Source: here.
The object and the mirror
mlechcha woman
Via an acquaintance, we ran into a middle-aged mleccha woman, who had survived a difficult health situation in her childhood. In premodern times, it might have been a death sentence, but she managed to survive to an age at which people would have often been dead in those times. But all was not naught, and she was left with a sahaja-dūradṛṣṭi-śakti and a bhūta-dṛṣṭi-śakti. The former capacity manifested in a peculiar fashion. She needed to first “connect’’ with some person in the dūrakṣetra in order for the śakti to manifest. Then the visions came in the form of flashes rather than a continuous film reel. They were like a series of static photographs that came one after the other. This strongly suggested to us that it was a left cerebral hemispheric process, perhaps mostly divorced from the right. Consistent with this, while she received the communications best when she closed her eyes, for the most intense connection, she had to turn her head as if visualizing something in her right visual field (the domain of the left cerebral hemisphere).
This brought to mind an account of the left cerebral hemisphere’s construction of existence by the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist (British English):
“While this view of the world, which characterises the left hemisphere, allows for the possibility of change, that change has to be accomplished by a series of, in themselves static, steps – not a flow. It is the substitution of one, in principle, fixed, static ‘fact’ by another, like the succession of static stills …’’
Iain McGilchrist contrasts the more static apprehension by the left hemisphere with the more fluid and continuous view of existence described by medieval philosophers – Leonardo da Vinci:
“Movement is the cause of all life.’’
And Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz:
“For all bodies are in perpetual flux, like rivers, and parts are constantly entering into and leaving them.’’
(c.f., the idea of spanda in the Kulāmnāya of the Śaiva tradition)
To support this left hemispheric view of existence, McGilchrist provides numerous examples from the neuro-psychiatric literature. Particularly notable is his account of palinopsia:
“There is a slightly different condition, palinopsia (from Greek, palin, + opsia, ‘seeing again’), also sometimes called akinetopsia (a, + kinet-, + opsia, ‘seeing no motion’). In this condition movement can appear dislocated as if in a juddering ciné film and there is persistence of after-images. It has been described, according to an extensive survey, ‘much more frequently with right-sided than left-sided lesions’ (typically in the parietal or parieto-occipital region). In his monograph on palinopsia (which he originally termed ‘paliopsia’), Macdonald Critchley described a case he considered typical, of a man with a gunshot injury to the right occipital region. The subject found that when he focussed upon anything he felt his gaze pulled towards the right and a stream of static images replaced the flow of movement: ‘the various images were arranged in parallel series, close to one another, and they were all of the same size’.’’
Indeed, the dūradṛṣṭikā’s account of her dūradṛṣṭi was similar, with a penchant for details again typical of unhindered left hemispheric apprehension, e.g.,: “I see this image of a wall. Leaning against it are a rake and an old cartwheel.’’ Here, she is describing one static scene. An account of the next scene that enters her remote vision would then follow such a statement. She has no history of cerebral lesions, and during regular existence and interaction, she is hemispherically completely integrated – in fact, strikingly so for someone who has otherwise had serious conditions that could have derailed most people. Hence, the state she seems to enter while receiving dūradṛṣṭi is dominated by apprehension of the images in the visual centers via the left hemisphere. It almost appears as if, in that state, her right hemisphere recedes into the background or into a partial sleep-like state.
However, we do not think that her right hemisphere is completely shut down. As we noted, she also has a bhūta-dṛṣṭi-śakti. Sometimes she simply has some kind of feeling that the bhūta is around. It is comparable to what we have heard multiple people mention before: a feeling of “not being alone” or of “being watched” in a certain space they have entered. On occasion, she also seems to simply get a non-visual sense of a ghost in the space she is getting remote views of. However, on other occasions, she gets clear visual indications of the ghost. Notably, unlike the static images of the spaces and people, these ghosts seem to be more fluid and may move across the static backdrop of her vision. This suggests that she does seem to have some residual right hemispheric activity that mediates bhūtadṛṣṭi when in these states of dūradṛṣṭi.
Our subjective assessment was that she had genuine dūradṛṣṭi-śakti. Of course, this is difficult to convey to a third person, unlike a scientific result, as each one has to experience it in person to convince themselves.
dūradṛṣṭi from mantras
We have also seen dūradṛṣṭi attained through mantra-siddhi. The main practice we have seen/performed relates to kaula mantra-s of the Dakṣiṇāmnāya and the Paścimāmnāya, and the practice of Vārāhī.
The practice of the mantra has to be accompanied by the corresponding yoga (c.f., saṃyama-s already alluded to in the Pātañjala Yogasūtra-s). Successful practice of the mantra alone gives you a more fragmented reception. It is like a series of static images with a gap of a minute or more between them. The conquest of the accompanying yoga – which the kaula traditions describe as tattva-bheda or tattva-vijaya – results in a more continuous reception with a rapid succession of images.
In either case, the dūradṛṣṭi attained by mantra-sādhana appears to resemble the reception described by the said woman in its essential features.
Genetics
It is notable that in her case, there seems to be some kind of familial manifestation of extra-normal sensory perception going as far back as she can trace her genealogy. This points to some biological predisposition because, according to her, nobody in her family had any active practice that would correspond to a sādhana – in fact, their religious framework would preclude such. We believe that even those who acquire the śakti via mantra-sādhana do so against a biological background. Some, despite prolonged commitment and mantra-practice, do not go very far – at best, they get a few fragmentary communications. However, others endowed with the appropriate intrinsic biological background (sahaja)s make rapid progress.
❀❁——✸✷——❁❀
Mirror
Perhaps, most people need validation of some kind to keep forging ahead in life in the face of all the obstacles that might come one’s way. A person we know has an extrinsic locus of validation. As a highly ambitious, highly mobile, and social person, this has been the engine of his success – he strives till he gets external validation for his acts. However, it has made him entirely dependent on it. While deep within, he may understand the intrinsic worth of a thing if his teacher points that to him, by himself, he has minimal ability to see the intrinsic worth of things. Everything in his life acquires a value only when he can sum it over the assessments others have made of it. If he is unable to carry out this operation, he simply fails to see its existence. Thus, his experience is deeply intertwined with the people around him, and he tries his best to surround himself with those who would provide a fulfilling experience. Thus, he could be described as an object that needs a mirror to know it exists.
We had each gone our own way and were out of touch for a while. However, as is wont of many when in the pits to come to us to air their suffering, he too came back to us one day while feeling grumpy and down. The reason for his normally jubilant mood being dented was the questioning of his grand visions by a close associate. Instead of the usual extrinsic validation that normally drove him to strive for high-stakes prizes, he was now receiving its opposite. He was not sure how to handle it. We asked him to meditate on an imagery where he was climbing up a difficult slope – like the Pāṇḍu-s on their last journey – even as tumbling rocks, hail and snow came his way as impediments. He said the meditation was a horrifying experience and would have driven him crazy if sleep had not taken over, his sleep-deprived, hyperenergetic body. Nevertheless, he felt the experience had cured him because it made him think of all that he had achieved and of all the people who still held him in high regard. Those thoughts convinced him that life was not so bad after all.
Once he had stabilized, we asked him a little more about his perception of self when in “flow”. He said a few notable things: first, he feels he is in a flow only when he is striving for a high-stakes prize that will bring him great praise from his peers. Second, his own creative ideas or grand visions do not have a natural continuity to them. They come almost as if they were static pictures that appear and fade away one after the other. He has a yearning to see them as a movie, but they never come together as such until he gets the external validation. When people whom he holds in high regard start telling him that his static visions are brilliant, they suddenly start flowing together as though they form a cinematic reel. He achieves the ullāsa of being in a flow.
Akulavīra & Vīra with the Kulāṅganā
While his case might be an extreme one, the more we thought of him or the dūradṛṣṭikā we realized there might be something general. We realized there were two paths of the yogin. Let us call one of those the “path of the Akulavīra” and the other the “path of the Vīra with the Kulāṅganā.” We twice journeyed on the path of the Akulavīra, observing austerities when our body could sustain those.
At the culmination of the first of our meditations, we saw a number of static images. Almost all of them were utterly silent and sometimes mystifying, yet almost all of them had a mild pleasantness to them, like a light mountain breeze. Then they faded away. We then saw static flashes of six striking beings. Each one of them vanished into total blackness. Then we saw static images of a long sandy path as though in a desert. In each image, we had made progress along the path, but never felt the continuity of true motion – the analogy that came to our mind was a world where calculus did not exist – just one that was discontinuous and “jagged”. The path finally ended in an ocean. It looked as though the sands of the desert had merged with the sands of the beach. For some reason, we were stuck in a vision of drinking the ocean water and being trapped in its briny bitterness, even as the static images of the six striking beings just appeared in a string. It dawned on us that this was the product of a yoga where we had failed to achieve siddhi.
In the second of our sādhana-s, the situation was different: at the culmination of our meditations, we saw an image of coursing in a safe boat down a river. We felt a continuity and smoothness in the motion. This was until it hit the sea. There it stopped, and we were jolted off the boat onto the sandy beach. There again we stood in a completely frozen experience, within a motionless image of drinking stinging brine that was perpetually stuck in our mouth.
kulAnganA
Suddenly, there appeared on the beach a vīra with his dūti. They had clearly attained some siddhi, though not vidyādharatva, and were uttering siddhānta. We carefully heard their siddhānta and realized that while they had acquired some siddhi, their tattvāveśa was inferior to ours. Yet, there we stood, having failed to attain siddhi despite having a superior jñāna. We wondered why that was the case. It was then that we learnt two things.
- First, the said vīra had a clearly superior yoga to ours. Such a yoga might be sahaja or attained through discipline. We clearly lacked the former, and our discipline could probably not match his sahaja manifestation.
- Second, the vīra had clearly mastered the practice with a dīkṣitā kulāṅganā, something which we had not.
Then, studying his mastery of the siddhānta, we found the same thing as before – the kulāṅganā stitched together his static actualizations into a continuous flow – like a movie. In essence, she was acting like a mirror via which he could perceive his own strivings and attain siddhi. We knew we were striving, but simply couldn’t see where we were headed. Nevertheless, we saw it as a partial success for all the lessons it had taught us, even if no siddhi was achieved.
anucharas
Based on this, we changed a few things and pursued a comparable path. At its culmination, we indeed attained some minor siddhi.
At the acme of that meditation, we saw an accomplished siddha, standing on the high, drinking from an ocean of soma. However, unlike the one we had seen in our earlier meditation, he was an “akulavīra,” who was uttering an immense volume of siddhānta as though he were a second Durvāsas. We realized that some of his siddhānta-s were mithyā, some wrong and some clearly inferior to ours in jñāna. This told us that we had the jñāna and the saṃkalpa for a considerably more profound siddhi, but had failed to get there. Instead, we had achieved only a minor siddhi relative to his.
We then saw the secret of his success: he both had an enormously developed sahaja-yoga, almost like an Agastya, and a retinue of anucara-s who constantly provided him with the reinforcing reflection as with our acquaintance.
We saw he was shining like Urubilva Jaṭila Kāśyapa amongst his throng of students. Ahead of him stood a parampara of akulavīra-siddha-s of even higher mastery, whose siddhānta-s we could only get a fleeting glimpse of or not at all. Those glimpses – static images – however, had an empowering feel to them. We gained some appreciation for our validation-dependent acquaintance.
❀❁——✸✷——❁❀
Factors in success
While high jñāna, disciplined yoga and putting in the hours of dedicated sādhanā are prerequisites for the attainment of siddhi, they by themselves do not mean that one would get a proportional siddhi. If that were the case, many a sādhaka would be flying around like a Vidyādhara favored by Rājādhirāja.
What determines their trajectory toward higher siddhi-s is the capacity to perform the sadhana with a dīkṣitā kulāṅganā, and the “sahajabhūmi”.
Body
This sahajabhūmi has certain aspects we hold trivial: high intrinsic energy, the capacity of not accumulating excess fat, and the ability to control ones diet – more generally, just an adamantine body. Trivial does not mean abundant; indeed, only a few are endowed with these qualities in a typical population.
Cultivation
By definition, the sahajabhUmi is the biology you are born with. You can cultivate it through physical yoga, type of diet and other exercises as mentioned in the note. But the innate background is the biggest factor: some people simply have more energy and not matter what effort you put it you may not catch up with them
Hemispherics
The more subtle aspect of the sahajabhūmi is what led us towards a deeper study of “hemispherics”. That is not a topic that we will dilate upon in this note, as it needs a separate treatment. However, an interested reader can check out the two books on this topic by the British psychiatrist McGilchrist to gain a neuropsychological picture of the same.
Briefly, he sees the larger right cerebral hemisphere as the master and the smaller left one as its “emissary.” He sees the integrated vision of the “big picture”, and the vision which has inherent motion and continuity, as something that can primarily be perceived/constructed by the right hemisphere. Similarly, he sees the deep, subtle connections between the seemingly disparate visions as something that can be mainly achieved by the right hemisphere.
The activity of the right hemisphere is also related to intuition. In this regard, he cites a telling statement of the French mathematician Henri Poincaré, who was widely regarded as one of the greatest of his time:
“For this it is necessary to see the end from afar, and the faculty which teaches us to see is intuition. Without it, the geometrician would be like a writer well up in grammar but destitute of ideas.”
In contrast, the left hemisphere is the one that records static imagery and facts. McGilchrist illustrates this dramatically with the work done on the copying from memory of a Rey-Osterrieth figure – a detailed geometric figure with a somewhat complicated internal structure. Young male children tend to reproduce it in a right-hemisphere-dominant fashion, capturing the overall form and topology of the figure. The females tend to capture it in a left-hemisphere-dominant manner, reproducing a greater number of internal details but presenting them without much regard to the overall arrangement.
We have come to realize that both secular- and mantra-siddhi-s are heavily dependent on the interplay between the hemispheres. We suspect it proceeds via an initial connection formed by the inputs received by the left hemisphere. For some siddhis, this seems to be sufficient, as noted above.
However, for the more complex ones, after the left hemisphere has established a connection and gathered a series of static “views,” they need to be stitched together into a state of “flow.” This latter process is heavily dependent on the right hemisphere – the master is needed for mastery.
Environment
This is the more subtle aspect of the sahajabhūmi that, on the one hand, is rooted in biology and, on the other, interfaces with the environment. The capabilities of each hemisphere in itself and the degree of connectivity between them are purely biological in their foundation. In the computer science analogy of the age, we would call this the underlying neural network, with a key role for the number of neurons and the number of layers of them (part of the sahajabhūmi).
However, as this neural network is refined through interaction with the environment, via pruning or strengthening of particular connections, it takes a shape that might allow a siddhi to manifest.
Cases
Some people have such a strong sahajabhūmi that with just a limited environmental input, they can journey on, finally reaching siddhi-s of even the highest order: these are the akulavīra-s.
But for the large part, the typical sādhaka needs a more intensive interaction with the environment, much like a Large Language Model, needing reinforcement learning guided by human feedback (to extend the computer science analogy of the day). Here is where the role of interactive sādhana, like that with a kulāṅganā, becomes vital.
Thus, the sādhaka who masters such a practice even with a lower state of jñāna and tattvāveśa might attain high siddhi-s.
Likewise, in the absence of the reinforcement network, another endowed with an abundance of both might still fail.
Dangers
However, both paths are fraught with danger.
The lower-rung akulavīra-s, cruising with little learning inputs, are prone to generate siddhānta-s which display a multitude of hallucinations (again using an LLM analogy). We suspect these are unfiltered, left-hemisphere-dominated productions, which have not benefited from the “social” corrections mediated via the right hemisphere.
Conversely, practicing with a kulāṅganā, the other type of vīra, might be waylaid by false learning to produce defective siddhānta-s, much like Duṣṭa-guggulu’s kṛtrima-buddhi at its inauguration.