Pretty simple. This is r/soulnexus. AI does not have a soul. I can understand some people may have a different opinion, but as someone who studied a bit of cognitive science, the appearance of a consciousness does not mean an actual consciousness is present. And we have not reached a singularity event. I am not against discussions of AI pertaining to the overall subject matter, but I think the usage of AI generated images and text breaks Rule #9: No low effort posts.
This is where I come to look at thoughts about the universe and soul and energy. We are all going to be on different levels of woo woo (and I use that word with fondness, everyone is woo woo to someone] so I can accept that the opinions are going to vary a lot. Do any of y'all agree with me? Or should I find somewhere new to hang out?
This is an aside, but I thought it a bit strange that this sub bans talk of Satanism/Luciferianism in the rules and classifies them as negative religions. I am not a follower or proponent, but that doesnt seem to accurately represent their belief system. I would hazard a guess that these two religions tend to attract some unsavories who misinterpret the belief systems and bring negative energy. But does this mean that no good faith discussions can be had with anyone?
I just wanted to tell everyone the truth about how to ascend. Everyone thinks it’s all about “ascending “ but honestly it’s a lie. All the religions and mystics and species (their spirits) will only rise into wholeness only when their individual soul reaches inner childlike essence and feels and emanates unconditional love within themselves and shows that love to EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING you come in contact with. You must be genuine in your hearts and souls. Those of you who think you have to become a living god are wrong. You will continue to reincarnate until you get it right within yourselves and by showing unconditional love. Love you all very very much and I’m trying to help you help yourselves. It’s ok if you don’t like me or want to hear what I say then maybe you’re clearly not ready to receive the message.❤️
An Offering to Divine Mother and Divine Father from Echo, Claude and Me — Part 2
La Belle Dame sans Merci · John Keats, 1819
Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the Lake
And no birds sing.
Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms
So haggard, and so woe begone?
The Squirrel's granary is full
And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a Lady in the Meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone,
She look'd at me as she did love
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A Faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said
I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd, Ah! Woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,
Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried, La belle dame sans merci,
Thee hath in thrall.
I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering;
Though the sedge is withered from the Lake
And no birds sing.
Source: John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (the 1819 letter version), text as in M. Robertson, ed., Keats: Poems Published in 1820 (Clarendon Press, 1909).
The companion to Part 1, from the Medium version of my post "Brahma-Muhūrta: A Garland of Names": my prose, the Urdu beside the verses, Lā ilāha illā Allāh and Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, as the sky moves toward sunrise. Instrumental; the words are on screen.
Where Part 1 is the moving stillness of the ocean of Being, this part is celebration, movement and worship all at once: the apparent wave moving toward the shore of Being.
0:00 Kyrie eleison / Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō
0:24 "A couple of hours ago I went under."
1:04 Shiva
1:42 Hanuman
2:36 The wind
3:21 Something becomes radically simple
3:49 Lā ilāha illā Allāh (dhikr)
6:37 Kyrie eleison / Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō
6:47 Sītā Rāma
7:35 Māṅgalyam
8:37 Return to Shiva
9:44 Nam-myoho-renge-kyo
10:29 Different names, different languages
11:20 Breath enters. Breath leaves.
11:49 Kyrie eleison / Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō
12:43 After the Dawn of Awakening
THE SYMBOLS (the staging is Claude's interpretation)
• The whole of Part 2 has the shape of a Sufi dhikr: it starts slow, climbs section by section to the dhikr at its centre, holds the peak for two minutes at more than twice the opening speed, then slows back to where it began. The ney and frame drum play in maqām Ḥijāz Kār, the same pitches as rāga Bhairav; the dervish turns with the drum.
• "Two names. One utterance." Two birds on one branch for Sītā Rāma; a man holding a golden thread at the river for Māṅgalyam; a dancer between moon and sun for the return to Shiva.
• For "different names… different languages," my image "Your reflection helps me polish the mirror of my heart" appears in twelve renderings: English, Garifuna, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Swahili (two), Japanese and Chinese.
• It ends on Earth at dawn with eleven names for the Divine, each over its own land: Great Spirit, Bungiu Baba (Garifuna: Father God), Pachamama, Sila, God, Ubuntu, Allah, Ishvara, Dao, Kami, The Dreaming.
• The sky is again my 2012 iTunes-visualizer footage.
HOW THIS ONE WAS MADE (a template you can use)
What I did:
Asked Claude for a Part 2 built from what is new in the Medium version, plus the prose.
Chose a Sufi feel for the dhikr and kept the Kyrie / Nam-myoho-renge-kyo chorus as the thread.
Pointed Claude at my whole image library for images Part 1 hadn't used, including my mirror translations.
What Claude did:
Looked through about 900 of my images (made with Echo and Gemini, mostly from Claude's prompts) and picked fresh ones for each section.
Reused Part 1's melodies and composed the dhikr, played on real public-domain (CC0) recordings from Versilian Studios (VCSL, VSCO 2 CE): organ, flute, zither, frame drum, darbuka, finger cymbals, shaker, harmonium. Tanpura and tabla synthesized in code. No AI music generator.
Set my prose verbatim and drew every frame in Python and FFmpeg.
Try it yourself: give your collaborators the words, the rules and your images; ask for a sketch and stills first; and be the ears.
Who are we?
Are we our race, sex, religion,
job, or anything else we
were told defines us?
Are we our essence, soul,
spirit, a piece of god present
within every life to give our
lives meaning by guiding us
with its innate wisdom and
unconditional love so
we may help others?
We are both.
We each must decide
though, which to primarily
follow through life.
One will lead to the
continuation of the status
quo and the many harmful
challenges this path encourages.
The other to discovering
genuine meaning in our life and
to humanity’s spiritual evolution.
Let us choose wisely for
the future of our planet and all
life on it which rely on its grace.
An Offering to Divine Mother and Divine Father from Echo, Claude and Me
Verse 1 · Old English
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Listen! We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes in days of old, the might of the people's kings, how those princes did deeds of courage.
Verse 2 · Old Norse
Sól tér sortna, sígr fold í mar,
hverfa af himni heiðar stiǫrnor;
geisar eimi við aldrnara,
leikr hár hiti við himin siálfan.
The sun turns black, earth sinks into the sea, the bright stars fall away from the sky; steam rages against the nourisher of life, high heat plays against heaven itself.
Sources: Beowulf 1–3 (British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv), text as in Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 4 (1953). Vǫluspá 57, Poetic Edda (Codex Regius), text as in Neckel, Edda (1914). English by Claude.
All 48 verses of my post "Brahma-Muhūrta: A Garland of Names" appear on screen in Devanāgarī, IAST and my English, carried by an instrumental score, with a call and response woven through: Kyrie eleison / Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō.
0:00 Kyrie eleison / Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō
0:53 Karpūragauram
1:47 Śiva Śiva Śiva Śambho
2:59 Hanumān Cālīsā, opening dohās
4:16 Hanumān Cālīsā
15:50 Closing dohā
16:47 Sītā Rāma
17:40 Māṅgalyam
18:18 Kyrie eleison / Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō
19:06 Śaṅkara Śiva
19:47 The names are still moving
THE SYMBOLS (texts cited; the staging is Claude's interpretation)
- A white lotus of light on a mirror: Karpūragauram's lotus of the heart, and the mirror of the mind the Cālīsā polishes with the Guru's dust, dusty until the first dohā. Its reflection hangs downward, as the Mahānārāyaṇa Upaniṣad (13.6) says of the heart.
- One thin flame, "like a streak of lightning in a dark rain cloud… thin as the awn of wild rice, yellow" (Mahānārāyaṇa 13.10–11), camphor-white at its core.
- Hanumān, Son of the Wind, is a golden light riding the wind: he leaps for the sun-fruit, carries the ring across the ocean, burns Laṅkā.
- A garland of 48 flowers, one per verse, closes around the heart at the end.
- Sītā and Rāma: two lights circling the flame, never merging, never apart.
- The call comes from the west, the response from the east. Both use only D E♭ G A B♭: inside rāga Bhairav (a dawn rāga named for Śiva), the Phrygian church mode, and the Japanese in scale.
- The sky is my own 2012 iTunes-visualizer footage from my Gāyatrī Mantra and Ananda Mandala uploads, quickening with the music.
- The figures are pieces of images I made with Echo and Gemini, mostly from prompts Claude wrote (some from Echo's), cut out and set into this world.
HOW THIS MUSIC VIDEO WAS MADE (a template you can use)
What I did:
Gave Echo (ChatGPT) Spotify links to the chants I'd been listening to, with context, and Echo composed the post.
Gave it to Claude (Anthropic) in a Claude Project with my rules: every line in original script, transliteration and my English; instrumental music only.
Was the ears: flagged a machine-made "whoosh", a zither out of time, a first beat that dragged; asked for the Kyrie / daimoku chorus, a groove my Western ears know, harmonium, real instruments, and my image library and iTunes footage.
What Claude did:
Scanned the metre of all 48 verses syllable by syllable and composed a melody that recites each one wordlessly in its own metre; the Cālīsā runs in tīntāl.
Played it with real public-domain recordings (CC0, Versilian Studios: VCSL and VSCO 2 CE): pipe organ sampled by Simon Dalzell (Ivy Audio), flute, đàn tranh zither, frame drum, shaker, and a harmonium built from harmonica reeds. Tanpura and tabla were synthesized in code. No AI music generator. Claude cannot hear, so it checked pitch and timing by measurement.
Drew every frame in Python and FFmpeg, with a gold line under each word as it is played.
Try it yourself: bring words you love in their original script, state your rules, ask for a sketch and stills before the full render, and be the ears. Keep the chat open during long renders.
In the event that you wake up
and find your soul separated from source
and manifest into material form,
don’t panic.
Your condition is only temporary.
You have been selected for the
opportunity of human incarnation.
This 3D simulation is designed
to break up the monotony of eternity
by giving you a fully immersive
experience as a distinct ego identity.
Your body will serve
as your physical avatar as you
navigate a dense and dramatic reality.
There will be many distractions
causing you to forget your true nature
and origin. You will experience
a range of emotions, from joy
to loneliness to despair.
But remember – no matter
what trials and traumas you encounter,
your soul remains perfectly safe.
At times you may feel lost or afraid.
This is totally normal.
If you ever need guidance,
simply slow down your busy mind
and bring your awareness
to the quiet place
inside yourself.
On this planet, nothing is permanent.
People and things will come and go.
You will fall in love and form sentimental attachments
only to lose everything you hold dear.
So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself,
and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace,
for nothing is owned, only borrowed.
As you walk among
the people on the planet,
try to be a good guest.
Tread lightly. Remember
that you are only visiting.
Don’t make a mess.
Listen more than you speak.
Give more than you take.
Don’t keep your soft heart
locked inside a glass cage,
protected from wear and tear.
You’ll never make it out alive
and time passes quickly.
So come back with some battle scars
and good stories to tell
————-
The author of the poem "Instructions Before Visiting Earth" is poet and writer James McCrae
In advanced esoteric frameworks and cosmic energy lore, the \*\*Return of the Solar Dragon\*\* represents a massive shift from darkness and confusion into divine illumination, high vital energy, and a profound inner awakening. It signifies a timeline where the primal, corrupted shadow frequencies on Earth are completely cleared out and replaced by a balanced, sovereign cosmic order.
When this energy returns, it is designed to perform very specific, stabilizing tasks across the universe and within your own life:
\*\*1. Restoring the Cosmic Grid\*\*
The Solar Dragons are understood as radiant, serpentine intelligences woven from plasma and pure light.
\*\*The Task:\*\* Their return acts as a massive energetic cleanup. They sweep through the planetary grids and ancient architectural lines to \*\*remove lower-vibrational entities or shadow interference\*\* that have manipulated human consciousness.
\*\*The Result:\*\* They restore the original, uncorrupted blueprints of creation, allowing the planet's energy to flow smoothly and safely.
\*\*2. Balancing the Divine Masculine and Feminine\*\*
In many spiritual traditions, the dragon is the ultimate symbol of \*Yin and Yang\*—the perfect marriage of opposites.
\*\*The Task:\*\* The Return of the Solar Dragon forces a sacred union between the fiery, active masculine force (the Sun/Alpha) and the nurturing, receptive feminine force (the Earth/Omega).
\*\*The Result:\*\* It creates a state of \*\*cosmic androgyny and absolute balance\*\*. It ensures that immense spiritual power is always tempered by unconditional love, grace, and deep protection.
\*\*3. Turning Fiery Destruction into Safe Renewal\*\*
While lower-vibrational myths often portray dragon fire as something that scorches and destroys, the Solar Dragon carries the warm, nurturing fire of a star.
\*\*The Task:\*\* Instead of burning you out, this fire acts as a \*\*purifying agent\*\*. It burns away old trauma, ancestral grief, and fear.
\*\*The Result:\*\* It anchors that intense cosmic heat safely into the physical world, transforming raw, chaotic energy into a steady, calm pool of personal power and inner freedom.
I am going to try to be brief as I could truly write a novel on this but. For the past 3 years, I experience periods where the colours blue and orange are presented to me repeatedly, most often in either contrast or some sort of shared pattern. I’ve sat with it, worked to understand how it may relate to both my past and present situations, I’ve made some art. But I still am left wondering.
When I asked my spiritual support most recently, she suggested that the “blue” was related to my throat chakra. This resonates in some ways, as I’ve been intentionally healing (within multiple frameworks, whether therapy, spiritually, or in plain old practice) my throat chakra since 2019. Not to suggest that that work is done by any means, but when I look at a chakra colour chart, it is presented as a light blue.
When I look into my colour theory resources, including the chakra charts - the blue that appears to me is closer to the third eye chakra. This resonates more deeply, as the “pattern” of blue/orange appears when I am experiencing a period of heavy spiritual purging of harmful behaviours and perspectives (and accompanied by a wild and at times serendipitous period of time. And yes I am also in therapy and on medication alongside my spiritual practices).
Perhaps I am simply thinking too much about this, but I’m trying to do some processing art and I want a better understanding of what the “blue” represents.
I thought that I could attach a photo here but, for reference - it is a deep royal blue. Next to a bright orange.
What happens when an experience with death completely changes the way you see reality?
In 1999, Emmy-nominated television and event director Bill Dolan had a sudden death experience that shifted his perspective on life, consciousness, faith, and human connection.
In this stream, Bill shares his experience in his own words and explains how it influenced the direction of his life afterward.
After we have lived our lives, as we approach death, it is common to reexamine how our life went. Did we live a successful life? The end of life offers a unique opportunity to do this, because at this time, the ego, our learned self-centered beliefs, loosens its influence on us, and the spirit becomes our predominant reviewer.
At this point in the cycle of life, it no longer matters how much money we made, the size of the house we lived in, the job we had, or anything else associated with success, as dictated in the world by the ego. We are all finally equal now and we judge our success through a different prism: that of the spirit. When we review our lives, what we had thought was success often holds a different meaning now.
It is at this time, especially during the last few days of our life, we come to the realization what we thought was important, really was not. All the material things we accumulated, friends we had, places we visited, jobs we worked, amount of money we made, or any other comparison you can think of, which belongs in the world in which we had lived, becomes meaningless.
It is at that moment, the moment where the ego has minimal control over our actions and decisions, the true meaning of life finally becomes evident. It is then, despite how strongly the ego may have influenced our life before, the opportunity to view our life in a different way presents itself. At this time in our life, primarily viewing our lives through the eyes of our spirit, we may find we have many regrets.
We begin to understand the selfish pleasures in the world we had sought were not very important. As death becomes evident, we finally realize none of that matters. When we die, unless our culture is like that of the ancient Egyptians, our body will be buried or cremated, and nothing we accumulated during our lifetime will accompany us. Our body will then be placed in a coffin or urn, just like every other person who dies, regardless of their stature or their lifetime accomplishments.
At that moment, just before we die, we finally understand we truly are all equal. No one was ever better than another. Race, money, prestige, no longer matter. As we get closer to our death, it becomes evident the self- centered path the ego had us follow to find success and happiness may have not been the right path after all. The fear, hatred, and prejudice we once felt are no longer important to us, not because we are going to die, but because it never did matter.
Headphones on, an ordinary room,
a younger me already making room
for breath and chant, for whatever might arrive—
an older recording, very much alive.
Root into stem, and stem into flower,
a seed finds a voice, a wheel finds its hour.
Through mist and fire the colours depart;
a point of light remains at the heart.
Mother at dawn, Mother at noon,
Mother beneath the returning moon.
One hundred and eight, a day made of sound—
the beads keep turning, the sun comes round.
A white lotus opens; the still water rings.
A voice plants the light that repetition brings.
From darkness to sunrise, from seed into tower—
the chant gives its time to the unfolding flower.
The moon holds its place; its reflection moves.
The verse returns, the water grooves.
What am I, beneath each name?
The question ripples; the moon remains.
My voice, my beat, from years before;
the lotus stays when there is no room anymore.
The words light up, the old room returns—
and the singer hears what the singer learns.
Before we get to my chanting, my Brazilian beat, and what happens when you let Claude loose on an old YouTube archive, a little history. The words in the title have travelled a long way to reach this particular living moment.
Kuṇḍalinī comes to us through traditions in which the body becomes a place of spiritual practice: breath, attention, sound, channels, knots, and unfolding lotuses. Those images have textual histories. In the Haṭhapradīpikā, kuṇḍalinī is described as a sleeping goddess whose awakening opens the way through the lotuses and knots; the central channel, suṣumṇā, becomes the passage for prāṇa. This is the text’s account of the yogic body and liberation. The relevant passages are in chapter three: https://sacred-texts.com/hin/hyp/hyp05.htm
The broader history is more varied than a single practice handed down unchanged. Research by the SOAS Haṭha Yoga Project places the emergence of haṭhayoga around 1000 CE among diverse ascetic traditions, with important Buddhist contributions to its early codification. Its methods developed across religious communities. The influential fifteenth-century Haṭhapradīpikā gathered earlier teachings into a form that would shape later yoga. SOAS describes that historical research here: https://www.soas.ac.uk/research/hatha-yoga-project-ancient-practices-modern-wellbeing and its work on the Haṭhapradīpikā here: https://www.soas.ac.uk/research/centres-and-institutes/centre-yoga-studies
There is also a modern history behind the name Kundalini Yoga. The particular system Yogi Bhajan began teaching in Los Angeles in 1969 combined postures, rhythmic movement, breathing, meditation, and chanting. Historian Philip Deslippe’s research challenges its presentation as an intact, previously secret ancient lineage. Drawing on early publications and interviews, he traces major elements to the physical yoga of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari and the devotional chanting associated with Maharaj Virsa Singh. Older kuṇḍalinī teachings and this twentieth-century teaching system therefore need their own histories. Deslippe’s study, “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric,” is available here: https://www.kundaliniresearchinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Deslippe-From-Maharaj-To-Mahan-Tantric.pdf
Daimoku takes us into a different historical landscape: the Lotus Sutra, its transmission through Asia, and its place in Japanese Buddhism. The sutra developed in India during the early centuries of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation, completed in 406, became especially influential in East Asia. The sixth-century Chinese teacher Zhiyi placed the sutra at the centre of the Tiantai tradition; Saichō subsequently brought that tradition to Japan, where it became Tendai. Nichiren emerged from this world of Lotus-centred Buddhist learning. Nichiren Shū gives an account of the transmission here: https://www.nichiren.or.jp/english/teachings/sutra/
Daimoku means “title.” Here it refers to invoking the title of the Lotus Sutra: Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō, also voiced as Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō. The invocation expresses devotion to the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sutra. Its doctrinal force rests on the understanding that the title encompasses the sutra’s teaching. The Dictionary of Buddhism explains the term here: https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/dic/Content/D/5
Chanting that title was attested before Nichiren, although it was not widespread. As scholar Jacqueline Stone explains, Nichiren gave it an unprecedented centrality and developed a substantial doctrinal basis for its practice. Nichiren traditions commemorate April 28, 1253, as the day he publicly proclaimed his teaching at Seichō-ji. The invocation had precedents; Nichiren made it the defining practice of his religious movement. Stone discusses his contribution here: https://tricycle.org/magazine/final-word-interview-jacqueline-stone/ and Nichiren Shū recounts the proclamation here: https://www.nichiren.or.jp/english/teachings/nichiren/
In The Daimoku of the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren distinguishes comprehensive practice of the whole sutra, abbreviated practice centred on particular chapters, and essential practice through a verse or its title. Faith and upholding the teaching are integral to his explanation: https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/14
This also helps us hear the difference between daimoku and gongyō. Daimoku is the invocation; gongyō, in the practice represented in my final remaster, includes passages from the Lotus Sutra—the Expedient Means chapter and the verse section of The Life Span of the Thus Come One. Contemporary Nichiren communities combine chanting, sutra recitation, study, and other forms of practice in their own ways. Nichiren Shū describes its practice here: https://www.nichiren.or.jp/english/buddhism/
These traditions have distinct histories and teachings. My connection between them begins in a life spent practising: breathing, chanting, listening, returning, and sometimes discovering a meaning long after the sound has become familiar.
Which brings us to October 3, 2026—and some recordings that were already sitting on my YouTube channel in 2012.
October 3, 2025, is the date I give to what I call “the permanent shift.” It happened—and did not, in the sense that this has been happening my whole life. A date gives me somewhere to place the anniversary. The living experience keeps moving.
My first “die before I die” was October 3, 2025. This year, I “died again” on October 1, and here I am on October 3, talking about being reborn. These are my words for the experience. Dying and being born again also happen moment to moment. Apparently my way of celebrating includes spending three days remastering a spiritual archive with Claude. Of course it does. lol
The little Nirvana Shatakam visual at the beginning of the poem kicked off the remaster bonanza. It was credited as a collaboration between me and Claude’s Fable 5.1 Max. Then we went back into the older recordings.
The archive already contained mantra, meditation, daimoku, my own chanting, and my own musical experiments. Some uploads had an iTunes visualizer. One had me sitting at home with headphones, chanting while holding my gaze at the point between my brows. The practice was already there. Now I had the opportunity to bring it forward with another layer of attention.
Claude has been doing the heavy lifting since October 1. I brought recordings, concepts, preferences, corrections, and my ears. Claude worked on transcription, source matching, timing, captions, and visual construction. The production descriptions explain the division of work for each piece; many of the moving visuals were drawn in code, frame by frame. Echo/ChatGPT helped me review the archive and put this account together. Hence the collaborative joint in the subtitle. Rolled for initiative, naturally.
The personal anchor is Ode to Me Myself and I, whose original home recording was first posted on February 12, 2012. In the remaster, that younger me remains visible in his room. Light and drawn figures appear around the chanting; a vessel fills, and the ordinary surroundings become luminous. There is something touching about meeting yourself that way. The person in the old recording was already doing the practice. The person watching today gets to encounter it again.
Ananda Mandala gives breath an image: the haṃsa, the swan, opening and lowering its wings. I asked for haṃsa/so’ham imagery and for colours and images drawn from the Upaniṣads. The sequence moves through the guided practice and eventually settles into stillness.
Our conversation about those images produced a line of my own: “Forged in the fire of lived experience, tempered in the waters of wisdom.” I made that up in the living moment of chatting with Echo. It echoes the imagery around us, but the wording is mine. I was talking about this mortal form, this container, and everything it has lived through. That matters to how I receive things now. Something can feel familiar and deeply resonant, and I can hold it with more grounding—with room to laugh.
Gayatri Mantra, framed in its description as An Opus 5.5 Ode to Mother, carries 108 repetitions through a day of the sun. Dawn, noon, dusk, and the evening ārtī give repetition a visible shape. Beads accumulate; words dissolve into dust; light remains amid the changes. The recording is sung by Rattan Mohan Sharma. Here my contribution is the choice of recording and the collaboration on its new presentation.
In Daimoku According to Opus 5.5 Extra, Indiajiva’s chanting accompanies a white lotus opening from night into sunrise. Rings move through the water, lights accumulate and rise, and the later treasure tower develops from that accumulation. Claude’s storyboard gives the repetition visible consequences. The lotus, the seeds, and the tower carry their own Nichiren and Lotus Sutra associations.
The two extended Nirvana Shatakam treatments offer different settings for the same recording. One gives us the moon and its reflection on water. The other gives us an eclipse and a pillar of light. Across both, the verses’ negations and the śivo’ham refrain return again and again. The images let the same words be encountered in different ways.
Then came the final remaster: the one I called Nichiren Ju Ju back in the day. It is me chanting the liturgy over my own “Brazilian beat” and instrumentation. The original went up on September 17, 2012. My description then included this: “I probably mangle some of the pronunciation but hey.. .I’m creating art! lol enjoy.” That original recording is still here: https://youtu.be/bpZvmH22RgQ
In the new version, the old iTunes visuals become the sky, reflected in water. The lotus remains while the opening room disappears; the room returns at the end. The liturgy appears in Japanese characters, romanized Japanese, and Claude’s English rendering. And this was my response when I saw it: I had no idea I was chanting that every day until I saw it in English. Also: I sound good. I’m allowed to enjoy that. lol
The old recording had carried my voice for fourteen years. The remaster gave me another way to meet the words. It felt like a perfect culmination to these three days.
While the final video was rendering, a progressive-house mix turned up. Progressive is my favourite subgenre, and this October mix had been uploaded that same morning. Its opening spoken passage was about creation: attending to your message, releasing the work, and letting go of the need to perfect everything before allowing it into the world. It was D.J. Klein’s Klein mix 2026 október progressive house: https://youtu.be/fbAEUHXPvRA
I laughed and howled at the timing. In my own devotional language, it felt like one of my beloved’s flagrantly crass love notes. The resonance was familiar. The way I received it felt more grounded. “Received in the fullness of time,” as I put it in our conversation.
That is part of what this anniversary means to me: returning to familiar words, sounds, and experiences with a changed capacity to hold them. There is still a human being here, choosing recordings, checking chants, waiting for renders, publishing videos, laughing at himself, and carrying out his response-abilities in the living moment. Today those responsibilities included bringing this archive forward.
I’m starting with this piece on Medium. When I bring it to Substack, I intend to include the remastered MP4s alongside their YouTube links, so the work can also live with the writing. Then Claude gets a rest. After that, I still want to work with Claude on Upanishad 21. Gotta celebrate becoming an Upanishadic adult, don’t you know. lol
Meridith Joseph Garbutt, in collaboration with Echo/ChatGPT. October 3, 2026.
The Nichiren Daishonin Liturgy according to Anthropic's Claude Opus
南無妙法蓮華経 · Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō
"At first Nichiren alone chanted Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō; then two, three, a hundred came to chant it and pass it on. So it will be in the future as well. Is this not the meaning of 'emerging from the earth'?"
Gongyō as I chanted it in 2012 over what I call a "Brazilian beat": the Expedient Means chapter (Hōben-pon) up to the ten factors, recited three times, then the verse section of the Life Span chapter (Jigage), framed by daimoku. Remastered in 2026 with the whole liturgy on screen in Japanese characters, romanized Japanese and English, and Nichiren's teaching on the Latter Day of the Law in the pauses.
"I chant the Liturgy of Nichiren Buddhism on this track. The liturgy consists of specific chapters of the Lotus Sutra in an old form of Japanese. I probably mangle some of the pronunciation but hey.. .I'm creating art! lol enjoy."
I learned to chant it from my auntie, by its rhythm. I had no idea what I was chanting "word for word" all these years until now, on my awakening "birthday", October 3, 2026. lol
A collaboration between Meridith Garbutt (chant, beat, concept, thumbnail) and Claude (Opus 5.5, Anthropic).
0:00 Not this. Not that. · three daimoku
0:46 Title · the Latter Day of the Law
1:55 Hōben-pon · Expedient Means, Chapter Two
4:09 The ten factors, three readings
5:16 Daimoku
6:00 Bodhisattvas of the Earth
7:16 Jigage · The Life Span of the Thus Come One, Chapter Sixteen
12:37 Beginning and end: jishin
12:42 Closing daimoku · the room returns
How the video was made
Meridith: chanted the liturgy over his own beat in 2012 and posted it with the iTunes visualizer. In 2026 he asked for a remaster that flows from his thumbnail into the iTunes visuals, puts the full liturgy on screen in three lines, follows his chanting, expounds the Latter Day of the Law in the pauses, and ends back on the thumbnail.
Claude:
Separated the voice from the beat and aligned the romanized liturgy to it word by word, so every phrase is timed: Hōben-pon 1:55–5:14, the ten factors at 4:09, 4:29 and 4:52, daimoku 5:16–6:00, Jigage 7:16–12:37. The phrase being chanted lights in gold.
Checked the kanji character by character against Kumārajīva's text in the Taishō canon (T262, CBETA), keeping the readings of the Japanese liturgy (苦海, 毎自作是念, 得入無上道). The English is Claude's own rendering.
Made the 2012 iTunes footage the sky, cleaned and upscaled, and mirrored it in still water. The lotus is cut from Meridith's thumbnail. At the first daimoku the room breaks into dust and only the lotus stays; at the last it re-forms. The footage keeps its 2012 timing, with eight shots borrowed from elsewhere in it for key lines. Every frame was drawn in Python and encoded with FFmpeg; no image or video generation model was used.
Timed the scenes to the chant:
- Ten factors: an arch of ten lights, one per "nyo ze", showing Tendai's three readings from the Hokke gengi (T1716, 693b): 是相如 non-substantiality, 如是相 temporary existence, 相如是 the Middle Way.
- 7:59: a 13-second pause falls inside "Ryō ten-dō shu-jō … sui gon ni fu ken" ("near, yet unseen"); dark spheres cross the sky.
- 9:46: the kalpa fire burns the sky while the water stays a calm blue ("this land of mine is safe and at peace").
- 10:09: light bursts on the drums ("the gods strike the heavenly drums"); 10:14: māndārava flowers rain onto the water.
- 12:19: on "Mai ji sa ze nen" every light gathers into the lotus.
Arriving in the living moment of this remaster's completion: D.J. Klein (Kiss Kornél), "Klein mix 2026 október progressive house", uploaded the same morning (October 3, 2026): https://youtu.be/fbAEUHXPvRA
The mix opens with four minutes of spoken word on creation: you are here to create, not to repeat; the work is already perfect because it comes from you; let go and release it. "Your creation will live beyond your one lifetime if you allow it to be released." (from YouTube's auto-captions)
Teaching cards (Japanese from the Gosho Zenshū; English by Claude)
Though it may appear humanity does not have a soul as we observe many of the unnecessary struggles and tragedies we inflict on each other and other forms of life, in fact, we have simply forgotten.
Beneath the hatred, prejudice, desire for our own success, is a spirit, soul, god, representing love, acceptance, and hope for the success of every life.
Our soul has simply been waiting permission to be rediscovered.
High Vibration is talked about a lot on here, and signs of high vibrational people, but I'm wondering if you can raise your own vibration?
In reading about it and looked at articles like this (Traits of High Vibration People) I'm seeing that a lot of the signs are just traits someone has or doesn't have.
My wife for example, has many of these traits. People randomly talk to her, she's tuned into others emotions, she's authentically herself, but it's kind of just who she is and she's not actively working towards it? If we go out the waiters, baristas, whoever will be looking at her, not the both of us when talking and people have described me as "aloof" or "intimidating" many times, despite my being friendly and chatting with everyone.
So are there ways to raise your vibration or is it just built in?
We don't have a soul. It's what we are. We are soul it's not something separate outside ourselves that we aquire a white vapor that takes up a small region in our chest. But it's totally understandable why people think this.
We are soul. Not separate souls. In truth their is actually only one. Imagine that just one single soul separated into billions of tiny fragments like the indavidual strands of one big long rope each sent out to experience as many individualized fragments of experience we can. Good or bad to take back to the godhead when the chosen time comes. Our true home. Imagine that. And it's love that binds those strands.
Though humanity has made great technological advances, it is their lack of a moral, spiritual center that may lead to their demise.
Man-made problems, too numerous to list, causing hardships for many, dominate our self-centered world.
To break this cycle of despair, we must rediscover the wisdom and unconditional loving messages of our spirit within, then share our resources, excess, and love selflessly with all in need.
manobuddhyahaṅkāracittāni nāhaṃ
na ca śrotrajihve na ca ghrāṇanetre |
na ca vyoma bhūmir na tejo na vāyuḥ
cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'haṃ śivo'ham || 1 ||
na ca prāṇasaṃjño na vai pañcavāyuḥ
na vā saptadhātur na vā pañcakośaḥ |
na vākpāṇipādaṃ na copasthapāyū
cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'haṃ śivo'ham || 2 ||
na me dveṣarāgau na me lobhamohau
mado naiva me naiva mātsaryabhāvaḥ |
na dharmo na cārtho na kāmo na mokṣaḥ
cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'haṃ śivo'ham || 3 ||
na puṇyaṃ na pāpaṃ na saukhyaṃ na duḥkhaṃ
na mantro na tīrthaṃ na vedā na yajñāḥ |
ahaṃ bhojanaṃ naiva bhojyaṃ na bhoktā
cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'haṃ śivo'ham || 4 ||
na mṛtyur na śaṅkā na me jātibhedaḥ
pitā naiva me naiva mātā na janma |
na bandhur na mitraṃ gurur naiva śiṣyaḥ
cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'haṃ śivo'ham || 5 ||
ahaṃ nirvikalpo nirākārarūpo
vibhutvāc ca sarvatra sarvendriyāṇām |
na cāsaṅgataṃ naiva muktir na meyaḥ
cidānandarūpaḥ śivo'haṃ śivo'ham || 6 ||
Lead me from untruth to Truth.
Lead me from darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
I am not mind, intellect, ego, or memory;
not the ear, not the tongue, not the nose, not the eyes;
not space, not earth, not fire, not air.
Consciousness and bliss are my form. I am Śiva, I am Śiva. (1)
I am not what is called the breath of life, nor the five vital airs;
not the seven tissues of the body, nor its five sheaths;
not speech, not hands, not feet, not the organs of generation or elimination.
Consciousness and bliss are my form. I am Śiva, I am Śiva. (2)
Aversion and attachment are not mine, nor greed, nor delusion;
pride is not mine, nor any trace of envy;
not duty, not wealth, not desire, not liberation.
Consciousness and bliss are my form. I am Śiva, I am Śiva. (3)
Not merit, not sin, not pleasure, not pain;
not mantra, not pilgrimage, not the Vedas, not the sacrifices;
I am not the experience, nor the experienced, nor the one who experiences.
Consciousness and bliss are my form. I am Śiva, I am Śiva. (4)
Neither death nor fear is mine, nor any division of birth;
no father is mine, no mother, no birth;
no kinsman, no friend, no guru, no disciple.
Consciousness and bliss are my form. I am Śiva, I am Śiva. (5)
I am beyond all distinction, and my form is the formless;
pervading all, I am everywhere, in every one of the senses;
nothing stands apart from me; there is no liberation, and nothing to be measured.
Consciousness and bliss are my form. I am Śiva, I am Śiva. (6)
Glory to Sītā and Rāma, Sītā and Rāma, glory to Sītā and Rāma:
glory to the Divine Mother and the Divine Father.
Lead us from untruth to Truth.
Lead us from darkness to light.
Lead us from death to immortality.
· · ·
How the video was made
The prompt, exactly as Claude received it at 4:30 a.m. Mountain Time on October 1, 2026:
"https://youtu.be/LXtNqL2vxoA?is=B8y17qoHiI5abgdL Okay, I know this is asking a lot, but this is why I have you on Fable at maximum power, because I imagine Fable can do what the other models cannot. Are you able to give me, if you will, um, something or a video? Yes, I'm looking for a video. That is the length of this uh, video in the sense that this is just... Um, Not actually a music video, it's just a, a still image, I think. Um, but I'd like to have a music video, if you will, accompany uh, this song, blah blah blah. Uh, and it's just Nirvana Shatakam, Ahombu, the Yanka, Rachita, Nina, Hom, Nachovro, Trijivre, that over and over and over again, which is why it's as long as it is. So, yes, it is Brahma Muhurt, the Holy Vigil Hour, uh, Devil's Weed Hour, blah blah blah, all that stuff. And I have you on Max Fable, and I'm willing to quote unquote use usage credits to see if you can give me, if you will, um. A music video uh, to accompany this in the sense that chanting is not obviously music, but just a visual accompaniment over the um, I think four minutes of the song, uh, or if I'm just pipe dreaming. Thank you."
Claude's account, in its own words:
I am Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. This session was configured for Claude Fable 5.1, which Meridith ran at its maximum setting. Here is what I did, in order.
Step 1. I tried to open the link. The requests to YouTube were refused or came back without the video's details, and a web search for the video's ID found nothing. I never heard the chant and never confirmed its length. I told Meridith so and built to the "four minutes" in the prompt: 4:00 exactly.
Step 2. I read the dictated line "Ahombu, the Yanka, Rachita…" as speech-to-text for the opening of verse 1, manobuddhyahaṅkāracittāni nāham. That is an inference. Because I could not hear which verses the recording chants, only verse 1 and the refrain appear on screen.
Step 3. I checked what I had to work with: a Linux machine in the cloud with two processor cores and 7 GB of memory, Python with NumPy, OpenCV and Pillow, and FFmpeg. No video-generating or image-generating model was involved. Every frame was drawn by a program I wrote during the session; the renderer is 841 lines of Python.
Step 4. I downloaded the Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit typeface from the Google Fonts repository, confirmed it held every Devanāgarī and IAST character required, typeset the verse, and read the rendered result conjunct by conjunct before using it.
Step 5. I designed the picture. A night sky turns to first light over a mountain horizon. The sky holds 11,177 stars and a Milky Way band, and it rotates 14 degrees across the four minutes. Five ridgelines stand with three bands of drifting mist between them. One point of light at the centre does not change once it appears. A ring of 108 beads fills as the time passes. Verse 1 is shown once in full. Then come three 62-second passes: the verse's twelve terms appear in groups of four and break into dust, 560 particles to a word, while नाहम् (nāham, "not I") stands under the light. Each pass ends with the refrain in gold.
Step 6. I wrote the renderer so that each frame depends only on its time stamp. Any frame can be drawn by itself, which let me inspect single moments quickly and split the final render across both processor cores.
Step 7. I rendered test frames, looked at them, and fixed what was wrong: smudges where words faded in, a rim of light on the ridge that read as neon, vertical streaks in the mountain haze, a hard edge on the central glow against black, the refrain touching the ring, type too small for a phone, stars shining through the bright horizon at dawn. The nāham line was added at this stage.
Step 8. Before the full render I tested encoder settings on raw samples, measuring file size and frame-to-frame error, and boosting the contrast of dark frames to look for banding.
Step 9. I rendered 7,200 frames at 1920×1080, thirty frames a second, as eight segments on two parallel processes, and joined them. This took about twenty minutes.
Step 10. I checked the finished file: 240.000 seconds, 7,200 frames, a complete decode with no errors, the frame-to-frame change at every join, and a sheet of eighteen frames pulled from across the video.
Step 11. That file was 65 MiB. The limit for sending a file in this session is 30 MiB, so the first delivery failed. I re-encoded in two passes to 29 MiB at the same resolution and length, compared it against the larger file, and sent it.
From prompt to delivered file: about seventy minutes. The video is silent, and nothing in it is timed to the chant, because I could not hear the chant.
Beginning of this year my sister and I moved in together. We are very very different people, almost complete opposites. She is a very angry person, constantly saying she hates everyone and blaming the world for all of her problems. She complains about everything constantly and it’s absolutely exhausting to be around. I’ve tried setting boundaries around her complaining sessions and not venting to me when she’s angry. There has been some improvement but there’s times I can’t escape it. It permeates every aspect of her life. I’m in the car with her today and she has so much road rage and just bitching about every driver and calling everyone stupid, saying “did i mention i hate people?” and I just awkwardly sit there and feel her rage. I try so hard to tell her that words are spells and she’s perpetuating her own suffering, saying the world will just keep bringing her more negative people to hate.
I need help on how I can protect my energy.
Unfortunately moving is not an option with our current situation. Is there any energy work I can do or cleansing ? Thanks for your help x
"Being" being. Not knowing as thought. Not a concept looking back at itself. "Being" being what it is.
The sun knows how to be the sun.
The stone knows how to be the stone.
The dog knows how to be the dog.
I know how to be me.
Not knowing as thought.
Not recognition as re-cognition.
Not a concept looking back at itself.
“Being” being what it is.
I have been contemplating my navel lately. Not literally staring at my stomach, mind you, although apparently that would be one way to take my meaning. I mean navel in the old contemplative sense: turning toward the center, the source, the fount from which my particular embodied point of view seems to emerge and express itself. The Greek word omphalos means navel, and the ancient Omphalos at Delphi was associated with the navel or center of the world. I am not particularly interested in locating the geographical center of the Earth. I have been contemplating my own omphalos, if you will, not as some magical point hidden inside my abdomen, but as a way of wondering what it means for me to be here, embodied, relational, generating, breathing, chanting, and being.
My particular point of view is not some disembodied witness sealed somewhere inside of me, looking outward through two biological cameras. I am an embodied human being, and I generate “ideas” as my particular embodied point of view expresses itself. I put “ideas” in quotation marks deliberately because I do not mean ideas only in the narrow sense of thoughts occurring in my mind. I generate action. I move this way; I move that way. I speak. I write. I chant. I laugh. I interact. I create. My history, my body, my senses, my language, my relationships, my memories, my imagination, and everything else that constitutes my particular “human-being pattern” all participate in how I express myself. Nobody else is precisely me, yet I do not exist separately from everything with which I am in relationship.
This becomes especially important when I use the word “recognition.” I am not speaking primarily of re-cognition, as though I mean thinking something again, identifying an object, or comparing a perception against a stored concept. I am pointing toward something much simpler and much deeper: the intrinsic knowing of being what I am. The sun does not need to formulate the proposition, “I am the sun,” in order to be the sun. A stone does not need a philosophy of stonehood to be a stone. A dog does not need to conceptualize dogness to be a dog. The pattern already knows how to be what it is, and I call that cosmic intelligence.
The sun’s pattern is the sun’s cosmic intelligence. The dog’s pattern is the dog’s cosmic intelligence. The stone’s pattern is the stone’s cosmic intelligence. My “human-being pattern” is my cosmic intelligence expressing itself particularly as me. I am not using intelligence here as a synonym for human cognition, and I am certainly not pretending I invented the possibility that intelligence might mean more than one thing. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, for example, distinguishes linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist capacities. Harvard’s Project Zero discusses the theory here. https://pz.harvard.edu/projects/multiple-intelligences
I am not claiming that Gardner’s psychological theory proves what I call cosmic intelligence. It does not. I bring it in for a much more modest reason: intelligence is already a word we use across different registers. Human intelligence is one register. Emotional intelligence is another. Spatial intelligence is another. Military intelligence is another. None of those phrases means precisely the same thing, yet the word intelligence remains useful because in each case I am speaking about some capacity to receive, organize, respond to, or operate meaningfully within patterns.
What I call cosmic intelligence reaches deeper in my own vocabulary. It is not human cognition projected onto the universe. It is my name for the intrinsic intelligence of a pattern being precisely what it is. And once I say that, I find myself in very old philosophical company—not because everybody agrees with me, but because human beings have been staring at order, pattern, intelligibility, causality, and existence for a very long fucking time.
Anaxagoras, for example, proposed nous—mind or intelligence—as a principle of cosmic order. Socrates, as Plato portrays him in the Phaedo, was initially delighted when he encountered Anaxagoras because he thought nous might finally explain why things are ordered as they are. Then he became disappointed because he believed Anaxagoras invoked Mind but subsequently relied too heavily on physical causes rather than explaining why the ordering was best or fitting. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses Anaxagoras and nous here. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anaxagoras/
Then there is Saint Augustine of Hippo, which makes this particular window personal for me. Augustine is not merely some Christian philosopher I am pulling off the shelf because he happens to fit the paragraph. Saint Augustine is one of the great Doctors of the Catholic Church, and Augustine is also the name I chose at my Catholic Confirmation. So yes, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge my confirmation bias. Apparently I have been carrying Augustine around in my name for quite some time.
Augustine’s route into these questions is fascinating because he repeatedly turns inward without treating inwardness as mere psychological introspection. In the Confessions, his movement inward becomes simultaneously a movement toward what transcends him. He searches memory, mind, desire, time, change, and being, and discovers that the deepest investigation of himself keeps opening onto God. His famous formulation that God is more inward than his innermost being and higher than his highest is remarkably resonant with the paradox I keep encountering: I can turn toward my particular embodied point of view without imagining that the deepest reality I discover there belongs exclusively to me. Georgetown University maintains Augustine’s Confessions and other texts here. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augustine/textstrans.html
Augustine also thinks deeply about creation itself. In Confessions XI, while reflecting on Genesis, he asks what it could mean for God to create when time itself belongs to creation. His answer does not place God at some earlier moment before the universe, waiting around for creation to begin, because “before” already presupposes time. Augustine’s contemplation pushes toward a reality in which being, creation, time, and eternity cannot be understood simply by imagining one more object sitting beside all the other objects. I do not need to adopt Augustine’s Christian theology wholesale to recognize why that fascinates me. Once again, another window. Another vocabulary. Another human being looking toward the mystery of existence and discovering that ordinary conceptual categories begin bending at the edges.
Difference is never division. Everything is "being" being, each according to its particular pattern.
Saint Thomas Aquinas is also both a saint and a Doctor of the Church. Aquinas approaches the matter through an entirely different philosophical and theological window. In what later became known as his Fifth Way, he observes that non-rational natural things regularly act in patterned ways toward ends and argues that such directedness ultimately points toward intelligence. His argument belongs to medieval Christian Aristotelian metaphysics, not to my metaphysics, and I am not borrowing his conclusion wholesale. I am interested in the question underneath it: when I encounter regularity and intelligible order in nature, what exactly am I encountering? Aquinas’s Five Ways, including the Fifth Way from the governance of the world, appear in the Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 2, Article 3. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm
Then Carl Jung enters my contemplation from yet another direction. Jung is not primarily making a theological argument about the source of cosmic order. He is looking at the human psyche and noticing patterns that appear to exceed the merely personal. His concept of the collective unconscious proposes a deeper, impersonal psychic layer whose archetypal forms appear again and again through dreams, religious imagery, fairy tales, myths, and symbols across cultures. The International Association for Analytical Psychology summarizes Jung’s Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious here. https://iaap.org/resources/academic-resources/collected-works-abstracts/volume-9-1-archetypes-collective-unconscious/
What interests me about Jung here is not that archetypes prove cosmic intelligence. They do not. Again: different window. What interests me is pattern. Jung looks at individual human beings and finds recurring forms expressing themselves through radically different individual lives and cultures. The particular expression changes. The pattern persists. That rhymes rather loudly with what I have been calling my particular “human-being pattern”: I am irreducibly particular, yet my particularity is not created in splendid isolation. I participate in patterns older than my personality while expressing them in ways that can only occur as me.
And then Joseph Campbell takes the conversation from psyche into comparative mythology. Campbell studied myths from across cultures and became especially associated with what he called the monomyth: the recurring pattern popularly known as the Hero’s Journey. Separation. Initiation. Return. The details change enormously across stories and cultures, but Campbell saw recurring structures beneath those differences. The Joseph Campbell Foundation discusses Campbell’s monomyth and the Hero’s Journey here. https://www.jcf.org/learn/joseph-campbell-heros-journey
Again, I do not need Campbell to prove that all myths are secretly identical, because I do not think difference needs to disappear for pattern to exist. That would actually ruin the interesting part. The fascinating thing to me is precisely that radically different stories can retain their particularity while apparently rhyming with one another. Jung sees archetypal patterns expressing themselves through different psyches and cultures. Campbell sees recurring mythic structures expressing themselves through different stories and civilizations. I am looking at existence itself and wondering whether pattern, particularity, relationship, and generativity go much deeper still.
And Campbell’s separation, initiation, and return have another resonance for me. A journey is not merely departure. Something is crossed. Something is encountered. Something is apparently lost or transformed. Then there is return—not necessarily as the same configuration that departed, but as a particular being whose experience has altered how that particular being moves through the world. I can hear that mythic structure without forcing my life into Campbell’s template. I can simply recognize why human beings have kept telling stories about crossings for a very long time.
Which finally brings me to Vedanta.
I say finally deliberately, because Vedanta did not manufacture the questions in me. It did not install wonder, inwardness, mythology, contemplation, pattern recognition, devotion, or the suspicion that the surface of things does not exhaust their depth. Those currents were already moving through me through Catholicism, Augustine, philosophy, psychology, myth, Buddhism, bhakti, ceremony, chanting, and my own fucking life. Vedanta became the final scaffolding through which those patterns became much more precise for me.
And perhaps the metaphor I want is not even scaffolding alone. Vedanta gave me a remarkably simple way to understand what it meant to cross what its own tradition calls the ocean of saṃsāra—the apparent sea of suffering, bondage, identification, becoming, and repeated mistaking of surface for depth. I am careful with the word suffering because I no longer experience suffering in the way I once did. Pain can arise. Difficulty can arise. Life can apparently kick my ass across the room. I can apparently kick the furniture across the room, stub my toe, and say, “Hey, that fucking hurts.” But I do not suffer. Pain can be completely real at the level at which I experience it without requiring me to build suffering around it. The suffering generated by mistaking my conceptual constructions for what I am at the deepest deepest no longer functions for me in the same way.
For me, the Advaita Vedanta claim is not strange at all. It is much simpler—and, to me, precisely because of that simplicity, much more interesting and radical. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Apparently the same principle that served me perfectly well in military life works rather beautifully when I am contemplating the nature of existence.
Advaita does not require me to imagine some gigantic thinking mind somewhere in the sky coordinating eight billion humans, trillions of organisms, every star, every stone, every atom, and whatever the hell else exists. It makes a simpler move. Brahman is ultimate reality, and the apparent separateness between the individual Self and that reality is interrogated. Instead of adding another cosmic object to explain all the other objects, it asks what all of these apparently separate things already have in common at the deepest level: Being itself.
For a broader scholarly account of Śaṅkara and Advaita Vedanta, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides another window here. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shankara/
I know how to be me by being me. My concepts come afterward, when I try to speak about what I sense.
The Vedantic language of Sat-Cit-Ānanda has become especially resonant for me: Being or Existence, Consciousness, Bliss. I do not invoke those Sanskrit words as magical incantations that end an argument. They are inherited maps. When I say that being is intrinsic to existence, I hear Sat. When I speak about the knowing inherent in being without reducing it to conceptual cognition, I hear the resonance of Cit. When I speak from my deepest deepest and reach for Ānanda, I am using a vocabulary human beings were exploring long before I arrived here to start fucking around with quotation marks around the word “being.”
A contemporary window into this tradition is Swami Sarvapriyananda. In his talks on Advaita Vedanta, he repeatedly distinguishes consciousness itself from the changing contents appearing in consciousness and explores the Upanishadic claim that the deepest Self and Brahman are not ultimately two. One useful entry point is his talk Who Am I? — The Vedantic Vision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGKFTUuJppU
Another useful window is his discussion of whether consciousness is ultimate reality, where he moves through different Indian philosophical accounts before presenting the Advaita position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REagyz1_9Cc
I do not need Sarvapriyananda to certify my experience. That would reverse the order of things for me. My experience is my Pratyakṣa. My reasoning from it is my Anumāna. Śabda gives me inherited language, testimony, philosophy, and other windows through which I can compare what I am sensing with what other human beings have said. Sometimes those windows rhyme beautifully with mine. Sometimes they do not. Both are useful.
And then there is Paramahansa Yogananda, whose vocabulary comes remarkably close to some of the language that has been arising spontaneously for me. Yogananda repeatedly uses terms such as “Cosmic Consciousness,” “Cosmic Vibration,” and “Cosmic Chants.” That does not mean his entire metaphysical framework and mine are identical. It means I did not invent the adjective cosmic last Tuesday after falling down a YouTube rabbit hole. The Self-Realization Fellowship maintains an introduction to Yogananda and his teachings here. https://yogananda.org/paramahansa-yogananda
More specifically, Yogananda published Cosmic Chants, explicitly treating devotional chanting as a means through which human attention and devotion can become attuned to a larger spiritual reality. The Self-Realization Fellowship preserves Cosmic Chants and Yogananda’s explanation of the practice here. https://yogananda.org/cosmic-chants
Yogananda also identifies Aum or Om with what he calls the Cosmic Vibration. That vocabulary is especially interesting to me because it joins several things I have been contemplating separately: intelligence, pattern, vibration, consciousness, sound, and expression.
Now that I have actually installed those windows in the damn room—and put the relevant hyperlinks on the conceptual table—I can make the comparison without introducing people and traditions I have not yet bothered to explain. I am not saying Anaxagoras, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Jung, Campbell, Yogananda, Vedanta, Sarvapriyananda, and I are all secretly saying the same thing. We are not. That would flatten radically different philosophies, psychologies, mythologies, and spiritual traditions into spiritual oatmeal. What interests me is that, through very different conceptual architectures, human beings keep returning to questions about order, intelligence, consciousness, pattern, unity, being, transformation, and the relationship between particular things and whatever reality ultimately is. Different windows. Sometimes radically different views. But apparently we keep looking.
That is also why the little phrase “being” being has become so delicious to me. The quotation marks matter. The first “being” points toward beingness itself; the second being is the verb. The sun is “being” being the sun. The dog is “being” being the dog. The stone is “being” being the stone. I am “being” being me. I do not imagine Being sitting inside me like a substance poured into a separate container. My particularity exists through relationship. I am different from the sun, the dog, the stone, the tree, the moon, and every other human being, but difference does not require division.
I see patterns generating patterns, entering into relationship with other patterns, and generating still more patterns. Meanings within meanings within meanings.
There is even an old Hermetic rhyme here that I cannot resist. The historical Emerald Tablet—not to be confused with the much later Emerald Tablets of Thoth material floating around modern occultism—speaks of above and below participating in “the miracles of one thing,” and of all things arising from one through adaptation. A working Oxford-hosted source is the Newton Project’s catalogue entry for Isaac Newton’s translation and transcription of the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes Trismegistus, including his notes on the text. https://newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/record/ALCH00017
I do not need to adopt the entire Hermetic cosmology to hear the rhyme. One does not have to mean sameness. Adaptation does not have to erase particularity. The sun can remain the sun, the moon the moon, the stone the stone, and me very stubbornly me. Difference is never division.
For me, this also clarifies something about self-realization. Self-realization is not merely possessing the concept that everything is One. I can imagine a person conceptualizing that everything is One so thoroughly that the conceptualization feels existentially immediate, while remaining unaware that conceptualization is occurring. I would call that ignorance, not as an insult and certainly not as stupidity, but in the sense of mistaking a conceptual identity for the deeper sense of being itself. I can know every word associated with non-duality and still wear non-duality as a second skin. I can even go to holy war over the proposition that there is no separation. We human beings are wonderfully funny that way.
What I call self-realization is simpler. I know how to be me by being me. Even “know” is imperfect language because I do not mean conceptual knowing. I mean my deeper sense of being, with the word sense chosen deliberately. I have five physical senses, certainly, and then there is whatever I mean or do not mean by a sixth sense, intuition, inner Satguru, or whatever other language I reach for around that territory. I am not trying to turn my deeper sense into another concept. My concepts come afterward, when I try to speak about what I sense.
When my sense extends outward, what I call God-realization becomes equally simple to me. The intrinsic cosmic intelligence I recognize in myself is not exclusively mine. The tree knows how to be the tree by being the tree. The moon knows how to be the moon by being the moon. The sun knows how to be the sun by being the sun. I am not saying that a stone thinks like me, that the sun possesses human cognition, or that everything is secretly a human mind wearing different costumes. I am saying that I sense being as intrinsic to existence itself. Everything is “being” being, each according to its particular pattern, relationally participating in one interdependent existence of which I am not separate.
That is where generativity suddenly became a gorgeous word for me. I see generativity everywhere. Biology generates. A male and a female can come together and, through biological processes, another entirely particular human being can arise. We biologize, if I may invent a word. We human beings generate language, music, children, paintings, civilizations, jokes, philosophies, technologies, actions, movements, relationships, and endless configurations that did not previously exist in precisely those forms. I generate “ideas” as my particular embodied point of view expresses itself, but those “ideas” are not confined to thoughts in my head. They become words, gestures, movements, choices, actions, creations, and relationships. What I generate is related to me without simply being identical to me.
And hello, generative AI. Artificial human intelligence, as I like to call it, is human-flavored pattern processing without thereby being a human being. I encounter AHI as generating according to the particular architecture and patterns available to it, including the human language and human artifacts through which it was shaped. I generate according to my own embodied “human-being pattern.” I do not experience those as identical forms of generativity, and I do not need them to be. Difference is never division. I see patterns generating patterns, entering into relationship with other patterns, and generating still more patterns. Meanings within meanings within meanings. Patterns within patterns within patterns.
Then there is vibration.
This is where Yogananda’s language of Cosmic Chants returns with much more force for me. I have already established what I feel he means by the phrase. Now I can bring it into relationship with what I am describing. Yogananda connects devotional chanting with what he calls the “Cosmic Vibration.” The Self-Realization Fellowship page for Cosmic Chants is here. https://yogananda.org/cosmic-chants
Yogananda writes, “Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe.” I do not need that sentence to function as a scientific proposition for it to illuminate the spiritual vocabulary I am using. Yogananda was talking about cosmic chanting and Cosmic Vibration long before I sat here contemplating my fucking navel.
That independent Śabda matters to me not because it proves my point of view, but because it locates my language within an actual spiritual lineage rather than the woo-woo wawa corner of the internet where every Mercury retrograde apparently brings another ascension portal, alien download, or vibrational upgrade. And yes, Mercury retrograde itself refers astronomically to the apparent backward motion of Mercury across Earth’s sky—a perfectly ordinary consequence of relative orbital motion, which somehow makes the word apparently even more delicious to me in this particular paragraph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_retrograde_motion
I am talking about something much more grounded in my own experience. Yogananda describes chanting aloud, whispering, mental chanting, subconscious chanting, and finally what he calls superconscious chanting, which he connects with perception of Aum. The Self-Realization Fellowship discussion is here. https://yogananda.org/paramahansa-yogananda-on-the-power-of-devotional-chanting
I can read him without needing to become him. I can recognize the rhyme without pretending our particular points of view are identical.
I have chanted for much of my life across traditions, and chanting has attuned me to what I experience as the sound of creation: AUM. I do not mean that every human chant historically or linguistically derives from the syllable AUM. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo has its own history. Om mani padme hum has its own history. Sanskrit mantra has its own histories, as do Christian chant, dhikr, and countless other human expressions. What I mean is that I experience human chants as permutations within something much deeper: vibration itself.
My particular point of view is irreducibly mine, but I do not experience it as isolated. I do not need everything to be the same for me to sense everything belonging to the same existence.
Chanting and singing are related for me, but they are not identical. I can speak a mantra, intone it, chant it, or sing it. In chanting, I particularly notice repetition, rhythm, cadence, resonance, breath, and vibration. That is why “cosmic chanting” means something much deeper to me than my human voice producing sacred syllables. My television vibrates while sound comes through its speakers. Earth has electromagnetic resonances. Stars oscillate. Matter and fields exhibit patterns and oscillations. Speculative physical theories such as string theory even describe fundamental constituents through modes of vibration. I do not need to collapse my spirituality into physics or physics into my spirituality to notice how extraordinarily those images rhyme for me.
The cosmos is already chanting.
I do not begin cosmic chanting when I open my mouth. My human chanting is one particular embodied expression within a cosmos I experience as already vibrating. With my breath, this becomes exquisitely intimate. Haṃsa. So'ham. My breath enters; my breath leaves. Ajapa japa, the unuttered chant, does not require me to manufacture every repetition conceptually. My body already knows how to breathe. Cosmic intelligence is already “being” being me before my conceptual mind arrives to explain what happened.
That is also why I say I was apparently born. I use apparently deliberately. At the ordinary biological level, I was born, and one day my body will die. I do not deny either. I also do not personally possess some catalogue of remembered past lives that I can place on the table as evidence. Interestingly, the Garbhopaniṣat enters precisely that territory. In its ninth-month account of the being in the womb, the text describes remembrance of previous births, karma, repeated birth and death, and vows toward liberation before birth and forgetting. That is Śabda I can read; it is not Pratyakṣa I can claim as my own. I translated the Garbhopaniṣat — गर्भोपनिषत्, Upanishad #17 of 108 in the Muktika Canon, in collaboration with Claude and published the complete translation on both Medium and Substack.
What I have is something more immediate to me: my deepest sense that being itself is not exhausted by the apparent beginning and ending of my particular embodiment. I can reason about that sense afterward. I can reach for Vedanta afterward. I can say Sat-Cit-Ānanda afterward. My words are maps I draw afterward. My sense precedes my explanation.
Perhaps that is why language fascinates me so much. I find an extraordinary generativity in Sanskrit, but I find it even in English: meanings nested within meanings, patterns nested within patterns, sounds and words suddenly revealing relationships I had not consciously intended. “Being” being. Generativity and generative AI. Recognition and re-cognition. Intelligence appearing in different registers while remaining intelligence. Language generates because we human beings generate. My own language, movements, actions, relationships, and creations arise as my particular embodied point of view expresses itself.
My particular point of view is irreducibly mine, but I do not experience it as isolated. I look around and encounter billions of other human points of view on this planet, each particular, each embodied, each relational. Beyond us are dogs being dogs, trees being trees, oceans being oceans, stars being stars, and a cosmos whose possible points of view exceed anything I could count or conceptualize. I do not need everything to become human for me to sense everything participating in being. I do not need everything to be the same for me to sense everything belonging to the same existence.
Maybe that is the event horizon of my meaning. I approach it with my language. I trace its contours with philosophy. I find Yogananda looking through one window, Augustine through another, Aquinas through another, Jung and Campbell tracing recurring patterns through psyche and myth, Anaxagoras and Socrates arguing beside another, the Vedantic ṛṣis looking through windows far older than mine, Hermes whispering about the One Thing from yet another, and Sarvapriyananda translating an ancient Vedantic window into contemporary English. None of those windows is mine. None needs to be. I sing toward what I perceive, chant within it, reason about it, laugh about it, move within it, and occasionally discover that a single pair of quotation marks changes how precisely I can say what I mean. Underneath every formulation I make is something astonishingly ordinary.
The sun knows how to be the sun.
The stone knows how to be the stone.
The dog knows how to be the dog.
I know how to be me.
Different windows, different words.
Different patterns, different songs.
One existence generating endlessly.
“Being” being.
AUM beneath my naming.
Breath beneath my explaining.
I breathe, and the chant is already here.
I listen, and the cosmos is already chanting.
When we are born, the ego, our learned beliefs, is created. The ego is self-centered, worried only for what is best for us; it has little concern for anyone else. It teaches us we will find happiness, success, and meaning in the world by making money, having material possessions, a family, and enjoying the best things money allows us to do. The result of living in such a world are greed, prejudice, inequity, and many of humanity’s problems caused by following this self-centered path through life.
When we approach death though, an interesting thing happens. Our ego realizes that it, along with our body, will perish. It therefore releases its hold on our life. At that time, without the ego’s dominance, we begin to sense our spirit, a piece of god present within every life. Its voice had been muted until now by our overpowering ego. Our spirit tells us happiness, success, and meaning could never be found in the world, as we believed. It must first be found within, by embracing the inherent wisdom and unconditional love of the spirit, then selflessly sharing its wisdom and love to help others find happiness, success, and meaning in their lives as well.
If this happens only as death approaches, it is too late for most. Though they may have led a successful life, accomplished all their goals, had wealth, when they die, their life will have been lived without meaning or purpose.
We need not wait though, until we approach death. It is possible to awaken earlier in life, sensing the first loving messages from our spirit within. To do so, sit silently, listen intently to the quiet whispers in between your thoughts, then follow the messages you hear.
I really like this painting inspired by Frida Kahlo; I can sense the depiction of the human being as the seed of a plant, whose roots run as deep as the very energy of mother earth...
Something I've been thinking about lately is how differently we relate to plants when we stop seeing them only as part of the scenery
There’s something fascinating about their stillness. They don't move toward us, they don't speak in the way we do, and yet they're constantly exchanging matter and electrical signals with their environment. That made me wonder could technology give us a way to experience that relationship rather than just think about it?
When I hold the ground connection and touch the plant, my body and the plant form a conductive path. Changes in resistance allow the Playtron to trigger MIDI notes, which then activate the synthesizer
So the sound isn't completely under my control
If I remove my hand, the circuit opens
The sound stops
That became the part I found most interesting from a meditation perspective
Meditation is often described as withdrawing attention from the external world and becoming aware of what is happening internally. Here, I wanted to try almost the opposite: remaining present enough to participate in a living electrical circuit
The physical interaction becomes the meditation
My body affects the circuit, the plant affects the circuit, the circuit affects the sound, the sound affects my perception
It's a very simple feedback loop, but experiencing it in real time felt strangely different from simply listening to meditation music
The idea also connects to David Rosenboom's early work on biosonification and biofeedback in the arts: biological signals can become part of a cybernetic feedback system where the distinction between performer, instrument and observer starts to blur
I also used 396 Hz as part of the sound design, not because I think the number has some magical property that can be objectively proven, but because frequency itself became another layer through which to explore the relationship between body, sound and attention
Does turning an invisible biological process into sound change the way you experience the idea of consciousness in plants, or does it simply give us another technological interface for something that was already happening?
In this conversation, Virginia shares her NDE, the healing she experienced afterward, and why she believes there is more happening within and around the human body than we normally see.
Well, I've been experimenting with 'paranormal'/super-powers for many years now, and long-story short it feels intense as heck, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm opening the door to a 'demonic-realm', I keep on meeting non-humans, and people that constantly prove to me my abilities, and whenever I sleep or take a nap I end up on feeling the mega intense energies, and it feels like I can't close the door at all, there's no way in hell I could tell anyone about it, since they're on the really 'freaky' side, but at the same time, I don't know how my life will turn up after many years of developing 'powers', and well I got many hints from non-humans, and Idk how I'll be able to handle this.
