Craziness reigns in the world but I remain focused on the inner world.
Since bliss will be our lot at some future time, hopefully not too far away, I’d like to look at what our sources have said about the nature and experience of bliss.
And this time, rather than looking at higher-dimensional celestials and galactics, I’d like to look at Earth’s own sages.
Nonetheless, most of the people consulted here turn out to be either avatars or else ascended beings.
Sri Ramakrishna and the Buddha are examples of the former; Sri Ramana Maharshi may be an example of the latter. We don’t know his background except that he experienced sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, which is Ascension.
The Buddha tells us that “[the] Highest Reality is an exalted state of bliss.” (1) I must take his word for it. But certainly bliss of a less exalted kind is still unimaginably delightful.
Others agree with him. Sri Ramakrishna, for example:
“The bliss of worship and communion with God is the true wine, the wine of ecstatic love.” (2)
He adds:
“If a man enjoys the Bliss of God, he doesn’t enjoy the world. Having tasted divine bliss, he finds the world insipid. … Can worldly pleasures and sex pleasures be compared to the bliss of God? If a man once tastes that bliss, he runs after it ever afterwards. It matters very little to him then whether the world remains or disappears.” (3)
I can certainly vouch for that. Here I am running after it ever afterwards. And my taste for worldly things just keeps falling away. Most of my taste/desire for food, drinks, etc., for instance has subsided a great deal.
Having tasted bliss, the pleasures of the world pale. I’m running after the former, caring little, really, whether the outside world persists or disappears.
“Sex pleasures” are seen to be about the pursuit of bliss anyways. I go more often for the experience directly, in the heart, now that I’m aware of it.
***
Bliss arises when external desire ceases. Most of the time we experience bliss when we attain an object of desire. We think attaining the object has caused the bliss, but bliss is known when desire stops, as it does for a short time when we obtain the object we desire. Sri Ramana explains:
“When the object of desire is obtained, the intellect becomes steady for a moment and turns inward. Then the bliss of the Self is reflected on it and this gives rise to a delusion that there was bliss in the object. But when other objects are desired the bliss vanishes.” (4)
So it isn’t desire or possession of the object of desire that allows the bliss to emerge, but the cessation of desire.
No matter how much bliss we get by this process of obtaining objects, it’s still small compared to what we get from going within, says Mata Amritanandanayi:
“The happiness that we get from worldly objects is only an infinitesimal fraction of the bliss that we get from within.” (5)
By “within,” she means the opened heart. It opens when the kundalini reaches the fourth chakra.
Paramahansa Yogananda demonstrates the truth of something that Archangel Michael shared with me. First Yogananda:
“When the divine joy comes, immediately my breath is still and I am lifted into the Spirit. I feel the bliss of a thousand sleeps rolled into one, and yet I don’t lose my ordinary awareness. This is universally the experience of those who go into the superconscious state.” (6) [My emphasis.]
“I feel the bliss of a thousand sleeps rolled into one, and yet I don’t lose my ordinary awareness.” As if in agreement, Michael has said:
Archangel Michael: Let me really shock you tonight and say to you that you can be in form, in your human form – as you think of your enlightenment journey – and still be connected, consciously, in that place of full connection to the heart of One.
SB: Oh, that is a shocker! (7) [My emphasis.]
I’d never have suspected that we’d retain ordinary consciousness and experience this much bliss. But I’m certainly open.
Franklin Merrell-Wolff also warns us of a state where we’re so intoxicated with bliss in the 8th-9th Dimension that we forget to go on to real mastery in the 11th:
“Conceive of the intensity of the bliss raised beyond all relative imagination, and far beyond the power of any physiological organism to endure, and then regard it as not lasting merely for a moment or a brief period, but extending with unbroken continuity indefinitely; then something of the Bliss-aspect of Nirvana may be apprehended. Is it so surprising that many become ‘God-intoxicated’ and fail to go to the winning of real Mastery?” (8)
Bliss lies at a lower dimension than mastery (9th vs 11th).
Let me stop there and pick up in another article.
Footnotes
(1) The Buddha in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist Bible. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966; c1938, 287.
(2) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 94. [Hereafter GSR.]
(3) Paramahansa Ramakrishna, GSR, 756-7.
(4) Sri Ramana Maharshi, Jewel Garland of Enquiry (Vichara Mani Malai). Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1996; c1977, 9.
(5) Mata Amritanandamayi, Awaken, Children! Vallicakavu, India: Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust 1, 8.
(6) Paramahansa Yogananda, Man’s Eternal Quest and Other Talks. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1976, 161.
(7) Archangel Michael, An Hour with an Angel, March 26, 2012, at http://the2012scenario.com/2012/03/archangels-michael-and-gabriel-on-the-angelic-realm-hour-with-an-angel-transcript-march-26-2012/ .
(8) Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Pathways Through to Space. A Personal Record of Transformation in Consciousness. New York: Julian Press, 1973, 29-3 .
Mastery is the 11th Dimension; bliss is between 8th and 9th, as Michael explains:
Steve: What dimension is bliss?
AAM: It is between Eight and Nine. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Jan. 20, 2016.)
I’m relying on a brief experience of mastery I had in, I believe, 2015, which Michael confirmed in a passing comment later:
“When I have said ‘spiritual currency,’ you’ve had a glimpse of this in the knowing of mastery and abundance and so you know it isn’t about money. It is about spiritual currency. And I say to you, ‘congratulations.’” (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Aug. 2, 2015.)