What happens vs what I do

05. Satsang Cafe - General Discussions on AYP
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I sit on my couch with my legs crossed, I sit leaning forward a bit while maintaining some contact on my lower back just enough for a stable balance posture, using my arms and hands to further balance my seat so it is very comfortable and easy to maintain (comfort is the priority here). Then I settle down in my seat so that my perineum is firmly grounded and there is a slight contact of my heel forward of the perineum, I start the timer on my watch.

At this point my first and second chakra are active and the energy starts to move up and down with my breath, root to sex then down, root to navel then down and so on, then I flex my eyebrows and the energy reaches my third eye and the cycle continues but it’s now root to brow, up and down. The energy becomes a steady stream and it triggers the opening of the crown, the energy goes from the brow to all around the head.

The energy becomes steady and now goes from the root directly to the centre of the head as a strong ecstatic stream that merges with the silent bliss inside the crown. I maintain this connection as well as possible by manipulating breath, mudras and banbhas, sometimes very little is necessary. The alarm goes off and I set it again.

Now the energy is flowing into an empty space and the merging with inner silence makes “That” and in “That” I am. My inner focus is centred on the third eye and I can see it as a central point of coloured light.

When the energy fades I find myself again, and I bring back the ecstatic bliss by a will that is more like a reflex. In, until I’m out and in again till the timer goes off.

Now the energy is almost too much, I start the timer, Love, rush of bliss, let it go, again, Love, no maneuver needed, the energy knows what to do, all I do is maintain focus and concentrate on the job. The timer goes off again, time to rest. This is what happens when I do my sitting practice.

What I just described is what happens but it is not what I do, what I do is 10 minutes of Pranayama, 20 minutes of Deep Meditation, 10 minutes of Samyama and 5-10 minutes of rest.

I have done AYP for over 10 years and what happens during my practice has steadily grown in intensity and some of the experiences have been out of this world but what has never changed is the practices themselves. For this to work you have to do AYP and AYP only, any deviation from the baseline will slow you down, and time is precious.

Thank you Yogani for the Practices

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Hi Alain,

Thanks for offering this unique insight into how core AYP practices can be experienced after more than 10 years of consistent practice.

It’s interesting that your description of the Deep Meditation experience seems to be the furthest removed from a description of how you actually do it (namely by simply following Yogani’s Deep Meditation instruction).

It’s really remarkable that sticking to the same instruction can carry one all the way.

If you were to switch out Deep Meditation by following

Now the energy is flowing into an empty space and the merging with inner silence makes “That” and in “That” I am. My inner focus is centred on the third eye and I can see it as a central point of coloured light.
When the energy fades I find myself again, and I bring back the ecstatic bliss by a will that is more like a reflex. In, until I’m out and in again till the timer goes off.

as an instruction you probably wouldn’t notice much difference for a while, but eventually your progress would slow down compared to just following the simple procedure of Deep Meditation.

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What happens is a personal experience and will change over time and even in each sitting. It will be different from individual to individual. The AYP instructions remain the same for everyone.

Sey :pray:

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Hi Tensor, if you mean that the experience sound like instructions, they do, but as you say, they are useless and a student would be set back eventually. Putting your attention on anything other than the mantra during DM is not the technique.

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For sure, if one would turn this into an instruction it would likely by useless to most practitioners. And what I pointed above is that even turning this into a tailored instruction for Alain, switching to that practice right now would likely lead to less progress than sticking to the original instructions, because as Sey says, experiences will continue to change. Yogani tirelessly repeated in the lessons that practices lead to progress while experiences are merely effects or “scenery”.

But it is worth pointing out that a practice instruction is somewhat similar to a description of an experience. A good instruction is one that can be executed by beginners and experts alike and continues to produce progress along the path. That something like this is possible at all is remarkable, because it could have been the case that at some stage on the path the Deep Meditation instructions cease to lead to more progress and that at that point a practitioner would have to switch to another type of instruction. Imagine one could become a piano virtuoso by just reading a page of instructions and executing those same practice instructions every day. Deep Meditation instructions seem to achieve that (becoming a virtuoso of one’s nervous system). We have enhancements for this practice (like solar centering and mantra enhancements) but they are not necessary for continued progress, they just add more speed.

Another important lesson from Alain’s post relates to something I noticed happening in the forum many times: failing to distinguish what happens from what is done. I made this mistake myself a few times for sure. It is easy to make.
This can lead to situations were people actually practice correctly, but describe what they are doing in terms of what is happening that suggests to others they practice incorrectly, which then leads to a loop of confusion. One example I remember from myself is failing to see the difference between “favoring stillness” versus “favoring the mantra as stillness”. Favoring the mantra as stillness can maybe be experienced as if favoring stillness, but favoring stillness would be a different practice.

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Tensor, I kind of missed your point, you are absolutely right, the moderators of this forum spend much time and effort to enforce this point. Yet it seems that the attraction to the scenery is very difficult to let go. The illusion is so strong that it uses the illusion itself as a means to keep you from the goal. The practice is so boring compared to the scenery, yet at the end the practice wins and the scenery turns into the practice. One sits down and immediately turns on the light, the core practice is the engine and the universe is the fuel.

This last bit is just for you as I know you will understand. I can sometimes hear and fell the vibration from both ear drums as distinct and separate and the merging of the two as one, then it resonates with the different hollows (sinuses) that are all over the cranium to create a loud hum (not that loud) that is very ecstatic in nature and sounds just like OM. When in deep samadhi it feels like my whole body is the vibration. I developed that vibration by doing the air equalization trick. It’s a pranayama technique that Yogani has mentioned once, where you force a little bit of air into your nose like divers do. He doesn’t go into much details about it. But I use it all the time during yoni mudra kumbhaka. Its on page 64 of the Asana Mudras and Bandhas book.

Cheers

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Hi Alain,

Thanks for sharing that fun sounding part of your scenery. I also still enjoy my tensor tympani muscles in stereo :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:
For me it feels like the ear rumbling is part of a wave that travels up and around the skull towards the crown. It sometimes looks like the tiles that some Buddha heads have are vibrating, sending waves up. Often sambhavi alone triggers it for me.

My eardrums started doing that without any specific trigger during a Buddhist practice that I learned right before discovering AYP.
After discovering AYP I was also pleasantly surprised that the gentle pressure we apply during YMK triggers it. Probably not by accident… These tiny muscles might be part of the “whole body mudra” symphony.

Maybe the best thing about Deep Meditation is that it also cultivates equanimity that eventually takes care of any obsession with or attachment to the scenery while making the whole journey ever more enjoyable :blush:

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Tensor, thanks for sharing. Perhaps eventually the state of Samadhi becomes something that can rival any experiences thus making them irrelevant and someone abandons them altogether ?

:folded_hands:

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Let’s find out by keeping going with those amazing AYP practices :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: :person_in_lotus_position:

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