Updated: April 4, 2025
Hello, my friends. So as promised, we will start a meditation today on the tanmatras of the subtle senses. To recapitulate pure consciousness modifies itself into all experience. Going back to Chapter 13 – Bhagavad Gita, I am the field, and I'm the knower of the field. So I am the field of awareness, consciousness and I know myself as experience. And we've seen that the experiences arise and subside every experience, whether it's breath, thought, feeling, emotion, image all arises and subsides. The only thing that remains is the I AM the awareness in which all is arising and subsiding just like the only thing on this screen is the screen itself that's real. It's always there.
The programs arise and subside. So the programs are part of the dream, including the waking state that we call the waking state. It is a lucid dream in a vivid now. So the the witnessing awareness is the most subtle mode of knowing more subtle before that there's only the potential to know where observer observed an observation or all existing simultaneously. But the first mode of knowing is that witnessing awareness, very subtle sensation on the screen of consciousness. And then after that the mind and then the intellect and then the ego. So we've discussed that already so far. And now we enter the Tanmatras, the subtle senses.
So the subtle senses include sound, touch, sight, taste and smell, but they're subtle. So we experience them almost as dreamlike. In fact, our dreams at night are the expression of the subtle senses or the tanmatras. And when these become kind of solidified in that through repetition, there's actually a brain process, synaptogenesis and neurogenesis. Then these project as what we usually refer to as the physical senses, but it's just another vibratory frequency of the subtle senses. And then what we call the physical senses, which are modified forms of awareness then project as the body and the experience of the physical world, species-specific. OK. That's the summary. And now let's start with the exercise, the meditation and you can keep your eyes open or you can keep your eyes closed for some of them. keeping the eyes closed is a little better. So now close your eyes and in your awareness in your consciousness on the screen of your awareness, evoke the following sound experiences.
Once again, evoke the following sound experiences with the eyes closed: the tinkling of bells. Hear that the sound of thunder, hear that the screeching sound of a siren or an ambulance. Hear that the sound of a baby crying, newborn baby crying, hear that the sound of the voice of a loved one. Hear that in awareness. So these are subtle sounds, there's no sound anywhere in the physical world in the brain, anywhere other than your awareness. So how did you do that? Through intention, awareness modified itself as the experience of subtle sound, awareness itself was formless and without sound, but through intention, it created the experience of sound, the knowing of sound which arose, which was there and which disappeared.
Part of the lucid dream or part of the dreamy dream. Ok? Now let's do the same thing with touch. You can keep your eyes closed for this as well. Touch or sensation. Let's call it touch sensation. So in your awareness, experience touching the rough bark of a tree feel the rough bark of a tree in your awareness, experience the soft petals of a rose as you touch them gently. In your awareness, experience a wet kiss from somebody that you love in your awareness, just touch the face of a newborn baby. In your awareness, experience your feet walking on hot sand, on the beach, you experience sensations of what we call touch and yet you did not touch anything that experience was in your awareness, modifying itself as the subtle sensation that we call touch. Ok. So let's do the same thing with vision but with the eyes closed. Ok. So in your awareness, experience a starlit sky in your awareness, experience a starlit sky with the full moon in your awareness, experience snow clad mountains as forms, shapes, colors in your awareness, experience a green meadow in your awareness, see the face of someone you love.
So in your awareness, you can see colors, shapes, forms that give rise to scenery. You're not looking at any scenery and nor are there colors, shapes and forms in your brain. You regenerate them through intention. OK. So now let's go a little further. And you know, you can imagine awareness even of what we call imagination is experiencing images. So you can experience anything, you know, just by intention and create that image, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, any memory as an image. And of course, the memory is not present in the brain till you evoke it. And then it shows neural correlates but there are no colors or forms in your brain.
OK. Let's move on to taste, same experience. OK? Same. All you have to do is intend so in your awareness, experience, your favorite food, your favorite dish in your awareness, experience licking a lemon, the taste of red wine, the taste of onions, garlic. Again, you did not taste anything. You just have the intention and the subtle experience appeared, appeared on the screen of consciousness only let's do that with smell.
And your experience In your awareness, experience a pine forest in your awareness, experience the locker room in a gym in your awareness, experience, the smell of cigarette smoke. In your awareness experience, what is called an intestinal explosion, otherwise also referred to as F-A-R-T in your awareness, experience, the smell of onion garlic mustard, no smell in your brain, no smell in the physical world, just near awareness through intention. So now that we've activated the 5 tanmatras, let's put them together in one more experience. So close your eyes. Imagine you're sitting next to a steep waterfall against a cliff and you're near the green meadow. OK. So in your awareness, see the waterfall, see the green meadow, meadow, see the cliff, the green meadow splashed with all kinds of flowers, yellow sunflowers, violets, whatever you want to.
Now hear the sound of the waterfall. Feel, the wetness as some sprays onto your skin, smell the earth as the parched earth of the green meadow actually exudes amazing. scent. experiences of smells and odors and fragrances. And now see yourself in a picnic with all these loved ones and look at the food and taste it and smell it and feel its crunchiness as you bite it, hear the sound and enjoy the picnic. Your actually shifting synaptic networks right now. And even if you do this repetitiously, you create long term potentiation of inter neuronal connections that are actually the neural correlates of the experience that you intended. The more you can play with the alchemy of the tanmatras, the more that will project as the physical perceptions that give rise to the experience of the physical body and ultimately, the physical universe we are playing right now with the alchemy of tanmatras, the subtle senses we did that already with witnessing awareness, with mind, with intellect, with ego.
And we keep going further from the tanmatras to the physical senses, the motor senses, the five elements on and on the different modes of knowing and experience. And the purpose of this exercise is only that which is formless and infinite and unbounded and without cause and irreducible and timeless. And space less and incomprehensible remains what we call the I AM. The rest, It is part of the dream. Today we played with subtle dreams or what we call fuzzy dreams in subtle awareness. But we can now convert them into physical perceptual activities which gives us a different experience of what we call the physical body and the physical universe. So more to come. Thank you..
