Ep362: Goddess Encounters - Delson Armstrong

In this episode, I am once again joined by Delson Armstrong, spiritual teacher, meditation virtuoso, and author of A Mind Without Craving. Delson describes his recent initiation into the goddess tradition of Sri Vidya, recounts his subsequent encounters with deities and supernatural beings, and discusses his latest writing on Paraconsciousness and Nibbana Datu. Delson explains how to relate to guilt, doubt, and skepticism, how to enter the three gates to cessation, and gives his take on the essence of the spiritual path. Delson also reveals his recent explorations in Western philosophy, why he has begun writing about world peace, offers his predictions for the future, and shares what he is doing to prepare himself and his family for what is to come.

So without further ado, Delson Armstrong. Delson Armstrong, welcome back to the podcast thanks steve it's good to be here again yeah it's nice to see you and uh we've come here to talk about your new article about power of consciousness very interesting indeed but before we get there i wonder if you might give us some sort of update on your life it's been about perhaps it's a year i think since we've last spoken something like that uh what if you might give a kind of update about your life and your activities and work and what you've been up to in this last several months? Yeah, I think since we last spoke, which would have been probably with kind of a three-way talk with Daniel.

I think that was the last we spoke. Well, since then, I've been keeping busy with a bunch of different retreats. So I've been traveling pretty much through India, and I had an opportunity to go back to South India. I love South India, and the temples there are just different than what you will see anywhere else in India.

I had a chance to actually go visit some really high-energy places like Chidambaram, which I've been to before, and did a few retreats in India, online retreats. And now I have a place at Dhammasukho always. So I've been doing retreats there, did some retreats in Europe, actually just one retreat in Europe and Austria. So I've been keeping myself busy with that. But there is something else that I'm quite excited about, which is a book that I'm almost done with, called Moksha Vidya, which in Sanskrit means the heart of liberation.

It's intended to be for what I call the exhausted seeker, the person who has tried everything, done everything, gone through all kinds of practices, met all kinds of teachers, but ultimately realized that it's all an interesting game. Now they're exhausted and they just want to sit and understand how their mind works, and that's where the premise of the book starts. So I'm currently in the last stages of edits, and I'm hoping that later this summer that book will be released. It's a sort of synthesis of, well, you could say Buddhism and Tantra and Vedanta, Yoga and Sankhya, so everything that I've taken on my journey in the last 20 years, and I've synthesized it into this. What's unique about it is it's in Sanskrit, so it's in aphorisms, just like the Yoga Sutras, and it's in Sanskrit, and then there's a translation, and then there's my let's say auto-commentary on it. So I'm quite excited about that, and then of course I sent you that article for you to check out.

And I guess that's the main topic of the talk, let's say, today. Yes, indeed. That article is The Mirror Beyond Mind on the Threshold of Consciousness, that you published on January 16th of 2026 this year. Before we get to it, I'm curious about a couple of things, really. What have these retreats been like? What have people been keen to talk to you about? What have you been, I suppose, teaching? As you point out, you've broken out of certain prior modes, models, and even standpoints, we could say, that you'd worked with, and we covered that extensively in previous episodes.

So what happens in the aftermath of that when you're traveling and teaching? Yeah. Like I said, I have a great home in Dhammasukho in Missouri, so that's the epicenter of the TWIM practice, and I keep coming back to TWIM only because I see how well structured it is. So I teach Kriya, I teach TWIM, I teach Mahamudra, Dzogchen, all of these things, but I keep coming back to TWIM as the mainstay because there's something interesting about it. One, when we talk about something like samatha and vipassana being yoked together, leading you to cessation, that is what TWIM represents: tranquil wisdom, insight meditation.

So while I might not agree on some of the tenets of, let's say, Theravadan Buddhism and things like that, because for me the jury is still out. I'm still practicing. I'm still seeing for myself how all this works. But I think TWIM provides a very good scaffolding. Now you see a lot of different, what you would call jhana wars going on, right? Hard jhana versus light jhana, what is the real jhana, these kinds of things.

But I've been going back to the suttas more recently. And what I found is it's not about having bliss on demand. That's just a sort of side benefit of that. It's about the fact that the way into jhanas is to have good ethics. So keeping the precepts, that's sort of the mainstay of everything, the five basic precepts.

And you'll see in the suttas, it's always said that once such a person keeps the precepts, their mind becomes filled with pamojja, which means relief and joy. And this kind of joy arises when the mind sees that it's free of hindrances. The hindrances have a direct or indirect correlation with precepts. So when we try our best to follow the ethical precepts in the best way we can, our mind is generally very collected. Our mind is generally void of any kind of remorse and regret, and that creates the template for the practice. As the suttas may say, for example,

When he sees that his mind is free of the hindrances, his mind is uplifted. With an uplifted mind, his body becomes tranquil. With a tranquil body, his mind becomes collected. So therein is the cycle of the process. And then what I'm teaching is basically that scaffolding is to let people understand that jhanas are great. It doesn't matter if it's hard jhanas or light jhanas or anything like that. It matters that your mind becomes relatively calm and collected, and then the rest of the things that have to happen happen quite naturally. So that's a lot of the stuff that I've been talking about on my retreats,

I tend to talk less about the cultural and the other aspects that are kind of on the sidelines. If we do the work and if we practice, we'll see for ourselves how far this will take us. I'll tell you a highlight of my retreats in the last year or so. I went to Austria, and that for me was one of the most liberating retreats, in the sense that I was able to talk and draw in from so many different schools, right, and talking about what's known in English as suchness, or tathata. That's the essence of the Dhamma, is understanding what's happening right here, right now. And then there was another retreat I did in California just a couple months later, which was in a similar vein, and letting people see that, look, you can take the scaffolding of the practice, you can take the scaffolding of the techniques, and everything

but your journey is your own, right? And so someone like myself or any other teacher is just a guide saying, have you tried this, have you tried that? So the questions that have come up from people are, how much of this do we need to believe in? How much of this do we need to make into a doctrine or a dogma? And I'm of the view of saying nothing, not at all. It's you try and see for yourself, see where that takes you, having these highfalutin ideas about

spirituality and enlightenment and waking, that's all fun stuff, that's all wonderful stuff. But at the end of the day, people are mostly, at least in my retreats, are looking for a way to experience greater degrees of happiness and satisfaction and contentment. So that's the gist. One of the fetters is, of course, doubt.

It inhibits, they say, one's, I suppose, spiritual progression. And when doubt falls away, that's seen to be one of the signs of progress in certain understandings, a certain kind of certainty that doubt can't touch. Yet on the other hand, this almost skeptical, curious, open-mindedness to what one might not yet know, and the way in which that might recontextualize what one is certain about, also seems an important quality, at least in the way you're talking.

What's the difference between doubt and, I suppose, the hindrance framing of doubt in that sense, in which it opens one up to more or different or recontextualizing? Yeah, that's a great question. I get that quite often, actually, on retreats as well, which is, we have the hindrance of doubt. And very simply put, for all practical purposes, that doubt, which is known as vicikiccha in Pali, vicikiccha is like, basically, which is what is going on here? And so that's an inability to recognize the states of mind that are present.

So when you're doing the work of meditation and you start to see what states are present, there can be a lack of recognition between, let's say, what is skillful and what is not so skillful, or what is kusala and akusala, wholesome and unwholesome. So the really kind of rigid definition of doubt in that perspective is that we're not able to see what states are present. And to deal with that, I think, is important from the perspective of Dhammavicaya, which is the investigation of states, and just taking a step back and then seeing, okay, this is causing tightness and tension, or this right now here is more expansive.

It's generating a more beneficial state of mind. It can be as simple as that, but it requires a good degree of mindfulness. In this case, by the way, I don't like to use the word mindfulness. I know it's become part of our culture in meditation, that mindfulness, but you go back to what mindfulness is. It's sati, smriti, which means memory or to remember. So the way I like to look at it is it's remembering to be in the here and now. It's remembering to be, you could say, present moment awareness.

And Bhante Vimalaramsi has said it's remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. That's a mouthful to say, but to simplify it, I would just say it's present moment awareness. And if we can just relax back into the present moment, that level of doubt in the meditation can be dealt with. But healthy skepticism is very important along the way, right? And so that means, okay, we've got the cultural aspects of things. We've got certain claims. We've got certain kinds of practices that say that this is going to take you there.

And I think if we take it step by step and say, okay, let me just try this and see for myself. That willingness, that openness of let me try and see is a great deterrent against a rigid doubt that could be like, I don't really care about this. I don't want to really do this. And then as far as the fetter of doubt is concerned, it's more of, as I see it, the realization that indeed having done this practice, it has led me to a certain level of experience.

And so now I have a certain level of experiential confidence, you know, and so traditionally you'll say, confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. And what does that actually mean? What that means is there is the possibility of Buddhahood, there is the possibility of awakening, and having gone through the process, having gone through the steps, I see for myself, whoever the practitioner is, that indeed it is possible that somebody like the Buddha has opened up the path.

The faith, the confidence in the Dhamma is essentially the seeing of the links of dependent origination, the realization of causality and conditionality, which takes you all the way to shunyata, the emptiness of self, the realization that what we consider this concrete sense of self is actually made up of many different composites. And then finally the Sangha. In this case, it could be the Sangha of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, or it could be the Sangha at large, which is, hey, I have like-minded practitioners around me that I can talk this talk about this stuff with, and I have teachers and guides who can show me on this path, and I've had the willingness to look at that and see for myself that, indeed, this does work.

So the opposite of doubt, then, in this case, is certainty in truth or openness to the possibility of discovery? What would be the opposite to doubt? The reason I ask is because another common idea that one hears is that there's a misapprehension of, say, practice as being about believing certain doctrines. And sometimes people will say, well, that's because Protestant Christianity is about, fundamentally, about believing certain doctrines or certain truths. That's the heart of it. I don't know that I actually agree with that characterization, but nonetheless, this is what one hears. Actually, to assume that Buddhism is about apprehending certain doctrines and believing them or holding them to be true or even experiencing a kind of certainty in them is fundamentally what it's about.

That's a misunderstanding. I don't particularly like that framing, but nonetheless, it does come up. Doubt, I'm not sure if this is true. Doubt falls away. I'm totally certain it's true. Is that what it looks like when there's no doubt? A sort of full certainty? Yeah, I think there needs to always be a certain level of healthy skepticism in this case. Now, when you look at something like right view, you know, there are certain things that people are a little hesitant to say like, okay, I don't know if I actually believe in that. For example, that there is this world and the other.

And I think even the Buddha has addressed this. And he said, even if, it's that bargain. Even if there isn't the other world, and even if there isn't something called karma, even if there isn't something called action and consequence, the fact of the matter is when we live this one life, and if we can do the best we can with it by not causing ourselves harm and not causing others harm, at the end of our time here on this planet, at the time of the end of this life, we can look back and look at, okay, yeah, I did my best, and I did what I could, and I caused as little harm as possible, and that's great.

And so we can die without confusion. We can die in a very uplifted state. So this is how I would reconcile that idea. One. And the second is when we talk about the other world, this can also refer to this world, which is the matrix of the six sense bases or the five physical senses that kind of take in what's happening in the world at large.

But then the other world is also what's happening in the mind. And so when we're going through something like the jhanas or certain states of mind, that is another kind of world. We leave the world of the senses and go directly into the world of the mind. Now rebirth, do we have to believe in rebirth? Do we have to believe in the idea that, okay, this was a past life of mine and now this is a future life and so on? I don't think so. I personally don't think you need to believe in that. But I think if somebody were to look at their life and see that there are certain patterns in this very life that we experience, and we seem to attract the same kind of people, even if we're halfway around the world, we seem to attract the same kind of situations.

And that's because of our behavioral patterning. We seem to kind of orient ourselves, or let's say we try to go in a certain path, but because of our behavioral patterning, it leads to a certain place that's similar to past times, past events. And so the breaking of that is also liberation, in my opinion. The breaking of those patterns so that we don't repeat the same mistakes or the same situations.

So rebirth in one life is definitely plausible and one can witness for themselves. So doctrinally, if you need to believe in something, I doubt that. You know, I don't think you need to believe in one thing or the other. I think the openness and willingness of that and seeing and addressing what right view is fundamentally about, at least the mundane right view, which is action and consequence.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The fundamental basis, in my opinion, of right view is that. Everything else is sort of an elaboration of it. And it's only when we come to a certain level of understanding and experience through practice that we start to see the super mundane right view, which is to do with the fact that there are these four noble truths.

And I don't think anybody comes to a practice like the Dhamma or Buddhism in particular, or any spiritual practice, unless they've experienced some level of suffering. There are the exceptional cases where they've had a good life, and now they're curious about these things. But in my retreats, I've seen especially, the majority of people who come to this are people who are already suffering. They're already experiencing some kind of discontent in life. And so the framework of the Four Noble Truths, when we start to see for ourselves, we start to understand, apply, and experience for ourselves, that is also an establishing of right view. So it's not about believing in anything. It's about the willingness to see, okay, these are certain doctrinal principles.

I won't take them for granted. I won't take them at face value. I'll just see for myself. And if they start to make sense, I don't even have to adopt them. My mind will automatically start to gravitate to what works and what seems not to work. Yeah, that's very interesting. Thank you. So one last question before we go to the Mirror Beyond Mind. What have you been reading and exploring and so on? You mentioned in our last set of conversations that you were certainly in a period of discovery and exploration,

given that you'd gone beyond previous positions that you'd held and so on, certain standpoints that you'd occupied. You've gone beyond those, and you were in a way not necessarily questioning everything but certainly open to new possibilities and new explorations. You emphasize that, so I'm wondering what's the update in regards to that aspect of your explorations, readings and so on since we last spoke. Yeah, so if you see my library, I have a very small library of books, and right now they're basically everything from the Ribhu Gita, which is a Vedantic text, to the Garuda Purana, which is all about different lives, to the Lakshmi Tantra, to things on Sri Vidya. So I had been, as I said last time, really focusing on understanding Indian tantra and South Indian tantra specifically, which is Sri Vidya, and that's been really interesting, because I had a chance to meet with my teacher there. His name is Gita Nath, and I went through a process of different initiation ceremonies, which ultimately resulted in allowing me to be a qualified teacher in my own right of these things.

And more recently I've kind of seen that it's not about adopting all of the culture and the dogma, because for a person at that certain understanding, they might enjoy that and they may like that. And it's very colorful, like the mythological aspects of the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata and these kinds of things. Wonderful.

But I really want to just get to the essence of things. And more recently, in the last month or so, I've kind of shifted my gears from adopting different techniques and practices from Kriya Yoga and Sri Vidya and so on, and actually gone to explore a little bit of Greek philosophy, a little bit of Western philosophy.

And what I'm resonating with is a couple of things. One is Epicureanism, not in the sense of being hedonistic, because I think people have to understand when we say hedonism, it's not the same idea as what the Greeks were referring to, at least Epicurus was referring to. And I see a lot of alignment with some of the Eastern ideas, which is to say that ataraxia, the sense of tranquility and equanimity, the realization that, hey, right now things are good and I can rest in that and I can be okay with that. And other things are just artifices of culture and society and expectations from the outside world. If I just remain with where I am and look into with some level of gratitude, let's say, that could be a gratitude practice.

Seeing that, then I can be at peace. Now, more recently, I've been delving into, of all things, philosophical pessimism. And I really, really enjoy reading it. One of the things I'm reading now is Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, which is such an interesting book because it's talking about consciousness. It's talking about perhaps consciousness as we understand it was a mistake, a fatal mistake for the evolution of the human species and so on. I've been going back to Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, and that's been sort of keeping me busy in terms of my reading, let's say. But personally speaking, when I think about and reflect on my personal philosophy on things, which isn't crystallized, but continues to evolve as I'm growing up and learning things.

I think what I see is that if we take away all the metaphysics, if we take away all of the cultural ideas and just come to the basics, which is a process of understanding this is how I feel in this moment, that this is an organism. This body is made up of various trillions of cells. The brain is made up of so many hundreds and millions of hundreds of millions of neurons, and so on and so forth. And so that allows this body to function, this organism to function a certain way, this mind, let's say, to function a certain way. And that really, the whole purpose of this biological organism is to remain in homeostasis.

And then from there is built up everything else in terms of how our mind is perceiving things. If there's some imbalance in the body, if there's something I ate last night that wasn't really delicious, or just has an effect on the next morning, I might wake up with a grumpy mood. I might not even attribute it to something that happened last night. I might just say, oh, this day sucks. And so the ability to observe that without adding any complexity, and just seeing the organism as organism, just seeing awareness as awareness, that allows us to kind of look at how to self-regulate. And so my view on this is very much in alignment with both Krishnamurtis, and that's to say J. Krishnamurti and U.G. Krishnamurti.

Krishnamurti, where J. Krishnamurti talks about choiceless awareness. And what does that actually mean when he says choiceless awareness? It just means not having an agenda in what you're observing and just observing things as they come. And when you do this, you're not concluding on anything, you're not trying to achieve anything, you're not trying to do anything, you're just seeing things. And the mind learns from itself its own capacities, its own limitations, its own samskaras, let's say, its own behavioral patterns.

In the fire of that awareness these things can be burned up, slowly, little by little, slowly, slowly, slowly, until there's a certain level of wisdom that's acquired from it. And then secondly, someone like U.G. Krishnamurti, who was quite radical, from J. Krishnamurti even further, said no, no, there's no such thing as enlightenment. There's no such thing as awareness. There's none of that. It's all BS. It's just this organism and the natural state.

So as I'm developing my own personal view on the world, I'm seeing that for myself. The other day I was just sitting and observing and just looking, just looking out into the window and not doing anything, not even meditating, not even watching the breath, not even like in jhana or anything. And as you do this, at least for me it was like 45 minutes of just seeing, allowing the thoughts to drift as they drift, allowing emotions to come as they come, allowing sensations to come as they come. And then there comes a point where there is wisdom, there is some insight that arises: that hey, when we talk about discomfort and suffering in life, when we talk about happiness and joy in life, these two are basically coming from the same nervous system, and so how we recalibrate, how we engage, how we self-regulate the nervous system, I think has more

of a profound effect. And so we can go top down by adopting certain views that allow that process to happen, or from the bottom up with something like kriya yoga, using certain breathing techniques, using certain movements, using certain kinds of pranic or chi movements, to self-regulate the nervous system. So suffice it to say that the way I'm looking at things now is: hey, here we are with the body and mind. That's the best I know about this. That I have a body, I have a mind. Now what's going on there? What am I feeling, what am I experiencing, what am I thinking? What is creating harm or perceivable harm for me? What is causing perceivable harm for another person? And can I regulate that? And so I am of the belief, right now at least, that we want to support the people or the beings around us that support us.

And so we want to be in a certain level of symbiosis and harmony, and that is, I would say, the starting point of that: to understand this body, understand this mind, understand its emotions, understand where the triggers come from. And then all the other stuff that I read and things like that definitely has a great deal of influence, but I also see it as entertainment and passing the time.

I'm curious which Epicurean writers you've been reading. And also in terms of your philosophy, Western philosophy reading, are you following some kind of course, a preset course? I don't mean a university course, I mean a path in a sense. It's one way of doing it, isn't it, to start early and move chronologically, to participate in track the great conversations, they say. The other way of doing this is just to go where you find something to be of interest. The downside of that approach is, of course, that a lot of times philosophers like Nietzsche are referring back, sometimes thousands of years back, and so a knowledge of what they're referring to does help, it seems. What's your course there?

Sure. Well, like I said, I'm dabbling in Epicureanism right now, and I haven't really followed any specific writers, but I've heard that there is a book that I, it's on my list. It's called The Swerve, which is what Epicurus talks about in terms of this body and the world being made up of atoms. He had sort of that understanding, and that certain events happen because of a swerve, right? So I will say that I don't know completely what that's referring to, but I know that that's getting deeper into Epicurus's philosophy.

So that's next on my list. In terms of the sort of pessimistic philosophy, like I said, right now I'm just going through Ligotti's work. I literally just started it yesterday. And I am kind of going back to the classics like Schopenhauer. I think Schopenhauer is the granddaddy of all of this. He influenced Nietzsche. He influenced a lot of different people.

And he himself, Schopenhauer, was quite, we can say, friendly to Vedanta, friendly to Buddhism, and so I'm sure he's taken components of that. So there is a book, which is his magnum opus, that I'm trying to go through. I think it's called The World as Will and Idea, something like that. And then Nietzsche, of course, wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that people have been telling me that's quite a complex book, maybe start with something else like The Genealogy of Morals or Beyond Good and Evil. So it's all on my list, but I want to go kind of more modern with someone like Thomas Ligotti. And my idea is to kind of understand that there is a bridge between, let's say, the Eastern world, especially something like Theravadan Buddhism, and philosophical pessimism. Another person that's on my list is Emil Cioran, the French-Romanian philosopher.

He sounds very depressive. He sounds very, very kind of, I wouldn't say he's bitter, but I think he's very self-aware of his sort of take on the world, and he's not trying to make anything about it, and he's just being very reflective. He talks about nirvana of all things, and suicide, and things like that. And I think his writing style is very, very sort of poetic, and I kind of identify with that stuff. So I'm looking at it from there. And maybe a course for me would be kind of going with Schopenhauer, and then going into Nietzsche a little bit, and then going into Cioran, these kinds of guys. But going back to what I was saying, the philosophical pessimism and Theravadan Buddhism specifically, there's a great overlap there, because they're talking about suffering. We're talking about dukkha here, and the Buddha was quite explicit about what that means, and he's defined dukkha in so many different ways. And so at the outset somebody can look at that and say, oh, Buddhism is very pessimistic in its outlook. It's like, okay, yeah, they're suffering.

But also the Buddha realized the other parts of the noble truths, which is there's a reason why we suffer, and it's basically because we identify with certain things and cause ourselves suffering. We engage with the world through an illusory perspective of what self is and what self isn't, and that causes us suffering, i.e. ignorance and craving. And he gave a systematic approach, and this is what I keep coming back to. What I love about Dhamma is that it's so well-structured and systematized.

You look at something like Vedanta, it's got some systems in place, but I think the way the Buddha has mapped everything together, I really resonate with personally. So coming back to the course, I think it's just coming back to the classics and then going from there: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and then Ligotti and Cioran. This is sort of my course. - Yeah, The Swerve is, I think, most famously and recently discussed in a book by the same name by Stephen Greenblatt. Shakespeare's- - That might be it. That might be the one that somebody has suggested, yeah. - Yeah, and in that book, he talks about this Epicurean text by Lucretius called De Rerum Natura, The Nature of Things.

And his thesis is essentially that the discovery or rediscovery of this book was a key aspect of the shift to modernity and things like that. And it had sort of ripple effects. He follows, it was one of the Pulitzer Prize, the book, and it's a very easy read. If you're going through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and so on, then this will be a knife through butter for you to read. Because it's written in a very accessible way. He follows this book hunter and the discovery of the book and the world in which he lived and so on and its implications philosophically or in terms of the worldview, that sort of thing. It's an easy book to read in that regard, very accessible.

And of course, a lot of people did disagree with Greenblatt's description of the world in which that book was found. Some people say it's a little overly simplistic. Other people disagree with his reading of Lucretius. But nonetheless, I suppose it'll be a reprieve for you when you read that, given what you've been reading so far. It's definitely not pessimistic. It's quite optimistic in many ways. You could also just read Lucretius if you want a good dose of Epicureanism.

I think that'd be interesting to see how you respond to that yeah yeah well have a look at that yeah yeah um so shri vidya you said that you received various initiations and now you're you're unable to teach that that seems very fast uh for perhaps not for you given your background but for the average initiate to shri vidya i would assume maybe i'm wrong about that maybe i'm assuming wrongly that that that's a quick progress through the system could you say something a bit more about that yeah yeah definitely because that that is um that is absolutely true it it was very fast for me but the teacher that i work with uh his name is avadud shri gita nath um and he is a very interesting guy because he he comes from a lineage of not only shrivedia but like Kashmir Shaivism and Bhairava Tantras.

So I had already gotten a good understanding of many of these different texts and when I spoke with him we started our practice or my practice with the basics the fundamentals which was related with connecting with Mahaganapati and Uchishtaganapati and other kinds of forms of Ganesha and then taking it from there to what's known as Bala Tripura Sundari, who's the childlike form of Lalita Tripura Sundari, who's sort of the empress of the world. You know, she's personified as the woman who is beautiful amongst all the three states of mind, beautiful amongst all the three worlds, Lalita Tripura Sundari. That's what it means, the playful one. And then from there, he kind of gave me some other practices.

And these things take a lot of time they definitely take a lot of time because you want to be able to engage with the mantras and the practices where you have good enough concentration and collectedness good enough feeling in in in the heart in your bones when you connect with these deities but the thing is for me these things come to me quite naturally

you know and people may doubt that and that's fine i don't really care but i know what works for me and what doesn't and so when i speak with my guru about this when i tell him like this is what i'm experiencing this is what i'm reflecting he knows what to do and he'll be like okay now i'm going to give you this okay now i'm going to give you that and so it was an accelerated pace because when i started working with ganpati it happened quite fast when i started working with bala it worked really fast and you know certain things are working up and then finally you know the the the practice ends in what's known as mahashorasi so there's something called panchadasi mantra which is a 15 syllable mantra and that mantra is quite effective it's it's it's a very fiery mantra and it's engaging with many different deities and

and if you're working with mahashorasi which is an elaboration of that mantra it means it's it it starts with 16 syllables and then goes all the way up to 28 syllables obviously for the sake of purity of the practice i'm not going to talk say the mantras themselves but i can just say these mantras are building on top of each other and because i've already had a good foundation with other practices with meditation because my guru is also a kriya yoga teacher so he knows when I talk about certain Kriya practices, he knows what level I'm at. He knows my level of understanding. And so at his discretion, he was able to kind of fast track me through the practice.

And Mahashorashi is the creme de la creme of Sri Vidya. It's encapsulating the Ganapati mantra, it's encapsulating the different Shaktis, it's encapsulating all the different Shiva mantras, bringing it all together so that it works really heavily on the crown. And so at the very end of that, you know, he gave me that, and then I actually went to visit him in Bhubaneshwar, where he did something known as Apoorna Abhisheka. So Apoorna Abhisheka means it's a process in which the conferring of the title or the conferring of the lineage of the lineage is given to the practitioner so that they are now authorized through the entire lineage to become a representative and teacher of this practice.

And it went on for about two days. It was a ceremony process that happened for two days. You have to chant certain mantras or certain fire ceremonies. He does certain things that I can't really talk much about, but they were kind of like, oh, this is really far out stuff. But at the end of that practice, what's beautiful about it is he said, okay, now you know all of this, right? Go back to just sitting. Go back to just sitting and watching what happens in the mind. So Sri Vidya is a beautiful, elaborative practice in terms of The deities that you work with, the energies you work with, the chakras that you work with, all of that is wonderful.

But at the end of the day, when we talk about someone like Mahatripurasundari or Lalita Tripurasundari, she represents the fourth state of turiya, right? We talk about the waking, the dreaming, and the dreamless deep sleep states. she works beyond that and she's working at a level that that is beyond all of it it's the witness the intelligence behind the witness it's the intelligence behind awareness behind consciousness so she's taking you to brahman and then she's taking to you beyond brahman where all dualities all triads all conceptual frameworks collapse and what you're dealt with or what you become let's say, is paraconsciousness.

It's beyond all elaborative thought. It's beyond all conceptual frameworks. And because I've already had a good sort of understanding in my own life, he made the decision to fast track me. Shri Vidya is a sort of goddess tradition, right? Yeah, more or less. Shakti, yeah. Shri Vidya: I'm asking because some people I've spoken with recently in the podcast have talked about working in goddess traditions, Shatky traditions and so on, and they've reported a sense of encountering these goddesses as beings, in fact, not merely as aspects of their own

consciousness or metaphors for personifications of certain ideas or states or so, but having the sense of meeting them as beings, not to say that they're not also those other things, but that's what they've been reporting. So I'm curious about that. I know that from our previous discussions you've had all kinds of encounters prior. So as you enter this sort of a tradition, how are you relating to these goddesses? Yeah, good question, because I recall when I was in Kerala, I had gone to Kerala for a week, maybe 10 days, and I was doing what's known as the Pancha Karma process. So I went to an Ayurvedic center over there, and interestingly enough, that place, it's called Anjaneya Center. It's run by Ayurvedic specialists, but who are also MDs.

And the head doctor over there, he is also a martial artist, an Indian martial artist. So he teaches martial arts on the side for kids for free at the center. But he's also a tantric practitioner. And I told him that this is what I'm doing right now, and I'm practising Sri Vidya and so on. And I was specifically working with a deity called Uchishta Ganapati.

Now, when you look at the image of it, it's a very sexual image. Here is this god who's got an elephant head, he's got his consort on his left thigh, and his elephant head is in the yoni of the consort while she is tending to his lingam. So it's a very, very explicit iconography, and this is known to be the essence of all tantras, which means he's sort of seen in some schools as the even higher, let's say, than Tripura Sundari in some schools. But long story short, I was working with him specifically while I was doing the Pancha Karma, secluded from everything in the forest, just going through Pancha Karma processes in the morning, no contact with the outside world, and just working with just a gun and putty, and it is very, very mind-blowing. Like, for me, I was able to see his iconography in the mind, but then going into sleep states, you do the mantra practice and you fall asleep.

You go through some kind of astral traveling, let's say, and I went through these different planes of existence where I'm looking at a triangle, triangular kind of portal, and in it are these different fires made up of blue flames and white flames, and in the middle of it all is this elephant head, which looks just like Ganesha. So I've had encounters like that. Another encounter I had, which people in the tradition will be like, that's a bit off, but it is what I had, it's the experience I had, was when I first started working with the Panchadasi mantra, which is the 15-letter mantra of Tripura, I did it on what you would call a lunar eclipse. So in the tantric traditions, when you do anything on a solar eclipse and on a lunar eclipse, they have a magnified, amplified effect. That's what the tradition says, and maybe going with that, that's what kind of enabled my mind to feel that, but I did it nonetheless.

And what I experienced was again going back into a meditative state, and then later going back into sleep, was that this goddess figure came. In my dream, let's say, or whatever you want to call it, it's probably a vision, it's probably a dream. And she started having sex with me. So the unification with the Shakti was where the goddess becomes your consort.

And so many times in Tantric practices, you know that you're experiencing the deity when they have given you a visitation in their dreams. And a lot of times, even certain mantras will be revealed to you in dreams, which they've done for me. So for example, I told you about my trip to South India. Over there, I had gone there to kind of go to Chidambaram and other temples of Shiva. But there was one temple called, it's in Kanjipuram. It's the temple called Kamakshi.

So Kamakshi is a form of Lalita Tripura Sundari, who's very, very erotic, very, very playful. And she gives liberation from the perspective of Sri Vidya, or Tantra in general. And what I was told, I had gone to see a Nadi astrology, I told you about this last time or a few times before, and so this particular astrologer said, "You have to connect with Agastya. So Agastya is one of the siddhas, he's one of the rishis, and he was said to have received Sri Vidya in a certain form from a deity called Hayagriva, and Hayagriva gave him what's known as the Lalita Sahasranam, and also known as the Lalita Trishati. And so these are the different names of Lalita that you say in a certain poetic meter, and they were written down by her

let's say her servants, her different sub-deities, for lack of a better word. And so what I was told was, you know, connect with Agastya, and we did a certain ceremony to connect with him. And he said, through your journey on this temple tour you will have certain initiations from Agastya. He may come to you in a vision, he may come to you in a meditation. And it was very interesting, because I went to Kamakshi with my teacher. Now, my teacher that I'm talking about here is the same teacher who took me to the mountains when I was 16.

So it was like coming full circle. He came with me and we went together, and we got an amazing place to sit, which is right in front of the sanctum sanctorum, so you could have a full view of Kamakshi, and I could feel myself blazing in this bliss and ananda and energy. And so on, we walk out and come out, and we're met with a bunch of parrots, and that's a sign of Kamakshi specifically. So sometimes when you come out of the temples you'll see a certain animal or a certain sign, and that's the sign that you're connecting with that deity. But I was told that Agastya himself would give me a mantra, right? And so I was waiting for that. I was wondering how that would happen.

It was interesting, because on my flight back to Bombay from Chennai, I was reading, of all things, something called the Brahmanda Purana. And there was a specific segment in there which is exactly what I was just describing, where Hayagriva is giving the secrets of Sri Vidya to Agastya. And if you go back to the original Sanskrit, encoded in the original Sanskrit are what are known as the 16 syllables of the Shodashi mantra, and Shodashi actually means 16. So 16 different syllables. Making sense of that, I was able to get that mantra, and later I went to my Sri Vidya guru and I said, this is what I experienced, and these were the mantras, this was the mantra that came up, and these were the syllables that came up. And he verified for me that that is indeed what that mantra is. So there have been some interesting coincidences when you do this kind of practice, which at this point I won't call coincidence. I don't believe even coincidences anymore.

I feel like they're what we call synchronicities. And when things have to happen, they will happen a certain way and be revealed to you in a certain way. Very cool. Well, thanks for the update on your latest adventures. It's almost fascinating to hear about them. Should we turn to the article then? The Mirror Beyond Mind on the Threshold of Consciousness. As I mentioned before, you published this earlier this year in 2026, on January 16th. Could you perhaps give us a sense of what it's about? Yeah. The way this article actually came out was because a friend of mine,

she told me that the, I think it's called the Berggruen Institute, has an essay competition. And the topic of the competition is consciousness. And she said, maybe you'd be interested in writing something about that. And I said, okay, let me give it a try. Now, obviously, I entered my article in the competition, but it didn't impress anybody, and that's okay. But I think there's still some good stuff there that's worth people's explorations.

And what I figured was, what can I contribute from my understanding, from my knowledge, from the wisdom I've gained, from having traversed through the perspectives of Vedanta and the perspectives of Buddhism and come to some kind of, if not synthesis, something that transcends that. And so the article is an exploration on what consciousness is. And I start off the article by saying, consciousness is not the final frontier as we understand it. Because, when we look at consciousness, there are many ways in which people can interpret what consciousness means. For some people it just means awareness, basic awareness. In certain Vedantic traditions, it means pragya, which is wisdom or intelligence, which is sometimes attributed to a larger field of awareness, which is known as Brahman.

In the case of a certain Theravadan model, it's that consciousness is dependently originated, so that's the sense-based consciousness. When you look at the Yogachara Chitta Matra school, it talks about consciousness in a different way. It talks about eight different consciousnesses, including the storehouse consciousness of karma, and so on, what's also known as bhavanga citta in Theravadan practice. But what appealed to me was also in the sutra, something known as vinnanam anidassanam. It means non-manifestative consciousness, or non-reflective. I like to say non-reflective consciousness. And so that's where the title came from, with the mirror analogy: that most of the way we experience life is that consciousness is reflected in our experience. We become aware of something that consciousness lands upon.

But if we were to take that away, can we find something, a field that is beyond the household understanding of consciousness? And that, I think, is what in my perspective vinnanam anidassanam is pointing at. When you take away all the conceptual frameworks, what remains is this non-reflective awareness. But it is reflecting something in my understanding, in my experience. It's reflecting the contact with Nibbana Dhatu, which I equate with para-consciousness. And why do I call it paraconsciousness?

Is because it's beyond the realms of everyday consciousness. So, like paranormal or paramatma in Sanskrit, which is beyond Atman, beyond Brahman, beyond any concepts. It's a paraconceptual awareness. I see. So paraconsciousness is Nibbana Dhatu? Yes, this is how I see it. I wonder if you might say a little bit more about Nibbana Dhatu. Is your understanding of Nibbana Dhatu as para consciousness somehow different from the standard understandings of Nibbana Dhatu? And if so, how? Before I go with that, I also want to take you through the journey of the Vedas, because that also contextualizes what Nibbana Dhatu is here. I don't think the Buddha was

doing away with the Vedas. There are many references in the suttas where the Buddha says the best of the mantras is the Savitri mantra, which is the Gayatri mantra. He talks about the three Vedas, and he doesn't demean them. He doesn't put them down. He just understands them as part of the social and religious framework of the time that he's in. And so I venture to say that he obviously understood aspects of the Vedas a great deal because of his training and his understanding in his life as a prince. The reason I'm bringing this up is because in the Vedas, in the Rigveda if I'm not mistaken, there is what's known as the Nasadiya Suktam. Suktam is a bunch of different hymns, or a hymn.

And it's a very interesting hymn, because it's almost like being a skeptic. And in the hymn, it says, there neither was this nor that. Behind that, there was no earth, there was no water, there was no fire. Who knows what was beyond that? Perhaps not even the gods know what was beyond that. And when I read that, it sounds very similar to what the Buddha said about vinnanam anidassanam. He says, where mind finds no footing, where earth, water, air, and fire find no footing,

where light and dark, all dualities collapse, in that there is vinnanam anidassanam. And so he even talks about Nibbana as asankhata, which is unfabricated, which is unconditioned. And he talks about it as a dimension. He talks about it as a place. But I'm not saying we should go as far as to say that it is some kind of dimension within the field of existence. But he's saying that there is, if it were not so, I would not speak of it. This is how he says it. And he says there is that space that is beyond the earth, beyond water, beyond the four elements, beyond this world and the other, beyond the jhanas, beyond the formless realms.

And it is the understanding that even Sariputta mirrors when he says there is all of that. And there is the realization of bhava-nirodha, that the cessation of being is nibbana. Just as when you throw wood into the fire, there are sparks and embers that come up. Those sparks and embers are a realization. The way he's analogizing this is that when you experience or touch Nibbana Dhatu, you don't know you've touched it until you come out of it, and the coming out of it is the vinnanam anidassanam, the reflection of that. And so paraconsciousness in this case, how I equate it as Nibbana Dhatu, itself cannot be understood with the common mind.

It cannot be experienced with the common senses, with the basic understanding of experience. It can only be recognized as a reflection of the mind having touched that. That's why it's without attribute, without conditions, without any formations. And so we can only, let's say, speculate or create concepts around it as a result of experiencing it. And I think where we may as practitioners falter is equating the experience of having touched it with it itself, rather than seeing it as a reflection of having touched the nibbana dhatu. What is the experience of having touched it? Not the experience of touching it, which you said is impossible, but the experience of having touched it, the reflections? So the way I've seen it, and the way I understand it, is that from the perspective of the world as the universe, or existence, or samsara.

As we understand it, there are times when, in the Buddhist cosmology, and even in the Vedic cosmology, there are time periods in which there is an exhalation, or there is a sort of expansion, and then there's a contraction. And so in those periods of expansion and contraction, there comes a point when no contraction is happening and no expansion is happening. There comes a point where it's a zero point, where virtually all particles and everything that makes up samsara is condensed into one thing, or into something, let's say. And then at some point, and I venture to say it's due to karma, let's say, there is an ignition, which we can call the big bang, that creates everything that we see and expands into everything that we have understood and experienced. Now that's the macro cosmic level or perspective. On the microcosmic level, the way I see it is

when you go through the process of jhanas and if you're doing it the way the buddha has ascribed it and suggested and taught which is you know to come to a level of collectedness after letting go of the hindrances and so on so forth what's happening with the jhanas is it's deconstructing the mind you are you are deconstructing the world around you and so each jhana is a cessation of a certain experience and so the first jhana is a cessation of sensual experiences the second jhana is a cessation of the first jhana and so on and so forth until you come to a point where you're in let's say neither perception and non-perception and then even those mental formations what's known as the mano-sankharas that allow us to feel and perceive switch off and having switched off

you experience cessation, the cessation of perception and feeling, which means nothing is present in our subjective mind. That's the same as the contraction, that's the same as the world coming into contraction. At that point, the way I see it, or the way I intuit it, is that the mind touches nibbana if the mind has let go, in a certain rhythm, of not me, not mine, not myself. I see it as the three gates of liberation. If you see that everything is conditioned and you actually experience it, then you also see that everything is inconstant and unstable. That is what is anicca, anitya, as it's known in Sanskrit. As a result of which you also realize that if everything that is conditioned is ultimately anicca, is impermanent, is inconstant, unstable, then every object that we take on is also that, because it's within the realm of intentionalized practice, in the realm of fabrications, in the realm of concepts.

So that's why the gate of anicca allows us to see what is objectless, what is known as animitta, the signless, without any signs. The second gate is the realization of what's known as dukkha: that any intention that I bring forth will ultimately result in its cessation. I can have the intention of being the richest man in the world, but one day I will depart from those riches by death or whatever happens. I might lose everything in the next moment, but my intention was to do this. My intention was to become the greatest meditator alive, let's say, and so I go through all of those things, but at the end of the day that is just an identity, and that will collapse at some point through death or whatever happens. So all intentions are then let go, and so what we come to is known as appanihita, which means the undirected, the unintended. Not unintended, like I didn't intend to have that happen, but the unintended in terms of letting go of all intentions.

And finally the realization of anatta, which is: I'm not in control here. What I conceive of myself as, this person or identity or ego structure or conceit, is just composites of different things that then identify with itself. So if I see through it and I realize there's no real control here, there's no real controller here, then my mind lets go of any center point of I or me or myself, and when that is gone, that gateway is leading to sunyata, to emptiness. And so the mind makes contact with what is known as the signless.

the unintended or undirected and the empty, and that is the nibbana dhatu, that's what one makes contact with. When one comes out of that, when the expansion comes up again, when the big bang of the mind comes up again, when one comes out of cessation, then one starts to see the fragments of reality come back up in the form of dependent origination. But because the mind has experienced this wonderful contact with what is known as the signless, the undirected and the empty, it experiences great amounts of relief and joy, and so that relief and joy is a reflection

of vinnanam anidassanam, and that can also be experienced as, so to speak, a non-dual awareness where the collapse of subject and object are no longer present. And non-dual in the sense of complete non-duality: no conceptual ideas of good or bad, white or black, of this or that. All of that collapses in that particular moment when the mind comes out from making contact with nibbana dhatu. What's the most skillful way of relating to that?

which you've just described. Is it best to strive to remain in that contracted state of, I suppose, contact with, although that doesn't really quite work, but contact with nibbana dhatu, this part of it? Should one go back quite regularly to get a kind of refresh, like turning off the computer and turning it on again? Is time away from that contact somehow degrading of its implications in terms of one's experience?

Is it something one has to keep going back to? In other words, is one contact enough? Is more better? If more is better, why not all the time? Why come out at all? What's the most skillful way to relate to that which you've described? Yeah. This is an interesting question to me, because, and this is just the way I'm seeing it, so you can correct me if I'm wrong, but such a question, whether it's coming from you or let's say the viewer or anybody, implies to me, the way I look at it, that the mind wants to make something permanent. Basically the mind wants to say, okay, if that's it, how do I have that every day, how do I have that every moment of my life? And the very simple and straightforward answer is no, you're not going to have that. That's not necessarily always the case, because

the unconditioned itself remains. This is how I would venture to say it: the unconditioned, or para-consciousness, remains, and that such a person, such a so-called person who has made contact with it, has seen the preview of what is possible, what that is, the substrate of all the matrix that we experience. It's the thing, it's the light that projects the image, and it's beyond the light, it's beyond the projector, it's beyond the one who's functioning the projection machine. It's seeing through the simulation, it's going beyond the ones and zeros. But so long as we are in the simulation, we are going to have to still play by the rules of the simulation, and therefore the best way of relating to it and skillfully going back to it is, I say, present moment awareness.

Going back to mindfulness, going back to the basics, which is to say, coming to every sensation that arises, every experience that arises, and seeing the conditionality of it, the conditioned nature of it, seeing it as impermanent, seeing it as not me, not myself. The ability to recognize sensation, experience, vedana, as it's known in Pali, any kind of experience as just experience, without planting on top of it a sense of this belongs to me or this is mine.

Easier said than done. But that's the practice. The practice is to observe without relating a sense of self to it. And this is why I say to people, experience everything fully, but don't add I to it. And so it goes back to the Bahiya Sutta, which I often love to quote. And the Buddha gives such wonderful, succinct description and detail for how to get there. And he says to Bahiya, in the seeing, there's only the seeing. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the sensing, there's only the sensing. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized.

When, Bahiya, you are not by that, meaning you are not shaped by that, you are not in it, and there is no you in it or after it or before it, meaning there's no shaping of an I mechanism, of a me, mine, myself mechanism in the experience, when it's just the experience as experience, then that is as good as being in nibbana. So the cessation of I and me and myself is the same as being in nibbana. But because we have everyday experiences, because we're always bombarded with sense experiences, the best way of skillfully relating to it, in my opinion, is to see that experience as sunyata, and that's as close as we can get to it outside of the framework of meditating and sitting and relaxing and then deconstructing and then letting the mind stop and cease, so that what remains is that underlying nibbana dhatu.

So I believe that perhaps at the end of one's life, if the mind lets go completely of everything, then what is known as the elaboration of the universe as samsara, as this being, collapses back into that nibbana dhatu. What prevents that from happening is our craving, our aversions, our ideas of, I wanted to experience this, I regret having done that. The life review process happens, which naturally happens in all our times in meditating, let alone death.

And if we attach to that with the sense of I, then that prevents, that filters the collapse back into nibbana dhatu. So the more we relate to it in this way, by letting go, the self in relation to experience, the easier it is, I believe, for the mind to experience nibbana dhatu as a meditative experience from reflecting from it, and the easier it is then at the end of one's life for the mind to completely cease without remainder and experience parinibbana.

This goes back to a sutta reference, which I really love as well, which is the Vakkali Sutta, and it's a sutta in which Vakkali is an old man and he wants to become fully awakened, and he takes the knife. It says because he is, he's old and he's sick and he doesn't want to live anymore. He tells the Buddha, this is what I feel and so on, and the Buddha says, do what feels appropriate for you, but understand, and that's the gist of it. He says, understand all feeling as impermanent, as dukkha, as not me, not mine, not myself. And so what happens is the moment he lets go after doing what he has to do, he realizes for himself, ah, all feelings are impermanent, all feelings are all sensations. And so then he dies. He's committed suicide, basically. In modern terms he's committed suicide, but in that process he's realized the emptiness of all experience.

emptiness of all experience. Now, after that happens, the Buddha is pointing to Vulture Peak, where I've been to, by the way. It's a very interesting place. He points and he says, you see that black smoke that's there? He tells the other monks, he said, that is Mara trying to look for the consciousness of Vakkali, but unable to find it because Vakkali is extinguished. And the way I interpret that is, because there was no more form of wanting something or pushing away, the mind completely let go, disappeared, and it collapsed back into nibbana. Also, one more point: the Buddha asks before everything else, he asked Vakkali, do you have any more regrets? Do you have any more remorse?

And Vakkali says, "No, I have no regrets or no remorse." And then he instructs him, because he knows because of that, Vakkali will be able to let go fully and extinguish into parinibbana. That's fascinating. Thank you. You mentioned that the life review process happens at death, but also in meditation, in every meditation. Not every, but generally, I would say. Yeah. Could you unpack that a little bit? Yeah, because you think about how when somebody's meditating, it's not necessarily a full life review as it could happen in one's death, but obviously there's something that's bothering us and it comes into meditation, why did he say this, or why did that happen, or I wish I would have done this, I wish I would have done that, and it's a fragmented, let's say, version of that, and this is why I tell my students that really what I'm teaching you is how to prepare to die.

Meditation in all practical aspects of it is learning how to die with ease, learning how to die with grace, learning how to die so that we don't die with pain and suffering. And presumably then this is where practices like the forgiveness practice of TWIM, and other sorts of... these are the things you do, apply to what comes up: regrets, guilt, etc. Absolutely. Forgiveness meditation is a very interesting one. That one was compiled by Bhante through, I hope I'm getting the name right, I think it was Stephen Levine. And he wrote a book on death. He wrote many books on death, but he wrote a book called Who Dies? It's a very interesting book. I would recommend a lot of people to read it, especially for people who are going through grief, things like that.

And Stephen Levine comes up with a way of letting go of our grief by letting go of our regrets and remorse. And so he utilizes forgiveness as a practice. And Bhante basically took that and formulated what is the TWIM forgiveness practice. And a lot of the people who come to TWIM retreats, a lot of people who engage with me, a lot of people who contact me will say, oh, well, I learned about you through the forgiveness meditation that you did as a guided video.

And so a lot of people are benefiting from it because that is the truth of life. We all have a lot of things we've done, and resentment, regret, guilt, shame, and these are all blockages to experiencing greater degrees of freedom, let alone compassion and loving kindness, which is the gist of brahmaviharas practice in TWIM. So forgiveness is given as an antidote, as a prescription, but Bhante himself, as far as I know, did it for many months, I think he did it for at least two years in his own life before he became a monk, while he was in Hawaii.

and so he integrated that as a prescription for people when they're unable to feel loving-kindness, unable to accept themselves completely, unable to see themselves and recognize their own goodness. And this is why I tell people when you're doing loving-kindness, it's nice to go back to your own virtues. And this is why it's great to keep the precepts, because you look at that and you celebrate and you realize, oh, I am a good person. I have goodness in me. There are things that are skillful about me.

And naturally, loving-kindness then comes up for oneself you know for other people not maybe not as much because there might be resentment there and so you go back to forgiveness and that helps to you know regulate that and then you're able to find some level of loving kindness for that particular person and so on so forgiveness you know and this is why i love the teachings of jesus you know i mean his whole idea you take away the other aspects of what happened after he was resurrected and then the church grew from there and it's all about you know faith and works and everything else but if you go back to like what he's teaching forgive you know the other the lord's prayer you know forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us you know and that was a controversy back then like he's saying that forgiveness is possible, that we don't have to go to temples and slaughter goats and do other things for forgiveness, to appease God.

We can actually go back and pray to God directly and say, forgive me as I forgive others. And that in itself, I think, is the essence of Jesus' teachings. One person can forgive themselves quite easily for this, another person can't. From, I suppose, an enlightenment point of view, what's the mistake there? I'm not suggesting that the enlightenment point of view will dissolve the grasping, the bracing, because if it did, then probably you wouldn't need forgiveness practices, or you could just bring in that perspective. But from an enlightenment point of view, if I can be so crude to say that,

what's the mistake there? What's the error that someone's making when they're holding on to something like that? Because there's surely some moral lesson there or value. There's some expression of rightness in the holding on that's being mistaken or so. What's the higher perspective, if you like, on that situation? I want to clarify with you on that particular point when you mentioned, which is that the moral aspect in the sense of somebody feeling that it's moral to hold on to it? Or in terms of the moral standards?

I think the sense that there can be a sense that guilt is a just response to wrongdoing, and may have a kind of function of deterrent, that to forgive oneself, and absolve oneself of guilt of something one has actually done wrong. It might feel good, but it doesn't address the wrongdoing in a practical sense. It's all very well and good to forgive yourself for having done something wrong, but you can't undo it, the act itself or whatever the case may be. So there's an implication there that, well, maybe I ought to feel guilty about that, because that wasn't very good. Yeah, fair enough. And I will say to that person who feels that way that it's fair enough to feel that way.

The way I look at forgiveness practice specifically also is that the guilt has done quite the number on the mind, let's say, at that point in time, perhaps, depending on how, where that person is in their life. I have students, I've had students who feel like they're breaking a precept when they're not really breaking a precept. They feel very protective, oh, maybe I'm doing this or maybe I'm doing that. They become almost OCD about these things, and that's also detrimental to their state of mind, to their clarity, to their equanimity. So the way I've seen this is, of course, if there was wrongdoing, to feel that guilt is an expression of karma.

The fact that we feel guilt about it, the fact that we feel remorse, I would say guilt is the shadow of remorse, then that we make amends for it. So, in terms of breaking this down, we do some wrongdoing, and in that particular wrongdoing we see that we've harmed ourselves or harmed another person, in this case, let's say, harming another person, and we've done wrong by intentionally doing something, and we feel guilty about that. Oh, I shouldn't have done that, and we have remorse. So one aspect is that, and that is the karmic repercussion, because what we see about karma, I say, is that it's not just what's happening in the world outside but it's also what's happening in our mind and in our heart. So if we're feeling guilt, that means it's already the karmic rebound of the action. Any sensation, any emotion, as a result of our intention is already one of the karmic fruition of that action or that intention. So, I would suggest seeing it in that way, one, but then making amends

is to follow through with that guilt, like I've done the best I could, and ask for forgiveness, and not only ask for forgiveness but say, you know, how could I make it right? What can I do to... I can't now reverse that wrongdoing, but what can I do to make you feel whole again? If we can follow through on that, I think that's where sometimes is the missing puzzle or missing piece in the puzzle, and that's where shadow work is involved, that's where things like what Ken Wilber talks about, and showing up and growing up, which is, okay, I've wronged you, so I see the error of what I did, I see that it was wrong on my part, and I acknowledge it now. How can I make it right? How is there anything I can do to recalibrate your understanding or recalibrate how you

Can move forward from this, right? I wouldn't say understanding, I would say what can I do to make this right? Let's say, to simplify things, what can I do? And I've found myself in situations where I've done wrong, and it's taken me a while to see that. And then I'll be like, oh, not that I don't feel guilty, I haven't felt guilty about it, but it's like, I feel bad, but that person is not receptive to talking right now. Let's say at some point I may message them and say, look, this was an error on my part. I was an asshole or I was a jerk or whatever.

And now what can I do to make it right? What can I do to make you feel whole again? Is there anything I can do? And so they may say, well, in order for you to make amends, you need to do this, this, and this. And the willingness to follow through with those things is the whole purpose of repairing the relationship. If you feel like you want to repair the relationship, if you want to repair the wrongdoing let's say because you can't like you said you can't undo that but you can repair that person's trust you can repair that person's faith you can repair that person's you know friendship with you if they're willing to do that and that and so self-forgiveness is one aspect

Forgiveness from the other person is another aspect, and the reconciliation, where you need two people for that to happen, is like this: this is what needs to be done, and if you follow through, I think that's enough. And if the person is dead, or doesn't want to talk to you, or asks you to do something that harms you a great deal, for example, or is unreasonable, you know, give me 10 million dollars or something like that, then I think it's fair to say, in that case, and I've had the experience of that. Nobody's asked me for 10 million dollars, but somebody's asked me to do something that I wasn't willing to do, because I knew it was then crossing my boundaries, and it was something that was affecting my livelihood or whatever. So I told that person

It looks like we can't really come to some kind of reconciliation, and so I wish you all the best and I'm sorry, and just let it go, you know. So that's from my perspective. But some people might not be able to take that. They say, I need forgiveness, I need redemption. But it's not about the other person at that point. It's about coming back to a level of mental clarity and stability and calmness. That's the purpose of forgiveness ultimately: to make ourselves whole. And we can't control how the other person is going to take our apology

or whether they're going to be unreasonable in their wanting of amends. And if it seems unreasonable, or if they're dead, then we have to accept that and do the work of letting that go. To come back to your article, you have quite a lengthy section about the implications of this paraconsciousness, this Nirvana Datu, and the results civilizationally.

We're talking about the personal results a little bit, and you say of course more about that in the article itself, but you also have this civilizational perspective, which is quite, I suppose, radical utopian in a sense. I wonder if you might say something about that. Well, for example, I read here: the result would be a civilization less driven by fear, competition and scarcity, and more focused on cooperation, empathy and mutual growth. The social systems we create – economic, educational, political – would naturally mirror this chord shift. The concept of progress would no longer be simply defined by technical advances or material wealth, but by the depth of understanding, integration and ethical expression within the collective.

The fundamental purpose of society would change from managing competing self-interests to fostering shared awakening. The phrase universal access to paraconsciousness would not signify an elite esoteric achievement, but a birthright, a hidden potential in all beings, waiting to be recognized and nurtured. I wonder if you might expand a bit on the civilizational implications, and why it is that access, universal access to paraconsciousness, would necessarily lead to these kinds of societal shifts. Well, first of all, I want to address what you said, which is I completely agree, which is utopian. And so this is obviously something that would be an idealized version of what the world could look like, what civilization could look like.

Is it possible? I venture to say that the chances of that are very minuscule, at least the way the world stands right now. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible. That doesn't mean that it can't happen. I believe that in this perspective the world has a lot of evolving to do, and the reason why it's very difficult to have that happen, if not happen at all, is because the realisation of paraconsciousness is very much individual. So if I've had that, or if another person's had that, that's well and good, but the best I can do is relate from there, or anybody who has had that can relate from there. And the other person who hasn't might not be receptive to that. As we see in the world, there are people who are looking for war, looking for conflict. There are people who say that it's a dog-eat-dog world. There are people who say, competition is healthy. There are people who say, make the most of this life by earning a lot of money, to whatever end, at whatever cost it requires.

And that is because of the way we've grown up, that is because of our conditioning. And I think trying to bring even universal access to our consciousness, as much as I would love it from an idealistic standpoint, from a utopian point, still can be totalitarian. It still can be authoritarian, because it's in conflict with the rest of the world. It can only happen naturally when everybody at some point realizes, hey, what the hell are we doing? There are people who are tired of the conflict. I mean, recently, as of this time that we're talking, there's a conflict that's happening with Iran and the US and so on. We didn't ask for that, and yet here we are, as you know, collateral effects of that. One day we will all experience it if it gets worse, with energy crises and things like that. But coming back to the idea, if we had that, I think it would require a fundamental shift in how we relate to the world.

We have communes in different parts of the world that look at this and they say, we want to create a society that is so and so and so, and that's well and good, and that's utopian. At the worst case scenario, we have something like, you know, Jim Jones, or at the best, we might have something like, you know, even Osho, who basically failed with that idea. And that is because not everybody is going to be receptive, and everybody will have their own idea of what paraconsciousness is.

So the relating to it of, like, this is what I've experienced, this is what you've experienced, that's great. And so the framework for creating a fundamental shift requires everyone to be in agreement with what that means, in terms of ethics, in terms of society, in terms of expectations, in terms of values. And now we live in a world where values are all over the place. India has its certain values as a country, and then citizens within that country have their own values. America has its own values, and within that there are certain values for individual citizens, and they may not be the same.

So I think for us to experience paraconsciousness we need to evolve beyond the idea that we are just individuals. We have to evolve beyond the idea that we belong to a certain place. We have to evolve beyond the idea that we even belong to a certain planet, right? And that requires a lot of work, a lot of spiritual work, a lot of emotional work, a lot of evolution through the processes of growing up and showing up. And sometimes we get stuck in just the culture of things. And so I identify with this culture, he identifies with that culture, she identifies with that culture. If we can allow that to be, but also transcend

and be able to say there's something that's beyond culture, that's transcultural, you know, that's beyond borders, that might be the first stepping stone. But it's going to take a while, if it ever happens. I wonder sometimes if it's a bit of a, how can I put it, self-limiting process, in the sense that the first person to put down the weapons, the most evolved person that puts down the weapons, is then immediately destroyed by the less evolved person who hasn't put the weapons down yet. So it's a sort of strange, if you want, standoff, in which one, I suppose, anyway. I feel like, you look back at history, though. I think this is where we have the idea that the first one to lay down the weapon, the first one to call a ceasefire, the first one to ask for peace or call for peace, will always be looked on favourably, I believe.

You know, at least for me, because it's like, okay, they're looking towards a point, because war doesn't help. War doesn't help the common person. It just destroys everything. Sure, everybody has their own idea of why war happens. It's to profiteer from weapons. It's to profiteer from blood. It's to profiteer from whatever. But at the end of the day, if you look back and say, this person decided to put an end to the war, or this group of people decided to put an end to the war, I think generally that would be very favourable, whether it's in the present or looking back at the past.

But we live in a world now, and I believe all of our world leaders are basically sociopaths. They don't have the capacity to see beyond whatever is right here, right now, for their benefit, what makes them look good, at the cost of the very citizens that voted them in. If we're talking about democracy, it's almost as if to enforce peace you almost need a superior capacity for violence. So maybe the best way to enforce world peace is to achieve world domination through force.

maybe, and which of course in a sense is a crazy thing to think and say, isn't it, because what sort of peace could emerge out of such a situation? But indeed, yeah, what kind of peace can truly emerge? Lasting peace can truly emerge from weakness? Right, right. But that's an interesting point that you bring up, which is, when we talk about somebody through superior force and domination, then there is peace. And we have the irony of the UN, which basically is just ceremonial at this point, that has peacekeeping forces. And that's a complete irony and oxymoron. But I can also see what you're saying there. And that depends on the person's values.

Because if, let's say, someone whose values are about conquering the world, or a country, or a culture that's about conquering the world, and that we are right, and what makes us right is the fact that if we dominate everyone else, then we'll have a utopia. That kind of peace is not a peace that everybody would agree upon, obviously. It's not a peace that everyone would want. Whereas the weak, perceivably weak person or weak culture that says, look, we want peace. We're willing to do something about this. Let's get into talks. The willingness to get into talks, I think, is looked upon favorably. The willingness to say, okay, let's see if we can negotiate something is better than saying, you know what, I'm going to obliterate this culture.

I'm going to obliterate this country. I'm going to obliterate whatever. But ultimately, that world leader, whoever they may be, is causing a lot of death and damage. And this goes back to something like the Mahabharata, the idea of this war for dharma. It's a righteous war where Krishna tells Arjuna, stand up and fight, because you're fighting against those who, if they continue to exist, will create further devolution or de-evolution of society.

How are we to know that for certain? You know, these are the challenges that we have to face at any point in our evolution as a civilization. But I don't think any one country is yet ever going to be willing to give up their sovereignty as a nation to come to a point where we can all be one global civilization. I think it's fair to say in trade and commerce, we're there, because that's what we see, where we have a global trade system.

But when it comes to things like politics and the function of society, culture gets in the way. And I don't mean to sound like a communist or Marxist, but I'm just saying culture in terms of, I won't let go of this. And I don't think we need to let go of it. We need to see that we can enjoy the culture that we have, the mythologies that we have, the history that we have, the texts that we celebrate in, the spirituality that we have. But can we find common ground? Can we find common humanity? Can we find something that transcends even humanity and goes to the complete essence of it, which is, I'm not just human.

I'm also a reflection of paraconsciousness. This is why it's so individualized. This is why we have only few saints and people who talk about this. And generally they're killed for it, because nobody else believes or accepts that. Given how improbable you have expressed this sort of civilizational outcome to be, I'm curious why you included it in the article.

It's because I want to inspire people. At the very, the short answer is because I want to have people think about it and say, hey, yeah, that could be possible, and get their brains racking and saying, what could that look like? And maybe my version of that might not be the same as yours, or her version might not be the same as his, or their version might not be the same as this one, this culture or this collective. But if you start to think about it, can we find some commonality around it? Can we find certain principles that we all, as a global civilization, can agree upon? And so if we start to come to a point where our world leaders are not coming from

being sociopaths, not coming from what's in it for me, and just using certain kinds of words and keywords to come into power so that they're elected and so on and so forth, but actually come back and say, look, this is who I am, this is what I realize, and this is how I think about the world. I think if people start making judgments, let's say as citizens, based on that rather than what can you do for me, so it goes both ways. It's not just what can you do for me, but what do you represent? What are your values? How do you see the world? How do you handle conflict? How do you handle tough situations?

I think the idea for that particular part, or that particular piece, in that article is for people to start racking their brains and saying, okay, what could we do for something like that to happen? First of all, it's wonderful to think about it, to be inspired by it, but now are there actually any concrete steps? And can we come together as a group of people, different groups of people, and come together and say, these are the shared values, and can we bring those values to a larger plane of existence? I think if we deduce everything to its common factor, which is our consciousness, and if everybody gets a chance to access that and to experience that, I do believe that we'll have little butterfly effects that might ring on, maybe not now, maybe in a few decades, maybe in a few centuries, maybe in a millennia if we're still here as a civilization.

Yeah, thank you. This has been very interesting indeed. You mentioned wars and so on, and certainly some would say, and some do say, that what's it from South Park, things are getting worse, and that's a line from the song Blame Canada. I don't think we need to blame Canada for that, but they do in that movie anyway. Sorry, I don't know where a South Park reference came from in such a rarefied subject we're talking about here. What's your take on the world situation and so on? Do you have a take? Do you have a sense? I know you've been

working with astrologers and different people like that. Often they have a sense of time, of a phase of civilization or phase of the world, etc. So perhaps that's something you have. Do you think of things that way? Do you have a perspective on where the world is at in that respect? So, in terms of, because you brought up astrology, I was actually in conversation with one of my teachers, and he is also an astrologer, and what he said was that according to him, as per Vedic astrology, things are going to get a little more crazy, they're going to get a little worse. There's a possibility that this conflict might rage on, and he mentioned something about where the planets are in terms of the houses. So for example, I think he said we've got Saturn in Pisces. If you look at the Vedic perspective, we've got Saturn in Pisces.

We've got Venus in Pisces. We've got, I think, Ketu, which is the South Node, in Virgo. And then we've got something known as Mars, and Rahu, which is the North Node. So Rahu here is all about obsession, all about progress, all about technology, all about AI and these kinds of things. And Mars is obviously a Martian planet, which means it's a warring planet, and it's in what's known as the 11th house in terms of the transits. And that creates fire, and that creates destruction, and that creates like, and the 11th house is all about networking, all about connections. So in this case, if we're looking at it from this perspective right now, we're not seeing a lot of that. There's a lot of just like he said this and he said that, I'm going to do better than this guy, and he's going to launch this missile, so I'm going to launch that missile.

And from my teacher's perspective, he says that this can continue on until April, May, June, and depending on how people, world leaders, take this, it could either result in where we have a larger regional conflict, or we could have a larger global conflict. I think we should take it week by week and see how things go. But my sense is that most people, or most world leaders, don't want to be in a world conflict, because it not only affects them as a world leader, because they want to hold on to power, but the economics of it is not beneficial for them. Most of these, look at what happened with Dubai and the Gulf regions. Dubai is known as the Vegas of the Middle East, and it's got a lot of wealth and power and all of these things.

they don't want to see that go away by joining into a conflict that they have nothing to do with, even though they've got buildings that have been affected, even though they've got maybe a few casualties, they still don't want to get themselves involved. So for that to happen, something really drastic needs to happen, and that potential could happen sometime according to the astrology, at least in April and May. Let's hope not, let's hope not. But that's the situation. And so when you think of things like this, do you take personal action in response to such a possibility? You personally, do you adjust your behavior or outlook based on this kind of a possibility?

Yeah. Of course, for me, my family comes first, so I have to think about that. I have to think about how does this affect them? And I'm the breadwinner of my family, so I have to think about it in those perspectives. And a lot of my breadwinning comes from retreats. It comes from consultations with people, and from traveling to these different places for retreats. So I was just in conversation with David the other day, in the situation where flights are getting canceled because of stuff that's happening in the US, with airports possibly shutting down and stuff. All of this has a great deal of effect, and so economically I have to make decisions. Financially I make decisions. And also in terms of resources, we, I'm right now in India, and my family stays in India.

So there are talks of a possible gas crisis. There are talks of a possible resource energy crisis. And so, taking that into account, we make decisions. And like I said, week by week, even for me, I take it week by week and see what decisions make most sense in these cases. I'll give an example. When we were in the pandemic, we were sort of in the tail end of that, but we weren't so sure of what was happening in Europe. And so the decision was made, let's postpone or delay retreats there because things aren't really looking up right now. So those kinds of decisions have to be taken.

And that has an economic effect on everybody, but personally, myself. But I can say one thing is from a resource standpoint, from a standpoint where I live in a country like India, where things are not as bad as they seem yet, at least in the cities like Bombay and Delhi. What I've heard is restaurants are kind of closing down because there's not enough LPG, as they call it, natural gas resources.

So you hear stories of that. Just recently, Prime Minister Modi mentioned something about, we all need to stand together. And that's a bit worrisome. So I was talking to a friend of mine who lives up north, and he lives in a city where there are military bases. And so he was talking about the fact that if this becomes a much larger regional conflict, where India is now swept in, then these cities will be affected first. And probably the best place to stay is in the middle of the country where there's nothing going on. So I may have to make that decision, or I might have to ask my family to make that decision if I'm not there in the country.

you know so they have an effect economically what i can say also is i just don't do i'm not just doing retreats but i'm also doing consultations they might come you know in between but i'm also doing mentorship programs and these are for high net worth individuals and so if they're not affected at least i can still make a living out of that provided there's sufficient electricity and wi-fi and things like that so we take it we take it week by week and then if things get really worse we take it day by day and then just look at what is the bare necessities and how we can continue to function there having said all that i'm just saying it's not as bad as that we're looking at like some of the worst case scenarios right now you know everything is great so but if we need to prepare then this is my thought process well thank you delson it's been very interesting talking with you about your latest adventures and explorations and investigations and your article, The Mirror Beyond Mind on the Threshold of Consciousness, available on Substack.

And of course, I'll link all that in the show notes. Thank you very much, Delson Armstrong. Yeah, this was fun, Steve. Thank you. Thank you for listening to another Guru Viking podcast. For more interviews like these, as well as articles, videos, and guided meditations, visit www.guruviking.com.