Bliss Experience / Analysis

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 3 years before Aug 28, 2016

MiBeloved 3 years ago

Email Inquiry:

Don't you miss the joy of feeling the eternal experience by expressing or analyzing it? I mean, if you engage yourself in analyzing, understanding and expressing the experience, you may simply loose the bliss feeling...isn't it / I am a layman in this regard, I do trap in that when I realize something and express it pl. explain it and how to overcome if such situation occurs..

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MiBeloved's Response:

To understand this one should use the most common pleasure experience which is the sex climax experience. Can any human being both enjoy that experience and also analyse the constituents of it simultaneously?

This would depend on the nature of the experiencer. We find that some persons can both enjoy an experience and be somewhat objective to it at the same time, while others who enjoy the same experience lose objectivity towards the experience while it overcomes them.

Therefore the answer is that it depends on the psychological nature of the individual person. We should not assume that all human beings have exactly the same amount of tolerance of any pleasure experience.

During World War 2, the Germans did experiments freezing prisoners in cold water and discovered that the tolerance of certain individuals excelled by far that of others. This means that we are not all the same in all respects. Some of us have more tolerance and some less in certain aspects.

In recent history for instance we have seen that many persons who have diabetes are able to curb the eating habits which aggravate that disease, while others cannot curb the habits and suffer terribly because of the failure to apply their objective analysis to experience.

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We heard in the Vedic literature about satchidananda. This is a combination of three words, sat, chit and ananda.

The idea is that spiritual awareness is tri-part, having three parts which are

·       Sat – layout of perpetual existence

·       Chit – self-awareness of this perpetual existence

·       Ananda – bliss feeling as the essential quality of that perpetual existence.

At least theoretically the chit feature allows for analysis, understanding and expression of the sat and ananda features.

If each of the spiritual entities (atmas) have the chit features and if some are unable to use it and simultaneously enjoy the ananda feature, then that is an admittance that there are various classes of spirits with varying percentages of sat, chit and ananda.

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However I can assure you that if you practice kundalini yoga, you can tip the balance and be able to relate to the ananda bliss feature so that it can be enjoyed and analyzed simultaneously.

When kundalini rises into the head, it may cause in one individual, a black-out in consciousness. It may cause in the other individual a white-out. And it may cause in yet another individual a gold-out. While in someone who is really proficient, there will be a gold-out experience with the objective feature of consciousness being prominent. One can through proficiency in kundalini yoga master the overpowering ananda feature of the pranas. It takes some practice.

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Once when I was in a dentist’s chair and was given the largest dose of Novocain, I was still feeling pain when the dentist did the drilling. He looked at the nurse and smiled because they had never experienced anyone who remained aware of pain sensation with such a large dose of the chemical.

He then went out of the room and came back with a larger syringe with what drug I do not know. Before he finished the full syringe, I then saw a blur. I then could no longer feel or see anything. Objectivity was totally lost. The last thing I saw was the dentist laughing with the nurse.

Some 20 minutes after I became aware again and had difficulty moving my head but I could see both the dentist and nurse looking with interest and astonishment.

So why did it take more than a double dose of the chemicals. If we all are exactly the same, if we are all one, why is it that someone has more tolerance than another in terms of objective consciousness?

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When we do kundalini yoga using bhastrika pranayama, it takes some training for the student to master the kundalini. So we are very careful initially to take the student to the edge of losing objective awareness when kundalini rises into the head. After repeated practice the student learns how to deal with the bliss feature without becoming overwhelmed by it.

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But here is another thing which you might consider. Sometime in the year of 1968, I used to be in training at Lowry Air Force base in Denver Colorado. This base was shut down sometime after. Once I was with a friend named Reikerk. He would take a LSD pill and drive all over just as if he had not taken the pill.

Other persons who took that pill would be freaking out and could lose their existential point of reference. If you put them behind a wheel there would be an accident for sure and they would not even be able to find their home address.

So how was he doing that, experience hallucinations of the subtle world and simultaneously keeping his reference in the solid material existence?

It is best to just admit that we are not all the same and that we have varying degrees of objectivity with some of us having more of the chit feature of consciousness.

Can this be changed?

Only God knows!

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After being in Denver, I was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. There was a guy who worked with us in the lab where we calibrated aircraft electronic instruments. He was a doper, which meant that he had to have narcotics on a daily basis. We mostly lived in barracks on base. He had a small house which he rented off base because he used to have to keep a supply of narcotics.

He used to have 55 gallon drums of what was called Thai weed. This was marijuana which was laced with opium. This stuff was really potent and dangerous but he used to smoke it daily, and he could function so that our supervisors could not tell that he was under the influence. How was he doing this?

How was this possible? This guy used to come to work and repair the electronic equipment while under the influence of opium.

Once some new recruits came to the base from the USA. They just got out of Technical training. So one of them came with us one Friday night off base. This is when we would usually go to the bars to seek out alcohol and native females. We went to the doper’s place first. This new recruit was raised in a Christian family and did not even drink anything more than diluted beer before. He had never had any hard liquor like whiskey even.

Doper offered him a smoke from a hookah water pipe. I was there and I was really afraid that this new guy might get hooked on opium. I was shivering in my boots, thinking that perhaps we have made a mistake by taking him by the place of the doper.

After about five minutes the new guy began giggling on and on and smoking. We kept trying to get him away from the water pipe but he just kept giggling. Later we got him away from it and took him back to the base because he was a mess. It was like his self had fragmented into pixels of bliss laughter.

After this he became a dope addict himself. We all felt really bad because we had taken him to the house of doper and did not foresee that this would happen to him.

So how is it that he got hooked on opium like that even though we did not? And how did doper have that high degree of objectivity with opium which even today stands out as a most addictive drug for human beings. Think about these things deeply and try to understand the components of consciousness.

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As intelligent a person as Timothy Leary told youths to freak out and give up their education even. And he did this even though he knew that many of the persons who did this lost their relationship with their parents and lost their jobs. Did he think that every human being had the same objective awareness that he had while on an LSD?

Think about this?

Are we really all the same?

Alfredo 3 years ago

Also, realized yogis and mahayogis can do amazing things.

For example, to make a point to his disciples, Sri Aurobindo once purchased an amount of Opium enough to kill a horse, and ingested it in front of several witness without having any noticeable effect.

Neo_Yogi 3 years ago

MiBeloved wrote:

Once when I was in a dentist’s chair and was given the largest dose of Novocain, I was still feeling pain when the dentist did the drilling. He looked at the nurse and smiled because they had never experienced anyone who remained aware of pain sensation with such a large dose of the chemical.

Neo_Yogi's Reply:

Something similar happened to me when I was still a teenager. I had a bad back tooth that needed extraction. The dentist injected some anaesthetic in my lower gum. After a while he tapped my cheek and asked if I could feel it. I said that I could so he gave me a second shot. After 2-3 minutes he checked again and I said that I still could feel it but he didn't believe me so he started his work. As soon as he pinched my dental pulp I shouted and then he looked at me astonished. He then said: 'Ok, I'm going to give another shot but it'll be the last one because it's too risky already', and I still could feel something after all.

This is related to one's threshold of pain. This threshold is different for each of us as Michael has said already.

MiBeloved 3 years ago

Rupalkumar wrote:

Now, from this, as far as I understand, not to express your bliss feeling until you are master of chit? But how can one be master of it and when does he know that?

Do sat, chit and ananda remain present simultaneously, are they in equilibrium? I mean all together? Because then only it is possible to express the feeling correctly with joy. Pl. explain.

MiBeloved's Response:

Sat, chit and ananda are in equilibrium in the brahma effulgence only. If I am not stationed in that effulgence then there is no question of its equilibrium. The equilibrium state of the brahma effulgence (brahmananda) is transcendental to myself, which means that I cannot control or regulated it. I can be a subject of it but not a master of it.

I can enter the state of the brahma effulgence by mastery of advanced meditation practice, or I can become aware of myself if I am in it, through the chit feature in the brahman effulgence but I cannot control it. The reason for this is that as a level of existence, the brahman effulgence predates the individual entity, jivatma.

Here on the earth, we understand that we are not masters of the environment, because the environment predated us being here. First there has to be an environment and then creatures may appear in it to exploit it, but their exploitation does not make them masters of the place. Dependence on the aspects of the environment is itself a denial of mastery.

Some view of this is gained in our experience in the material world, where even though I was an embryo in the mother’s body, still I cannot objectify the fetal condition to know the form of the mother during conception. I was there, undoubtedly but still it predated my objectivity.

Once I find myself in the material world, the equilibrium of the sat, chit and ananda is over for me. Here in the material world another feature comes into play and becomes prominent and that is the kleshas or psychological afflictions. These cause the ananda feature of consciousness to recede, to vanish, and to surface now and again only, and in a very distorted and twisted way.

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The bliss feature cannot be controlled absolutely at any stage, at least not for the jivatma. Paramatma can control it. Krishna can control it but those who are not in the category of paramatma cannot control it absolutely. A greater percentage of control can be gained by mastering higher meditation practice, but that is all.

The usual situation is that as soon as the limited entity (jivatama) makes contact with the bliss energy (ananda), then it proportionally loses its chit ability. As the pleasure feature is increased, the chit objective feature is reduced proportionally.

To stop this reduction equation, one may practice kundalini yoga which causes some higher degree of objectivity while one is in a subjective state, even a blissful subjective state.

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I am also required to distinguish between the ananda feature and the happiness feature (sukha) of the material energy (prakriti). The sukha happiness feature is the counterfeit production of the ananda feature in the material world. That is listed in the Bhagavad Gita as part of the duality (dvandva). The duality here is not oneness and multiplicity but rather happiness and distress or the swing of moods.

While in the transcendental world, there is only bliss and no distress, in the material world there is a counterfeit bliss, there is distress and there is neutrality. Focus on this neutrality in deep meditation leads to discovery of the spiritual bliss feature of the transcendental world. We do however mistake the counterfeit bliss for the spiritual bliss and this causes us endless hassles and confusion.

To understand this neutrality, study chapter 2 of Bhagavad Gita where Sri Krishna hammers home the value of focus on this neutral material energy which could lead one to graft on to the transcendental bliss eventually.

So how should one sort what is happiness from material nature and what is really bliss (ananda) spiritual feature. This must be sorted. How do I know if I am in the happiness of material nature or in the bliss feature of the spiritual consciousness?

Due to this confusion and my inability to distinguish between sukha and ananda, the discussion cannot proceed because we must first agree in what is brass and what is gold before we can have an intelligent discussion about a set of jewels where some are gold and some are brass.

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Sat. chit and ananda are present universally and in all times and places, but the material nature has copied these features and issued counterfeits, therefore a discussion about this will get us nowhere until we can have a failsafe system of sorting the aspects.

So long as we are not fully segregated from the influence of the material nature, our discussion about this is waste of time. After all, there are sufficient phony yogis, devotees, transcendentalist and mystics, and we need not chip in to issue counterfeit realizations about this.

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Somewhere in the Mahabharata there is the story about Mudgal, a yogi who became so advanced that the devata supernatural ruler Indra, sent his personal chariot to take the soul of Mudgal to the Swarga heavenly planets.

When the celestial charioteer arrived, he told Mudgal to get on the chariot immediately and to accept the honor of the god of heavenly worlds. Mudgal as a practicing yogin, was not too eager about going on the journey even though it was the heavenly world in which there is so much happiness.

Mudgal asked the charioteer, Matali, if there was any negative feature at any time in the heavenly places. The chariot could not tell a falsehood but he did not like the question. Anyway he explained that eventually those persons who reach the heavenly world of Indra do reach an impasse when the sustaining force of their pious activities becomes exhausted. Mudgal then asked what happens at that point to the person.

Matali explained that at that point the person, who was a celestial being but not a permanent resident of the celestial world, would begin to fade away from the heavenly place.

It was then that the yogin told Matali to go away. He said something to the effect that he was not interested in that sort of happiness which comes to an end in such a disgusting way. Mudgal more or less said this,

“I will not get on Indra’s chariot. I will continue my yoga austerities until I can reach a stage where I can go to a place where there is happiness without end. Why would anyone want to go to some place where the happiness has limited duration, and from which he would eventually fade away and find himself again on the gross material level.”