Phenomenology of the sublime vibration as word and language

Introduction

By becoming aware of awareness we can experience the innermost sense or the felt sense of spaciousness and self-illumination. Within this state of open awareness, the openness of spacious luminous awareness, we can enter the experience of the radiance of light as energy through the sublime, luminous vibrations. The experience of the unfolding of sublime awareness and the corresponding energetic manifestation of the self-arising of primordial awareness is self-liberation. These experiences of the sublime manifestation of luminous energy was described by the 14th century Dzogchen master Longchenpa in his text «Precious Treasury of The Genuine Meaning». This meditative experience often arises spontaneously in Dzogchen meditation practice. This experience of translucent energetic manifestation is also described in Chan Buddhism, Hindu Kashmir Shavism, and Yan Xin Qi Gong.

This experience of energetic manifestation can be experienced within subtle forms of respiration. Sometimes the ongoing sense of subtle luminous respiration can be experienced even as there is a profound sense of breathlessness. Breathlessness used here means no breath or minimal breath (Kutz, Borysenko & Benson, 1985). This experience of the ongoing sense of respiration without breath is very powerful and empowering. In this experience of vast stillness there is no breath and yet there arises from deep within, a most subtle respiration within the breathlessness. During this respiration of stillness, the body seems to breathe and be breathed by most subtle inner wind. The inner sense of stillness expands and extends throughout the entire body and beyond the body’s boundaries. This stillness opens us into the dimension of potential space, the dharmakaya and pure awareness.

Spanda As Movement and Pulsation

In this openness of stillness, of vast silence and vast breathlessness, sublime vibrations begin to manifest and become felt. This spanda, which in the language of Kashmir Shavism, means the upward movement of unfolding light of awareness becoming energy. The energy is becoming sublime embodied pulsation, the pulsation of unfolding and unwinding as inner vortextualness. This non-conceptual vortextualness can be experienced, felt and responded to. In time it becomes language and is conceptualized as words and symbols. The initial non-discursive experience in time becomes the discursive experience of becoming spoken language. The pre-reflective experience becomes reflective and expressive.

This self-arising of the spanda is the arising of the innermost light of primordial awareness becoming energy, becoming vibration. Eventually the vibration becomes sound and sound begins to be felt and experienced directly and vividly. This most subtle dimension of awareness is a pre-conceptual or a non-conceptual experience, within which there is a place of the manifestation of the subtle inner will and inner intention. This place of primordial vibration arises as the Shakti of will or the energy of will. This self-arising energy of movement is motivation and is fundamental intention. Within this non-verbal pre-reflective dimension of awareness the subtle power of invocation becomes manifest and arises as the power of manifestation. This power of manifestation brings forth the subtle dimension of the archetypal energies into ordinary life and circumstances.

These timeless moments of experiencing the vibrational dimension of primordial energy within the space of awareness is the direct perception of the nature of awareness as Shakti or Qi or as Energy. Energy or the sublime vibration is the manifestation of primordial awareness. This manifestation arising from within the ground of Being is manifesting as radiant light becoming energy. The dharmakaya or ground of Being is radiating as elemental light becoming energy. The dharmakaya or ground of Being as elemental light becomes elemental energies.

The non-conceptual source manifesting as the sublime vibrations eventually becomes sound and words. This arising of the spanda or movement is the field of awareness as vibration. This field of vibration is not only within us but surrounds us, permeates us and is also beyond us as the world of circumstance. The field of vibration is both the world itself as well as ourselves as bodies, as minds and as our own innate innermost awareness. Our personal awareness is the manifestation of pure primordial awareness. There is spanda or movement manifesting infinite singularities, manifesting worlds within worlds. This spanda, this movement of luminous energetic manifestation, manifests infinite events of singularities within time and space. Events are the manifestation of Being itself. Being is manifesting unceasingly. There is always this unbound ongoing self-arising of experience. This is the manifestation of immanence, the immanence of luminous spacious awareness.

This infinite field of potentiality is the dharmakaya, the dharmakaya is Being itself. Being is not a being but luminous no thingness that manifest everything and anything. Being manifests being in all beings as all the beings. Dharmakaya is not a being, but is Being itself. The dharmakaya is ground awareness manifesting everything and anything. Being is ground awareness. God is ground awareness. Awareness is not an entity. Awareness is luminous no thingness. Awareness is divinity.

This realm of pure potentiality manifests infinite configurations of light, the radiance becoming energy, becoming pulsation. Primordial movements of the field of awareness are radiance as light, then as energy, and then as sound. These vibrational movements of the field as the field become the foundational elements and configurations of various forms of energy and light that bring forth worlds and universes and us. This moving radiance of energy becomes the body/mind configuration and circumstances of the world. The vibrational movements and manifestations are felt as pulsations and vibrations within our bodies. Personal awareness itself is the manifestation of primordial awareness as radiant energy.

These sublime vibrations as sound and movement become the body, speech, mind of the person, and these primordial sounds become the unfolding circumstances of our world within worlds. These sublime vibrations become events within events, becoming openings within openings as awareness within circumstance. All these events are openings and clearings for the manifestation of spanda, the vibrational enworlding of the worlds.

The manifestation of primordial awareness as different dimensions of experience unfolds from very subtle to most dense. There are the divine manifestations of the apparitional dimension of light forms or what is called the sambogakaya dimension and the dimension of embodied appearance or what is called the nirmanakaya dimension. There is the primordial dimension as source which is pure awareness, pure potentiality, pure Being, pure creativity, pure luminous no thingness, pure dharmakaya from which everything and anything arises. All these dimensions are within you and around you and through you and are you.

The Vibrational Dimension of The Word

The vibrational expressions can be considered to be the word of Being and the felt sense of being. The word is first the word of potentiality, the word of Being that manifests everything and anything. The word manifests as human awareness and manifests as human mind. The word is both expression and manifestation. The very nature of Being is manifestation and expression. This nature of manifestation and expression is primordial vibrations becoming sounds, and sound becoming syllables, and syllables becoming words, and words then becoming signifiers and significations. Vibration becomes language. Through the mind the mental process of language as signifiers and significance arises. The mind brings forth signs and associates signification to sounds and manifestation of the sounds as words, words that acquire signification.

Signs and Meaning

The first phase of the word is vibrational and is without sign or signification and then through the manifestation of mind the world of language as signs and signification of meaning arises. The world of meaning arises out of the world of signs and signification. The process of knowingness of awareness as felt sense brings this experience forth, brings the non conceptual into conceptuality, from pre-reflection into reflection, from non discursive into discursive experience.

Through the mind the mental process of language as signifiers and signification arises. The mind brings forth signs and associates significations to sounds that become words and meaning. The first phase of the word is virbrational without sign or signification. Then through the manifestation of mind the world of language as signs and signification of meaning arises. The world of meaning arises out of the world of signs and signification.

Forms of Knowing and Experiencing

Human awareness and the human mind within awareness are openings to different forms of knowing and experiencing. Human awareness as awareness can know directly and immediately the nature of the sounds and vibrations of awareness. These manifest as configurations of words and as matrix of fields of configuration becoming cirucumstances and situations. Human awareness can know directly, immediately and non-dualistically because of the indivisibility of personal awareness and primordial awareness field. In awareness humans can know non-dualistically the unfolding of events and situations. In awareness we can experience directly the nature of sound as light and as the radiance of ground awareness, which can be felt as sound. In awareness we can know directly sublime vibrations manifesting as worlds and as innermost experience.