Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
So, let’s begin. Namaste. So last night, I had a wonderful experience.
As I often do, I woke up around 2 o’clock and started to meditate, chanting my mantra, Mahāṣodaśī-mantra, and I found myself in a very interesting space. I was out of my body, I had no form, I was like pure energy, and I was in this space where there were no forms, only subtle shifting patterns of light and energy. And there were others there, too.
Divine Mother was there, you know, I kept chanting my mantra. And others were there; I can’t name them, I don’t know who they were exactly. But the whole experience was so beautiful, full of love, acceptance, and freedom. Tremendous freedom. This is like an unlimited space. I think this is the world of Brahman.
This is what it’s like. You know, we read in the scriptures descriptions of like Śrī Cakra and abodes like Vaikuṇṭha or Goloka, where there are still forms. The Lord is there, or the Goddess is there, and the devotees in their various forms, and then they have different activities.
But in this space, there was no form. There was nothing to do, really, except interact with others. But the others who were there were so beautiful. You know, they were like me. How can I say? Free from arbitrary constraints on their identity and activities and so on. Upādhi—free from upādhi. So there was no difficulty in communicating—although there was no language, it was wordless.
The communication was very easy, and very pleasant. And there was like a kind of merging that happened when you want to communicate or, you know, when you encounter somebody; there’s no hard edges, no sharp boundaries between one being and another. And this experience went on and on, you know, for hours.
It was very wonderful, very beautiful. And this, I think, is the natural result of chanting the Mahāṣodaśī-mantra. It’s written in the śāstra that Mahāṣodaśī is only for liberation. It’s only for mokṣa. It doesn’t give any material results. It gives only release.
And that’s what this experience was like. It was like being released from material conditioning. You know, the body was over there someplace. It was still there and I could still, you know, make it do things if I wanted to. But mostly I just wanted to be there and experience this wonderful space. And indeed, it is really wonderful.
And so this is the result of chanting Mahāṣodaśī, which I’ve offered to everybody on this channel, all the viewers on this channel, in the Mahashodashi series here. Please take a look at it because this is the greatest benefit. This is really the ultimate that spiritual life has to offer.
And I’ve been chanting Mahāṣodaśī now a little more than a year. And recently I took a vow to chant it one million times. So I’m getting the result and it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. The first result is that I feel the presence of the Divine Mother all the time. The loneliness of the experience of human life in the material world is gone; it’s absent, you know. And She is full of unconditional love and full understanding. I’m looking at Her picture now, and behind her is Aruṇācala.
I have a wonderful perch here, you know, for meditation or chanting or making these little videos. And this is the other point I wanted to bring out. That in real spiritual life, there is no bias; there is no discrimination. About nationality or race or color or gender or sexuality or any of the things that, you know, what to speak of politics. There’s no discrimination, no boundaries, nothing to stop any sentient being from enlightenment.
This is the great advantage of the Śrī Vidyā. This is the great wonder of the Mother’s path. Like a mother, even if the child is bad, she still loves him. See, this is the difference between the male-oriented paths and the Mother’s path. That it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter what you have been. All that matters is you make a sincere effort, and you immediately get results.
You don’t even have to wait. As soon as you qualify yourself, She’s going to give the result. And really, the only limiting factor is how much change you can tolerate. How quickly you can bear to lose all your conditioning.
So look at it this way. Other paths are like partial, narrow, and they discriminate. They say only male heterosexuals can be spiritual teachers, stuff like that. Bollocks. Bullshit. OK. It’s not true at all. They’re doing this because they want to set an example that’s so hard to follow that you’re going to feel yourself less.
“I’ve quit sex for life!” They crow like roosters. “I’m a sannyāsī! I quit sex forever. You should do that too.” You know, “I can’t do that.” Right. So immediately you feel less. And then you feel like, “Oh, I have to listen to this person. I have to serve this person. I have to allow myself to be dominated by this person because they can do something I can’t.”
See, this is how hierarchy is built. This is how social classes are formed. That this one person can do something that you can’t do. This person is a leader and you have to follow. This person is an authority and you have to listen. See, this is the old cis-male domination system that has ruined the planet and human society. And what to speak of religion, actually, in every sphere of life.
It’s created only suffering except for a few rare people, the one percent, you know, or the point one percent. So this is against Vedas, actually. This is against spiritual life. Because spiritual life should be open to everyone. Any sentient being should be able to attain enlightenment.
And Rāmaṇa Mahārṣi proved this by bringing a cow to Self-realization. Lakṣmī the cow. You can read about it on the Internet. So if any, even an animal can attain the Self, then what to speak of any human being—regardless of color, nationality, race, sexual orientation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There are no barriers because real Self-realization, real spiritual life is about is about taking off all masks, removing all coverings and being just pure naked consciousness. That’s what it’s like in the spiritual world. That was my experience last night.
So none of these things matter. I mean, they are matter. So when we give up identifying with matter and identify only with consciousness, these things fall away effortlessly. The only effort that’s involved is a little chanting, you know, a little service here and there. I mean, it’s really easy.
People make it so hard. The only reason is it seems hard in the beginning. Like if you go back to our original series, Being in the World, which you should watch; you will find that it exactly describes the human condition in the material world. That the whole world wants you to do this and that and be like this and be like that. And if you don’t, there’s going to be a problem. You’re going to be punished and so on like this. The whole material world is like this. Everybody experiences it this way. So even the people at the top, they have to conform to a certain stereotype or they lose their position.
Isn’t it? So they’re suffering too. And they’re suffering in exactly the same way. The only thing is they’re a little more expert at cheating. So they’ve accumulated more material results. But where does that get them? It gets them an animal birth or it gets them thrown into hell. But the truth is the ordinary average person already has everything they need for complete Self-realization. All they have to do is drop the material coverings, the upādhis.
You see? So all meditation, all sādhana, all this studies and all the work that we do on ourselves, is simply to get to the point where we can release ourselves from the body, the mind, you know, these coverings, these things that condition us, that trap us in material existence and make us suffer.
So all we’re asking anybody to do, all we’re suggesting that people should do, because I’m not a guru, I’m not even really a teacher, right? I’m just telling you to drop the material conditioning. Everything else will become obvious by direct consciousness. If you just drop this conditioning that makes you think that I am the body, I am the mind, these attachments are mine, you know, and so on like that.
If you just drop those things, you instantly come to the platform of full Self-realization. Aham brahmasmī: “I am Brahman. I am pure awareness.”
And then you become aware of the world of Brahman, the world of pure awareness, and that’s it. That’s the ultimate. That’s liberation: mokṣa. That’s the end of all striving, all suffering, and the complete Self-realization.
ĀŪṀ Tat Sat. ĀŪṀ Śakti ĀŪṀ.