another view

To go to the beginning of this blog and an introduction to the Lifewave cult click here.

When I was in Lifewave there was one way of looking at the Inner Light and Sound. It was regarded as an energy that was divine in origin. This is consistent with the Divine Light Mission, which John Yarr used to be part of. It is also consistent with the Radha Soami and Sant Mat traditions in India, of which Radha Soami Satsang Beas was just one example.

There is another way of looking at the Inner Light and Sound though. This view is found in other traditions. They don't see it as an energy - instead they see it as an aspect of the mind. I have scanned two pages of a book called 'Journey of Insight Meditation' by Eric Lerner. This book helped me to see that there are other ways of thinking about the Inner Light and Sound, which is why I have included it here.

I like the bit where he writes "When the mind is still, its nature is light". I know that many will resist this view, as I did to begin with. Lerner's explanation is more poetic than mungojelly's.

When I was in Lifewave I was told to take what they said to me at face value, not to try to work it out for myself. I was told this is beyond your mind. That seems to be common in cults, I was told that elsewhere, with people getting angry if I dared to suggest there might be something incomplete about their wonderful system.

Well, sod them. When I read the above two pages I knew that there are others who take a completely different view about what the Inner Light and Sound is. And it's a more sophisticated view, which allows for a more complete understanding of what it is and how to use it. I don't anymore have to put up with anyone telling me I'm not able to think for myself. It's not me who is stupid.

reply to Malcolm's comment

To go to the beginning of this blog and an introduction to the Lifewave cult click here.

Malcolm made some good points in his comment on one of my posts. I replied to his comment but I didn't make a full reply because I was pushed for time and the comments section isn't the best place for a full reply anyway. So in this post I am making a fuller reply to some of the points he made.

Firstly I would like to say that I do believe that his enlightenment was the real thing, just the same as other people who in Lifewave were called Adepts. I also believe that the Lifewave enlightenment is the same as what mystics in different parts of the world have sought and sometimes found. So I'm not saying that his enlightenment is less than other people's enlightenment.

The point I was trying to make is that enlightenment is different from what we were led to believe. His account is valuable because no one else connected with Lifewave has given an account of what enlightenment actually is. That is why I was surprised by his account. Enlightenment seems to be to do with this material world. It seems to be about the perception of the material world, how someone relates to this world.

I expected enlightenment to be about some higher level of reality. I believed at the time that there are many levels of reality (Planes of Existence). There is the material world, which is the lowest level of reality. Then there is the highest level at the other end, you could call that God or Brahman. Somewhere in between is the level of the mind. These kinds of ideas are common in spiritual circles, in the Theosophical Society for example, and in Lifewave too.

He said that he didn't interpret what happened to him as merging with Brahman. However, I think that many people who have had enlightenment do interpret it as merging with Brahman, or union with God. Suzanne Segal seems to have had the same thing happen to her and gave a similar account in her book. She uses the word 'vastness' instead of Brahman or God.

On the 1meditation site they say this: "a desire to get beyond all separation and to merge with the cause of all things". What is the cause of all things? Some would call it Brahman, others would call it God. The Neoplatonists called it 'The One'.

It's a similar idea though. The idea that there is a universal or primordial consciousness and that you are part of it. You are not separate from it. I don't believe in this universal consciousness anymore, but I can see that people would interpret their enlightenment in that way.

Now I would interpret it as a shift in brain functioning. The brain can no longer distinguish between subject and object. Everything seems subject without object, everything seems to be part of you. Nothing seems to be separate from you. I think that ideas about Brahman, very common in Hinduism and New Age movements, derive from a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of this state of consciousness.

In one of my posts I copied-and-pasted something from a forum to do with the inner light. I thought that the writer (mungojelly) had a good understanding of what the inner light actually is. Malcolm replied that it didn't make sense to him.

What mungojelly was saying is that our brains create a model of our bodies and our environment. This model is updated by our sense perceptions. When we meditate we are focusing our attention on something - a mantra or the breath - and ignoring physical sensations apart from that. The model isn't getting updated in the same way and so the model starts doing unusual things.

The example that mungojelly gives is when the breath seems to turn into light. That seems to happen to people when they meditate on the breath, which is common in Buddhist circles. Eric Lerner writes about this in his book. I don't know how it happens with people who meditate using a mantra. I doubt if the mantra turns into light, or sound.

I understand that seeing coloured discs is common. Blue, golden or white usually. Then it seems you end up with an all-pervading white light. I used to think that this light was something spiritual in nature and divine in origin. Now I think that it is just something produced by the brain. That doesn't mean that it is valueless, it can help in entering different altered states of consciousness.

It's an interesting question as to why to begin with the light disappears when you focus your attention on it. That could be because if we turn our attention towards it we are treating it as a sense perception when it isn't that. We are updating the model and because the inner light doesn't derive from our senses then when the model gets corrected it is removed.

Malcolm said that he didn't think that Krishnamurti was as important in Lifewave as I had thought. He could be right about that. The reason why I thought Krishnamurti was important was for two reasons. First, an Adept had said in a talk that Ishvara (John Yarr) had sent someone to talk to Krishnamurti. This person told Krishnamurti that the Buddha of our age had now arrived and was teaching and enlightening people. He meant John Yarr himself.

The story went that Krishnamurti got angry with this person and told him to go. The Adept then said that it looks as if Krishnamurti is a very angry and dismissive man. It's not surprising that Krishnamurti got angry though, he was noted for hating anyone who set himself up as a guru. He was dead against gurus. He must have thought to himself 'Have they understood nothing of what I have said?' He said that he wasn't a teacher and had no teaching and no method (which seems to be not quite true).

The other thing is that when I was in Lifewave in Liverpool in the 1980s we had a little library of spiritual texts. I had a couple of books I didn't want so I donated them to this library. Some time after, one of the Second Initiates wanted to talk to me. He solemnly stated that one of the books was unsuitable so he was returning it to me. I said to him that they probably didn't want the book by Krishnamurti either. I said this because I knew that Krishnamurti hated gurus. To my surprise he said no, the Krishnamurti book is acceptable.

So I was intrigued. Why did Ishvara seem to like Krishnamurti so much despite Krisnamurti hating gurus? It could have been that John Yarr had sent people to talk to many spiritual teachers throughout the world, but it didn't seem that way. Krishnamurti seemed to be important to John Yarr.

Although Krishnamurti said he wasn't a teacher and had no teaching or methods, that's not quite true. Often teachers in the nondualist tradition say the same thing. It's part of their philosophy. If you read what Sam Harris has said about nondualism or Ken Wilber they do say that.

They have something called 'direct pointing' or 'pointing-out instructions'. This is where someone helps you to be aware of your inner consciousness. Then you can focus your attention on that as your form of meditation. I'm sure nondualists will say that I'm misrepresenting what they believe but the less extreme nondualists will accept they do have these practices.

According to Ken Wilber you establish the 'Witness'. The Witness will eventually disappear, and then everything you turn your attention towards will seem to be part of you. I don't know if John Yarr ever received or gave 'direct pointing' or anything like it, or if he just understood the principle and that was a big help to him in getting to enlightenment.

It would seem though that if you want this enlightenment then nondualists techniques would be a big help. It's found in the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Advaita Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhists. Meditating on the inner light and sound, and entering the various altered states of consciousness is the main thing though. The altered state of consciousness called in Lifewave 'Second Initiation' or 'going beyond form' is what the Theravada Buddhists call the 5th jhana or the Sphere of Infinite Space. That's quite a high one but there are even higher ones.

Inner Light and Sound

what is the nature of the Inner Light and Sound?

The Inner Light is not seen with the eyes, neither is it something visualized. Some people do visualize or imagine colours in their meditation, but that's not what we're talking about here. I used to believe that the Inner Light and Sound are aspects of a spiritual energy that is always there and we can tap into when we meditate. The idea is that it is divine in origin.

After I left Lifewave I read a book called Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner. He was a Buddhist but he knew about the Inner Light and encountered it in his meditation. Buddhists call it 'nimitta'. His understanding was limited, but his book showed me that Theravada Buddhist development is very different from the sort of development that I was familiar with from Lifewave.

In Hinduism there are many beliefs, but a dominant one is the idea that we each have an Atman. The Atman is our consciousness, which is not the same thing as our mind. The Atman seems to be separate from Brahman, but this is an illusion that we can overcome. Brahman is the universal or primordial consciousness. This is the teaching of Shankara, one of the most prominent Hindu teachers.

I have never believed in God, but I was willing to accept the possibility of the existence of Brahman. Although 'Brahman' may be translated as 'God', they are not the same. God is a being who has thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes. Brahman is pure Consciousness.

My interest in the book Journey of Insight Meditation led me to read the books of Buddhists Daniel M Ingram and Culadasa. Culadasa has a lot to say about nimitta. He doesn't explain it as a spiritual force, divine in origin, though. To Culadasa, when the mind has become pacified it begins to function in a different way.

This is from Culadasa's book The Mind Illuminated page 238

"With the senses fully pacified, all but the most intrusive external sounds fade away, and auditory awareness is often dominated by an inner sound; all visual imagery ceases, and the visual sense is often dominated by an inner light;"

Culadasa explains how the Inner Light can develop and how it can be used to enter into different altered states of consciousness. One of these altered states is called by Buddhists the Sphere of Infinite Space, which is the same as the 'going beyond form' or 'Second Initiation' of Lifewave. It is also called the 5th jhana, the first of the formless or arupa jhanas. Jhana is the Pali word for the various altered states of consciousness, and the 5th of them is the subject of my next post.

Below I have quoted someone from a forum called mungojelly who explains very convincingly what the Inner Light actually is.

"There's two different things called "the breath," one which can't sustain jhana and one which can. The actual breath sensations coming from your body are inconsistent, random, patchy, confusing, intermittent. Attending to these actual sensations only creates as much as access concentration, because new breath sensations hit you unpredictably and incline you towards discursive thought.

Along with these actual sensations there is a consistent steady internal model of the breath, created by the mind in the process of attending to the external sensations. That model is the "nimitta" which can produce jhana, because it can be steadily present, because it is produced inside the mind-- you can produce more and more of it, "strengthen" and "purify" it, so that you have more to concentrate on. The external sensations can't be intensified like that, they come and go. So you must latch instead onto this model, which can be made very intense so that your attention on it can be very stable.

The point here is to distinguish two layers of your perception, which usually are so tightly coupled that they seem like one and the same thing. There's actual flickering streams of perceptions coming in through your sense gates, that's one layer, and then also there's an internal model which is continually being corrected using those sensations. 

This model is a mental tool that we're constantly using to interpret sensory data. But it's not actually limited by that data. In order to be able to match any data that comes in, the model is just made of infinitely flexible thoughtstuff. It's like clay that can be molded into anything. In response to sensations we're always habitually adjusting the clay model to rationalize the sensations. Oh, there's a sensation over there? Hmm, well then I guess the body must actually be over here like this, does that fit better? We adjust the model until the sensations coming in align with it, we keep the model dancing along with the sensations, so that we have an idea of what we're in the process of being/doing rather than being in a fuzzy haze of various disconnected sensations. 

So that's why this is tricky. You're trying to tell the difference between two things that are the same thing. One actually is the sensations of breath or whatever. The other one is pretending to be the sensations of breath. This is very convenient, usually, because you don't want to be aware of this distinction usually, you want to move your body around and do things and not think in terms of the various body-like representations in your mind just in terms of the body as one integrated real thing as if you had access to it as a whole coherent thing at once instead of through the weird telegraph network of your nerves, it's a useful handle for the mind, that's the point. But then it's annoyingly seamless when it comes time to try to hack into it. :/ 

So what they mean by saying "nimitta" is any sign that what you're looking at isn't the meditation object after all, but its representation. Becoming light is one stereotypical example of this that happens to people often. This doesn't mean seeing light with your eyes normally, but the breath itself turning into light, which is just the sort of clue you're looking for that something's off. Breath sensations shouldn't really be light, but the modelling clay that you're working with is the same clay used for modelling sight, so it can slip. It's making guesses about what the breath is like, predicting it, modelling it, but you can catch it being flat out wrong. It's just like, um, IDK, is the breath a glowing light now? And usually if that happens for a moment some sensation immediately contradicts it like, um, no, the breath isn't light at all, weird question. But instead you're there paying moment-to-moment attention and you catch it doing that and say, what's this? Aha, got you. 

I describe it as perception having two parts, a guesser and a checker. The guesser only has questions, and the checker only has answers. Specifically it seems what the checker says is "no" when the guesser guesses wrong. The more wrong it is the more it shouts "NO! WRONG! CORRECT THIS!" This makes sense because we're talking about maintaining a model. It's a model of your whole body and mind and perception, so lots of different stuff to juggle. You don't need a bunch of noise coming back from the checker saying "YES! You still have an elbow! YES! You still have a little toe!" Instead for efficiency's sake what makes sense is to just give corrections as things change. If a guess is seriously wrong, the checker will shout how wrong it is, but as guesses get more correct, the checker gets quieter about how wrong they are, until when they're exactly right the checker doesn't respond at all. 

So this is the ancient hack we're applying to this system: If you simply turn the checker off, any guess you make seems right. If a "no" never comes from the checker to correct our model, then that feels exactly the same as if every guess was already spot on and it just didn't need to correct anything. If the sensations coming in from outside aren't allowed to check the model, we can gain direct control of the thoughtstuff that it's made of, and use all of it for the purpose of meditation (instead of the much smaller amount we'd been able to use before). 

The best possible use of that thoughtstuff is of course to use all of it directly for meditation-- this is the 4th jhana. In the scriptures Buddha is said to have used this jhana to attain enlightenment, which makes sense because while technically you could use any jhana, your odds are better using all of the thoughtstuff just for that and not for anything else. But obviously since your normal experience is to use it for maintaining the sensation of having a body, suddenly using it all to meditate with instead is so disorienting that it's recommended you get to that point only very very slowly."

If all of the above sounds implausible then read what the physicist Carlo Rovelli has written in his book Helgoland about the nature of seeing. Page 162. "The brain elaborates an image of what it predicts the eyes should see."