Riffin' On The Place Beyond the Winds

“The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: My dear Arjuna, happily have I shown you, by My internal potency, this supreme universal form within the material world. No one before you has ever seen this primal form, unlimited and full of glaring effulgence.” 11.47 Bhagavad Gita The Universal Form

“O best of the Kuru warriors, no one before you has ever seen this universal form of Mine, for neither by studying the Vedas, nor by performing the sacrifices, nor by charity, nor by pious activities, nor by severe penances can I be seen in this form in the material world.” 11.48 Bhagavad Gita The Universal Form

“You have been perturbed and bewildered by seeing this horrible feature of Mine. Now let it be finished. My devotee, be free again from all your disturbances. With a peaceful mind you can now see the form you desire.” 11.49 Bhagavad Gita The Universal Form

While certainly a thorough shock to Arjuna’s psyche in its utter thoroughness, Krishna’s universal form, which is the universe…every material transpiring firing along the causation chains in play (which, really elucidates the mystical nature of what Arjuna is encountering here…he is somehow “seeing” everything consciously at this moment, a feat many rather naturally construe as outside of the very parameters of the human experience as we know it, being creatures with limitations…)…is apparently a “perturbing” and “bewildering” thing to experience. Really, when it comes to stimuli, what else is new?

As in, “newness” is a series of perturbances. External stimuli “bewilder” what is, as it is, in the moment, and this just seems to happen constantly… it’s the flow of time…the march of human history… and when studied intently, its origins seem to be of a pervasive orienting force that gives shape to the very understanding within the minds of decision-making creatures in such a fashion that it shapes the face of justice and inspires the various spontaneous and deliberate behaviors of men and women the planet over (the same holds true for the animal and plant kingdoms as well). It is that which moves us, “newness”, and fortunately it’s aims have been clearly delineated in cultural systems, it’s very ways charted here, even, in the Bhagavad Gita, a nearly 7,000 year old piece of scripture…

        And while it can be condensed down into a lean and ferocious philosophical system, it is literally, outside of the words which we have gracefully chained it too, both the grass, as well as that which makes the grass grow. This is the unfurling of the Lotus…the perpetuating of the story…the tick-tocking of the clock…it is Life itself, the emergence of subsequent phenomena…

                This stimulus which rides everything in each and every moment, we have come to learn, is after utter resonance in all life-forms. When one does…as one ought to do… they somehow grow into the form of the Beloved…of the very Source of Life…of Life, itself…God. Such is the wonder of existence, of the mere existence of the good life amidst the bad life…

                Culturally, we have been raised rather sensibly to seek out the righteous life, in the face of some sort of utter opposite… we have been taught to seek this and to seek that and all of the accolades we discipline ourselves so as to earn as to perpetuate a social machine/cycle lovingly constructed to continue on some sort of admiration of unspoken mystery eventually turn sour if we do not see them purely as means to the end which is communion with Divinity.

These material forms and experiences…this mortal life… these things are ultimately, while what it is all about…they’re actually all about God. That’s how we lean into them and sustain them… this always was the promise of Divinity to a tribe of people and the culture they lovingly scrapped together with the activities of their lives… protection…sovereignty… continued existence…

                I’ve seen narratives framed in which the narrator loudly and angrily construed assimilating forces as simply too systemically strong in some scenario or another, and of course across time these people won’t even realize they are giving up their ways of life, but in reality as I’ve really racked my brain on the subject it really seems that only when you make a cultural modality transparent to the transcendent that it sticks around reliably. It goes for things as benign as what hobbies you do in your free time even.  We sometimes assume this world is about things that it’s not about.

                It is surprisingly opulent…and in reality true spirituality entails a robust culture of awesome material items…of very nice and distinguished, or kind of ratty yet utterly beloved…really all kinds of things. Things are simply a means to an end. Yet time…seems rather abundant, as does quality of life, on my end right now… and even if you wanted to tell a soupline story, the forensic accountants disagree.

                This stimulus which rides everything in each and every moment, we have come to learn, is after utter resonance in all life-forms. This is what it means by expounding upon how the very activities stereotypically associated with men of God…people of God…won’t allow one to see the universal form. It’s only happily, by Krishna’s/My’s “internal potency”, that one can see it. In so many words, it becomes glimpsed fully when one effectively realizes that they are utterly One with God. They are not in a relationship with God… they aren’t serving a Being above or outside in any way, truly…they are One with God.

                Pious activities won’t get you there, and you need to get there. “Performing sacrifices” won’t get you there, and you need to get there. “Severe penances” nor “charity” will work, not even “studying the Vedas”…

                Wait a minute…

                He’s cracking a sly joke. The aim of all of these things is both worldly and transcendental (doing them will get you there, which is why the priest class is a lousy idea, and LSD/Ayahuasca should be legal). You give charity or penance or perform sacrifice, or study the Vedas even… to create immediate results in your external environment so as to advance the purposes of love in the community. But in the Transcendental sense of it, you do it because you realize that in doing it you are God, incarnate, performing an act of God…

                Until we begin to do as much in a pronounced way culturally, “newness” will continue to barrage all of us at both the personal and social levels in our lives. That “stimulus”… “newness”… what it’s after is the utter recognition within sentient beings that they are one with Everything in a fashion that allows their will-power to effectively care for the cosmos. So undone is the myth that we are dying by our own hand, or that some force greater than us at the social level has doomed us already and there’s nothing we can do personally to rise up in the name of what is universally just…

                Something I’ve realized in my short time dabbling with spiritual topics, particularly with Oriental spirituality, is that the paradigms swing wildly and quickly across the years. Eastern spirituality is really fresh and fun for that reason. Back when I was initially interested in it as a topic, and had not  the faintest idea what it would actually look like….there was some notion going around that Boddhisatva would escape “endless” time or “linear” time in the enlightenment experience. How that ultimately played out personally in my path was with the erosion of harsh external stimuli…a prolific increase in comfort as well as ease of execution across the board in all life activities, both active and sedentary. Living is comprehensively “easier”, and pleasures more pleasurable.  

                There were some who certainly thought the idea of leaving linear time was dangerous. Like the idea of astral projection, or remote viewing… dangerous toys in an other immaculately vulnerable sandbox surrounded by alligators…

                To say as much, that it really comes down to feeling good, man, I do run the risk of being a bit of a devil to certain types. To others, I’m a breath of fresh air. I work unbelievably hard. In my life, I know every square inch of the experiences allotted to me. I can listen to a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” without blushing. Which is why I come around like a viking to sing the praises of leisure and pleasure. But to me, it is a damn good life, and a contagious one as well. Come and join me, won’t you?

"Hey...u dead yet?"