Devi, imagine the Sanskrit letters in these honey-filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free.
- The path is a deliberate reversal of the mind-building sequence: philosophy -> thoughts -> words -> letters -> sounds -> feelings -> being. You can only release the layer you are currently standing on; you are standing at philosophy/words, so skipping straight to feelings fails.
- Prerequisite (where it actually breaks down): the block is words, not feelings. You cannot drop a layer while it still grips you, so first detach from words by seeing they are mere agreed-upon noises (‘Ram’ is just a sound; your name is just a code-number, like soldier ‘101’). Test: can you stay unmoved, even laugh, when your scripture or god is insulted? If a word can still wound you, you are too identified to begin.
- Step-by-step: (1) close eyes; visualize consciousness as a blackboard and fill it with the letters of any language (Sanskrit is not special) – see them as written shapes; (2) shift from the visual shape to the sonic – hear ‘A’ rather than see it; (3) from the sound, go deeper and feel what arises in your feeling-center when that sound is made; (4) from that feeling-ground, take the jump into the abyss of being.
- Why start with the visual: we are ninety percent eye-centered, and modern reading has re-associated letters with sight rather than their true home, sound. Use the eye-gate first, then migrate to the ear-gate, then to the feeling-center below both.
- Every sound carries a corresponding feeling necessarily behind it – the entire mantra science is built on this mapping. Pre-verbal beings (animals, birds, the child’s first ‘ma’) live in this feeling-sound world; the horse-poet story: a wordless feeling-communication ran for years, destroyed the instant self-awareness/ego appeared – because the moment ego/words/thought arrive you rise ABOVE sounds, while feeling lives below them.
- Mantra caution: a specific sound inevitably produces its specific feeling; death mantras exist (they create the will-to-die, the thanatos longing); never use an arbitrary mantra without a master who knows the sound-feeling correspondence and whether that feeling is what you need.
- Marker that it is working: as you go deeper the mask-face drops and the real face becomes fluid and readable. Zen masters (e.g. Dozo’s master with his staff) read the face to know instantly when the sound-to-feeling translation was occurring and would strike if it went wrong – enlightenment was never reported because the face, the eyes, even the walk show it without a word.
- ‘Be free’ is not a further task to perform: being IS freedom, mind is bondage (sansar – the world). Once you step off the feeling-layer you have returned to what was never in bondage. Going physically to the Himalayas is useless – the seed (mind) travels with you and re-creates the world wherever you go. The only Himalaya is this inward descent.