In the Vedas there is the saying, “Ekam Va Idam Vi Vabhuva Sarvam.” (This One Absolute has become manifested in many.) The word Vibhuti has been derived from the mantra “Vi Vabhuva”, so we can say easily that the universe is His manifestation. Elsewhere the Veda
itself is speaking through Vak**, the Brahmasakti*** saying, “I have manifested Myself so far in My own glory.” Here we find the manifestation of Vak or Brahmasakti.
Vibhuti merges into Sambhuti. Vibhuti is the universe and Sambhuti is Brahmasakti, the
root of this world of Brahma. This is the dormant state of Brahma. But beyond this dormant state there is something higher, the whole tree is not the sum total of the seed. But there is such a precise state of His nature where there is no question of Vibhuti or Sambhuti. In the Vedas it has been described as the upward tide which flows beyond His Triad. In the Upanishad this is described as Asambhuti.
Now we experience three states: Asambhuti, Sambhuti and Vibhuti. The first is Asambhuti is the highest; in Sankhya it is called the state of Kaivalya of the Purusha. The second level down is Sambhuti; it is called the power of Aiswarayoga or the Brahmasakti or the special cause.
The third and last level down is Vibhuti; it manifests in forms, names and actions.
It is impossible to explain the coiling of this Sakti (feminine potency, power) in therealization of Yoga (experience the union of natural world and God). However from our point of view it is Asambhuti, that Sakti where the Chinmayee Sakti becomes exhausted, that is, it is the Mahakarama of Karana, is the Brahma (creator; divine essence of existence) or Kaivalya (onlyness, single-ness; highest expression of Truth) of the Purusha (life principle).
When the Sadhaka ascends this domain of consciousness then the manifestation of Vibhuti takes place spontaneously. Nobody can say how it happens. Only One who is
Brahmasakti of Sambhuti Himself can say this.
Let me cite another analogy using father, mother and child. The child is Vibhuti, the mother Sambhuti and the father Asambhuti. The qualities of the father are transmitted to the children through their mother. The child cannot say whose quality he or she would prefer, only in the natural course of conception and manifestation of the child does this occur as father and mother become one and thereafter two in one. Like true parents their presence must last. The child in whom that perpetual relation is reflected, in the child alone momentous Vibhuti comes forth. That momentous Vibhuti is not to be counted as Siddhi (temporary powers acquired through yoga practices). It is the subtle manifestation of an auspicious Chitasakti which the child alone carries. This is the mystery of the Vibhuti yoga. The link with the Root (Asambhuti, Brahma, Kaivalya, Purusha, Absolute) can be disconnected in the allurement of the illusion (Maya, the creative potency of the Absolute which manifests the world); that is why the yogis warn about Vibhuti.
But in the case of Dadaji this is His Swabhava (innate nature; integral fullness in the Absolute; no sense of want; fully in tune with God), which is not the case of any other yogi in the ordinary sense under any circumstances.
--- Srimat Anirvan
Notes:
* Vibhuti is One who is Full; in the Gita a person having miraculous, superhuman manifesting power.
** Vak is primal omnipotent Sound as the matrix of all Creation.
*** Brahmasakti. Brahma is the Divine Essence of Existence, the Creator. Sakti is potency, power conceived as feminine and, as such, consorts of Gods.
from http://www.dadaji.info/PDF/DT.04.pdf
-"When you are able to direct your thoughts in a more objective manner, it will prove that you are already dissociated from them. One can learn to control them and no longer need feel one with them. What counts is to experience the most complete dissatisfaction with oneself and see it with open eyes until one gets down to bedrock. This causes Prakriti ("that which gives shapes," signifying Nature), uncovered and unmasked, to react.
At this moment something previously unperceived can break through. It is shakti, the sacred power, or divine force. Something can only be born or take shape when the time comes. Bedrock represents the eternal Prakriti busy with ceaseless creation, for such is her function, indifferent to everything taking place around her. This is one of her movements. But she has another movement, opposite to it: according to one of her Laws, she gradually pushes her children into the field of vision of the Self. Meeting the piercing look of the Self, whose function it is "to see," is an instant of total understanding, a giving up of oneself. How can one describe that look? What one knows of it cannot be communicated. And besides, it would be useless to try.
All one can do is to wait with much love and be ready to meet it. Is it possible to guess when Prakriti will make this gesture for you? Is it possible to know why she does so?
It is essential to build one's life around two principles: that of contraction, and that of letting go. The moment of complete, conscious "letting go" is when the Self is in dissociation from Prakriti. Such a moment lasts only as long as several very calm respirations. Correctly speaking, this is not meditation, but rather an attitude of interiorized life. Sri Aurobindo lived it for forty years isolated in his ashram; Sri Ramanna Maharshi lived it during his whole life in his rarely broken silence.
Expansion is the creative movement corresponding to introspection. The one inevitably leads to the other, that is, expansion, of itself, leads to letting go when one finds the inner point of balance. A fundamental idea is that of conscious identification with the forces of Nature. Its significance is vast. It means full expansion in complete relaxation. But one cannot actualize anything without first having let go of everything!
What can I do? Faced with this question, the best thing to do is to do nothing on one's own initiative. The idea of expansion has to be properly understood. There can be no expansion except through love. In love we emerge from our little ego. But this love has to be impersonal. I can speak about it using the Vedic image of the sun, which radiates energy and thereby illuminates and creates. This is the essence of its expansion. It is not attached to anything, yet it attracts everything to it in its kingdom of light. Expansion does not mean doing something; it means being and becoming. The capacity "to do" flows spontaneously from the capacity "to be."
The Self "is," whereas Prakriti "is" and also "does," but always from the center outwards, exactly in the way the very delicate green shoots sprout from the germinated seed. The seed in itself is the Self folded back on itself, motionless and at the same time the creator of the movement of life. You must know this, and then feel in yourself that you are both the Self and Prakriti. This is the metaphysical version of expansion.
I often wonder who orchestrates the dangerous games of nations, who it is that in a given year devours the sap of life and in another year gives it fresh vigor. All this is the work of Prakriti. How clever she is at creating mountains out of a grain of sand! From afar the Self watches her at work. He smiles! To tell the truth, Prakriti also laughs while pretending to be absorbed in the work on which her heart is set!
The important thing in all this is to keep calm and to smile while taking everything as it comes up just as seriously as a child would. Then forget it in the next minute! There will always be heavy obligations for you to carry, but you can lay them down, one after the other, as you move forward on the road of life. The secret is to accept everything, but be very careful not to be attached to anything whatsoever!
SRI ANIRVAN REMEMBERS NEARLY DROWNING AS A CHILD
From the writings of Sri Anirvan:
The notion of space is always difficult to grasp. It leads us to life and also to death. I learned this when I was quite young. My father and my mother would rise very early in the morning, take their baths and sit side by side before a picture of their Guru who, later on, became also my Guru. And they would meditate for a long time.
We had a small house; when the curtain was drawn back, I would stare at them from my bed. They sat motionless, so still! That stillness made me full of awe. And I thought: "There must be something in that stillness." So, after a while, I began to imitate them and I felt: "Oh! so this is what they have!" It was Life connected with the life all around me.
And there is another thing related to death, which also came very naturally to me when I was a boy of ten. A few of my school friends and I used to go and bathe in the river. The river was dry in the summer. There was only a thin stream with a strong undercurrent, which people avoided when they crossed it. One day, when we were playing there, splashing in the water, I suddenly saw a whirlpool and heard the boys shouting: "Come back! Come back!" As I was swiftly carried downstream, I said to myself: "How is this? I was with them and now I am going away from them."
Suddenly, I remembered that there was an undercurrent somewhere, and I felt that I was caught in it. Then, where was I drifting to? Toward what? I had read in books that all rivers run into the sea. "So, I am going to the sea." I thought: "And what is waiting for me there? Nothing but water. So this is death approaching. Yes, death." I closed my eyes and thought: "I will float on."
I very often use these words: "Float on" -- when speaking with people. That was my first feeling of consciously floating on: "I float on, I float on." With closed eyes, I saw nothing. Suddenly, my head bumped against something. I had simply crossed the current and come to the opposite shore. My head had struck the steps that came down into the river. I let down my legs and felt ground under my feet . . . . "Well, that was death and this is life!"
I told no one about what had taken place, but it surely gave me an inner illumination and a sort of security. I thought: "Everywhere and in everything, I shall be floating on, and one day I shall come to the vast ocean." This is the whole of life, and from this you come to understand the words written in the scriptures: "I am Shiva! I have conquered death. . . . "
When, later on, I heard these words uttered by worshippers of Shiva, what did they convey to me? First, a feeling and knowledge of the infinite. You have to bind the two together. Everywhere you will see that first the bud appears and then the fruit. But in the case of gourds and pumpkins, you will see that the fruit appears first, a tiny fruit, and then the flower opens on its top. If God's feeling comes to you first, then His aura of knowledge is a splash of wisdom! Do you then still want books?
And so it goes on and on. Life runs smoothly in its own fashion. The mind alone wants to know more, and still more, of the things which separate what feeling is from what knowledge is. Let the mind rest awhile. Let it sleep and quiet itself, otherwise there is no chance of consciousness. People will learn this by and by. No hurry and no worry. It should just be like the coming to bloom of a flower.
-- excerpted from To Live Within, by Lizelle Reymond
The notion of space is always difficult to grasp. It leads us to life and also to death. I learned this when I was quite young. My father and my mother would rise very early in the morning, take their baths and sit side by side before a picture of their Guru who, later on, became also my Guru. And they would meditate for a long time.
We had a small house; when the curtain was drawn back, I would stare at them from my bed. They sat motionless, so still! That stillness made me full of awe. And I thought: "There must be something in that stillness." So, after a while, I began to imitate them and I felt: "Oh! so this is what they have!" It was Life connected with the life all around me.
And there is another thing related to death, which also came very naturally to me when I was a boy of ten. A few of my school friends and I used to go and bathe in the river. The river was dry in the summer. There was only a thin stream with a strong undercurrent, which people avoided when they crossed it. One day, when we were playing there, splashing in the water, I suddenly saw a whirlpool and heard the boys shouting: "Come back! Come back!" As I was swiftly carried downstream, I said to myself: "How is this? I was with them and now I am going away from them."
Suddenly, I remembered that there was an undercurrent somewhere, and I felt that I was caught in it. Then, where was I drifting to? Toward what? I had read in books that all rivers run into the sea. "So, I am going to the sea." I thought: "And what is waiting for me there? Nothing but water. So this is death approaching. Yes, death." I closed my eyes and thought: "I will float on."
I very often use these words: "Float on" -- when speaking with people. That was my first feeling of consciously floating on: "I float on, I float on." With closed eyes, I saw nothing. Suddenly, my head bumped against something. I had simply crossed the current and come to the opposite shore. My head had struck the steps that came down into the river. I let down my legs and felt ground under my feet . . . . "Well, that was death and this is life!"
I told no one about what had taken place, but it surely gave me an inner illumination and a sort of security. I thought: "Everywhere and in everything, I shall be floating on, and one day I shall come to the vast ocean." This is the whole of life, and from this you come to understand the words written in the scriptures: "I am Shiva! I have conquered death. . . . "
When, later on, I heard these words uttered by worshippers of Shiva, what did they convey to me? First, a feeling and knowledge of the infinite. You have to bind the two together. Everywhere you will see that first the bud appears and then the fruit. But in the case of gourds and pumpkins, you will see that the fruit appears first, a tiny fruit, and then the flower opens on its top. If God's feeling comes to you first, then His aura of knowledge is a splash of wisdom! Do you then still want books?
And so it goes on and on. Life runs smoothly in its own fashion. The mind alone wants to know more, and still more, of the things which separate what feeling is from what knowledge is. Let the mind rest awhile. Let it sleep and quiet itself, otherwise there is no chance of consciousness. People will learn this by and by. No hurry and no worry. It should just be like the coming to bloom of a flower.
-- excerpted from To Live Within, by Lizelle Reymond
-- excerpted from the writings of Sri Anirvan, recorded in To Live Within, by Lizelle Reymond
