Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
Namaste.
So, yeah, I know I said I was not going to make any more videos, but I got direct instruction from the Boss Lady that I should summarize the whole channel to finish it up and make a conclusion.
And in a few minutes from now, Mercury is going to transit the disk of the Sun in retrograde motion. It also happens to be full moon. You can see the moon right through the window here.
And this is an ideal opportunity, a rare opportunity, to speak some things that are rarely heard. Well, you’ll find many things like that on this channel; but this is really, really out there.
So, in the beginning of this channel, I had been a Kṛṣṇa Consciousness devotee for like 25 years. And I had gone deep into the background literature, Sanskrit, the Vedic chants, and so on. And I came to the conclusion there was something off.
And a big part of that was the character and the nature of the Kṛṣṇa devotees. I mean, anybody who’s hung out around a temple knows what I’m talking about.
So, I decided to move on. I closed down my āśrams, told all my disciples to go home, gave everybody their money back, and said, “See ya!”
And I went on a journey.
I started from the premise that a real spiritual path should not be based on faith alone; it should be verifiable by experience. So, that, of course, drew me in the direction of the Buddha’s teaching. And for some time, for more than five years, I got into the Buddha’s teaching very deeply.
Now, I had already attained First Path back in 1984. I didn’t know it though, because I didn’t have any background knowledge. But I caught up that knowledge pretty quickly, went through the whole Tipitaka, became a Buddhist monk, made a whole bunch of videos.
You can see them on this channel. And I realized the other three Paths as well. And I came to the conclusion that, “Okay, this is good, but there’s something missing.” So, I went into many other things.
I went into Osho’s teaching, and I did a whole series on the Golden Flower, which is also on this channel.
But I still felt incomplete, even though actually the whole teaching of the Buddha is realizable through that one easy technique. I said, “Well, that’s nice, but there’s still something missing.”
So, I came back to India. And I got into Rāmaṇa Mahārṣi’s teaching, which is, of course, Advaita. So, I was back in the Vedic realm, the Vedic context. And after three years now, almost four, three and a half years, I feel like I have a pretty good mastery of that. And it’s very nice, but there’s something missing.
There’s something missing from all of these teachings: the Vaiṣṇava teaching, the Buddha’s teaching, Osho’s teaching, Rāmaṇa’s teaching. And what it is, I found in the Śrī Vidyā.
Now, the Śrī Vidyā is the worship of the Mother Goddess, the Universal Mother. And the nature of this teaching is described as trans-transcendental.
Trans-transcendental. When I first came across this term about a year ago, now, what does that mean?
Well, now I know. And I’m going to share this with you tonight. Remember, a few episodes ago, I went into the five kinds of liberation.
Most of the time when people talk about mokṣa or mukti, they’re talking about sayujā or nirvāṇa, nibbana in Pāli, where you just merge into the great emptiness and become one with everything and disappear.
And nobody comes back from that. You’re gone: gate, gate, paragate, parisaṁgate, bodhi svāhā. So, everybody thinks that this sayujā-mukti is the highest and they discount the other types of mukti, samīpya, sarūpya, salokya, and sārṣti. They think these are somehow less.
Well, I got news for you. That’s backwards. That’s backwards. You cannot qualify for these four types of liberation—salokya, sarūpya, sārṣti, and samīpya—until you have realized sayujā-mukti. Until you have realized the Advaita state, you cannot qualify for these other liberations.
So, the Advaitans, and especially the neo-Advaitans, rationalize this and say, “Oh, those liberators, they’re in duality because there’s still form. There’s still personality. There’s still activities, qualities, and so on.”
No, this is rationalization of their failure to understand the trans-transcendental.
Okay?
Advaita is transcendental. Yes, Brahman is transcendental. Absolutely. But beyond the transcendental, there’s the trans-transcendental, where you still have a form. You still have a personality. You still have a name, activities, relationships, and so on. But these are all on the transcendental platform.
These are all on the platform of having realized Brahman, of having qualified for sayujā-mukti and rejected it. I got—I don’t know how many times—four or five times, I got opportunities to take sayujā-mukti. I’m not going to go in and discuss them all in detail, because the main point about them is, I didn’t take them. I rejected sayujā-mukti.
And the reason I rejected it is that I had this nagging doubt, this intuition that this wasn’t all. This wasn’t it. This was not the highest. And now it’s confirmed.
My research into the Śrāmad-Devī-Bhāgavatam, which you’ve seen in the last few episodes, just the bare beginning of… you should go and read it yourself, because this will educate you in all these things far better than I can in a short video—that this Goddess—try to understand, Mother means what?
Womb. Universal mother means the womb of the universe. And what is the womb of the universe? Consciousness.
Brahman is undifferentiated, totally subjective, objectless, unified awareness, unconditioned by any qualities, by any measurements, by any actions or any desires or anything. But when that awareness comes into manifestation, this is consciousness. And within consciousness, the whole universe rests.
Just look at your experience. The whole universe shows up in your consciousness, doesn’t it? Look out at the sky, see the moon and the stars, get a telescope, look at the galaxies and the clusters and all this stuff out there. It all shows up in your consciousness. Even God shows up in your consciousness.
So what is this consciousness anyway? This is something very special. This is Bhagavatī. This is the Ādyaśakti. This is the womb that gives birth to the universe every single day of your life.
And you have missed it. You completely missed it, because of conditioning, because of name-and-form, verbal structures that you’ve been indoctrinated to believe, brainwashed into believing.
They’re all wrong. They’re all māyā, that which does not exist. Illusions, mirages, hallucinations, hypnotic trances.
When you wake up from this trance, what you see directly is that the whole universe rests in consciousness. Every morning, when you’re in deep sleep, in suṣupti, you are in objectless, totally subjective awareness. You’re in Brahman. You’re resting in the lap of the Great Mother.
Brahman, Brahmanī. Then when you begin to come out of suṣupti into dreams, svapna, this is your desires beginning to take shape in name-and-form. And then, as you rise toward the surface of awareness, the ego develops. And suddenly you have an “I”, this false identification, false identity. And then you go in pursuit of those desires in the outside world through the senses.
And of course, it always fails. Even you may get some temporary satisfaction for those desires, it all ultimately fails. And then you have to come back, defeated, lie down in your bed, go back into your dreams, go back into your deep sleep, reunite again with Brahman.
And then the whole thing starts all over again.
People laugh; they say there’s no reincarnation, but your reincarnation happens every single day. I’ve been teaching for eight years on this channel, Buddha’s paṭicca-samuppāda process of manifestation of the world. And nobody up to this day has understood it, and realized that it happens every day when you’re coming out of deep sleep. In fact, it happens every single moment, multiple times in a moment.
The whole process of paṭicca-samuppāda, which is described in the Vedas, and especially in the Devī Bhāgavatam, as the process of manifestation of the universe through Śakti.
So we are, you know, the Advaita teaching is right, we are Śiva: Śivo’ham, Śivo’ham.
But when that Śiva becomes covered with desire, which is ignorance, then all the restrictions, all the conditionings, all the coverings, then reduce that universal consciousness into a personal consciousness.
And this is called conditioning, upādhi. Upādhi means a restriction. So when that universal consciousness is restricted down to personal consciousness, and you come into this world and chase after your desires and fail again and again and again. And then you have to come back again that night you go into sleep and the whole thing starts all over again.
This is saṁsāra. Let alone being the body being born again and again. The consciousness is born again and again and again, every day, every moment. You can see it if you watch for it, if you know what to look for.
This is what I’ve been trying to tell you guys all these years. You know, but there’s a certain amount that you have to work on yourself. And you have to discover for yourself. If somebody just tells you, it doesn’t mean anything.
Words aren’t our realization. Words are only information. When those words turn into knowledge to experience and become wisdom. That’s the realization. That’s what you want.
So in this channel, I’ve given everything. See, we all suffer from the delusion that God is male. But who gives birth to this universe? Not a male, baby.
A mother. So the Mother who gives birth to this universe, Jagadāmbā. Jagadāmbā means the Mother of all. That’s one of Her many, many names, innumerable names.
So if you practice this, go back and watch these videos again. Read the books that I’ve posted the links to on this channel.
I’m not going to be available through this channel. I’m starting a whole new life and a whole different project and everything. But I’ve given all the secrets. You have to use them, work with them, and make them real in your life.
ĀŪṀ Tat Sat. ĀŪṀ Shakti ĀŪṀ.