Vijnana

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Swami Lakshmanjoo’s Commentary on the Vijnana Bhairava:
The Manual for Self Realization Audio Study Set

Transcript & 7 audio CDs

Even though for the last two years I have been slowly teaching myself Sanskrit, it will be years before I am able to translate - therefore I love to have more than one translation of any text that feels key to me.

However, what I have learned and experienced with Swami Lakshmanjoo's teachings is that there is an enormous difference in learning from the consciousness of the real enlightened Master. Even a highly intelligent and wonderful Indian teacher who carries the Sanskrit traditions in his or her DNA, or the most brilliant Sanskrit scholar cannot infuse you with the wisdom knowledge in a comparable way.

The scholar and teacher will endeavor to give the reader all the facets of a verse, with multiple word definitions, and references to similar ideas in various other related texts. All of this information is useful and helpful, but cannot reach a similar depth of understanding when compared to the simple, direct and potent meaning transmitted by the enlightened master. He is there, where we want to be.

In fact due to the deeply veiled nature of the Kashmir Shaivite texts, scholars and other teachers must look to the enlightened master to decipher these texts. For example Jaideva Singh in the introduction to the 'Pratyabhijnahrdayam' says: "No one who has not studied this book with a teacher can work away its translation merely with the assistance of a lexicon and grammar. I had the good fortune of studying it with Swami Lakshmanjoo... who embodies within himself the tradition."

I have found this to be true in all the translations of the ancient Sanskrit texts, even the Bhagavad Gita. Each translation reflects the consciousness of the translator. Indeed in all humility I touch the feet of those amazing scholars who have climbed the peaks of Sanskrit grammar and given me so much. Yet I do recognize something else, something that emerges from that elusive state of Being the Oneness that only comes from one who is There - in Parabhairava.

The scholar Mark Dyczkowski, an Oxford don, is reported to have said: "Somehow he [Swami Lakshmanjoo] sees much more in them than could ever be grasped through mere bookish knowledge and we could all feel that behind his words lay another dimension beyond them in which he lived and from which he beckoned us to join him" (from the foreword to 'Self Realization in Kashmir Shaivism', John Hughes).

Swami Lakshmanjoo's Vijnana Bhairava, a how to Become manual, is filled with his gems from that other dimension. One in particular that struck me was his explanation of Verse 133. I had on my own developed the theory that myriad other worlds, heavens and hells if you like, were holographic in nature - perhaps projected by us over the cycles of time. So when Swami Lakshmanjoo reveals that "these 118 worlds" have no substance, and even more "it is just a joke" - I had to laugh. The Creators Play!

We never were this - we are always That, just as the ancient texts say. Swami Lakshmanjoo is there in that Thatness waiting, as Dyczkowsi says, beckoning you. The "nectar lips" of Swami Lakshmanjoo have the power to reveal that other dimension within you.

Transcript & audio available here:

http://www.universalshaivafellowship.org/store/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=5

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