brain activity. They are modulated by certain high or low thresholds in various parts of the brain. Extremeness in states of consciousness are generally rare, but those with spontaneous glimpses are more likely able to recreate or amplify them with practice. They are also more likely to have a desire to do so.
Meditation stimulates and modulates pineal activity, creating a standing wave through resonance effects that affects other brain centers with both chemical and electromagnetic coordination. The pineal also modulates thermoregulation and may be an influential aspect of tummo. Unrelenting efforts in meditation have shown that certain places are more conducive to results, and caves are among them.
Resonance can be induced in the pineal using electric, magnetic, or sound energy. Such harmonization resynchronizes both hemispheres of the brain with high-amplitude cascades of alpha and theta. This results in a chain of synergetic activity leading to the production and release of naturally occurring hallucinogenic compounds.
Sacred images are generated by the lower temporal lobes which also respond to ritual imagery, facilitated by prayer and meditation. Religious emotions originate from the middle temporal lobe and are linked to emotional aspects of religious experience, such as joy and awe.
Intensely positive or negative emotions and unpleasant subjective states arise in the amygdala and generalize in the limbic system. They are limbic system disturbances. Limbic stimulation can produce hallucinations mapped onto and eliciting the symbolic imagery of the temporal lobes.
This is also the root of the ‘hallucination’ of self, the sense of self, and self-image. We experience our self as real through the senses. In sensory deprivation or rhythmic driving that sense distorts and/or disappears entirely in oceanic bliss. When one hemisphere of the brain is over- or under-stimulated it rebounds into its opposite, flooding the opposite hemisphere with its rebounding signals.
This ‘inter-hemispheric intrusion’ may b the source of instantaneous enlightenment. Connections drop out of service from burnout or excessive stimulation. The clue is that epiphanies often follow very negative experiences.
Metabolic snapback is the name for this process when it happens in response to magnetic signal stimulation, and when it happens (in theory) to keep rarely used matrices of neurons active, it's called dynamic stabilization. The amygdala itself is much more labile than the structures it's connected to. It is more prone to localized seizures than any other part of the brain (Murphy).
So meditating and engaging in Tantric practice for long periods of time in a cave could suppress certain cognitive and emotional circuits and encourage large amounts of sexually-related neurotransmitters and endorphins which mimic opioids. Love or bhakti generates amphetamine-like chemistry, while bonding mimics opium. Dopamine and norepinephrine levels surge when a person is confronted by the unknown. In the initial phase of romantic love, they engender such exhilaration that we lose the desire to eat or sleep.
Elevated levels of dopamine and norepinephrine electrify the reward system in the brain. The awe of dopamine eventually subsides, followed by love's rear guard, vasopressin and oxytocin, hormones that lead to long-lasting attachment. Sex elevates testosterone which revs up dopamine.
Long sessions of sexual encounter stimulate pain-reducing endorphins. Dopamine has been implicated in the reward and motivational aspects of sex. Oxytocin and prolactin, are released in large amounts during orgasm, even without ejaculation. The thrill and power of dopamine increase by embracing new adventures, since novelty prompts the brain to pump out this chemical. Novelty raises dopamine levels and probably lowers the threshold for ability to feel romantic love.
Reemergence might generate enough signal to overwhelm normal amygdala function, spreading it to the non-verbal hippocampus, which contextualizes experience. The amygdala's social functions favor anthropomorphic hallucinations, so the appearance of a demonic entity becomes more likely as the experience gains in intensity. As the signal rebounds through overloaded brain circuitry, inhibiting synapses go offline and the overloaded mind is silenced in bliss and ecstasy. Darkness and sensory deprivation or overstimulation can modulate this process by lowering response thresholds. A new nonlinguistic sense of self is reconstituted on reemergence.
Yet neural correlates don't mean that these experiences exist "only" in the brain or are merely illusory. They are associated with distinct neural activity. There is no way to distinguish if the brain causes these experiences, or actually perceives spiritual reality. However, visions of bright lights, portals, and spiritual icons strongly correlate with endogenous or natural pineal DMT.
Could it be that human beings have actually evolved specialized neural circuitry for the sole purpose of mediating religious experience? Neurologist Ramachandran says so. He claims, “there may be certain neural pathways—neural structures in the temporal lobe and the limbic system—whose activity makes you more prone to religious belief.”
If this is true, it is easy to see how much this mind-altering chemical could amplify all of the tendencies toward mystical apprehension originating in other parts of the brain.
The pineal contains high levels of the enzymes and building blocks for making DMT, and it may be secreted when inhibitory processes cease blocking its production. It may even produce other chemicals, such as beta-carbolines that magnify and prolong its effects.
Entering the Earth
It is one thing to contemplate finding and walking into retreat in a deep labyrinthine cave high in the mountains. But imagine having to scale a precipice taller than the Empire State Building, maybe with or without rope ladders, entering a yawning cave, then descending over 50 feet in utter darkness into the Abyss of the Transcendent imagination.
Then consider remaining there, with little food and water, often motionless, for weeks, even months. It would be daunting to even the most stoic arousing excitement and fear along the final climb of the journey. Anoxia or altitude sickness, possible above 8,000 feet, could amplify that disorientation, perhaps approaching panic.
Most places in Tibet are near 10,000 feet. Lhasa is at 12,500 feet (3700m) elevation. The peak of Mt. Kailash is 21,778 feet; Lake Mansarovar 4510m, with treks to 5630-6000m.. The sacred Dzogchen caves vary from 2700 to 7000 meters. There are no specific factors such as age, sex, or physical condition that correlate with susceptibility to altitude sickness with cerebral edema which affects the brain. Some people get it and some don’t. The body will adjust to about 1,000 foot rise daily. Natives, of course, tolerate low oxygen levels better.
Entering the cave would initiate another phase of groping in the dark speculating on its variety of dangers. Profound darkness, in and of itself, creates a primordial biochemical shift in the human organism that literally is Light revealing. It awakens the immediacy of luminous awareness, where physical vision is superseded by multidimensional mystic vision that is ‘now’ yet eternal and opens to all past and future generations.
The cave itself is symbolic as a liminal threshold where we can enter the womb of the earth. But that dark retreat has a dramatic alchemical effect that is literal and life changing. Further, we carry that cave within ourselves, in the deepest part of the skull where the pineal or Third Eye sits bathed in the CSF lakes of nectar, which nourish and cleanse the pinecone-shaped gland.
Soma Pinoline, the combination of the Pineal secreted DMT (Dimethyltriptamine) and the MAO Inhibitor, Pinoline (Methoxytetrahydrobetacarboline, MeOTHBC) may be responsible for naturally occurring psychic experience. But how does one go about making this elixr?
Pinoline is a neuromodulator, which prevents, among other effects, the breakdown of serotonin. This results in an accumulation of physiologically active amines including dimethyltryptamine (DMT) within the neuronal synapses, which may lead to hallucinations, depression or mania depending on the amines being affected (Strassman, 1990).
Furthermore, noradrenaline plays a significant role in the Pineal gland, when there is sufficient Pinoline saturation in the brain. It releases a serotonin site, enabling another serotonin site on the pineal gland to produce the potent visionary Dimethyltryhptamine (DMT), neurotransmitter.
Twenty minutes of compassionate love, through meditative breathing, and whole body 8 Hz entrainment is the ultimate hormone precursor anti-aging pill. Not only does the pineal gland produce more Melatonin and Pinoline, which instigate 8 Hz ELF waves throughout the body, but these neurohormones signal the pituitary to release the life hormone Somatropin, which signals the adrenal glands to instigate cholesterol to convert to Pregnelenone then DHEA.
The extra Pinoline and other beta carboline levels that result, aid the body cells to replicate, and neutralize microorganisms, parasites, fungoids, and bacterias, and related harmful invaders. Melatonin and Pinoline are also antioxidents. Meditation is a rest break, an exercise session, an integration session, an energizer, and a body tuner, promoting antioxidant and antidepressant production. It is a healing state.
The body is an island of energy/matter and emotions with waves of feelings crashing onto its shores. Body-consciousness can either hide or reveal spirit, depending on how we direct our attention toward our ego, stress (including spiritual distress) and relief. The body and mind can be reunited in a congruent, healthy lifestyle by acting on what you know.
Fractal Embryogenesis
Dr. James Callaway detected this DMT molecule in the spinal serum of people who were dying, or were having an "Out of body experience (OOBE)", or who were lucid dreaming. All of this relates to Tibetan dream yoga and vrious Bardo states.
It is Pinoline that enables the threshold levels of DMT to become active in the brain, but it requires an adrenaline burst. DMT with Pinoline increases brain activation, and with its cousin the 5-Methoxy-DMT, has been shown to activate the brain by as much as 40%, compared to our 10% maximum potential at present. This is a frightening prospect for the uninitiated, due to the absolutely overwhelming nature of DMT.
Isolated from external light, the third eye (pineal gland) overflows with certain neurotransmitters that awaken the higher brain, the ability to imprint the brain, reprogramming itself for an “instant experience of Being.” Dark Rretreat reopens the source code of embryogenesis.
The transformative core of Tibetan Buddhist practice is the Bardo Retreat, traditionally lasting 49 days or even longer. This experience, reserved for stabilized, advanced practitioners rends the mystic veil and opens the Third Eye wide in a retinal circus of biophotons which only the Third Eye sees or even creates: the Light of Wisdom. . The pineal gland becomes decalcified as in youth and produces the endogenous hallucinogen, DMT, creating access to a whole other order of existence, somewhere between dreams and waking.
This "Third Eye,” in the center of the brain, is implicated in the production of endogenous or natural DMT, dubbed the Spirit Molecule. The pineal synthesizes natural hallucinogens in response to certain psychophysical states, and raises serotonin levels in the brain. There is a functional decline in the gland with advancing age.
This master gland is responsible for the internal perception of Light, the raising of Kundalini the serpent power, and for awakening inner sight or in-sight. The key to a successful meditation is the withdrawal of the sensory currents to the eye focus or the third eye. Once there, the gaze focuses on the middle of whatever appears without any distractions or intrusive thought.
Many of us will only experience a glimmer of this deepest revelation in the most critical of circumstances. DMT production is stimulated, in the extraordinary conditions of birth, sexual ecstasy, childbirth, extreme physical stress, near-death, and death, as well as meditation.
Pineal DMT also plays a significant role in dream consciousness. This chemical messenger links body and spirit. Pineal activation awakens normally latent neural pathways. Nerve fibers leave the pineal and make synaptic connections with other brain sites through traditional nerve-to-nerve connections, not just through endocrine secretions.
"All spiritual disciplines describe quite psychedelic accounts of the transformative experiences, whose attainment motivate their practice. Blinding white light, encounters with demonic and angelic entities, ecstatic emotions, timelessness, heavenly sounds, feelings of having died and being reborn, contacting a powerful and loving presence underlying all of reality--these experiences cut across all denominations. They also are characteristic of a fully psychedelic DMT experience. How might meditation evoke the pineal DMT experience?"
"Meditative techniques using sound, sight, or the mind may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain "sacred" words, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired effects. Such effects may occur because of the specific fields they generate within the brain. These fields cause multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies. We can feel our minds and bodies resonate with these spiritual exercises. Of course, the pineal gland also is buzzing at these same frequencies. . .The pineal begins to "vibrate" at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation: the pineal cellular shield, enzyme levels, and quantities of anti-DMT. The end result is a psychedelic surge of the pineal spirit molecule, resulting in the subjective states of mystical consciousness." (Strassman, 2001).
Serotonin or tryptamine levels are higher in the pineal than any other organ in the brain. 5-methoxy-tryptamine is a precursor with hallucinogenic properties, which has a high affinity for the serotonin type-3 receptor. Gucchait (1976) has demonstrated that the human pineal contains an enzyme capable of synthesizing both DMT and bufotenine-like chemistry. These compounds are prime candidates for endogenous “schizotoxins,” and their production may be related to stress and/or trauma, that correlate with schizophrenia.
Strassman notes that both the embryological rudiments of the pineal gland and the differentiated gonads of both male and female appear at 49 days. Melatonin is a timekeeper for gonadal maturation, so the pineal is implicated again. He suggests this rein-effect may be the root of the tension between sexual and spiritual energies, yang and yin. The pineal gland is a source of both psychedelic compounds and the gonads, sources of spiritual and generative immortality.
Stress-related hormones cue the pineal activation to activate normally latent synthetic pathways, creating tryptamine and/or beta-carboline hallucinogens. When we face stress or potential death, or in meditative reveries, we “tune back” into the most well developed motif of such experiences--the birth experience. Perinatal themes and memories re-emerge.
Those with Cesarean deliveries report greater difficulty in attaining transcendent states of breakthrough and release during drug-induced states. Maybe less fetal (or maternal) hallucinogens were released at the time of birth. They may not, according to Strassman, have a strong enough “template of experience” to fall back on, to let go without fear of total annihilation, because lesser amounts of pineal hallucinogens were produced during their births.
Through meditation, the pineal may be modulated to elicit a finely tuned standing wave through resonance effects. It creates the induction of a dynamic, yet unmoving, quality of experience. Such harmonization resynchronizes both hemispheres of the brain. It recalibrates the whole organism.
Dysynchrony is associated with a variety of disorders. Such a standing wave in consciousness can induce resonance in the pineal using electric, magnetic or sound energy, and may result in a chain of synergetic activity resulting in the production and release of hallucinogenic compounds. Thus, the pineal can be likened to an attractor, or “lightning rod” of consciousness. It generates an illuminative laser beam that pervades the energy body.
The pineal is a superconducting resonator. Ananda claims it potentiates DNA as a multidimensional transducer of holographic projection, through hadron toroids, and is crucial to staying youthful. 5meoDMT & DMT act on the T-RNA messengers, which carry out the protein synthesis for the DNA, or the rebuilding of our body image and organs.
Melatonin is exclusively made in the pineal gland, comprised of the same Tryptophane base materials as Pinoline. Melatonin induces mitosis. It does this, by sending a small electrical signal up the double helix of the DNA, which instigates an 8 HZ proton signal that enables the hydrogen bonds to the stair steps, to zip open, and the DNA can replicate.
The human Pineal gland not only produces the neuro-hormone Melatonin, one of the body's most potent antioxidents, but the revolutionary Pinoline, 6-methoxy-tetra-dydro-beta carboline, or 6-MeO-THBC. Pinoline is superior to Melatonin in aiding DNA replication. Pinoline can make superconductive elements within the body. It encourages cell division by resonating with the very pulse of life - 8 cycles per second - the pulse DNA uses to replicate. Andrea Puharich measured this 8 Hz resonance in healers in the late 1970s.
DMT in the hyperdimensional geometry or architecture operating in DNA through hadronic mechanics, a model of the 8 hz, or universal phase-conjugational force, that is also the most coherent Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the DNA replication frequency. He relates this to the sacred geometry of the Merkabah, Flower of Life, Sri Yantra, Diamond Body and Vector Equilibrium Matrix.
The living DNA in our bodies operates in hyperdimensions. The entire body holographic message is present in the single DNA molecule, in order to be capable of reproducing the whole organism. The local 8hz field component is a standard tetrahedron interlocked with a second tetrahedron representing the counter-rotary field that it is phase-conjugating with, and together comprising a “stellated cube.”
Pitch Black
In Malta, Ghar Dalam, otherwise known as the ‘Cave of Darkness,’ was used for habitation by prehistoric man as long ago as 5000 BC. In ancient times when humans naturally sought shelter, worshipped and gave birth in caves, they must have noticed their natural consciousness altering properties.
Caves were the original sensory deprivation chambers. The ancients associated caves with the womb of the earth, life and death, the afterworld, and the place of healing. They made petitionary art in these caves in an attempt to create magical outcomes for their survival. The cave is a bubbling cauldron of darkness and silence, with an alchemical interior that is the hotbed of incubation and transformation, of that which is concealed.
Absolute darkness has an initiatory quality - the metaphor of moving from the darkness of ignorance into the illuminative light. But it is more than a metaphor. All wisdom traditions have used sensory deprivation and darkness (such as caves, tunnels, catacombs, or special chambers), as a shamanic mind-altering force.
Ancient Egyptians and Mayans practiced a form of the dark retreat traditionally lasting 10 days. Holy men, or shamans, would enter into the center of their respective pyramids, completely removed from light and sound to experience visions of the workings of the universe. Now we know that when the human body is deprived of visual stimulation, the brain produces a substance called DMT, a triptamine, which results in intense hallucinations.
Clear Light
Illumination has been described as being blinded by the manifestation of divine presence, which has no relation to visible light. Visionary experience, which has symbolic or religious content, gives way to this dazzling light, which is reported in eastern and western religions.
The fundamental nature of the energy body is Clear Light. Sacred Light – a biophotonic light show -- is generated internally by DMT within the ventricles. Tendencies toward mystical apprehension originating in other parts of the brain are amplified. This universal Clear Light appears in all cultures with different names. Visionary experience with symbolic or religious content gives way to the dazzling light of illumination, reported in eastern and western religions.
The mindbody is electronic, but it is rooted in the luminosity of its invisible ground. Living systems are very sensitive to tiny energy fields and resonance phenomena, both locally and at a distance. They allow the cells of the body to work together instantaneously and symphonicly.
All biological processes are a function of electromagnetic field interactions. EM fields are the connecting link between the world of form and resonant patterns. EM fields embody or store gestalts, patterns of information. Biochemical action and bioelectronic action meet at the quantum-junction.
We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment, in the living Light that generates our Being.
Disorientation outside facilitates internal focus and connection. . Meditation kick-starts the pineal into high gear. Dark Retreats are gaining a new audience worldwide.Dark Room (DR) technology is for core reprogramming, restimulating the hardened pineal which begins calcifying around age 12. Sound becomes light. Chanting and drumming amplify the effects, which culminate in a rebirth of the spirit when one enters the point of Light or primordial Luminosity.
Bardo Retreat: 49 Dark Days
Author, Robert Newman, (Calm Healing, 2006) advocates Medicine Light for a variety of conditions. He cites Tibetan Buddhist, Trungpa Rinpoche about a highly advanced, dangerous form of meditation practiced in utter darkness, known as a Bardo Retreat. They last up to seven weeks in a specially prepared Darkness Chamber, during which the whole Tibetan Book of The Dead becomes experiential and visions arise innately from the brain. The Taoists, Egyptians, Druids and others had similar practices of external light isolation.
“One of the most highly advanced and dangerous forms of practice is the bardo retreat, which consists of seven visualizations, largely based on the principle of the five tathagatas seen as different types of eyes. The central place of the peaceful tathagatas is in the heart, so you see the different types of eyes in your heart; and the principle of the wrathful divinities is centralized in the brain, so you see certain types of eyes gazing at each other within your brain. These are not ordinary visualizations, but they arise out of the possibility of insanity and of losing ground altogether to the dharmata principle.
Then an absolute and definite experience of luminosity develops. It flashes on and off; sometimes you experience it, and sometimes you do not experience it but you are in it, so there is a journey between dharmakaya and luminosity. Generally around the fifth week there comes a basic understanding of the five tathagatas, and these visions actually happen, not in terms of art at all. One is not exactly aware of their presence, but an abstract quality begins to develop, purely based on energy.
When energy becomes independent, complete energy, it begins to look at itself and perceive itself, which transcends the ordinary idea of perception. It is as though you walk unconsciously. It is that kind of independent energy without any self-consciousness, which is not at all fantasy-but then again, at the same time, one never knows.”
The beneficent and wrathful “eyes of Buddha” become visually and interactively alive as the Bardo of Luminosity flashes on and off; visions are self-arising; and transcend ordinary perception. The 49-day cycle recapitulates embryogenesis up to the point when pineal and gender differentiation occurs, as on the 49th day of gestation.
“There is now enough 'Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibition' triggered by the pinoline, to allow the pineal gland's 'serotonin to melatonin cycle' to be intercepted by adrenaline and ephedrine activity and converted into a 'serotonin - DMT pathway'. When DMT levels reach more than 25mg, one's experience can become very visual. DMT is the visual third eye neurotransmitter. It enables the energy body and spirit to journey into hyperspace, beyond third dimensional realms of time and space.” (Chia, 2006)
Reentry implies rebirth -- the self-organizing emergence of the new self. The seed of initiation is realized as the mature fruit of experience, which feeds and sustains us. The experience continues to be useful in our lives. Each healing journey is the death of something within us, which has kept us stuck or stultified. Healing facilitates our continuing evolution.
The new self continues to emerge and the consequences of the journey become embodied in this new form for months and even years after the journey. New behaviors, feelings, attitudes, ideas, and wisdom follow. Thus, the circle of life continues unbroken.
In creativity and meditation we seek in a fully conscious way, willfully cooperating and facilitating the process not only of connecting with the divine, but experiencing ourselves in the process of “becoming” divine or being sacred. The ego no longer perceives itself as a separate expression of consciousness, but reconnects with our metaprogram as the same essence as All, infused with Medicine Light. We are Nothing, but Brilliant.
Buddha Fields
Mystics suggest even more subtle connections of soul and spirit through time and space, evolutionary intelligence. Even without a mystical approach, we can rest and refresh ourselves by aligning our intentionality with the very fabric of spacetime.
Consciously participating in this universal process helps heal and integrate our mindbodies, psyche and matter. We can learn to self-soothe cumulative daily irritations by practicing self-regulation. Tuning up the energy body supports the immune system and physical stamina.
Cosmos resonates within each of us, but we have lost touch with that due to electromagnetic pollution and the distracting demands of modern life. But we can rediscover this integral context in which we are embedded as a field of timeless, radiant abundance. We can also have a negentropic influence on one another, perturbing, enlarging, creating new pathways and possibilities. Theoretically, behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world.
We live in a persistent delusion of separateness. However, we are all nonlocally connected in an ill-defined yet tangible way at the subatomic, individual, group and global level, connecting and diverging. Soma is the embodiment of that connectivity. When we open the heart, inner light floods our being.
Psychic energy or libido is a psychosomatic phenomenon analogous to the paradoxical nature of energy/matter or wave/particle. The human body is not an object in space, but seamlessly welded to spacetime. We are not merely a phenomenal body of flesh, but one of awareness, of consciousness, a living interface of inner and outer field phenomena.
We can return to Nature and our own nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory that integrates physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a continuous process of recursive self-generation.
Maybe we just need to "remember" our essential hyperdimensional nature to become Enlightened. If all this is true, why do we needed to do any kind of spiritual practice? The answer is that we have not made this 'truth' true for ourselves.
Intellectual knowledge is not enough; that is a concept. Even if we are "initiated" the raw substance of the material body is not. Initiation just means "the beginning". It must be directly realized in one's own experience to the point that the realization is fully established and is not lost from moment to moment.
This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment. We are each a temple of living lightin a multidimensional sea of radiance that is not separate from the indwelling light of consciousness: Homo Lumen.
Meditation masters speak of an inner Light that pervades the physical and energy bodies. Now science investigates it as biophotons. Through quantum physics we can watch that matter/energy/information devolve back into the unstructured void from which potential emanates.
Mystics have often equated this pervasive Light/Sound with primordial Consciousness and the source of life as well as matter. Quantum bioholography shows the DNA literally produces coherent light, which transduces to sound that directs the formative processes of life. Radiant energy is radiant energy. Whether we look outside into our environment or inside into ourselves we find primordial Light.
Multiple worlds of visionary experience are known as the Buddha Fields or “pure lands.” In Buddhist cosmology, Bodhisattvas can exist in two different planes, the earthly plane and "Buddha Fields"
When people start on the path towards enlightenment, they are obviously in this world--the world of samsara. But once they attain enlightenment (and there are six stages known as paramitas on the way to nirvana), they pass out of samsara's bonds. But since they do not enter nirvana but remain to help others, they remain in the Buddha-fields "between" samsara and nirvana.
The Buddha-fields are described in geographical terms, in the sky and on the earth. Even though most lay people envision them in geographical terms, the monks and others who striving the path towards enlightenment see the symbolic character of this description. The hyperspace depths of the deep field contain an uncountable number of bodhisattvas and buddhas. They are not dissimilar to the electromagnetic fields and quantum and subquantal fields and virtualities of modern science.
In Buddhism, Buddha fields are the preferred place of rebirth in each instant. The Buddha field is a metaphysical meditative realm of practice, discipline, service, gnosis, wisdom virtuous application, tolerance and generosity. Those that live by love, compassion, joy, and impartiality will be born in the Buddha-field.
Conclusions
DEATH REBIRTH is a generic cycle of nature with typical phenomenology:1) ego death or subjective feeling of being dead; 2) peace and well-being; 3) disembodiment; 4) visions of material objects and events. The Transcendental phase includes 5) tunnel or dark zone; 6) evaluation of one’s past life; 7) light; 8) access to a transcendental world, entering in light; 9) encounter with other beings; 10) return to life.
PHOTONIC BODY is a biohologram projected by coherent light and sound. We arise from and are sustained by field phenomena, waves of biophotonic light and sound, which form our essential nature through acoustic holography This coherent light transduces itself into radio waves (holographic biophoton field), which carry sound as information that decodes the 4-D form as a material object.
Chromosomes probably transform their genetic-sign laser radiations into broadband genetic-sign radio waves. The polarizations of chromosome laser photons are connected nonlocally and coherently to polarizations of radio waves. This is an explicit physical analogue for the traditional mystical apprehension of inner Light and the Audible Life Stream. Bioholography.
LUX and FLUX. Self-illumined Light is both an inner (biophysical) and outer (quantum and cosmological) essential phenomena. Energy/matter emerges as light from the boundary layer where nothing becomes something. Quantum nonlocality is directly related to laser radiation from chromosomes (coherent light), which jitterbugs its polarization plane to radiate or occlude photons.
DNA and the genome have now been identified as active "laser-like" environments. Roughly speaking, DNA can be considered as a liquid crystal gel-like state that acts on the incoming light in the manner of a solitonic lattice. A soliton is an ultra stable wave train that arises in the context of non-linear wave oscillation. Despite their rarity on Earth, over 99% of the universe is in the plasma state.
CLEAR LIGHT. Sacred Light is generated internally by DMT, the spirit molecule, and within the ventricles but that is a correlation with the universal Clear Light. Meditation evokes pineal DMT release through EM vibrations. Visionary experience with symbolic or religious content gives way to dazzling light of illumination, reported in eastern and western religions.
Meditation modulates pineal activity, eliciting a standing wave through resonance effects that coordinates other brain centers with both chemicals and electromagnetism. Resonance is induced in the pineal gland using electric, magnetic, or sound energy, resynchronizing both hemispheres of the brain, resulting in a chain of synergetic harmony that releases DMT, an endogenous psychedelic.
The pineal contains high levels of enzymes and building-blocks for DMT, which may be secreted when inhibitory processes cease blocking its production with other chemicals, such as beta-carbolines which magnify and prolong DMT effects.
Soma Pinoline and DMT are the source of visionary Light in transpersonal experiences. Its primary source, the pineal, has traditionally been referred to as the Third Eye. Curiously, this gland is light sensitive and actually has a lens, cornea, and retina. DMT production is particularly stimulated in the extraordinary conditions of birth, sexual ecstasy, childbirth, extreme physical stress, near-death, psychosis, and physical death, as well as meditation. Pineal DMT may also play a significant role in dream consciousness.
Meditative techniques using sound, sight, or awareness may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain ‘sacred’ worlds, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired effects, causing multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies. When our minds and bodies resonate with these spiritual exercises the pineal begins to ‘vibrate’ at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation and release.
The mindbody is electronic, but it is rooted in the luminosity of its invisible ground. Living systems are very sensitive to tiny energy fields and resonance phenomena, both locally and at a distance. They allow the cells of the body to work together instantaneously in concert. All biological processes are a function of electromagnetic field interactions. EM fields are the connecting link between the world of form and resonant patterns. EM fields embody or store gestalts, patterns of information. Biochemical action and bioelectronic action meet at the quantum-junction.
We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment, in the living Light that generates our Being.
REFERENCES
Callaway, J.C. (1994). Pinoline and Other Tryptamine Derivatives: Formations and functions. PhD Dissertation, Dept. Pharmacol. & Toxicol, Univ. Kuopio, Finland
Chia, Mantak (2006), http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/index.html
Davenport, Maila (2005). A Walk on the Wild Side: On Pilgrimage in Mythic Landscapes, 2005 Doctoral Thesis, Pacifica, Santa Barbara.
Dowman, Keith (1983), Sky Dancer: the Secret Life and Song of the Lady Tese Tsogyel, Snow Lion, New York, 1997.
Miller, Iona (1981), Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation
http://zero-point.tripod.com/meditation/tantriclunar.html
Miller, Iona (1999); "Chaos as the Universal Solvent: Re-creational ego death in psychedelic consciousness"; Psychedelics ReImagined, Thom Lyttle, Ed. New York: Autonomedia, 1999
Miller, Iona (2003), How the Brain Creates God: The Emerging Science of Neurotheology, Chaosophy, Asklepia Pub. http://neurotheology.50megs.com
Miller, Iona (2006), The Nature of Embodiment is Light, http://harmoniccontinuum.50megs.com/
Miller, Iona (2006) Photonic Human, http://photonichuman.weebly.com
Murphy, Todd http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/enlightenment.htm
Strassman, Rick (1990), “The Pineal Gland”, Psychedelic Monographs & Essays, Vol. 5, Thom Lyttle, Ed., PM & E Publishing Group, Boynton Beach, Florida
Strassman, Rick (2001). DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, Vermont: Park St. Press. http://www.rickstrassman.com
Waning Moon and Yeshe Tsogyel Tsog-khorlo Envisionment:
http://www.maha-kala.com/archive/yeshetsogyal/yeshe101.htm
Retreat Caves of Tibet
http://www.dzogchenlineage.org/caves.html
Introduction: Hidden Ground
The hidden ground of our experiences is the deep source of our inspiration and transformation. Conscious experiences belong to slipstreams of consciousness, and these streams are part of nature’s process. They can be described in physical and psychological terms as our sacred journey.
Experience is a process rooted in the stream of consciousness and happens “to” a person in that stream of consciousness. Each person is an aspect of nature’s process whose stream can flow forth like a fountainhead to quench and nourish many over the course of time.
Phenomenal experiences, including altered states, happen to specific people in specific places, perhaps never to be repeated. The mythic soulscape of a place is formed of these personal events and the holographic memories they infuse in that place, particularly in the case of sacred ground. They condition the way we think about that place from such a time forward.
The archetypal field of illumination encompasses the All and Everything. It is the soulscape of The Journey, the Pilgrimage to the sacred heights and depths, which is more than a symbolic or metaphorical journey. It is a journey to the center of the earth, our earth, our own spiritual Ground of Being, whether we conceive of it in eastern or western terms.
As described by Dr. Maila Davenport (2005), pilgrimage is a primal, embodied prayer, a reiterative pattern of spiritual movement in the physical world. It is a ritual to root a being into a specific sacred field, a deep field. Without rootedness, we remain aliens in our own world.
Pilgrimage or the SACRED JOURNEY as an archetypal motion need not be literalized. We can be pilgrims of the heart and mind, moving from profane to sacred space by directing our attention inward. The internal journey into the deep field carries its innate metaphoric form into the verticality and expansion of transpersonal and imaginal realms.
Ritual pilgrimage opens limitless soulscapes--imaginal and terrestrial, simultaneously inner and outer, esoteric and sensual. The soul finds its home in personal practice, and ritual within the imaginal world. At the cultural level, shallow ground and the bowels of the earth transform into the luminous world of the seeker, uniting inner and outer life.
As Wanderer we hunt our place in the cosmos. We seek our place in the Heart of the Wilderness. Classically, this has meant staying on a mountaintop, in a hidden cave, perhaps even deep in the harshness of the Himalayas. But what do these hinterlands offer that no others provide? Is it “space” or the sense of absolute space? How about the direct experience of absolute space?
The Wanderer seeks the hidden, the mysterious, the wild. We know the changes we go through while searching are as important as finding what we seek. We are not in a hurry. Wandering is as valuable as anything else we might do. We wander through both psyche and nature until we can no longer tell them apart. As seekers, we adopt a meandering style as our way of life. (Davenport, 2005)
In much the same way we can meander through the furthest reaches of the transpersonal imagination, purposefully seeking that which as yet remains unknown in the depths. Mankind has wandered in the fields of reality seeking its true nature since the dawn of time. Science is on an essentially spiritual quest. Both science and mysticism are searching for Unity.
Splendid Isolation
Happiness and misery are both transient states. Incubation and emptying the mind are part of the cycle of creative withdrawal and return. To create, to find passion and divine inspiration, mind must withdraw upon itself for a time to focus its forces and then project an image of itself onto an external medium.
Connection to Source is the basis of creation, which manifests something unique from formless nothing. We draw apart from our fellows, whether up the mountain, into the desert or shore, or away to our closet, but always into a solitary silence. Being creative requires a capacity to be reborn anew every day. The will to be, the emergent property, the unfolding of self-in-reality is always potential, until the moment of existence - then, there you are!
Nature and wilderness invite flow between spirit, soul and ego. We go for expansion, to feel more than our puny selves. Nature’s threats are not to the ego or self alone, but to the entire organism. They require instinctual, intuitive and visceral responses involving the whole person.
Being in the wild is an opportunity for ego and instinct to cooperate in a dynamic balance that paradoxically challenges and fosters ease. We lose our small personalistic view in expansive vistas, glimpsing the eternal now.
The nature mystic experience is one of the most awesome and easily accessed non-ordinary states. Every landscape resonates with soulful stories. Untainted wilderness is possibly one of the least realized yet most valuable healing resources we have, particularly pristine areas of desert, water or mountains where we can enjoy solitude as clock time and concerns seem to melt away.
The Response Experience is called a nature-mystic, oceanic, or a peak experience. It opens us to the numinous element. We may begin with spiritually invitational procedures such as pilgrimage, creativity or meditation, but numinous experiences appears as grace states.
Grace exemplifies emergent qualities or degrees of expansion, which are glimmers at first that later may stabilize as intimacy or compassion, generativity, integrity and self-actualization. The integrated person is open, empathic, spontaneous, expressive, effortless, and innocent.
Our experience of the numinous transforms from a dreadful and uncanny mysterium tremendum to aesthetic arrest and expression, and finally to a transpersonal, universalist or integral perspective. Our spiritual voltage rises culminating in greater degrees of existential freedom. The transformed becomes a transformer.
Deep Field
Tibet is a land of both shamanic and meditational “power places,”: mountains, valleys, rocks, caves, springs, rivers and lakes are identical with sacred Buddhist shrines. The sacred caves deep in the Siltrom Snow Mountain in the Holy Dzogchen Area are among the most highly revered pilgrimage sites, globally. This rugged and legendary land inspires challenge, awe and reverence in those of all religions. To move about its landscape is to be moved in one’s core.
The “Tibet of the mind” represents echoes of the hinterlands of our primordial consciousness. Finally, we move beyond all local landscapes into the holistic or holographic field. The Bardo Thodol, (Tibetan Book of the Dead), said that in the Fifth Stage of the world's development, a stage not yet actualized, "Ether" will dawn in the consciousness of man.
An ether is a propagation medium. The bardo is the threshold between the formless and manifest, the virtual body and the “real” body. The template of life resides in the primordial ether, the fifth element. This Ether is correlated with spirit and relates to the change in consciousness from dense to subtle body, during the period between death and rebirth. This also applies to the ego death and rebirth of daily meditation. The all-pervading luminiferous ether is synonymous with consciousness.
The void is a plenum. Any momentary state of consciousness can be considered a bardo, as are our lacunae, our empty places. Lacuna means a resonating gap that describes a space of missing or formless information. This liminal state lies between our past and future existences. It provides us with the opportunity to experience reality, which is always present but obscured by the projections and confusions due to our previous unskillful actions.
This Bardo Thodol metaphysical statement about the ether conjures up woolly Theosophical abstractions and outmoded 19th century science theories of a universal medium. But new physics confirms this modified “ether” theory of the DEEP FIELD, hyperspace. It is a revisioning of the nature of deep space itself as infinite energy and potentiality, absolute fullness that propagates all pattern and form.
Creative Physics is based in the negentropic potential. In plenum physics, this primordial creative field of Zero-Point Energy (ZPE) is the dynamic vacuum of scalar physics. It is a virtual condition. The vortices of space itself carry the electromagnetic oscillations or vibrations. Light is basically information emanating from the void. We can learn to wrap our minds experientially around this quantum reality that we are not separate from the ongoing process of creation, even if a universal energetic field of information defies detection.
Scalar ether is being seriously reconsidered as the medium of electromagnetic and light waves. It is the dynamic basis of the subquantal and biophotonic energy body in integral medicine and healing. The subquantal realm of quantum physics is every bit as awe inspiring as any earthly landscape. Just imagine subspace as a luminous ocean of ceaseless virtual photon fluctuation, popping into and out of luminescent existence in every instant.
In this dynamic model there are no “things”, just energetic events. Light and sound (acoustic cymatics) modulate all matter. This “holoflux” includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and all possible forms. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. This is the guiding matrix for self-assembly, and manipulating and organizing physical reality. It is how our DNA creates and projects our psychophysical structure.
Our brains mathematically construct ‘concrete’ reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension. This information realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality transcends time and space. Thus, the brain is an embedded hologram, interpreting a holographic universe. Supernal light emerges from this ground of being, both in the cosmos and our human brains and bodies.
All existence consists of embedded holograms within holograms, fractally embedded waves within waves of clear light. Their interrelatedness somehow gives rise to our existence and sensory images. When we embody this intimate wisdom, our bodies become temples of the living spirit.
Absolute space is the womb of creation and the physics of virtual photon fluctuation reflects not only Nature, but also our nature. Only now are we learning just how literal that experience of Light is, and the interactive mechanisms it engages in our holistic psychophysical Being.
Luminiferous Ether
Is this “process zero” of the Mother Luminosity what the Lamas see when they look deeply within in their meditations? Is what is true for subspace true for superspace? It is a fact of physics that at the subquantal level the fabric of reality and our bodies flicker in and out of existence each nanosecond at a phenomenal rate.
In music theory, a lacuna is a contrasting period of no music, which acts like “negative music,” inducing a state of serenity, experiential silence. This is likewise true of the space between our breaths, particularly in meditative states when we recalibrate our consciousness to the baseline of Ground Zero.
All “things” arise from the vacuum potential, including the three great illusions of space, time and personality. This mystical realization means release from the triple prison of personal isolation and illusion. We are all simply connected: self, others and cosmos. Superspace is a virtual-state hierarchy of infinite contextual and potential fractal levels on a fine gradient from 3D into higher dimensions from which all creation manifests; and it is, of course, also zero-point energy.
Space is not empty, nor is the relatively vast empty places between our atoms in the body. Modern physics theories recognize space or the vacuum as a very active medium saturated with quantum energy fluctuations. It has been described as a turbulence of particles, miniblack and miniwhite holes, and a sea of bubbling foam.
The psychical attributes of "Ether" as conceived and defined by the Lamas are, in modern terms, precisely those of the Deep Unconscious, seamlessly welded psyche and matter. They believe, in fact, that what we call the Unconscious is a "transcendental" consciousness, an undeveloped higher than normal awareness, where imagination is reality.
The Heart Sutra says the Void is all forms and all forms are void. The formless field gives rise to itself. Both the vacuum and the psyche are expressions of the virtual plenum of ‘in-form-ation,’ the virtual photon flux.
The gist of the holographic paradigm is that there is a fundamental reality that is an invisible flux not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information. All potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns constantly bombarding us.
In the quantum world, everything is in self-organizing flux, including the subquantal virtual photons popping in and out of existence. The foamy Zero Point fluctuation of subspace perturbs and determines the behavior of quantum systems theoretically through radiant EM fields. Radiation is absorbed from the zero-point background. The stability of matter itself is mediated by the zero point fluctuation phenomena.
Mindfulness and pure awareness is the active consciousness of the next stage of the world's development, which the Lamas estimated would begin in the twentieth century and flower in the twenty first. It is not passive absorption in the collective state, but empathic psychophysical engagement and active participation. It is certainly more foresighted to prevent the onset of problems than to resort to supernatural heroics as a last resort.
The process of mind-expansion produces unusual byproducts and powers called siddhis. Seldom seen naturally, they are said to be "developed" by yogis and others as a result of spiritual training. Siddhis include life extension, healing, ESP, telepathy, precognition, prophecy, time distortion, healing, pain anesthesia, psychic heat, clairvoyance, levitation, OOBE’s, psychokinesis, and autonomic control.
But the compassionate aspirant remains unattached to these potentially hazardous powers and egoic power traps, in general, continuing toward enlightenment, the Buddha fields of the ground state.
Ervin Lazslo says, “The interaction of our mind and consciousness with the quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us, as well as with the biosphere of the planet. It "opens" our mind to society, nature, and the universe. Mystics and sensitives, prophets and meta-physicians through the ages have known this openness.”
Biophysicist and leading proponent of the theory of quantum coherence in living organization, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, postulates that, "a pure coherent state for the entire system would be a many-mode quantum electrodynamical field with a collective phase over all modes. It may be attainable only under very exceptional circumstances, as during an aesthetic or religious experience when the ‘pure duration’ of the here and now becomes completely delocalized in the realm of no-time and no-space.”
Specifically, the amygdala, parietal, temporal and frontal lobe circuits which orient us in spacetime quiet down. Our sense of self goes offline and “we” dissolve in openness, connectedness and transparency.
Tibetan Plateau
Is there living proof of these mystical scientific theories, or are they simply mythopoeitic concepts? If so, how can we access that state with those anomalous phenomenal experiences? Each culture has its means, but at their core they share common elements. From shamanic times onward it has required an inward Journey into one’s own depths.
A fiercely lived life is an artform -- illumination in action, based on discipline, practice and service. The specific “Art” is alchemical, a merger of inner and outer reality in One World. The Hermetics had a formula from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes for this realization, encoded in the anagram VITRIOL. It is a formula for visualizations which take one to a precise location in the inner landscape, for the specific purpose of uniting body, soul and spirit.
The formula, a call to meditation, is Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. These seven words relate directly to the seven chakras, whose activation is the key to making the Philosopher’s Stone, wholeness. When the chakras function correctly, a ray of incomparable coherent light is created that is more than metaphorical.
Roughly translated, the alchemical formula means, “Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectification you will find the hidden stone.” Rectification implies alignment. It relates to inner practice the same way in Tibet as it does in Egypt. It correlates with Illumination and activation of the Third Eye, which allows us to “see through” and beyond. It means all truth is found within our own human consciousness, and the lives of great saints and mystics reflect this Truth.
The chamber of reflection is literally the cranial cavity, a holographic resonant chamber which can read out the cosmic sourcecode from the void. In a hologram all the information is contained in each part of the energy dance, just at lower resolution. There are enfolded potentialities inherent in each moment of time. Physical reality is a potentiality for an experiencable event. Conscious experiences are real and they have tangible effects.
What is true in physics holds in mysticism. Individuals enter the theory in a manner similar to actual scientific practice. They are experimenting agents that set up conditions, observe and perceive outcomes. These people are not ghosts, nor mystical figments, And their conscious choices are highly efficacious.
All the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly the Diamond Way, are contained in the exemplary life story of Yeshe Tsogyal, (later 700s-800s), a Tibetan princess who became enlightened living in the wild with her Guru, Padmasambhava. Moving from sophisticated palace life into stark wilderness caves for contemplation must have produced quite a perceptual contrast.
Buddhism had just arrived in 8th century Tibet, in the fertile Yarlung Valley, home to Tibet's earliest Kings. Tsogyal was one of the first disciples. Teachings whose time was not yet ripe were hidden in the landscape by the dakini. Many of these were instructions she received from Padmasambhava on retreat in places to the east, like Terdrom, and above all in the caves of Chimphu above Samye, where the first monastery of Tibet had just been established.
In Tibet and the Himalayas there are thirteen Karmo Taksangs, or Tiger lair caves - meditation caves of Guru Rinpoche. One of these caves is to be found near Dzongsar Monastery in Kham. Guru Rinpoche consorted here with Yeshe Tsogyal, in their visionary manifestation, meditating on Dorjee Telpa for one month.
This founding mother of Tibetan Buddhism consciously decided to tell her spiritually erotic story in sacred biography. Her Chemical Wedding with Guru Padmasambhava inspired future aspirants. The tale of her enlightenment is one of Tibet’s greatest, male or female. This dakini or “sky dancer” lived with her Guru at the yogi's cave of Langlesho, above Parphing.
She is one of Padmasambhava's (Guru Rinpoche) two mystic consorts, former wife of King Trisong Detsen. This yogini is one emanations of Vajra Varahi. She had a perfect memory and recorded the teachings faithfully. Tsogyal is an emanation of the Goddess Sarasvati, who cuts away ignorance and attachment with her hooked knife. Tsogyal hid Guru's spiritual treasures, which were to be found in the future when the time was ripe.
Padmasambhava also took another princess Mandarava, daughter of Shastradhara, the king of Zahor, as his consort. They went to the mountain cave of Maratika, presently known as Halesha, Nepal. There they performed rituals of longevity for three months and actualized the Immortal Vajra Body which marks the attainment of an Immortal Life Awareness Holder.
The name Yeshe, which Tsogyal received later, refers to unending primordial wisdom. Her whole name means Victorious Ocean of Wisdom, or Ocean of unending Primordial Wisdom, which implies she is one with the subquantal ocean of virtual motion, known in physics as ghe Dirac Sea. This historical being became a Buddha in her lifetime. The spiritual child of this union is that of the reborn soul symbolically reliving embryogenesis and birth. Yeshe Tsogyal's residential cave is in Drikung Terdrom, which has a hot springs.
A recent translation of the life story of the Tibetan yogini, states that she and her young male consort (chosen for her by the Guru Padmasambhava) went to a cave that no one had ever found before (now known as the Secret Cave of Tsogyal in Drikung Terdrom). There for seven months they devoted themselves to the tantric cultivation of the Four Joys.
This concentrated tantric yoga practice, which included sexual rituals, allowed her to cultivate powerful siddhis. “The Lady Tsogyal could pass through any kind of object, and her body was no longer subject to the phenomena of aging, sickness, and decline.” It would seem that the Medicine Light of meditation had worked its alchemical magic as an elixer of life.
Later, she took up various solitary ascetic practices in order to develop her spiritual consciousness further through the generation of tummo (inner or psychic heat), stabilizing her yoga attainments and having the following vision of VajraYogini:
“A woman, red skinned, naked and without the ornaments of bone, appeared and pressed her bhaga to my mouth so that I drank deeply of the blood that flowed from it. My whole body was suffused with bliss, I felt as though my body had become as strong as a lion, and in my meditation I realized the ineffable truth.” (Changchub & Nyingpo)
TLRM
Tantric Lunar Resonance Meditation
There is a tantric meditation on certain dakini symbols synchronized to phases of the moon cycle, designed to add 'soma' to the body. The times of optimal practice are two alternating phases of nine meditation days, yielding 18 resonant trigger points in each cycle. Though the nature of soma has been hotly debated, most agree it produces optimal spiritual growth.
Less well-known is that the moon may be used as a means of spiritual regeneration and accelerating the growth of the "diamond body," or spiritual vehicle. Psychologically, the ritual for absorbing soma is designed for relating oneself properly to the feminine principle -- what has become popularly known as the Goddess. It is likely rooted in reproductive cycles.
This Goddess not only confers 'immortality,' but also wisdom and inspiration. She is our medium, mediator, inspiratrix and intercessor with the divine. Soma is a universal life power dispensed in great abundance during the waning moon. It is absorbed directly in meditative states without having to ingest any substance to experience this mysterious psychic energy.
Through communion in the meditative process, an individual becomes acquainted with his/her own limits, depths and ultimate reality. The highest incarnation of the divine feminine confers the deepest revelation.
The higher arc of Lunar consciousness is a more diffuse awareness, a dark-adapted Third Eye, an ability to penetrate the Void by discerning the dimly lit regions or 'Dark Matter and Energy' of the deepest layers of the primordial unconscious to the Ground State of Being.
The veil is part of our spiritual nature; it epitomizes the blocks to our enlightenment as embodied in our personalities and our souls' attachment to our minds, and to Universal Mind. To raise it means to dis-identify and deconstruct ourselves until we find our fundamental unification with divinity. It means to transcend the limits of individuality and become consciously immortal (or, conscious of our inherent immortal nature). The soul is released from the constraints of time, space and ego-orientation.
This inner marriage of intentionality and inwardness, of masculinity and feminine components gives birth to the inner child and release from the power of death. In a sense, in meditation one learns to "die daily." But this also means to be reborn daily.
Death becomes a familiar guest, and brings Grace in its wake. Ego-death is induced by withdrawing the external focus of the senses and focusing attention at the Eye Center. Successful accomplishment of this process, this child, is the Self in embryonic form, ever renascent, the fruit of psychic development.
Soma is also associated in yogic practice with the "inner moon" chakra, which correlates with the pituitary and pineal glands. This "inner moon" is said to shower subtle secretions, or soma drops, which nourish the psychophysical organism. These glands directly influence physiological processes. The pituitary regulates, among other functions, sex hormones, metabolism, and growth and development of the individual.
The pineal develops from specialized tissues and is flooded with cerebrospinal fluid connecting it with crucial emotional and sensory brain centers. It is separated from the hypothalamus and visual and auditory relay stations only by a resonant cavity -- one of the brain's fluid-filled ambrosial 'lakes' or ventricles.
The pineal hangs from the roof of the ventricle or ‘inner cave’. Certain practices, such as intense fine-tuning of attention and awareness, can amplify or prolong its chemical effects, making us see, hear, feel and think differently.
Stress as well as meditation activates the pineal. So does immersion in darkness. The ancient Indo-Iranian lunar traditions ascribe the "holiest power" of the month to the dark of the moon. In terms of this tradition, the soma (energy for spiritual regeneration) most fully saturates the earth during the waning moon, when the "invisible" (or higher) light is brightest.
The dark of the moon is associated with maximum life elixir flow. The new moon is the period when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction. This symbolizes the alchemical Coniunctio, or Divine Marriage. Immortality teachings state that growth of the higher body during life allows full consciousness to remain even after physical death. (Miller, 1981)
Retreat Cave
It is a wisdom cliché that the aspirant to enlightenment meditates exhaustively in deep caves in the desert or snowy realms. Yeshe Tsogyal's cave in Drikung Terdrom is terrible, dark, and freezing rains blow through it when blizzards rage outside. This unsurpassed practice cave of Yeshe Tsogyal is called the Secret Accomplishment cave. In the dark caves, pilgrims are challenged by several high ladders and slippery ropes. They confront their fears on the precipice even before entering the cave mouth.
The deep and dark labyrinth complex, Drak Yangdzong, is a secret meditation cave of Guru Rinpoche and Yeshe Tsogya. Another of these caves in the snow is found near Dzongsar Monastery in Kham. It is said that in this cave Guru Rinpoche meditated with his consort Yeshe Tsogyal.
This Tibetan princess became the tantric consort of Guru Padmasambhava. Her miraculous life story describes the ideal path for a female practitioner, providing a blueprint for every woman who aspires to Buddhahood. In the Mother Essence Lineage, Yeshe Tsogyal and her incarnations and emanations are of primary importance, because she is the Mother of Vision, Bliss Queen and Mother of non-dual experience. In Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, Dzogchen - the Great Perfection, Maha Ati - is considered the ninth and highest “vehicle” of the Buddhist teachings, the Diamond Way.
While living alone in the wintry cave of Nering Senge, her mate having retreated to warmer climes, Yeshe Tsogyal began to face all the demons of her mind. Visions rose up before her in the process of her meditations, equal to those of Buddha Sakyamuni beneath the Bodhi-tree, or Christ in the throes of his Temptation, or St. Anthony in the Desert, full of hideous and terrifying intensity.
Hordes of phantoms advanced upon her: fearsome, seductive, malignant, and evil. With these, the product of her own traumatic passions, she wrestled, while remaining unmovable in her vajra-like samadhi, the immutable poise of impartial contemplation. For days the onslaught continued, until finally she was left in peace. This was the ordeal of her final spiritual catharsis.
Afterwards, at the lonely cave of Paro Taktsang in the highlands of Bhutan, with her consort Atsara Sahle, she disciplined herself through vigorous fasts and long meditation. In the spiritual practice known as karmamudra, she blended the refined positive and negative seed essences (bindus) of her heart nerve-plexus (chakra) and branch nervous-systems (nadi).
The five major and five secondary bio-energies (vayu) of the living body emerge, crystallizing the whole of her Presence as the basis of an inner vajra-body – the Diamond Body. This rigorous blending together of refined nerve substance (the white and red seed essences), and the undoing of the last psychological knots of the heart center, pertains to the final stage for winning Buddhahood in a single lifetime. Yeshe Tsogyal's retreat at Paro Taktsang would be the last austerity practiced for her own benefit. (Davenport, 2004)
In Paro Taktsang after pursuing her goal with incredible diligence, Yeshe Tsogyal attained the level of world-encompassing insight. Thus she gained the basic stages of Enlightenment. Later she traveled all over Tibet with her Precious Guru, the Lord Padmasambhava, blessing particular locations and depositing Treasure texts for the benefit of future mystics.
She went into an isolated Meditation Retreat in 796 and did not come out until 805, after her great Guru had already left Tibet. She finally emerges as a fully Enlightened Buddha. Possibly in 837, but perhaps later, she transcended worldly existence, ascending bodily to the manifest pure field dimension of the Sacred Red Mountain, the luminous sphere of her Guru, the Lord Padmasambhava
Yeshe Tsogyal Tibetan Buddhist Dakini is called Lady of the Lotus-Born: The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal embodies the Journey theme. There are the archetypal aspects of her pilgrimage and the places and symbolism, and then there is her PRACTICE and its alchemical results. Just what happened to Padmasambhava and Yeshe in those caves?
The Alchemy of Enlightenment
Enlightenment is a neurological and biochemical process also connected with the energy body. So is tantra, which modulates dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin levels of “feel-good” neurotransmitters. Consider the complex biochemical symphony of engaging day after day in meditation and tantric sex in complete darkness.
Tantric sex prefigures the union of personal and universal. The transcendent is perceived by contact as well as active imagination and vision. The activity is sacramental in essence, a ritualized union of male and female in sitting position with little or no movement, and alchemical retention of charged sexual fluids. Carnal contact becomes ineffable contact, love awareness.
Buddha Hero of Pure Pleasure, do as you will.
Guru and Lord of Pure Pleasure,
With true energy and joy, I implore you to inject
The seed into the inner mandala.
And I will guard the secret of the method with my life.
Lovers become symbolic, shedding the ego to unite with the divine in existential nakedness. United as a hermasphroditic being, they no longer live in time but in the eternal present. They become hyperdimensional embodiments of archetypal God/Goddess in the primordial generative act. Depth of knowledge transmutes into Being. Outwardly, they are potential, but inwardly they are a cosmic dynamo, dynamically and energetically radiant with creative intentionality.
This oceanic union balances the opposites, and manifests pure consciousness, which is the experience of primal cosmic potential. Sexual intercourse is probably the clearest simile of complete and pervasive spiritual union that most mortals understand. Mystic rapture, as a vastly enlarged domain, exceeds it.
Different states of consciousness produce different psychophysical phenomena. States of consciousness are supported by patterns of brain activity. They are modulated by certain high or low thresholds in various parts of the brain. Extremeness in states of consciousness are generally rare, but those with spontaneous glimpses are more likely able to recreate or amplify them with practice. They are also more likely to have a desire to do so.
Meditation stimulates and modulates pineal activity, creating a standing wave through resonance effects that affects other brain centers with both chemical and electromagnetic coordination. The pineal also modulates thermoregulation and may be an influential aspect of tummo. Unrelenting efforts in meditation have shown that certain places are more conducive to results, and caves are among them.
Resonance can be induced in the pineal using electric, magnetic, or sound energy. Such harmonization resynchronizes both hemispheres of the brain with high-amplitude cascades of alpha and theta. This results in a chain of synergetic activity leading to the production and release of naturally occurring hallucinogenic compounds.
Sacred images are generated by the lower temporal lobes which also respond to ritual imagery, facilitated by prayer and meditation. Religious emotions originate from the middle temporal lobe and are linked to emotional aspects of religious experience, such as joy and awe.
Intensely positive or negative emotions and unpleasant subjective states arise in the amygdala and generalize in the limbic system. They are limbic system disturbances. Limbic stimulation can produce hallucinations mapped onto and eliciting the symbolic imagery of the temporal lobes.
This is also the root of the ‘hallucination’ of self, the sense of self, and self-image. We experience our self as real through the senses. In sensory deprivation or rhythmic driving that sense distorts and/or disappears entirely in oceanic bliss. When one hemisphere of the brain is over- or under-stimulated it rebounds into its opposite, flooding the opposite hemisphere with its rebounding signals.
This ‘inter-hemispheric intrusion’ may b the source of instantaneous enlightenment. Connections drop out of service from burnout or excessive stimulation. The clue is that epiphanies often follow very negative experiences.
Metabolic snapback is the name for this process when it happens in response to magnetic signal stimulation, and when it happens (in theory) to keep rarely used matrices of neurons active, it's called dynamic stabilization. The amygdala itself is much more labile than the structures it's connected to. It is more prone to localized seizures than any other part of the brain (Murphy).
So meditating and engaging in Tantric practice for long periods of time in a cave could suppress certain cognitive and emotional circuits and encourage large amounts of sexually-related neurotransmitters and endorphins which mimic opioids. Love or bhakti generates amphetamine-like chemistry, while bonding mimics opium. Dopamine and norepinephrine levels surge when a person is confronted by the unknown. In the initial phase of romantic love, they engender such exhilaration that we lose the desire to eat or sleep.
Elevated levels of dopamine and norepinephrine electrify the reward system in the brain. The awe of dopamine eventually subsides, followed by love's rear guard, vasopressin and oxytocin, hormones that lead to long-lasting attachment. Sex elevates testosterone which revs up dopamine.
Long sessions of sexual encounter stimulate pain-reducing endorphins. Dopamine has been implicated in the reward and motivational aspects of sex. Oxytocin and prolactin, are released in large amounts during orgasm, even without ejaculation. The thrill and power of dopamine increase by embracing new adventures, since novelty prompts the brain to pump out this chemical. Novelty raises dopamine levels and probably lowers the threshold for ability to feel romantic love.
Reemergence might generate enough signal to overwhelm normal amygdala function, spreading it to the non-verbal hippocampus, which contextualizes experience. The amygdala's social functions favor anthropomorphic hallucinations, so the appearance of a demonic entity becomes more likely as the experience gains in intensity. As the signal rebounds through overloaded brain circuitry, inhibiting synapses go offline and the overloaded mind is silenced in bliss and ecstasy. Darkness and sensory deprivation or overstimulation can modulate this process by lowering response thresholds. A new nonlinguistic sense of self is reconstituted on reemergence.
Yet neural correlates don't mean that these experiences exist "only" in the brain or are merely illusory. They are associated with distinct neural activity. There is no way to distinguish if the brain causes these experiences, or actually perceives spiritual reality. However, visions of bright lights, portals, and spiritual icons strongly correlate with endogenous or natural pineal DMT.
Could it be that human beings have actually evolved specialized neural circuitry for the sole purpose of mediating religious experience? Neurologist Ramachandran says so. He claims, “there may be certain neural pathways—neural structures in the temporal lobe and the limbic system—whose activity makes you more prone to religious belief.”
If this is true, it is easy to see how much this mind-altering chemical could amplify all of the tendencies toward mystical apprehension originating in other parts of the brain.
The pineal contains high levels of the enzymes and building blocks for making DMT, and it may be secreted when inhibitory processes cease blocking its production. It may even produce other chemicals, such as beta-carbolines that magnify and prolong its effects.
Entering the Earth
It is one thing to contemplate finding and walking into retreat in a deep labyrinthine cave high in the mountains. But imagine having to scale a precipice taller than the Empire State Building, maybe with or without rope ladders, entering a yawning cave, then descending over 50 feet in utter darkness into the Abyss of the Transcendent imagination.
Then consider remaining there, with little food and water, often motionless, for weeks, even months. It would be daunting to even the most stoic arousing excitement and fear along the final climb of the journey. Anoxia or altitude sickness, possible above 8,000 feet, could amplify that disorientation, perhaps approaching panic.
Most places in Tibet are near 10,000 feet. Lhasa is at 12,500 feet (3700m) elevation. The peak of Mt. Kailash is 21,778 feet; Lake Mansarovar 4510m, with treks to 5630-6000m.. The sacred Dzogchen caves vary from 2700 to 7000 meters. There are no specific factors such as age, sex, or physical condition that correlate with susceptibility to altitude sickness with cerebral edema which affects the brain. Some people get it and some don’t. The body will adjust to about 1,000 foot rise daily. Natives, of course, tolerate low oxygen levels better.
Entering the cave would initiate another phase of groping in the dark speculating on its variety of dangers. Profound darkness, in and of itself, creates a primordial biochemical shift in the human organism that literally is Light revealing. It awakens the immediacy of luminous awareness, where physical vision is superseded by multidimensional mystic vision that is ‘now’ yet eternal and opens to all past and future generations.
The cave itself is symbolic as a liminal threshold where we can enter the womb of the earth. But that dark retreat has a dramatic alchemical effect that is literal and life changing. Further, we carry that cave within ourselves, in the deepest part of the skull where the pineal or Third Eye sits bathed in the CSF lakes of nectar, which nourish and cleanse the pinecone-shaped gland.
Soma Pinoline, the combination of the Pineal secreted DMT (Dimethyltriptamine) and the MAO Inhibitor, Pinoline (Methoxytetrahydrobetacarboline, MeOTHBC) may be responsible for naturally occurring psychic experience. But how does one go about making this elixr?
Pinoline is a neuromodulator, which prevents, among other effects, the breakdown of serotonin. This results in an accumulation of physiologically active amines including dimethyltryptamine (DMT) within the neuronal synapses, which may lead to hallucinations, depression or mania depending on the amines being affected (Strassman, 1990).
Furthermore, noradrenaline plays a significant role in the Pineal gland, when there is sufficient Pinoline saturation in the brain. It releases a serotonin site, enabling another serotonin site on the pineal gland to produce the potent visionary Dimethyltryhptamine (DMT), neurotransmitter.
Twenty minutes of compassionate love, through meditative breathing, and whole body 8 Hz entrainment is the ultimate hormone precursor anti-aging pill. Not only does the pineal gland produce more Melatonin and Pinoline, which instigate 8 Hz ELF waves throughout the body, but these neurohormones signal the pituitary to release the life hormone Somatropin, which signals the adrenal glands to instigate cholesterol to convert to Pregnelenone then DHEA.
The extra Pinoline and other beta carboline levels that result, aid the body cells to replicate, and neutralize microorganisms, parasites, fungoids, and bacterias, and related harmful invaders. Melatonin and Pinoline are also antioxidents. Meditation is a rest break, an exercise session, an integration session, an energizer, and a body tuner, promoting antioxidant and antidepressant production. It is a healing state.
The body is an island of energy/matter and emotions with waves of feelings crashing onto its shores. Body-consciousness can either hide or reveal spirit, depending on how we direct our attention toward our ego, stress (including spiritual distress) and relief. The body and mind can be reunited in a congruent, healthy lifestyle by acting on what you know.
Fractal Embryogenesis
Dr. James Callaway detected this DMT molecule in the spinal serum of people who were dying, or were having an "Out of body experience (OOBE)", or who were lucid dreaming. All of this relates to Tibetan dream yoga and vrious Bardo states.
It is Pinoline that enables the threshold levels of DMT to become active in the brain, but it requires an adrenaline burst. DMT with Pinoline increases brain activation, and with its cousin the 5-Methoxy-DMT, has been shown to activate the brain by as much as 40%, compared to our 10% maximum potential at present. This is a frightening prospect for the uninitiated, due to the absolutely overwhelming nature of DMT.
Isolated from external light, the third eye (pineal gland) overflows with certain neurotransmitters that awaken the higher brain, the ability to imprint the brain, reprogramming itself for an “instant experience of Being.” Dark Rretreat reopens the source code of embryogenesis.
The transformative core of Tibetan Buddhist practice is the Bardo Retreat, traditionally lasting 49 days or even longer. This experience, reserved for stabilized, advanced practitioners rends the mystic veil and opens the Third Eye wide in a retinal circus of biophotons which only the Third Eye sees or even creates: the Light of Wisdom. . The pineal gland becomes decalcified as in youth and produces the endogenous hallucinogen, DMT, creating access to a whole other order of existence, somewhere between dreams and waking.
This "Third Eye,” in the center of the brain, is implicated in the production of endogenous or natural DMT, dubbed the Spirit Molecule. The pineal synthesizes natural hallucinogens in response to certain psychophysical states, and raises serotonin levels in the brain. There is a functional decline in the gland with advancing age.
This master gland is responsible for the internal perception of Light, the raising of Kundalini the serpent power, and for awakening inner sight or in-sight. The key to a successful meditation is the withdrawal of the sensory currents to the eye focus or the third eye. Once there, the gaze focuses on the middle of whatever appears without any distractions or intrusive thought.
Many of us will only experience a glimmer of this deepest revelation in the most critical of circumstances. DMT production is stimulated, in the extraordinary conditions of birth, sexual ecstasy, childbirth, extreme physical stress, near-death, and death, as well as meditation.
Pineal DMT also plays a significant role in dream consciousness. This chemical messenger links body and spirit. Pineal activation awakens normally latent neural pathways. Nerve fibers leave the pineal and make synaptic connections with other brain sites through traditional nerve-to-nerve connections, not just through endocrine secretions.
"All spiritual disciplines describe quite psychedelic accounts of the transformative experiences, whose attainment motivate their practice. Blinding white light, encounters with demonic and angelic entities, ecstatic emotions, timelessness, heavenly sounds, feelings of having died and being reborn, contacting a powerful and loving presence underlying all of reality--these experiences cut across all denominations. They also are characteristic of a fully psychedelic DMT experience. How might meditation evoke the pineal DMT experience?"
"Meditative techniques using sound, sight, or the mind may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain "sacred" words, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired effects. Such effects may occur because of the specific fields they generate within the brain. These fields cause multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies. We can feel our minds and bodies resonate with these spiritual exercises. Of course, the pineal gland also is buzzing at these same frequencies. . .The pineal begins to "vibrate" at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation: the pineal cellular shield, enzyme levels, and quantities of anti-DMT. The end result is a psychedelic surge of the pineal spirit molecule, resulting in the subjective states of mystical consciousness." (Strassman, 2001).
Serotonin or tryptamine levels are higher in the pineal than any other organ in the brain. 5-methoxy-tryptamine is a precursor with hallucinogenic properties, which has a high affinity for the serotonin type-3 receptor. Gucchait (1976) has demonstrated that the human pineal contains an enzyme capable of synthesizing both DMT and bufotenine-like chemistry. These compounds are prime candidates for endogenous “schizotoxins,” and their production may be related to stress and/or trauma, that correlate with schizophrenia.
Strassman notes that both the embryological rudiments of the pineal gland and the differentiated gonads of both male and female appear at 49 days. Melatonin is a timekeeper for gonadal maturation, so the pineal is implicated again. He suggests this rein-effect may be the root of the tension between sexual and spiritual energies, yang and yin. The pineal gland is a source of both psychedelic compounds and the gonads, sources of spiritual and generative immortality.
Stress-related hormones cue the pineal activation to activate normally latent synthetic pathways, creating tryptamine and/or beta-carboline hallucinogens. When we face stress or potential death, or in meditative reveries, we “tune back” into the most well developed motif of such experiences--the birth experience. Perinatal themes and memories re-emerge.
Those with Cesarean deliveries report greater difficulty in attaining transcendent states of breakthrough and release during drug-induced states. Maybe less fetal (or maternal) hallucinogens were released at the time of birth. They may not, according to Strassman, have a strong enough “template of experience” to fall back on, to let go without fear of total annihilation, because lesser amounts of pineal hallucinogens were produced during their births.
Through meditation, the pineal may be modulated to elicit a finely tuned standing wave through resonance effects. It creates the induction of a dynamic, yet unmoving, quality of experience. Such harmonization resynchronizes both hemispheres of the brain. It recalibrates the whole organism.
Dysynchrony is associated with a variety of disorders. Such a standing wave in consciousness can induce resonance in the pineal using electric, magnetic or sound energy, and may result in a chain of synergetic activity resulting in the production and release of hallucinogenic compounds. Thus, the pineal can be likened to an attractor, or “lightning rod” of consciousness. It generates an illuminative laser beam that pervades the energy body.
The pineal is a superconducting resonator. Ananda claims it potentiates DNA as a multidimensional transducer of holographic projection, through hadron toroids, and is crucial to staying youthful. 5meoDMT & DMT act on the T-RNA messengers, which carry out the protein synthesis for the DNA, or the rebuilding of our body image and organs.
Melatonin is exclusively made in the pineal gland, comprised of the same Tryptophane base materials as Pinoline. Melatonin induces mitosis. It does this, by sending a small electrical signal up the double helix of the DNA, which instigates an 8 HZ proton signal that enables the hydrogen bonds to the stair steps, to zip open, and the DNA can replicate.
The human Pineal gland not only produces the neuro-hormone Melatonin, one of the body's most potent antioxidents, but the revolutionary Pinoline, 6-methoxy-tetra-dydro-beta carboline, or 6-MeO-THBC. Pinoline is superior to Melatonin in aiding DNA replication. Pinoline can make superconductive elements within the body. It encourages cell division by resonating with the very pulse of life - 8 cycles per second - the pulse DNA uses to replicate. Andrea Puharich measured this 8 Hz resonance in healers in the late 1970s.
DMT in the hyperdimensional geometry or architecture operating in DNA through hadronic mechanics, a model of the 8 hz, or universal phase-conjugational force, that is also the most coherent Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the DNA replication frequency. He relates this to the sacred geometry of the Merkabah, Flower of Life, Sri Yantra, Diamond Body and Vector Equilibrium Matrix.
The living DNA in our bodies operates in hyperdimensions. The entire body holographic message is present in the single DNA molecule, in order to be capable of reproducing the whole organism. The local 8hz field component is a standard tetrahedron interlocked with a second tetrahedron representing the counter-rotary field that it is phase-conjugating with, and together comprising a “stellated cube.”
Pitch Black
In Malta, Ghar Dalam, otherwise known as the ‘Cave of Darkness,’ was used for habitation by prehistoric man as long ago as 5000 BC. In ancient times when humans naturally sought shelter, worshipped and gave birth in caves, they must have noticed their natural consciousness altering properties.
Caves were the original sensory deprivation chambers. The ancients associated caves with the womb of the earth, life and death, the afterworld, and the place of healing. They made petitionary art in these caves in an attempt to create magical outcomes for their survival. The cave is a bubbling cauldron of darkness and silence, with an alchemical interior that is the hotbed of incubation and transformation, of that which is concealed.
Absolute darkness has an initiatory quality - the metaphor of moving from the darkness of ignorance into the illuminative light. But it is more than a metaphor. All wisdom traditions have used sensory deprivation and darkness (such as caves, tunnels, catacombs, or special chambers), as a shamanic mind-altering force.
Ancient Egyptians and Mayans practiced a form of the dark retreat traditionally lasting 10 days. Holy men, or shamans, would enter into the center of their respective pyramids, completely removed from light and sound to experience visions of the workings of the universe. Now we know that when the human body is deprived of visual stimulation, the brain produces a substance called DMT, a triptamine, which results in intense hallucinations.
Clear Light
Illumination has been described as being blinded by the manifestation of divine presence, which has no relation to visible light. Visionary experience, which has symbolic or religious content, gives way to this dazzling light, which is reported in eastern and western religions.
The fundamental nature of the energy body is Clear Light. Sacred Light – a biophotonic light show -- is generated internally by DMT within the ventricles. Tendencies toward mystical apprehension originating in other parts of the brain are amplified. This universal Clear Light appears in all cultures with different names. Visionary experience with symbolic or religious content gives way to the dazzling light of illumination, reported in eastern and western religions.
The mindbody is electronic, but it is rooted in the luminosity of its invisible ground. Living systems are very sensitive to tiny energy fields and resonance phenomena, both locally and at a distance. They allow the cells of the body to work together instantaneously and symphonicly.
All biological processes are a function of electromagnetic field interactions. EM fields are the connecting link between the world of form and resonant patterns. EM fields embody or store gestalts, patterns of information. Biochemical action and bioelectronic action meet at the quantum-junction.
We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment, in the living Light that generates our Being.
Disorientation outside facilitates internal focus and connection. . Meditation kick-starts the pineal into high gear. Dark Retreats are gaining a new audience worldwide.Dark Room (DR) technology is for core reprogramming, restimulating the hardened pineal which begins calcifying around age 12. Sound becomes light. Chanting and drumming amplify the effects, which culminate in a rebirth of the spirit when one enters the point of Light or primordial Luminosity.
Bardo Retreat: 49 Dark Days
Author, Robert Newman, (Calm Healing, 2006) advocates Medicine Light for a variety of conditions. He cites Tibetan Buddhist, Trungpa Rinpoche about a highly advanced, dangerous form of meditation practiced in utter darkness, known as a Bardo Retreat. They last up to seven weeks in a specially prepared Darkness Chamber, during which the whole Tibetan Book of The Dead becomes experiential and visions arise innately from the brain. The Taoists, Egyptians, Druids and others had similar practices of external light isolation.
“One of the most highly advanced and dangerous forms of practice is the bardo retreat, which consists of seven visualizations, largely based on the principle of the five tathagatas seen as different types of eyes. The central place of the peaceful tathagatas is in the heart, so you see the different types of eyes in your heart; and the principle of the wrathful divinities is centralized in the brain, so you see certain types of eyes gazing at each other within your brain. These are not ordinary visualizations, but they arise out of the possibility of insanity and of losing ground altogether to the dharmata principle.
Then an absolute and definite experience of luminosity develops. It flashes on and off; sometimes you experience it, and sometimes you do not experience it but you are in it, so there is a journey between dharmakaya and luminosity. Generally around the fifth week there comes a basic understanding of the five tathagatas, and these visions actually happen, not in terms of art at all. One is not exactly aware of their presence, but an abstract quality begins to develop, purely based on energy.
When energy becomes independent, complete energy, it begins to look at itself and perceive itself, which transcends the ordinary idea of perception. It is as though you walk unconsciously. It is that kind of independent energy without any self-consciousness, which is not at all fantasy-but then again, at the same time, one never knows.”
The beneficent and wrathful “eyes of Buddha” become visually and interactively alive as the Bardo of Luminosity flashes on and off; visions are self-arising; and transcend ordinary perception. The 49-day cycle recapitulates embryogenesis up to the point when pineal and gender differentiation occurs, as on the 49th day of gestation.
“There is now enough 'Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibition' triggered by the pinoline, to allow the pineal gland's 'serotonin to melatonin cycle' to be intercepted by adrenaline and ephedrine activity and converted into a 'serotonin - DMT pathway'. When DMT levels reach more than 25mg, one's experience can become very visual. DMT is the visual third eye neurotransmitter. It enables the energy body and spirit to journey into hyperspace, beyond third dimensional realms of time and space.” (Chia, 2006)
Reentry implies rebirth -- the self-organizing emergence of the new self. The seed of initiation is realized as the mature fruit of experience, which feeds and sustains us. The experience continues to be useful in our lives. Each healing journey is the death of something within us, which has kept us stuck or stultified. Healing facilitates our continuing evolution.
The new self continues to emerge and the consequences of the journey become embodied in this new form for months and even years after the journey. New behaviors, feelings, attitudes, ideas, and wisdom follow. Thus, the circle of life continues unbroken.
In creativity and meditation we seek in a fully conscious way, willfully cooperating and facilitating the process not only of connecting with the divine, but experiencing ourselves in the process of “becoming” divine or being sacred. The ego no longer perceives itself as a separate expression of consciousness, but reconnects with our metaprogram as the same essence as All, infused with Medicine Light. We are Nothing, but Brilliant.
Buddha Fields
Mystics suggest even more subtle connections of soul and spirit through time and space, evolutionary intelligence. Even without a mystical approach, we can rest and refresh ourselves by aligning our intentionality with the very fabric of spacetime.
Consciously participating in this universal process helps heal and integrate our mindbodies, psyche and matter. We can learn to self-soothe cumulative daily irritations by practicing self-regulation. Tuning up the energy body supports the immune system and physical stamina.
Cosmos resonates within each of us, but we have lost touch with that due to electromagnetic pollution and the distracting demands of modern life. But we can rediscover this integral context in which we are embedded as a field of timeless, radiant abundance. We can also have a negentropic influence on one another, perturbing, enlarging, creating new pathways and possibilities. Theoretically, behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world.
We live in a persistent delusion of separateness. However, we are all nonlocally connected in an ill-defined yet tangible way at the subatomic, individual, group and global level, connecting and diverging. Soma is the embodiment of that connectivity. When we open the heart, inner light floods our being.
Psychic energy or libido is a psychosomatic phenomenon analogous to the paradoxical nature of energy/matter or wave/particle. The human body is not an object in space, but seamlessly welded to spacetime. We are not merely a phenomenal body of flesh, but one of awareness, of consciousness, a living interface of inner and outer field phenomena.
We can return to Nature and our own nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory that integrates physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a continuous process of recursive self-generation.
Maybe we just need to "remember" our essential hyperdimensional nature to become Enlightened. If all this is true, why do we needed to do any kind of spiritual practice? The answer is that we have not made this 'truth' true for ourselves.
Intellectual knowledge is not enough; that is a concept. Even if we are "initiated" the raw substance of the material body is not. Initiation just means "the beginning". It must be directly realized in one's own experience to the point that the realization is fully established and is not lost from moment to moment.
This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment. We are each a temple of living lightin a multidimensional sea of radiance that is not separate from the indwelling light of consciousness: Homo Lumen.
Meditation masters speak of an inner Light that pervades the physical and energy bodies. Now science investigates it as biophotons. Through quantum physics we can watch that matter/energy/information devolve back into the unstructured void from which potential emanates.
Mystics have often equated this pervasive Light/Sound with primordial Consciousness and the source of life as well as matter. Quantum bioholography shows the DNA literally produces coherent light, which transduces to sound that directs the formative processes of life. Radiant energy is radiant energy. Whether we look outside into our environment or inside into ourselves we find primordial Light.
Multiple worlds of visionary experience are known as the Buddha Fields or “pure lands.” In Buddhist cosmology, Bodhisattvas can exist in two different planes, the earthly plane and "Buddha Fields"
When people start on the path towards enlightenment, they are obviously in this world--the world of samsara. But once they attain enlightenment (and there are six stages known as paramitas on the way to nirvana), they pass out of samsara's bonds. But since they do not enter nirvana but remain to help others, they remain in the Buddha-fields "between" samsara and nirvana.
The Buddha-fields are described in geographical terms, in the sky and on the earth. Even though most lay people envision them in geographical terms, the monks and others who striving the path towards enlightenment see the symbolic character of this description. The hyperspace depths of the deep field contain an uncountable number of bodhisattvas and buddhas. They are not dissimilar to the electromagnetic fields and quantum and subquantal fields and virtualities of modern science.
In Buddhism, Buddha fields are the preferred place of rebirth in each instant. The Buddha field is a metaphysical meditative realm of practice, discipline, service, gnosis, wisdom virtuous application, tolerance and generosity. Those that live by love, compassion, joy, and impartiality will be born in the Buddha-field.
Conclusions
DEATH REBIRTH is a generic cycle of nature with typical phenomenology:1) ego death or subjective feeling of being dead; 2) peace and well-being; 3) disembodiment; 4) visions of material objects and events. The Transcendental phase includes 5) tunnel or dark zone; 6) evaluation of one’s past life; 7) light; 8) access to a transcendental world, entering in light; 9) encounter with other beings; 10) return to life.
PHOTONIC BODY is a biohologram projected by coherent light and sound. We arise from and are sustained by field phenomena, waves of biophotonic light and sound, which form our essential nature through acoustic holography This coherent light transduces itself into radio waves (holographic biophoton field), which carry sound as information that decodes the 4-D form as a material object.
Chromosomes probably transform their genetic-sign laser radiations into broadband genetic-sign radio waves. The polarizations of chromosome laser photons are connected nonlocally and coherently to polarizations of radio waves. This is an explicit physical analogue for the traditional mystical apprehension of inner Light and the Audible Life Stream. Bioholography.
LUX and FLUX. Self-illumined Light is both an inner (biophysical) and outer (quantum and cosmological) essential phenomena. Energy/matter emerges as light from the boundary layer where nothing becomes something. Quantum nonlocality is directly related to laser radiation from chromosomes (coherent light), which jitterbugs its polarization plane to radiate or occlude photons.
DNA and the genome have now been identified as active "laser-like" environments. Roughly speaking, DNA can be considered as a liquid crystal gel-like state that acts on the incoming light in the manner of a solitonic lattice. A soliton is an ultra stable wave train that arises in the context of non-linear wave oscillation. Despite their rarity on Earth, over 99% of the universe is in the plasma state.
CLEAR LIGHT. Sacred Light is generated internally by DMT, the spirit molecule, and within the ventricles but that is a correlation with the universal Clear Light. Meditation evokes pineal DMT release through EM vibrations. Visionary experience with symbolic or religious content gives way to dazzling light of illumination, reported in eastern and western religions.
Meditation modulates pineal activity, eliciting a standing wave through resonance effects that coordinates other brain centers with both chemicals and electromagnetism. Resonance is induced in the pineal gland using electric, magnetic, or sound energy, resynchronizing both hemispheres of the brain, resulting in a chain of synergetic harmony that releases DMT, an endogenous psychedelic.
The pineal contains high levels of enzymes and building-blocks for DMT, which may be secreted when inhibitory processes cease blocking its production with other chemicals, such as beta-carbolines which magnify and prolong DMT effects.
Soma Pinoline and DMT are the source of visionary Light in transpersonal experiences. Its primary source, the pineal, has traditionally been referred to as the Third Eye. Curiously, this gland is light sensitive and actually has a lens, cornea, and retina. DMT production is particularly stimulated in the extraordinary conditions of birth, sexual ecstasy, childbirth, extreme physical stress, near-death, psychosis, and physical death, as well as meditation. Pineal DMT may also play a significant role in dream consciousness.
Meditative techniques using sound, sight, or awareness may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain ‘sacred’ worlds, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired effects, causing multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies. When our minds and bodies resonate with these spiritual exercises the pineal begins to ‘vibrate’ at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation and release.
The mindbody is electronic, but it is rooted in the luminosity of its invisible ground. Living systems are very sensitive to tiny energy fields and resonance phenomena, both locally and at a distance. They allow the cells of the body to work together instantaneously in concert. All biological processes are a function of electromagnetic field interactions. EM fields are the connecting link between the world of form and resonant patterns. EM fields embody or store gestalts, patterns of information. Biochemical action and bioelectronic action meet at the quantum-junction.
We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment, in the living Light that generates our Being.
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Miller, Iona (2006) Photonic Human, http://photonichuman.weebly.com
Murphy, Todd http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/enlightenment.htm
Strassman, Rick (1990), “The Pineal Gland”, Psychedelic Monographs & Essays, Vol. 5, Thom Lyttle, Ed., PM & E Publishing Group, Boynton Beach, Florida
Strassman, Rick (2001). DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, Vermont: Park St. Press. http://www.rickstrassman.com
Waning Moon and Yeshe Tsogyel Tsog-khorlo Envisionment:
http://www.maha-kala.com/archive/yeshetsogyal/yeshe101.htm
Retreat Caves of Tibet
http://www.dzogchenlineage.org/caves.html
Iona Miller is a nonfiction writer for the academic and popular press, clinical hypnotherapist (ACHE) and multimedia artist. Her work is an omni-sensory fusion of intelligence, science-art, new physics, symbolism, source mysticism, futuring, and emergent paradigm shift, creating a unique viewpoint. She is interested in extraordinary human potential and experience, and the EFFECTS of doctrines of religion, science, psychology, and the arts. She serves on the Advisory Boards of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, DNA Decipher Journal, and Scientific God Journal, as well as the Board of Directors of Medigrace, Inc., and Editorial Board of CRAFT (Community Resilience through Action for Future Transitions). Ms. Miller is published by Phanes Press, Destiny Books (Inner Traditions), Autonomedia, Nexus Magazine, Paranoia Magazine, Alchemy Journal, Green Egg, DNA Decipher Journal, Scientific God Journal, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Dream Network, Journal of Nonlocality & Remote Mental Interactions (JNLRMI), Chaosophy Journal, OAK, PM&E, DNA Monthly, Antibothis, Pop Occulture, numerous anthologies, and more. http://ionamiller.weebly.com
