A jewel in the Lotus

[Alcyone]

I finished reading a book called: “A jewel in the Lotus” by Danijel Turina. It is the second book in a sequel, the first being “A possibility of the new”. The book deals with the complex subjects such as: Atman and Karman, the accretion theory of karma as a mechanism for evolution and the accretion and transformation of Karma as a mechanism for attaining initiation into Vajra. Apparently, the results of that process are similar to the physical process of a dark body, such as a gas giant, growing by accretion to mass sufficient to initiate hydrogen fusion, turning it into a star!

 

As with the first book, it is available online for free and can be downloaded here:

 

http://danijel.org/fileadmin/books/jewel_in_the_lotus.pdf

 

I haven’t found such concepts expressed at this level of clarity anywhere and I found the book very useful. Here are some extracts of text from the book, in case it sparks anyone’s interest and provides motivation for further reading:

 

Atman and karman

 

“The theory of karmic aggregation states that the entity which humans perceive as “self” is a compound of particles of spiritual substance, an aggregation of karmic matter formed as a result of spiritual choices and actions. Essentially, unlike the classic Yoga which perceives the karmic seeds (karmashayas) as additions to atman which need to be removed, Buddhism perceives atman as an illusory entity created by the aggregation of karmic matter (a concept somewhat evolved from the concept of the karmashayas), stating that there is no “soul” different from “karma”.”

 

Accretion theory of evolution

 

Our “soul” is a karmic aggregate, a compound of all our decisions, bound together by the cohesive forces between the particles. If this aggregate dissociates, the illusion of continuity of the soul's existence will suddenly cease. By development of the positive emotions and mental coherence one is therefore in a position to stabilize his soul, so that its segments start working harmoniously with each other. With sustained and focused effort, the spiritual substance of the soul is transformed, and the amorphous substance of the aggregate, initially resembling weakly bound concrete, transforms into a homogenous, cohesive and monolithic structure. When purification of the soul is complete (meaning the state of homogenous structure and uniformly high energy of the constituent particles), there occurs the phenomenon of cessation of the four elements into vajra, which is the key point of the process of transformation of karma, in a way similar to that which happens when graphite, under high pressure, transforms into diamond, or when the process of nuclear fusion takes place in a stellar core. Enlightenment, according to Buddha, is a culmination of a long lasting process of transformation of karma, of a karmic aggregate that makes a “soul”. It is absolutely not something that is the potential of all beings, and especially it is not a certain event whose occurrence is but a matter of time.

 

Samadhi and the transformation of karman

 

“A Buddha is not just a guy who is in samadhi infinitely. It's more than that. A Buddha isn't human, he's vajra. A guy in samadhi is human. His soul consists of the kalapas of the four elements. A Buddha is pure vajra and four elements ceased without remainder. It's like a black hole, where a whole star collapsed into a singularity point, but in a way where only a portal of a kind would remain in the physical Universe toward another kind of reality, the true kind. This portal, which is no longer a human soul, is mani padme, the jewel in the lotus. Vajra is something that is presence of the Absolute in the Relative, and has qualities of both.”

 

“So, in Buddha's teaching the enlightenment is not switching your consciousness into some state, for instance into a perspective of Brahman , as in the teaching of Vedanta. The enlightenment is not the state of “One” which is “the same in a brahmana of high learning and humility, in a cow, elephant, dog, and even in the lowest of the outcasts”, as Gita professes. That doesn't concern Buddha in the slightest. If asked, this would have been his response:

 

““Dear Krishna, even if it all were as you say, what is truly reborn – the karma that makes the difference between the brahmana, cow, elephant, dog and an outcast, or the brahman, to which you sing such high and eloquent praise?” Krishna would respond: “Surely, it is karman that is reborn. Brahman is neither born, nor does it ever die.” Buddha would then answer: “If karman is that which is reborn, then transformation is necessary in the sphere of karman, in order to prevent rebirth. The aggregation of karma is susceptible to suffering, disease, old age, death and rebirth, quite independently of its relation to Brahman , which is, under the influence of the apparent continuity of existence known as jivan, known also as the illusory entity of atman . Only in the extinction of karma does the possibility of rebirth cease. Therefore all efforts should be directed into the sphere of transformation of karma, and all activities directed towards switching perspective from the position of jivan to the position of Brahman are to be considered useless for the purpose of liberation, because the attachments that define the karma, untouched by the change of perspective, prevail.” With this, Krishna would have to agree, and would stay with Buddha as his disciple in order to learn more.””

 

Vajra and the extinction of the four elements

 

“Transformation of the four elements and their cessation in vajra is an extremely intangible and esoteric concept which only a few enlightened ones experienced. Those who have gone through the process cannot explain it to those who have not, because it is a qualitative transformation of consciousness, not a spiritual experience. A spiritual experience is, for instance, when you go through a tunnel towards the light and then you see a spiritual being. This experience can have a transformational quality, but it is essentially just an experience, which means you are the same person before and after. But vajra is something entirely other. In the context of spirituality, Vajra is like expecting a Santa Claus bearing gifts, who will communicate with you on some common emotional grounds, in a “good-bad” context, and instead you are turned into an alien with a completely different hardware for producing emotions, with no glands producing hormones that cause the feelings you are used to, and everything is completely different from anything you have ever read about or heard of, and no “spiritual teacher” you know had ever mentioned it; there is no love, no religious concepts, but there are things you see for the first time, for which you don't have names, compared to which the human emotions and thoughts are but fog compared to a mountain made of bright hard diamond illuminated by inner lightning which is

the diamond, the diamond and the lightning are the same substance, described in different analogies. Instead of thought and emotion, you experience hard clear light of consciousness without thought or emotion, with hardness, width and clarity of awareness impossible to human experience, and if you could think, it would be along the lines of “Dorothy, this ain't Kansas anymore, but it's not the Oz you expected, either”.

 

Vipassana, the kalapas and the four elements

 

“I talked to this Buddhist yogi some sixteen years ago (around 1998) in order to compare our respective techniques, and having learned about my technique of the inner space and up-stream kriya he concluded that they operate on the same principles he uses in transformation of karma, with a slight difference in technical realization, since I use the Kundalini-whirlpools to accelerate the dissociation of the compound structures into their basic constituents, while he uses compassion through which he identifies with the karma in question and opens him up towards the suffering it contains. Since similar opening and integration is one of the main elements of my technique, which does the same thing until the point where kriya is activated in surrender to the higher consciousness, I conclude that vipassana, if practiced by an expert and skilled practitioner such as my colleague at the time, is principally equivalent to the technique I developed through experience and effort. My technique contains all the aspects of vipassana, but joined together with the Kundalini-energetics which reduces the directness of contact between the traumatic content and the consciousness, and accelerates the dissociation of the harmful contents with a focused contact with the energies of the higher order.”

 

On the concept of the bodhisattva

 

“The opportunity for attaining enlightenment rarely presents itself, and is to be taken immediately. The concept of renouncing Nirvana in order to guide other beings within Samsara is utter folly. This is so because a being which didn't go through the process of transformation into vajra, which had not been formed by the process of cessation of the four elements into vajra , a being which is not nirvana within the samsara, has no ability whatsoever to lead the others to nirvana. His quality of consciousness is essentially the same as the other beings in samsara, and attempt to guide them would be like blind leading the blind.

 

Only the fullness of nirvana which is present within samsara can function as a magnet which attracts other beings into nirvana. Only the perfect Buddha, the arhat who is pure vajra , can in some form of connection between samsara and nirvana (vajrasattva, vajrapani and padmasambhava) manifest the perfect nature of dharma. Before one is initiated into vajra, teaching means losing coherence of one's own karmic substance, and, likely, spiritual dissociation. So not only that the “path of bodhisattva” doesn't accelerate one on the path towards enlightenment, it actually produces the spiritual death of the practitioner, whose soul will lose integrity if it forms strong connections with others before initiation into vajra. Only by initiation into vajra does one attain the higher order of spiritual substance, defining one's existence in a medium that is an order of magnitude above the basic four elements, and attaining independence of the states of the four elements, which remain to be used only as a means of continued physical existence in order to instruct others. Only a guru made of vajra, vajracarya, possesses distance from the momenta of energy introduced by the students, distance that in fact saves him from being compromised and having his spiritual core broken. The unenlightened ones should therefore never engage in guru-student relationships, because it is absolutely fatal.”

 

“In the meantime, their saints think something along the lines of “Ah, after a million lives I reached the brink of nirvana . I attained liberation from all attachments and the transformation of the karmic aggregate that makes my personality has begun. I realize that my entire personality used to consist of the karmic substance, of four elements bound into compounds, which are now dissolved into vajra without remainder. But alas, the horror! An euglena in the puddle of water beside me suffers due to its hopeless love for some paramecium or another. Seeing its suffering, I understand that I need to return into the world and remain there until all the euglenae attain buddhahood. I will intentionally stupefy myself in order not to understand that new euglenae keep forming due to the source of karmic substance being inexhaustible, making the ocean of Samsara interminable. I will intentionally stupefy myself in order not to understand that rejecting nirvana means to spit into the face of Buddha and his teaching, which stated that it is the only thing worth attaining. In the point where the four elements coalesce into vajra, I will listen to my heart, the fourth of the four elements, thus establishing an attachment/desire on this element, and reject nirvana, thus forming a karmically binding decision which will bind my karmic body with unforeseeable consequences. But when I see the euglena suffering for the paramecium of his desire and lusting after its pulsating vacuoles, desiring to join her and exchange cytoplasm, I understand that my decision to reject nirvana in order to feed my attachment to the beings is of the exactly the same silly quality as its fixation on the paramecium, and I decide I should enter nirvana instead, but since I already made a karmically binding decision on my peak energy level, now I can proceed to fuck myself because I no longer have this order of magnitude of energy at my disposal, and it is no longer possible for me to rescind this magnitude of choice.”

 

Reliance on external means

 

“Buddhism is therefore the way of gradual increase of purity, clarity, detachment and spiritual accuracy. Buddhism is not a magic wand: there is no baptism, or a savior to redeem your sins. Your personal purity is your job; none can redeem you from it, nor would you want him to. Buddha can show you the dharma, but the entire job of developing virtues and removing flaws is up to you.”

 

“Fourth, if Buddha really thought that prayer, intercessions of the saints, blessing of the Bodhisattvas and similar methods could produce nirvana , he would surely have mentioned it somewhere. Instead, he stated that enlightenment is attained solely and exclusively by one's own efforts, and by no external influence. Enlightenment is the result of inner spiritual transformation and has nothing to do with the external influences. Rebirth in this or some other world is equally irrelevant, like prayers, intercession or curses. Buddha attained enlightenment despite being cursed, attacked and showered by illusions of Mara and all his demons. Therefore, the external forces are irrelevant for enlightenment and reliance on them is a delusion and an aberration.”

 

On Gods

 

“Buddhism makes an interesting remark: if you do indeed keep the gods in their exalted position with your offerings, do you really think they will allow you to abandon your position of attachment in which you make your offerings, and attain buddhahood? At the very moment you desire to attain liberation, those very gods you nurtured with your prayers and offerings will become your enemies, and will do whatever is in their power to discourage you from the path of dharma and return you to the position of being the source of their nourishment. According to this, all prayers and offerings are in fact opposed to your best interest, at least in the long run, because you strengthen your own jailers. In order to free yourself from bondage, you will eventually, after having dealt with all other issues, also have to overpower those very gods who grew strong and fat from your offerings.”

 

Death and rebirth:

 

“After the physical death, a man at first finds himself within the subtle (“astral”) body, but within the physical world, and can see and hear people and see his dead body. After this phase, occurs that which I usually call the “top-down sieve”, the process of sieving the pearls through a series of sieves of increasing density. The biggest pearls remain at the top, while the smaller ones travel towards the bottom, until they meet the sieve through which they can no longer fall. The worthless sand, however, travels all the way through, and is discarded. Bardo Thödol describes the process in the following way: A being initially faces the state of nirvana. It is enough for him to decide: “this is my true nature”, and it will be so: he will forever dwell in the all-blissful state of pure consciousness, absolute bliss and perfection of the supreme reality. However, most beings find themselves unable to make such a choice. Exposed to the pure light of nirvana, they feel fear, pain, suffering and horror. Why is that so? Everyone who is adept at vipassana will immediately understand the cause. The karmic aggregates that are exposed to such a high order of magnitude of reality start to strain and dissociate, releasing a terrible amount of concentrated suffering in the process.”

 

“After having ran away from the sight of nirvana in utmost horror, the soul is exposed to the pale-white light of the world of the Devas . If it feels attraction towards the form of existence that resonates with this plane, the longing for the attainment of this form of existence will result in birth at this plane. But most human souls are unable to feel attraction towards this form of existence, either. This is so because life in the world of the gods is a life of truth and virtue, where all sins are immediately visible and cannot be hidden, where it impossible to lie because one communicates by direct insight into the other person's spirit, and most things that humans perceive as the causes of happiness do not exist there. A sinful soul would therefore feel naked and violated in the world of the gods: all its sins and bad intentions would be revealed and obvious to everybody, and all would despise and avoid it; it feels as if the powerful spotlights of truth reveal all its flaws in searing pain and shame. The obviousness of all its lowly and sinful thoughts also makes it impossible to lie to others, to delude them and to exploit them, as it used to in the physical world, and since the beings here are naturally protected from abuse by the very nature of the world, this makes heaven look like hell to the sinful soul, and it would run away from it as soon as possible. Explanation for this is the same as in the case of nirvana– the soul doesn't want to release the identifications with the lowly and sinful structures, and the natural process of their dissolution in the benevolent energy of the heavenly world is perceived as a threat to its spiritual integrity and existence. For this reason, it perceives everything good as evil, as a dark threat to its way of life, and fights it in any possible way, and if it can't fight, it escapes.”

 

“Having escaped the sight of the heavenly worlds, the soul perceives the pale-blue light of the Earth. Most souls, due to the qualities of their spirit, feel attraction for this place, because the karmic patterns that condition them find their natural place of fulfillment there. For instance, it is possible to lie, to steal, to have secret dark thoughts, there are sex, ownership, pleasure of having what the others have not, as well as the coarse sensual experiences the primitive and unevolved souls strongly identify with and perceive them as the only valuable and full form of existence. Experiencing the visions of strongly attractive intercourse of man and woman, the soul is attracted and bound into conception and birth.”

 

Mara

 

“So why do I insist on talking about Satan? Because it is of paramount importance, and holds the key to the final liberation from the world. Without knowledge about Satan, it is possible to attain great spiritual heights, but if you don't know the truth about him, sooner or later he will trick you, he will deceive you with some spiritual concept or another, which will bind you to the world and turn the whole of your spiritual progress into fuel for great attachment and evil. The majority of the traditional spiritual teachings are the result of some trickery or another, which the Devil used to deceive this or that saint, who was spiritually more advanced than you are, with knowledge greater than yours, and who also, like yourself,thought that devotion to God, truth and virtue will protect him. Do not delude yourself by groundless optimism. If Buddha and Jesus had serious problems with the Devil, enough so that they had to endure real temptation, he will not only have you for lunch, but he in fact already did, and when you think that you emotionally or intellectually oppose these ideas, it's in fact him having gas from digesting you.”

Edited August 29, 2014 by Alcyone