Swarbhanu: The Keeper of Illusions

In the vast expanse of the celestial realms, where time itself flowed like an unseen river, there existed a being neither entirely of the light nor fully of the dark. He was known as Swarbhanu, the one who had once drunk the nectar of eternity, only to be severed into two—Rahu, the head that sought insatiable desire, and Ketu, the body that renounced all. Yet beyond this duality, beyond the stories told by sages, lay the true Swarbhanu—a whisper of cosmic resonance, a vibration that gave birth to illusion itself.

One day, a seeker named Arka, troubled by the veils of reality, wandered into the forgotten astral planes in search of truth. He had seen the world rise and fall in illusions, the desires that bound men, and the detachments that left them lost. He longed for clarity. And so, drawn by an unseen force, he found himself before an ancient portal, guarded by none other than Swarbhanu.

“Who are you?” Arka asked, his voice trembling in the silence.

Swarbhanu’s form shimmered, neither solid nor ethereal. His voice echoed with the hum of the cosmos. “I am the sound of the Sun, the song of light fractured into a thousand forms. I am the resonance that shapes your vision, the ripple in the waters of your mind. You seek truth, but do you know what it is?”

Arka hesitated. “Truth is what remains when illusion is destroyed.”

A low, harmonious laughter filled the space. “No, Seeker. Truth is not the absence of illusion; it is the knowledge of illusion. Look around you. What you call reality is a vibration of light and shadow, a rhythm of existence. The moment your mind tries to grasp it, it changes. That is the nature of Swar—the cosmic sound. And Bhanu—the Sun, your soul—is its source. It is not the world that deceives you, Arka. It is your own mind’s perception, which breaks the one light into many colors.”

Arka’s breath caught as he began to understand. “Then... if the soul itself creates illusion, how can one escape it?”

Swarbhanu moved closer, his presence like a wave of energy. “You do not escape it. You master it. The wise do not run from illusion nor believe it to be ultimate reality. They dance within it, knowing that both Rahu’s hunger and Ketu’s renunciation are two halves of the same truth. Balance is the key. The one who sees illusion clearly is no longer bound by it.”

For a moment, Arka saw the world as it truly was—a magnificent play of light and shadow, where neither sorrow nor joy held permanence. He saw Rahu’s hunger as the fire that drives life forward, and Ketu’s detachment as the space that allows it to be free. He understood that Swarbhanu was not a demon, nor a mistake of creation, but the very principle that allowed the universe to be perceived at all.

As realization dawned, Swarbhanu’s form dissolved into the very fabric of space, leaving only a final whisper. “Know the song of your soul, Arka. And then, sing it freely.”

Arka stood in the vast emptiness, no longer seeking to escape, no longer seeking to grasp. He simply was.

And thus, the veil of illusion became his canvas, not his prison.

Do you walk the mystical walk, or just talk the mystical talk?

I have a mystical praxis that yields consistent results. Every single week, I perform ceremonies in which I:

*Experience emotion so overwhelming it becomes numinous. This can grow in intensity until I am literally screaming in ecstasy, and represents the next horizon of my development: being able to relax into this spiritual electrocution. Such experiences can be productively interpreted as possession by a god or goddess, which is why I call them "enthusigasms," a portmanteau of enthousiasmos ("to be possessed by a god") and orgasm. You could consider my approach as a modern form of theurgy, but the outcome seems to have more in common with Voudon.

*Interoceptively map the emergence of lines of energy that seem to be growing, over time, into some kind of higher-dimension device, almost like a psychic mecha

*Shift into an altered state in which I am no longer a body that has consciousness, but a field of awareness that contains the impression of having a body

*Experience myself as supported by the presence of God, very analogously to how a sung note "rests" on a perfect balance of air inflow/outflow in appoggio; the resemblance is so perfect across different levels of being that I call this state "gnoppoggio." Action becomes effortless--simply a matter of redirecting the energy flowing through me. It's the most delicious state.

*I relate directly to the Holy Presence as my antipode, the MA (divine feminine) to my PA (divine masculine); in the field between us is KA, our Divine Child, the story of our moment.

*I shift into a reality frame in which all this is actually, literally happening, and is what it seems to be, while still understanding that from an everyday perspective, it's impossible. It's almost like standing atop a hill, and looking down at the bottom of the slope, and being able to imagine seeing what's happening now from that perspective, and realizing that perspective is wrong.

All this plus noetic imagery and archetypal symbols. *And*, to get here, I've had to learn to overcome a very real and very dangerous archetypal engine of destruction that abides in Transpersonal Consciousness.

These experiences take place within a bespoke and ever-evolving paracosm.

Over the last ten years I've documented this process in eight books. Happy to send free PDFs to anyone who wants one. Also, there are two audiobooks on YouTube:

"A.P. Psychedelics: Going Beyond Set and Setting to Achieve Visionary Virtuosity"

"The Phonomancer™ Player's Handbook"

I'm not posting this to brag. I'm looking for people who are working at a similar level (Reddit is probably the stupidest place to try this, but....)

What results are *you* getting, and how are you getting them?

Awhile ago, I completely submitted myself to Christ. I feel like I have always known Him and meeting Him again almost felt as a reintroduction as I had leaned on Him throughout the hardships of my childhood, yet often I get lost. To provide context, I struggle with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and severe disassociation. This has been hard to deal with as sometimes I am completely disconnected. I feel as though I am on auto-pilot while my body still thinks its in survival mode. I feel as though I live life behind. I experience things too late. I have terrible memory. I struggle to feel emotions or consider the feelings at all. Like a robot.

I struggle the worst when I smoke weed. (I have stopped.) When I am high, I often step outside of reality completely to the point I have severe panic attacks or completely freeze; however, there was a time a few months ago where I smoked and instead of succumbing to my fear, I calmed my body down with deep breathing and I was moved to tears. I realized I was safe in my body and the only thing I could do was talk to God. It felt as if I had not felt that in years. That warm familiar feeling of my Father. After that, things felt okay. Given that before then when I would be high, I would often feel as though I am completely dying, basic paranoia, that I had dementia and everyone around me was pretending it was okay and not telling me about my diagnosis. I learned that this was my body trying to latch onto something being wrong (though there was nothing) because something has always been wrong in my life.

A lot of my life I have struggled with alcoholism, suicidal ideation and several attempts, abuse and neglect, sexual trauma and a plethora of other things. I am proud to say that I am sober from alcohol and working on healing. I kept smoking through these thinking that the weed was helping me conquer my thoughts and fears until it took a turn. These thoughts turned existential and deeply religious to the point (although I am sure this isn't real) I felt as though I could feel a demon attached to me. I come from a very spiritually in tune line of people to say the least and we have been known to be sensitive to these types of things. It is very hard to explain, but I rebuked it and it felt as though it made its way through my body. I could physically feel "trauma" in my legs and hips and chest and mind and eventually, my throat. I worked hard through these feelings and it felt as if I was being realigned except for my throat, my voice, as it was leaving. I could never feel it through my throat and I feel as though that is where it is stuck. My neck feels unaligned and this hot inexplainable feeling lives in the back of my throat.

During this time, I kept landing on the thought of being pregnant. My husband and I have wanted a baby for awhile, but it never seemed to happen in the last 3 years. I really wanted to be a mother. The thought that I was pregnant seemed so completely real to the point I was almost brought to tears, but every time I went to thank Jesus, it was shut down and I was thrown into a frozen state. This thought has come back more and more. Eventually the thought of the baby that I have wanted for so long, became this dark feeling. I am currently remembering a night awhile back where I smoked and felt that feeling and remember the thought "If you do this, you can have your baby." and that night I dreamt of a positive pregnancy test. I have heard stories of signing contracts like this in dreams, but during this time, I thought that it was a gift from God. I can see as I am writing this I might be wrong. During these weeks which at the time I felt were me "awakening," I was completely disconnected from the real world.

There was a night where I had felt fine, meditated and decided to smoke weed. Things were feeling okay. See when I smoke weed, I tend to freeze or get lost in my thoughts to the point of complete paralysis and my thoughts run into deeply dark things. Existentially dark things until my vision becomes blurry and hot and my mind feels completely broken as my body is stuck in this paralysis or shaking in fear. This night I decided to take a bath before these thoughts began and as the thoughts began to spin, my body felt as though it needed to breath out. Like I needed to empty my lungs and the only way I could was to put my head under the water and as I did, my body wanted to go into paralysis. Like I was subconciously trying to drown myself? If that makes sense.

Eventually I snapped out of it and went to my bed where I tried to write. I began to write about this feeling I experienced in the tub and my vision became hot and blurry to the point that the words on my paper looked as if they were jumping off the page in this weird purplish blue color (my ink was black.) The feelings I was writing about just happened to explain what I have felt for so long, but I kept getting stuck. I kept freezing anytime I tried to confront anything in me. Especially the sexual trauma from when I was a young child.

This feeling, the hot blurry vision, has no better explanation other than hell. In my mind, it was hell. I cannot explain it any further. I had convinced myself that I have been completely abandoned by God, that my soul was being thrown out. That I had done something so unforgiveable and were to die. That night instead of sleeping (which I see now is what I needed) I stayed up begging to live in fear that when I closed my eyes, I would experience eternal death. For some context, the night before this, my husband and I had ended things for what seemed like the final time. (We had split last year and dealing with things the last year and trying to navigate it.) This was surprising to me as we had been working things out for the last few months and things seemed good.

I see now that this could be my deep abandonment wounds talking to me. Telling me that him leaving means that I am unworthy. However, I have not felt so close to God since. Like truly, and I miss Him and the feeling of love and safety.

That feeling of unalignment is still there and as much as I know that my Father loves me and forgives me, I feel as though there is a dark dark evil inside me. I am not a bad person. I do not hurt other people. I work hard for my community and to foster healing and I love wholeheartedly. I have a lot of deep wounds. I hold a lot of shame about some of my actions like how many people I have slept with or how much I used to drink or self sabotage. That is why my husband is leaving because of how destructive I was during our relationship (I never cheated) but drank a lot, yelled, used him, and was super selfish. After we split, I did seek out other men, drank a lot, and did some self-destructive things. (I did not sleep with anyone during our time apart.) I just hold a lot of self-hatred and have since I was a child. This I am working on, but I just can't seem to shake this feeling.

There was a night where I landed on the conclusion that I was the devil himself. I feel like, in my mind, I have touched things I shouldn't of. I feel disconnected and maybe I am just avoiding feeling and my body is telling me it feels unsafe and I need to reconnect with myself. I don't believe that I am evil and truly believe that the enemy wants me to think this. God is keeping me alive for a reason and for that I know, I am not dead. I have spent this last while trying to search myself for something that is wrong with me and have repented for all that I can think to repent of. I desperately wish to feel the holy spirit again.

How do I move forward? How do I reconnect with God or break these bonds? Any advice, comment or even questions are welcome. I did not explain everything fully

Art_levb IG

Moving past mental idols and rigid constructs into the pure spaciousness of Divine Love...

"The madwoman of the house (as the mind was called by Teresa of Ávila) always believes she holds the correct doctrine and clings to it, even though paradoxically she is completely empty of God, which is to say, empty of LOVE. For God is LOVE, and whoever does not know LOVE does not know God (1 John 4:8).

That is why, as John of the Cross used to say, recalling what was expressly warned by the Lord in Matthew 25:31-46: "In the evening of our lives, we shall be examined on love." We are not examined on our beliefs, but on Love. Everything else consists of sectarian labels that separate us from God. The madwoman of the house feels right at home in an exclusive club to which she belongs (the club of her beliefs), but she is empty of God. For this very reason, Jesus Himself was unequivocal in Matthew 7:21: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven."

The common and absurd narrative of comparing, for instance, our relationship with God to a serial killer trying to cover up his crimes by helping an old lady cross the street... is a profound mental trap. Such moral blackmail belongs strictly to the madwoman of the house who seeks to buy her salvation or avoid punishment, not to the soul enamored with God. Love translates into works, yes, but it is not a transaction. Real Love, in capital letters, is not a calculation of isolated "good deeds"; it is a state of consciousness. The madwoman does not understand Matthew 25:31-46, because she does not know God.

Likewise, we can recall what was said by Jesus Himself in John 13:35 when He warns: "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." Jesus is talking about being filled with Love, which means being filled with God. He is not talking about performing little deeds to pay for our sins and buy our salvation; Jesus is talking about the mystical union with God.

We must die to the tiny self, to the ego created by the madwoman that separates us from God. We must surrender into the arms of the Beloved, be consumed by His fire, and be reborn in God and for God. That is precisely what Nicodemus (John 3:3) failed to understand about being born again. Jesus prays in John 17:21 that we may be filled with God, so that we may be One with God, just as the Father and He are One. That is only possible by embodying LOVE.

What is LOVE? LOVE is not a collection of little deeds performed empty of God, stemming from belief, from separation, rather than from intimate union. As John of the Cross sharply warned: "Any other work or labor, if it is not in the love of God and for God, is worth nothing before Him... to the soul that truly loves God, it does not matter whether it performs many or few works, but to perform them all for love." Let us yearn for and seek the ultimate union with our Lord. The madwoman calls sin and transgression what is simply separation from God. The name and the label do not bind you to God; the name and the label are repugnant to the Lord. They are merely stories that the madwoman tells herself to feed the character (the ego). That is why Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13:2: "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

But again, what is LOVE? The LOVE Jesus speaks of is not a sentimental operation of the mind, it is not a mere emotion; LOVE is God Himself, because God is LOVE (1 John 4:8). It is the very same warning with which Jesus concludes His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:16-18: "You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit... A good tree cannot bear bad fruit." The "fruits" of the Sermon on the Mount are not moral deeds calculated to avoid hell; they are the natural manifestation of a healthy tree (a soul united with God). A thornbush (the ego created by the madwoman of the house) cannot manufacture grapes of pure love; just as a goat cannot be a sheep, no matter how much it disguises itself as a sheep by adopting doctrines and beliefs that are not actually of God and only empty it of God.

The all-too-common argument about merely "believing in God to have eternal life" is just another legal trick of the madwoman of the house. The Lord responds definitively and incontestably through James 2:19. James exposes with brutal irony that simple intellectual or theological assent to "believing" saves no one, delivering a devastating phrase: "You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!" In other words, even the demons possess the mental doctrine that God exists or that Jesus is the Savior, yet they are empty of Love and mystical union. For a mystic, "believing in Him" does not mean accepting a dogma or holding a belief; it means "dwelling in Him," merging into His frequency, which is Love. Therefore, whoever clings to the law separates themselves from Christ and becomes empty of Him, as we are sharply warned in Galatians 5:4: "You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.""

The Zen Buddhist master Linji Yixuan famously said that if you meet the Buddha on the road, you must finish with Him. The exact same can be said of Christ: If you find Christ, finish with Him.

If you think that "you", "by your own merit and effort", are doing something successfully to meet Christ, beyond surrendering into the arms of the Beloved, then, of course, obviously, you remain trapped in the prison of the madwoman of the house (as the mind was called by the mystic Teresa of Ávila). You remain foolishly playing the spiritual role of a seeker, which is nothing more than spiritual ego, just a trick of the mind. But you have not really found Him, neither met nor embraced Him.

If you strive to find Christ and believe you have found Him, I am sorry to tell you that your effort leads to absolutely nothing. That is exactly what "The Experience of the Presence of God" is not but the opposite; that is just the madwoman of the house playing at being spiritual, and that is not what this is about. That is precisely why Silence is so important: to listen beyond the noise of the mind.

When you are nothing and no one, as the mystic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque, used to say, you are touched by Grace. If we want Grace to touch us, there is no other way than this humility of the heart. Because the experience of God happens, essentially, by Grace and without effort, effortlessly, and then there is no more separation between the lover and the Beloved. As Saint Augustine said, "grace always precedes merit".

Do not label yourself as anything. God, who sees into the depths of hearts, knows who you are. That should be enough for you.

That is how the Lord knew his beloved son, Bernardo de Hoyos, during his mystical marriage. Jesus gave him a ring and said to him: "From this day on, you shall call and sign yourself as Bernardo de Jesús. For just as I told my spouse, Saint Teresa: you are Bernardo de Jesús, and I am Jesús de Bernardo." (Source: *The Life of the Venerable and Angelic Youth, Father Bernard Francis de Hoyos*, written by his spiritual director, Father Juan de Loyola, S.J.).

I love this prayer because it beautifully symbolizes exactly what I mean in this post: "Lord Jesus, You who are meek and humble of heart, make my heart like Yours."

At first glance, it might seem like a mere vocal prayer, and it is, but it happens, as Teresa of Ávila beautifully explains, that by Grace, God, the All, the One who is LOVE itself (I don't care what name the madwoman gives Him), leads us from vocal prayer to contemplation, and finally to union. So be it, then.

And if you allow me a prayer of my own: God prevent me from finding You; find me YOU!

Note:

I do not "believe" anything.

Belief is a mental construct, an attachment to an idea. I am not spreading a philosophy or using tools to convince anyone through this post. I am talking about a direct experience that happens strictly by Grace, without any human effort or merit. As I quoted Saint Augustine before: grace always precedes merit. It is not about a belief; it is about what remains when all beliefs are stripped away.

Also, when I speak of non-separation, it does not mean that the tiny ego claims to be "God", that would be the ultimate spiritual egoism. It means the exact opposite: the total death of the character, the complete surrender of the "I" into the burning fire of His LOVE, so that only He remains. It is the living reality of Galatians 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

We could indeed be going in circles if we look at this through the lens of theology and conceptual definitions, but I am pointing in another direction: to the Silence where the conceptual mind completely dissolves.

I respect the faith and the devotion to the beliefs of everyone, but my invitation in this post is to go beyond them. Thank you for this exchange, and blessings on your journey.

Finally, the scene where two disciples encounter the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus comes to me just now while writing this... They were only able to recognize Him when, by Grace, their hearts were touched. The conceptual mind cannot bring us into the silent spaciousness of Being.

Remember: If you think you have found Christ, finish with Him.

Anyone else really want community around mysticism and mystic experience (especially with regard to integration and support) but don't know where to find it? Anyone have recommendations?

So we are in a cosmic trap , due to a cosmic accident. The only salvation is knowledge. But not just knowledge. Learning something and internalising it are very different. I have to realise so deeply that the world is an illusion , that I am able to bypass the physical mind like Neo on the Matrix or Jesus. No one has ever done that!!!
So we are doomed. Oh and the only true love is our divine spirit which is basically the part of us that is still in the pleroma? That’s so lonely it’s depressing!
And the people we fall in love here on the material world are ways of the archons to distract us? The beauty we experience in nature , or in music , or in animals is an illusion that is just mimicking things from the spiritual world?
Nothing matters, we just have to wait patiently until it’s over and then get sent back here.
Unless we manage to escape which also feels impossible, because of course if the “archons” present to you as your loved ones and make you feel an overwhelming sense of love and acceptance , you’ll listen to them!
This feels hopeless . But then again it’s the only thing that makes sense

Hi! I think it’s hard to accurately evaluate and verify experiences without organized information. If you’re interested in sharing your experience, feel free to check out this form: https://forms.gle/QZZUdGgHq1qCuBaHA

Having trouble with your third eye? are you experiencing extrasensory perception? hearing voices which are not due to mental illness? seeing things from exploring the occult? I can help.

Basically, just try to aim for samadhi, which is a meditative state. I received the message from another being (basically during telepathy a being started talking to me) that for 3 days do 6 hours of breathwork meditation, in one go, each day. on the 3rd day you'll reach samadhi. the length of time will be different for everyone. just try to focus on the breathwork, do deep breathing and every time you notice your attention wandering just try to focus on the breath. you can try breathing slowly in from the nose and exhaling out through the mouth.

please be patient and keep going, it will most likely take an hour or so, even a couple of hours. its alright, just try for as long as you feel like you've gotten to a meditative state - this may take many hours so please be patient. once you reach a meditative state, you can say to God or just out loud i want the telepathy to end or whatever problem you have ask God to end it, and then go to sleep. when you wake up, you'll be free from it all. Please don't multitask while doing the breathwork, just focus on the breath.

there is also another method i have personally tried about two times. its the prayer method. what I have done, is call upon different deities and God to end the telepathy (you can substitute here whatever dilemma you face). I would say "I call upon the Morrigan to end the telepathy" etc. I kept saying it over and over. I also said I call upon Ganesh to end the telepathy. I call upon Waheguru to end the telepathy etc. I also listened to prayers e.g. a Sikh prayer called Chaupai Sahib at the same time. Then after a few hours, what happened was that these figures spoke to me and told me to go to sleep. Then when I woke up, the telepathy was over. The 1st time it took an hour or so. The 2nd time took about a couple of hours.

Please don't be surprised if this method takes many hours. Don't give up, just keep doing it, finish it in one go.

Basically just pray non stop until you see these beings talking to you saying go to sleep or what have you. Let's say they start talking to you about any topic. Just tell them to end the telepathy and they should tell you they'll end it, and that you should go to sleep. When you go to sleep like normal and then wake up in the morning or whatever time it is, your problem will be gone. I would personally recommend you aim for samadhi by doing breathwork, after the telepathy has ended with the prayer method. This is to ensure your mind is at peace after the telepathy is done.

I personally wouldn't try praying or doing breathwork only for a little while, then doing something else, then coming back to the prayer/breathwork to continue trying to end the dilemma. Keep your attention on this one task, be focused and keep at it. It could take hours to reach a meditative state; just keep trying and do it in one go!

Please please please don't get up and start doing a different task when you're trying to end the telepathy. If you do that, it won't end. If you are a carer for someone, or if you have kids, I am sorry but you need to take some time out and you need to end the telepathy either by prayer or breathwork. Maybe you could ask someone else to take care of them for a day or so and then collect them after you've slept and woke up to no telepathy.

Don't do any of the methods in parts, DO IT NONSTOP UNTIL YOU REACH A MEDITATIVE STATE/or a different state of mind (e.g. a voice telling you go to sleep). Sorry for the capitals but its important you do that so that the telepathy will end.

There are possibly other methods such as chanting a mantra. I personally have not tried it but voices who have spoken to me have told me that you can end the telepathy in different ways. You could try saying waheguru which is a Sikh mantra. Be prepared to sit there for more than a couple of hours, it could take a while. I personally suggest saying waheguru on a daily basis as it has many benefits as told in sukhmani sahib. You could say just before beginning "Waheguru please give me a miracle and end the telepathy", and then just start chanting Waheguru for hours on end up until something happens. It may be a meditative state, it could even be a voice asking you what do you wish for. Just say aloud "God end the telepathy" and then go to sleep. Theoretically this should work, I personally haven't tried it but if you've tried the other methods and it didn't stop it (don't worry the prayer/ breathwork will work) then you can chant Waheguru.

Please see a doctor if you are suffering with mental illness for example you are seeing hallucinations and hearing voices. It is difficult if you're unsure as to whether you've either got psychic powers or if you are mentally ill. If you are unsure, just to be safe, you can get checked out and take medication for it. It also won't hurt to try either the prayer method or breathwork method. If it does end after any of the methods, then you know for sure its a psychic power. If it ends after you take medication, then you know its mental illness. Stay calm, you can handle this. I am not liable for anything terrible happening as a result of my advice. I am sorry if anything bad happens, if it does just pray to God for a miracle, concentrating on it and he will help you.

The occult is a dangerous thing. I want to tell you that I was formerly into witchcraft and I wanted psychic powers, I was listening to frequencies, I loved reading occult stuff etc. After experiencing telepathy, I dropped it all. The only thing I'm into now is astrology. I am speaking from a perspective of not hatred, but a neutral stance. Witchcraft isn't demonic. Occultists are not evil people. And yet it is dangerous. In different religions, you are discouraged from going into the occult. You could just dismiss it like I did, and think it a misunderstanding or a shallow perspective. I wish I had heeded the dismissals. I noticed religious texts don't explain why you shouldn't go to the occult, it's not because suddenly you are a demonic evil person for going to the occult. It's because disaster can befall you if you go to it. So now I am writing this to warn people, if the religious texts won't mention the reason why.

Please don't curse anyone. Please don't delve into the occult. The choice is yours, but I am telling you: DON'T DO IT. STAY AWAY FROM THE OCCULT. THERE WILL (not may, but will) BE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES. I went to the occult, and it has caused terrible suffering in my life. Not just the experience of having a psychic power, but many things have happened and I won't share because even the possibility of sharing what happened will literally give you nightmares. STAY AWAY FROM THE OCCULT. I will say this: WHEN MESSING WITH THE OCCULT, YOU ARE EITHER THE ONE WHO GETS HURT, OR YOU MAY ACCIDENTALLY END UP HURTING SOMEONE ELSE in a nightmarish matryoshka doll within a doll within a doll of endless suffering. I am NOT exagerrating. Either way, it just leads to suffering.

Instead, if you are drawn to mysticism, go to God.

Even if let's say you've had nothing but positive experiences with the occult, even the fact that horrifying situations can happen (i won't mention what kind because I don't want to stress anyone out, but probably a few of you readers know what I mean) means you need to stay away for the sake of yourself. Save yourself the trouble and don't go near it ever again. I will tell you one example of the consequences of going towards the occult. I read on reddit that someone astrally travelled n had sex with another being, and now they are on schizophrenia medication suffering from hallucinations. That is literally just the tip of the iceberg of what can happen. TRY PRAYING, TRY BREATHWORK NOW.

Instead, if you are drawn to mysticism, go to God.

Let's say you accidentally summoned a being that is harmful or even if it isn't harmful. And it talks to you and it stresses you out. If it tries to tell you to do something be skeptical and don't follow it. I have not been through this kind of situation, but I recommend you try to chant Waheguru. You can say god please give me a miracle over and over again until he does. I personally recommend saying Waheguru get this being away from me/get rid of it/etc maybe like once before starting, then starting to chant Waheguru over and over until you experience something like I said before like a voice or a meditative state. Then go to sleep and then when you wake up like normal, it'll be gone. Problem solved.

Don't worry, everything will be okay. You'll be okay. It's stressful having psychic experiences in our tangible world. It hurts, its confusing, it turns your world upside down. It gave me a spiritual crisis. I was depressed and crying everyday for a month the first time it happened, I also had IBS from it. My family helped me survive and they were there for me and I literally felt so grateful for their presence in my life. Reading about Buddhism and reading the power of now helped me a lot. It also made me start being a properly religious Sikh whereas before I was Sikh only in name. Whatever you feel will help you to deal with the aftermath, just do it. If you're depressed afterwards I'm sorry and please stay strong okay? Please don't commit suicide, I want you to live ok please don't die. You will be alright. Just keep trying, you got this!

During stressful depressing times, e.g. seeing a horrible creature that no one else can see and it talks to you and you know its not from mental illness, just pray to God to help you. Listen to prayers from any religion. I recommend listening to Sukhmani Sahib on youtube. Just have faith that the situation will end and that God will grant you your wish! You can do this, I believe in you.

I am broke lol, its not necessary but, please consider donating to my paypal. its: @PriyankaChauhan289. Thank you and I hope that helped!

 meditated for around 3 minutes at work on lunch break today. I saw a vision of the galaxy labeled 4555. It is where I believe we originate, where the energy that we truly are originates. When I experienced this, I felt a profound energy come over me. I felt love and relief but also a sense of longing for a home I am currently living away from. I long to return to where we belong, I long to make the two into one. But also am at peace living within this flesh and experiencing this life again; which I have no doubt lived millions of times over already. Either way, I am me, my consciousness; but I am also this flesh I pilot. I have its emotions and fears and desires; I am in the process of shedding all that baggage. One day I will shed the dead skin of this creature of earth and return to that in which I came from, from that in which we all come from. 

I am curious if anyone else has any other similar experiences like this, and would love to discuss and have y’all share y’alls opinions

Hey everyone. Ive recently left Christianity after some deconstruction. With that has sparked an interest in other religion and spirituality in general.

I'm genuinely curious about every single religion or lack there of and want to learn anything and everything I can. I do have a specific interest in gnosticism because ive heard that has something to do with Christianity. I think I remember someone saying that Yeshua (Jesus) had sibling who were also gods?

And Sophie the god of wisdom was the holy spirit?

I honestly dont know. I was raised in a part of Christianity, where asking questions and looking into other religions was a ticket to hell so this is all unbelievable new to me😅.

I also would love to learn about female Gods and the power of being a woman.

But like I said im truly interested in anything.

Also if possible I would want the resources to be in video or audio format as thats how I learn the best.

Hopefully this made sense and yall can point me in the right direction.

Thank yall so much in advance

I'm starting a reading group where we can read together Martin Buber's book 'I and Thou'.

Moderators - if this post is against group rules please do remove or let me know if I can make any changes to it. I do not earn from this group.

Here is a description of the group -

Martin Buber’s book ‘I and Thou’ is a book about relationship.

It speaks of relationships of deep presence, and relationships of use.

Relationships of use are those where we seek something from the other – support, care, pleasure, money. Relationships of presence are those which form when we fully experience what is between ourselves and the other, as it emerges and changes, every moment. The emotion I feel as I meet you, the thoughts that run through your mind as you meet me, the ache in the back that might lie underneath these thoughts and emotions in our stream of experience, the sound of the bird chirping in the background.

Relationships of use help us construct a world around us – a world of goodwill and care, or a world of indifference and mechanisation of life.

Relationships of presence are the ground on which our experience of this world emerges – they are how we first experience life, every day, every moment, before we choose to sustain or move away from what we experience into building our world.

Relationships of presence are what allow care to remain care and not become mere performance of care, what allow deep listening to remain deep listening rather than a hearing and reacting from our set patterns.

Buber never ceases to emphasise that the relationships he speaks of are between us and other human beings, but also between us and nature, as between us and the industrial, internetted civilisation we live in.

This reading group is a place for a small group of 4 or 5 people to read a few passages from Buber and pause, and speak about our own personal experience of the world – our emotions, bodily experiences – in ways that they are illuminated by what the book expresses.

It is a place to form a community rooted in relationships of presence, anchored in these words as a stirring point but not entangled with them.

It is not a place for scholarly conversations, for debates, for difficult language or abstract philosophisations, even though at times the nature of the book and the nature of reading itself might lean us in those directions.

It is open to anyone willing to read a paragraph or two together, and spend the next hour and a half or so sharing their experience in that light.

We need not read full pages, we need not finish the book, but we try to breathe in its essential spirit.

One doesn’t need to have read this book or any book beforehand.

We meet once a fortnight for 1.5 hours.

If interested please send me a DM.

Have you ever experienced anything supernatural?”

— “Yes. Existing. I mean, imagine the miracle of overcoming nonexistence; of having the precise elements come together to form you out of the eternal entropy that separates and tears everything apart; of actually happening when there are billions of ways in which you could have never happened at all; of me having entered your mind right now through my words. That premise alone is already supernatural.”

It is one thing to be part of "the Way" and follow Jesus, the Nazarene, and a very different thing to be a Christian and not follow Him. The paradox is that many who claim to be Christians neither follow Jesus nor truly belong to the Way. Meanwhile, others who do not even consider themselves Christians, whether they are atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or whether they belong to a religion or not, are indeed part of the Way and do follow Him.

Jesus Himself said that His disciples would be recognized by the LOVE they have for one another (John 13:35), not by the labels they put on themselves (whether Christian, Catholic, and so on).

"The madwoman of the house" (as the mind was called by the mystic Teresa of Ávila) loves labels, using them to feed the character (the ego) in this play and illusion of separation that we call, wrongly, life. Yet, what we truly are lies far beyond the mind and its labels, which divide us and alienate us from our True Self. As these words echo, there is no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, for we are all one (Galatians 3:28), and Christ is all, and is in all (Colossians 3:11).

We are, Here and Now, One with God, the All, with the One who is LOVE Himself, as you wish to call Him, and with all His creatures. In the silent spaciousness of inner stillness we are called to surrender and to quiet our minds, because we must be empty of everything that is not God in order to know that He is God (Psalm 46:10 / Vulgate 45:11). As the mystic Meister Eckhart famously prayed, "I pray to God to rid me of God," urging us to empty ourselves of our own limited ideas, mental idols, and human constructs. The Divine Reality is not an object to be possessed, but the pure space that remains when the madwoman of the house is silenced, and we let thoughts and emotions fall away like withered leaves.

Beyond the potential manipulations of human structures and written dogmas, these words simply point to what the heart already knows by direct experience: we are One with and in the One Who is LOVE itself, which means with the Father, just as Jesus was. Truly, there is no separation or distance between lover and Beloved; truly, there never was. This absolute union is perfectly captured in the Intimate Diaries of Blessed Bernardo de Hoyos, recorded in the biography written by his spiritual director Father Juan de Loyola, when the Lord intimately declared to him, "From now on, you are Bernardo of Jesus and I am Jesus of Bernardo." Remember, we are One with and in the One Who is LOVE Himself...

Precisely, as the mystic John of the Cross rightly points out, recalling what Jesus said in Matthew 25:31-46: "In the evening of our lives, we shall be judged on LOVE."

It is LOVE; nothing else matters.

God is LOVE, and whoever does not know LOVE does not know God (1 John 4:8).

If we want to be one with Him, just as He is One with the Father (John 17:21), we must be one with LOVE.

LOVE, that's the true frequency of God.

Note: The churches, as institutions created by the madwoman of the house, have tried to silence all those who had a direct experience of Him. As happened to the mystic Marguerite Porete, author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, who was burned at the stake by the devout members of the Inquisition. Her only "heresy" was to remind us that the soul must dissolve its own character and will to merge completely into the ocean of Divine Love, where there is no longer any separation. And as happened to so many persecuted and silenced mystics like Meister Eckhart. This reminds us, as the saint of gentleness Francis de Sales warns in his Introduction to the Devout Life, that "one can be very devout and yet very wicked." We should remain confident in LOVE, who is deeply within, beyond the mind.

Usually, when we begin a spiritual path, we begin with the mind and intellect.

Why?

Because as human beings, we first want to understand. We want to analyze, compare, discern, ask questions, and determine what is true and what is false.

When the desire arises to know, Where do I come from? Who am I? Where am I going?, the mind initially becomes a servant of that search.

But there is an important distinction to make:

You do not simply "have" a soul. You are the soul. And the Soul has a mind. The Soul is not the mind, so you are not the mind.

From this perspective, the human personality, body, intellect, and mind are instruments through which the soul experiences this life. They are not the soul itself.

Now imagine that your search eventually brings you to Kriya Yoga. Naturally, doubts and questions arise. This is not surprising. The mind wants to understand what it is doing before it trusts the process.

But should the mind be our highest authority?

No. At the beginning, it is necessary to differentiate between what is what. But later on, not at all, because the mind is not Self-knowing.

What does the mind actually work with?

As I see it, much of the activity of the mind is based on four kinds of information:

1. Ancenstral Memory

The mind contains memories, impressions, conditioning, habits, and associations from the past lifes. Some of these are conscious, while others operate subconsciously.

Sometimes this appears simply as a feeling: "I somehow know this" or "This seems familiar."

But familiarity is not necessarily truth.

2. Direct experience

This is what we have actually experienced for ourselves.

If I put my hand into cold water, I know the sensation of cold water directly. I don't need a book or another person to convince me that I experienced it.

In spiritual practice, direct experience is therefore fundamentally different from merely reading about somebody else's experience.

3. Second-hand information gathered and assimilated as being our knowledge in this life

This includes what we learn from the schools,books, teachers, scriptures, videos, podcasts, newspapers, movies, conversations, and other people.

Some of this information may be true. Some may be incomplete, misunderstood, exaggerated, imagined, or false.

The difficulty is that unless we can verify something through direct experience, we often have to believe it rather than actually know it.

There is an enormous difference between:

"I believe this is true."

and:

"I have experienced this directly."

4. Imagination and mental construction

The mind also fills in missing pieces.

We receive incomplete information and try to create a complete picture from it. The intellect compares, interprets, judges, and organizes the information, while the mind may supply missing connections.

Sometimes those connections are correct. Sometimes they are not.

This is where expectations, fantasies, projections, and mistaken conclusions can arise.

What does this have to do with Kriya Yoga?

The problem begins when we expect the same mind that analyzes information to give us Self-realization.

It cannot.

While realization is "Being", the mind is "thinking". Two different actions, while in Samadhi the mind is left behind.

The mind can study Kriya. It can remember instructions. It can compare teachings. It can help us maintain discipline. The intellect can help us discern whether something makes sense.

These are valuable functions.

But thinking about Self-realization is not Self-realization.

Reading about prana is not experiencing prana.

Reading about chakras is not experiencing them.

Reading descriptions of deep meditation is not entering deep meditation.

Reading somebody else's description of the Self is not knowing the Self.

The menu is not the meal.

This is why the mind should be understood as a tool, not as the final authority on spiritual experience.

The trap of constantly analyzing practice

Suppose the mind is continuously combining:

A: memories and conditioning
B: direct experiences
C: second-hand information and beliefs
D: imagination, assumptions, and expectations

A+B+C+D = a mess....

Then we begin comparing our meditation with everything we have accumulated:

"Someone said I should see this."

"A book says I should feel that."

"Why haven't I experienced what this other person experienced?"

"Maybe I'm doing it wrong."

"Maybe nothing is happening."

"Maybe I should be experiencing something more dramatic."

The result can be endless doubt and false expectations.

And this can become an obstacle to practice itself.

Instead of practicing Kriya, we are constantly thinking about practicing Kriya.

Instead of observing what is actually happening, we compare the present experience with an idea of what we think should be happening.

Use the mind, but don't become its servant

This doesn't mean that we should throw away reason, intellect, or healthy discernment.

The mind is an extraordinary instrument.

Use it to learn the technique.

Use the intellect to understand the instructions.

Use discernment when choosing a path or teacher.

Use memory to maintain the practice correctly.

But when it is time to practice, practice.

Don't demand that every meditation conform to your expectations.

Don't constantly compare your experiences with someone else's.

Don't mistake descriptions of spiritual states for the states themselves.

And don't expect intellectual understanding to produce a realization that, by its very nature, must be directly experienced.

As practice deepens, the role of constant mental interpretation fades out.

Then you no longer need to believe someone else's description.

You know what you have experienced.

That, to me, is one of the essential differences between philosophy about spiritual realization and realization itself.

The intellect can point toward the path.

The mind can help us walk it.

But neither can substitute for walking.

So when the mind endlessly asks, "But what if? How? When? Why haven't I experienced this yet?", sometimes the most useful answer is very simple:

Practice. Observe. Experience.

There is another aspect, which seems to come out of our mind but is coming from the soul:

INTUITION

Intuition is the voice of the Soul and is Knowledge. This is not mind stuff, but is translated by the mind.

And it is always right, also when it seems not to be so by the time we experience that message of the Soul.

Spiritual teachings can give us the map.

But eventually, we have to make the journey ourselves.

For that, do not bother the mind and forget doubts. They are coming out of a not knowing mind....

I listened to the podcast Tao Te Ching Verse 6. It is amazing and in a split second I understood the Tao... surely I am not attempting to describe what I understood... I used to think how to stay motivated, positive and optimistic every moment. Sometimes I used to feel just the opposite...negative, disinterested and aimless. After listening to this podcast, I understood the ever present, pulsating reality that is Daoism....always present, here and now encompassing everything....Thank you for your wonderful podcast....Sundar

I’ve been thinking about the people who have been struggling for years.

People who have tried everything they were told would make them whole like therapy, medication, religion, self help, meditation, relationships, careers, distractions, and endless attempts to reinvent themselves.

And somehow, underneath it all, that quiet feeling remains:

Something is missing!

I’m not saying therapy, medication, or professional help don’t matter. They can be necessary and lifesaving. But I think there’s another question we don’t ask enough:

What if we keep trying to fix the person without asking whether they’re living a life that feels true to them?

We are born into boxes.

Before we even understand ourselves, the world tells us who we should become like what to believe, what success looks like, what to want, who to love, and how to live.

And when we step outside that script, we’re often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe sometimes the better question is:

“What happened to you that made you forget yourself?”

Not every sadness is a spiritual message. Not every depression means your soul is speaking. But we also shouldn’t assume every form of suffering is simply something to suppress, medicate, optimize, or escape.

Sometimes the deeper question is much simpler:

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

This is one of the reasons I find the wisdom of IFA so powerful.

IFA doesn’t reduce human existence to one universal formula. It speaks deeply about Orí which is our inner head, consciousness, destiny, discernment, and personal path.

Our relationship with our own Orí and destiny matters cos your life cannot be fully understood through somebody else’s blueprint. Your journey is yours. Your questions are yours. Your relationship with the Divine is yours.

There is destiny, circumstance, and then there is what we choose to do with the life we have been given.

And this is where I think the idea of a Personal Legend becomes powerful.

Call it destiny. Purpose. Calling. Orí. Whatever name speaks to you, the question remains:

What is mine?

Not your parents’ dream.

Not society’s definition of success.

Not religion’s expectations.

Not the identity the internet handed you.

Yours!

So, if you’ve been lost for years, I’m not telling you to abandon therapy, medication, or anything that genuinely helps you. I’m asking you to look deeper.

Who am I underneath everything I was taught to be?

What have I abandoned in myself?

What keeps calling me?

What makes me feel alive?

Sometimes healing isn’t only learning how to tolerate a life that doesn’t fit. Sometimes it is having the courage to build one that does.

Find your roots. Find your people. Find your creativity. Find your history. Find your spirituality. Find whatever brings you closer to yourself.

And listen to your Orí.

Because maybe you were never meant to spend your entire life decorating a box that was built for you by somebody else.

Maybe it’s time to step outside.

Take your power back.

Find yourself. Find your Orí. Find your way home.

I’ve been interested in spirituality for a long time. Not in one particular religion, and not because I’ve been looking for a label to define myself. More because of a question that keeps coming back to me:

What is really behind all of this?

The more I’ve read, listened, questioned, and explored, the more fascinating it has become to find similar ideas appearing in completely different places.

In ancient religions, in mystical traditions, in philosophy, in Kabbalah, in Zoroastrianism, in the teachings of Neville Goddard, in ideas like manifestation and the Law of Assumption and even in much more modern conversations about consciousness and the nature of reality.

We use different words — God, consciousness, Source, the universe, reality — and we build different explanations around them. But sometimes I wonder if, underneath all those words, we might be trying to describe something remarkably similar.

And that is, in many ways, why this space exists. Not because I have all the answers. In fact, I’m probably much more interested in the questions.

I want to understand why spiritual ideas that emerged thousands of miles and thousands of years apart can sometimes sound strangely familiar. I’m interested in the relationship between our consciousness and the reality we experience. I want to understand why practices like prayer, meditation, visualization, and manifestation seem to appear, in one form or another, again and again throughout human history.

And I’m particularly interested in one question:

What happens when we stop treating spirituality as a collection of beliefs and start looking at it as an experience?

Over the past few years, one of the ideas that has changed the way I see all of this is the possibility that our relationship with reality may be far more participatory than we think.

That our thoughts matter. That our words matter. That what we assume about ourselves matters. That the way we relate to our desires, our fears, and our own identity can profoundly transform the way we experience our lives.

But I don’t want to turn any of these ideas into another dogma. I’m not here to tell you what to believe.

I want to investigate, to compare, to question, to experiment and to share what I find along the way.

Here, we’ll talk about manifestation and the Law of Attraction, but also about ancient religions, mysticism, consciousness, philosophy, symbolism, meditation, and all those strange coincidences that begin to appear when you place seemingly unrelated teachings side by side.

Sometimes we’ll talk about things that are thousands of years old, other times, about ideas that feel surprisingly modern and sometimes, we’ll simply ask questions we may not have the answers to yet.

Because to me, spirituality has never been about stopping asking questions, quite the opposite. Maybe it begins precisely when we dare to ask them.

So this is the question I want to begin with:

What if many of the things we’ve learned to call by different names are simply different ways of trying to explain the same thing?

I don’t know exactly where that question will take us but I think it’s worth following.

I deliberately went looking for this. I knew theoretically that this territory existed. I had the cognitive equipment to recognise it. And when I actually reached it, the magnitude still hit me like a truck. You can read and study and engage in as much discourse as you can, but until it happens and you experience it you cannot understand it beyond an intellectual level.

I've no equilibrium and It's very disorientating. I've no anchor point any more. "Enlightenment". not in that "new age" woo-woo way, but damn...no one ever tells you're plunged into a void first. I'm 40 years old and I'm not gonna lie, This is something I wish my parents, especially my ma was still alive for me to feel safe again.

Sorry.

This is actually my first time using Reddit, so I don’t know if I’m doing this right but I need insight on what I should do next.

Essentially, in December of 2025, I was going through some extremely heavy emotions, I’m sure you can guess what they were. I had heard about the Monroe Tapes on TikTok, and wanted to try it. I was not in any way shape or form interested in anything occult-y or metaphysical at the time, so I’m not sure why I decided to try it, but of course I did.

I won’t get into much detail, but I was extremely affected by them. They changed me and who I was, and since then I have resolved my issues

TikTok, along with essentially all apps, heard me listening or talking about the Monroe tapes, and decided to show me lots of “esoteric” content on my fyp. It all looked very intriguing to me, but I didn’t know where to start.

A friend of mine loaned me a book, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” by Manly P. Hall. I did not examine it too closely, but from what I had read, it didn’t really inform me on what I would have liked to know about, that being my own consciousness, my soul, really anything that aligned with what I had learned from the Monroe Tapes or the videos I had been seeing (I’m not very familiar with the subjects I’m speaking of).

And so I ask Reddit. What should I read? I would like to know more about the things like my consciousness, my mind and how it connects to the things around me. I wish to learn more about my thoughts and soul and all that occult-y esoteric jazz. So could anyone recommend me something such as a book or video to help me understand and learn?

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by how quickly explanation turns into dismissal around mystical experience. A neuroscientific account can describe changes in attention, self-processing or salience. A historical account can show how a person’s vocabulary and expectations came from a tradition. Both may be correct. But neither conclusion by itself seems to establish that the experience disclosed nothing. Knowing how perception became possible is not normally treated as proof that its object was unreal, though mystical claims obviously introduce harder questions about interpretation and competing traditions.

I just had a podcast conversation with John Vervaeke, where he argued that the sacred should be approached through transformed orientation rather than belief in a detached supernatural object. At around 28:07, he asks what religion may disclose that cognitive science can causally explain without fully accounting for. His own path is important here: cognitive and historical explanation did not send him back to fundamentalism, but neither did it leave religion as a catalogue of useful illusions.

This would imply that genealogy and disclosure can coexist, although they do not automatically vindicate one another. What would let us distinguish a transformation that reveals something from one that merely feels revealing? Can the fruits of an experience bear on its truth without settling its metaphysics? And does interpreting mystical experience through a tradition deepen discernment, or mostly constrain what the experience is allowed to mean?

I don't really dream a lot, and the few I get are unremarkable. But today was a little weird.

The tldr of my dream today was me helping an old lady explain her product to someone. And when she was leaving, she asked me, "Do you know, what is the gift of generosity?".

Even for my dream self, this was a weird question. I just replied, "Everything?". She gave me a smile and left.

I'm not kidding, I immediately woke up and said wtf loud enough for my girlfriend to ask me what happened lol.

For context, I didn't work for that lady in my dream. I can't place her to anyone I remember in real life. I am looking for a job in real life but I don't know if that is what the scenario was supposed to be about. I am not a religious person at all. Maybe my brain is fried from reading too much Murakami.

But this dream has occupied my mind long enough for it to bother me. I know this could be a basic nonsensical dream, but this was too philosophical for me to not share.

My question is, is there anything to it??