juan

Hi CarsonZi. After years without posting, I find you in the same situation. Maybe you don’t remember, but you were the one who helped me, in December 2013, when my Google search landed me in the AYP forum. And you kindly answered my most urgent questions: Has anyone had similar experiences? Can this be controlled? Is it dangerous? Your answers were key for proceeding forward, and this led me to a path of unexpected and wonderful experiences. I agree that AYP is not the perfect system, and after some time I saw that it was not for me, but your answers and what I picked here and there in the forum were a great help at that time. So in my case your apologies are not accepted. You have nothing to apologize in front of me, you have not my pardon but my gratitude. Cheers

Hi friends. Some time ago you gave me here the concept of Yidam, and I am very grateful for that. Now I would like sharing my experience with this practice - and my questions too. I hope it may serve as inspiration to some, as the experiences shared by other bums inspired me. My apologies to those who might find my words heretic or even insulting, if this is the case please forgive me. I understood Yidam as an exercise of fusion, and I focused it as attaining the same feeling of fusion I had already experienced with a real woman in tantric sex. So I fused my belly in sex with the idealized memory of my finest lover and it was great. I fused in love with my lover in our hearts and it was awesome. Our heads fused in joy and it was exhilarating. But fusion has a limit, i.e. when we were totally fused we were no longer two, only one remains. This emergent “one” seemed to be just me, a new “me” who apparently was the owner of this inner body made of feelings. And the feelings coming from this body were quite weird. Fusing in sex wiped out the concept of being one half needing another half to be complete. This inner body was neither male nor female, or both at the same time. These concepts became meaningless, this body was just whole. Fusing in love had the strange effect of changing my perception of space. It was somehow confusing at the beginning, but as I combined this new perception with my “energy” practice, the limits of my perceived body slowly faded away. First it was felt as a sort of tube, with openings at my hands, feet and head to an apparently limitless space. Then the membrane that made the walls of this tube became more and more porous, and when it became transparent enough I could only perceive a limitless void filled with a feeling of pleasure, love and joy, without spatial references to tell what was near and what was far, what was in and what was out. This inner body was boundless, without a centre, without a periphery. Fusing in the head produced an unexpected orgasm of joy, but a very specific one: shared joy, the kind of joy experienced with others when we fulfill together a common desire. I think this is the same feeling that thrills soccer fans when their team scores, or communities when they sing their anthem and their hair stands. In this fleeting moment all differences disappear and they share the joy of being one. This feeling of oneness challenged the very concept of “me”. What is “me” if there are no “others” at the other side? Friends and enemies, gods and demons, I felt one with them all. And this took me back to the letter of the Yidam practice: I am not fusing with the perfect woman, but fusing with God. This consciousness that seemed to be “me” and all at the same time fitted quite well with the concept of God of an atheist. This God was not an “other” imposing his/her will with a carrot in one hand and one stick in the other. This God was everything, including what I considered to be “me”, there are no barriers for God. And when everything is One, hierarchies are meaningless. And there I was, enjoying this wonderful feeling of Oneness, bathed in a bliss made of joy that was beyond joy, love beyond love, pleasure beyond pleasure, all this filling a boundless space. Could this possibly be Heaven? Might this be the meaning of “being in the lap of God”? Seemed like this, but I felt that something was still missing. Working with “energy” is a kind of meditation, in the sense that, even when there is a purpose and an action in order to attain the desired results, there are no thoughts. And without thoughts, the “operating system” that was downloaded in my mind in childhood and constantly updated with new experiences, is turned off. Like a newborn child, I was free from all the concepts and rules that were later instilled in me. But operating systems are downloaded upon a more basic, embedded code, to make everything run: the BIOS. After getting rid of the OS, it seemed that I was facing the basic rules embedded in the BIOS of every living, embodied being. One basic rule is that there is “you” and there are “others”, and the others might have ill intentions. Very useful if you face a tiger, or a cat if you are a mouse. Next rule has to do with space. You perceive reality from a central point, i.e. your body, so you know what is near and what is far, what is in and what is out, so you can build barriers that protect you from the Other, so you can know if you have to fly or fight. These are basic rules for survival. Next rule is somewhat contradictory with the other two, as it’s purpose is not the survival of an individual but reproduction, and it applies to organisms that must mix their DNA in order to reproduce: you belong to one half of your kin and must find another specimen of the other half and mix your DNA. Well, it seemed that these rules did not apply in this scenario, and it was hardly possible that they apply to a god. So this is it? Following this practice have I discovered that this inner “body” feels the same as the “body” of a god? Not quite. There is still a BIOS basic rule to hack, the very first one I guess: You are. And the “I” that I perceive may be a whole, boundless, all encompassing “I”, but still is an “I”. An “I” that “is”. This was the flaw I perceived in my Heaven. My heavenly experience did not withstand the test of Time. So how could a god perceive Time? Is there a before and an after for God? Is God subject to the flow of Time, whatever this may mean? Does the concept of “being” have any meaning in a reality beyond Time? Something beyond Time, “is” or “is not”? Perhaps “being” and “not being” are, again, two faces of the same coin, as male/female, in/out, one/all? Some scientists also wondered about the paradoxes of Time. Einstein once wrote: “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”. Schroedinger may also have some clue about what being and not being might be: as long as the box remains closed, the cat inside “is” and “is not” at the same time. In order to keep both states entangled, the observer has to be removed from the equation. We’ll see… or not, as I feel that the observer might be the last remnant of what I still perceive as “I”. Sometimes I think I tarry, that I’m taking this more as a picnic than as a march, but I don’t mind lingering. I have no hurry, and the landscape is just so beautiful.

Hi. I stumbled upon this old thread, and I would like contributing with my two cents on this subject, which perplexed me for a time, explaining my current view of chakras and dantiens, that partially overlaps with these concepts, but is based on my own experience only. IMHO, chakras and dantiens are descriptions of the same system, but at different levels of detail. To complicate things, when I read about chakras, the descriptions often mix two different levels of detail. As I perceive them, chakras are not single points, but constellations of eight peripheral points, with a ninth point in the middle. So the basic elements, IME, are these peripheral points, that appear in line and connected vertically along the spine, in the front, and also along two lateral lines and four extra vertical lines in between. Horizontal lines connect these groups of 8 + 1 points, or nodes, at different horizontal levels, that roughly correlate with the levels where the chakras are supposed to be. These nodes work cooperatively, so firing a node helps and boosts the firing of neighbor nodes. By firing I mean inducing a feeling very similar to the familiar orgasm in ordinary life. And like ordinary orgasms, they are not something just imagined, these feelings are very real. When eight peripheral nodes are fired, they induce a strong and different feeling in the central node. The exception (up to certain point) are the nodes located at the root and crown, which seem to fire spontaneously, but I later discovered that their “brightness” hides the activity of other nodes in its close vicinity. So these constellations of 8+1 nodes would fit in the scheme of chakras, that would make the second level of detail. Only that I perceive not seven, but nine chakras, which correlate with the usual picture but with two “manipuras”, one below the navel and the other at the level of the diaphragm, and another extra chakra between vishuddi and ajna, with its central node just behind the soft palate. When adjacent levels, or chakras, work together, they induce a general feeling of periphery vs. core, so the end feeling is that of a “radiant” periphery and an “absorbing” core. Feeling propagates in the periphery as fire in a forest, while feelings in the core seem to coalesce as bubbles in old lava lamps. This would make the third level of detail, with a clear distinction between “LDT” from root to diaphragm; “MDT” from diaphragm to neck, and “UDT” from neck to crown. These areas, when activated, have to do with what could be called “emotional feelings” i.e. Lust, Love and Joy, and things become more complicated. This would be the third level of detail, but eventually the three DTs merge into one single core and one single periphery. This is just the description of what I perceive inside, but of course is not a prescription of what others might experience. Cheers

Thanks, johndoe, this brings the conversation back to the point I wanted to stress. First, I admit that I could very well label this “presence” as an external divinity helping me. I have even “seen” her eyes! And she is helping me a lot, if help consists in raising my previous experience to totally new realms. But it could also be ‘my’ divinity. I mean, an external divinity is someone alien to me, with his/her own agenda. But ‘my’ divinity is always there, her reaction seems to depend on my intention only. She goes as far as I want to go - or rather, as far as these ‘energies’ take us. And when we fuse, I no longer know if I am the male or the female, if I am “me” or “her”. Internal or external, who cares? What counts is this dilution of my perception of being male or female, even of my own individuality.

OK, thanks for your advice.

But I cannot see through the veil.

What’s the difference? I mean, the answer depends on how we define matter, or, specially, what do we understand as immaterial world. I checked Collins, and it says the following: adjective: immaterial 1. unimportant under the circumstances; irrelevant. 2. PHILOSOPHY spiritual, rather than physical. "we have immaterial souls" If we stick to the 2nd definition, my guess is that the immaterial world can very well be an artifact built by our material minds, so the material world is first (and, quite probably, the only one). But without further agreement on the terms, my answer can only be the same as Marblehead’s.

IMO that’s the game, yes. There have always been people writing these books - politicians, religious leaders. From the dawn of Humanity. When you get enough people having the desired version of a story you gain a lot of power. Cambridge Analytica knows a lot about this. Let me tell you a bit about my experience. I came here via “tantric sex” with a physical partner, and I despised visualization techniques, seeing them merely as a kind of substitute of the real thing. Even on my own, I was focused only in the “energy” feelings, not leaving thoughts to guide or interpret what these feelings were. Some day, about one year ago, due to a series of circumstances, I gave visualization a try. The technique I tried consisted in fusing with a god, so for obvious reasons I replaced god by “perfect partner”. And, to my surprise, this worked extremely well. With a physical partner there is a strong feeling of fusion, but skin still marks the frontier between “me” and “other”. Making “sex” with this imaginary woman took me to a new place. We fused in lust at the LDT, we fused in love at the MDT, we fused in joy at the UDT. I never had these feelings, with such intensity, with a physical partner. Was this imaginary woman a divine being lending a hand? According to the results, I could say yes. I we see this process as an accelerated clearing of obstructions, definitely yes. But the woman was just my own creation! And - this is to me the most significant, I hope I am able to express it correctly - this ideal being was inside me, not outside. It was made of the same stuff as this other mental construct called “me”. There was no “someone”. So, IMO, mind constructs (gods, ideal partners) can be useful to raise these feelings to new heights. But once the feeling is in place, mind constructs are (to me) more a hassle than a benefit.

Absolutely. I even think that speaking about local or collective mind is irrelevant, we must simply get rid of mind constructs. And gods are (mostly collective) mind constructs, don’t they? But OK, let’s imagine they are real. Would they lend a hand? If this was possible, what would then be the merit? As I see it now, gods may be a powerful visualization object for people with deep religious beliefs, and this can be helpful, but only up to a certain point. So I will continue gladly with my “practice”, leaving gods outside of the equation, but now with a bit more confidence.

Thanks, silent thunder. I deeply resonate with your words (bold is mine)

Pffff... let’s see... Mind is indeed a very slippery term. I would say that mind is the set of rules that we use to define reality. I also think that all minds are local, encapsulated inside the skull, and this “mind space” could very well be an illusion. A lot has come inside us through the senses from our birth to distinguish a deeply rooted dogma from a universal/shared truth. Only we, each one of us, using our local mind, is responsible for the consequences of accepting any truth without verifying it. Starting from “…do you exist as an independent being”, I would say that this perception is being challenged, yes. Everything seems to flow towards Oneness, the boundaries dilute. To me, the rabbit hole is the omega point where all converges into One. Kind of singularity point, where you jump from zero to infinite. Sounds poetic, a bit hollow maybe, but all we have is only words...

Thank you all for our contribution. Now I think I have a clearer picture. Sorry I about derailed the conversation from the very beginning with my human-animal meme. This is really the gist of my question. So, could a right conclusion be that gods, as anyting else existing in the realms of mind - your social character, your gender, your individuality, must be left at the door? Or, is there room for them to pass through the rabbit hole?

Well, thanks for your explanations. I will reflect upon this.

Thanks for your comments Just watching wildlife documentaries we see that we share exactly the same drivers, survival and reproduction, even with the humblest animal. And when it comes to social animals the similarities are amazing: kings and heirs, treason and punishment… I have even seen a gang of dolphins passing a pufferfish along, apparently some kind of ball game, but the pufferfish was really used as a joint, not as a ball. Do these behaviors prove that animals think? Maybe, if we define “thinking” more precisely. But what about culture? Survival, mating and social rules/rituals passed from one generation to the next is culture, and animals do that. So I am more of the opinion that even having a set of rules, a “culture”, does not make the difference. It’s the kind of culture what counts. This takes me to my main question. It is not about the difference between animals and humans, which doesn’t seem so big (even between gods and humans, thanks Mudfoot). We share the same opinion on that. But my main question is: What is the role of gods in this business? Animals may think and even display specific cultures, but don’t seem to have gods. Only humans, or rather, specific human cultures have gods. And more often than not I see the concepts of gods, of “divine beings” slipped here and there in meditation literature as if they were awaiting us at the other side of the rabbit hole. For a human/animal living in an atheistic culture this is a bit unnerving. Am I missing something? Or, perhaps, what other cultures call “divine” is merely the sight of our real nature?

This suggests some kind of evolution. Animals are animals, we humans are one step above animals, as we are able to think. But still one step above, gods abide. And we should strive to climb this step, leaving our human-animal “level” behind. Meditation seems to be a good vehicle for that, but if I understood it well, this means stopping the thinking process, leaving any thought and any idea behind. But thinking is what makes us human! With all senses turned inwards, just feeling the signals of your body, without interference of thoughts that pretend explaining them, what makes this consciousness different from animal consciousness? In other words: is this A->B->C progression real? Can we really jump from B to C leaving A and B behind? Could the second step be only an illusion and we are, we have always been, at step A? What happens then to C?