Monthly Archives: December 2020

What is the Alaya?

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Everything You Wanted to Know about Alaya but Were Afraid to Ask

By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: Here’s another term that befuddles me: What the heck is Alaya?

A: We generally speak about Alaya as being the force that animates the cutting edge ensouling entity. There are actually three major forms:

  1. The Alaya directed to the ensouling entity – This is the brain center attunement. It gives life to the Soul. It reveals the calling of the Soul to complete its journey in that Division of the Continuum of Consciousness. It is the force that unfolds the Soul’s spiritual evolutionary potentials, which bestows initiation. It empowers the Soul to use its innate abilities, which are called the Shaktis of the Soul.
  2. The Alaya directed to the spirit – This is the spiritual heart center attunement. This activates the spirit in the domain that is contiguous with the cutting edge ensouling entity, and imbues it with Divine Love and remembrance of its Source. The Alaya expresses through a Nadamic Master that dwells in that domain to guide the spirit to reunify with the form of the Divine Beloved that dwells there.
  3. The Alaya directed to your vehicles of consciousness – This is the medulla center attunement. This circulates energy through your causal body, which revolves around your seed atoms of your vehicles of consciousness contiguous with your cutting edge ensouling entity.
    • It moves clockwise through the awakened zone of your consciousness, and allows you to carry out your personal and spiritual activities that arise from a center of integration—your ego, your Self, and your Soul.
    • It moves counter-clockwise through the layer of your unconscious mind directly behind your awakened zone of your consciousness, and brings forward your unconscious issues—these unconscious issues may be behavioral, like bad habits; emotional, like anxiety and depression; or cognitive, like obsessive or paranoid thinking—and allows you to process them.
    • The relative percentage of conscious/clockwise and unconscious/counter-clockwise energy movement varies widely between individuals. A woman with a virtuous, saintly character might demonstrate a 95% conscious/ 5% unconscious mix; whereas a man who is powerfully addicted to drugs might operate with a 15% conscious/ 85% unconscious matrix.

When the Soul is liberated in one Division of the Continuum, this brain center Alaya picks up and animates the Soul in the next Division. So for example, when you finish the development of the Soul Spark, Planetary Soul, and Monad in the first Division of the Continuum, the Alaya picks up and animates your Astral Soul in the Cosmic Sphere.

When you liberate the spirit in one domain, the spiritual heart Alaya will pick up and animate the spirit in the next domain. This occurs when, for example, you liberate the spirit upon the third Path of the Nada at the top of the Second Planetary Initiation, it animates the spirit of the fourth Path of the Nada, which begins in the Third Planetary Initiation.

When you drop a vehicle of consciousness into its origin, the vehicular Alaya will begin circulating around the next vehicle of consciousness on the next higher Plane. If you liberate your cosmic consciousness nucleus of identity and its associated vehicles of consciousness at the top of the First Cosmic Initiation, this energy will begin to work in your vehicles of the Second Cosmic Initiation, and work with the karmic stream behind those vehicles.

Q: Where does the Alaya come from?

A: The brain Alaya and the spiritual heart Alaya emanate from Satchitananda, the ensouling entity of the Seventh Transcendental Path. The rhythms of the vehicular Alaya originate from the Lords of Karma.

So when you liberate the spirit or the Soul, the energy of the Alaya returns to Satchitananda, then animates the next ensouling entity through the brain center attunement—or it may activate the spirit in the next domain through the spiritual heart attunement.

As long as you have vehicles of consciousness at your cutting edge of spirituality, this current of karmic cycling will operate within you.

Q: What happens if someone activates an ensouling entity, spirit, or nucleus of identity with its associated vehicles of consciousness outside the cutting edge of spirituality?

A: You perturb the Alayic Force.

First, you generate an imbalance that begins to create an energetic split between your cutting edge ensouling entity, its aligned spirit, and its vehicles of consciousness. You begin to partly process karma behind your vehicles of consciousness associated with your cutting edge of spirituality, and partly from behind the misaligned spiritual essence.

Second, when this imbalance reaches a certain point, you experience what we call a fulcrum shift: you fully identify with that spiritual essence that operates outside the cutting edge of spirituality, and your attention becomes fixed in this essence. You begin to primarily process karma from behind the misaligned spiritual essence; the karma behind your vehicles of consciousness associated with your cutting edge of spirituality begins to move into a state of suspension or dormancy.

When this fulcrum shift occurs, you begin to live from the misaligned spiritual essence and you may regard your native spiritual essences at the cutting edge of spirituality as unreal or illusory. You may abandon goals and desires that operate within and behind the spiritual essences and vehicles of consciousness at your cutting edge of spirituality; you instead operate on an alternate agenda.

Third, when you liberate the ensouling entity, spirit, and or vehicles of consciousness at this alternate octave of being, this energetic tributary to the native Alayic current returns to Satchitananda, and becomes refocused at the cutting edge of spirituality.

This is why the Masters of the Mudrashram® lineage may work with individuals, who have generated significant imbalances in their spiritual alignment, to liberate those higher essences, so they will be able to realign energetically with their cutting edge of spirituality. This heals the split within them.

This need for liberation of higher essences becomes most pronounced when individuals have moved their ensouling entity and spirit on a Transcendental Path way out of alignment, as the conflicting energetic harmonic that is set up makes it harder for them to function at the level of their personality.

Q: Is the Alaya the same as the Will of God?

A: The Alaya is synonymous with the core activity of the Divine Will. Those who work with a Master or Initiate may also incorporate the attunement of the transpersonal octave of will with the Divine Will, which confers discipleship. It may also include giving a spiritual service assignment to the attentional principle or the spirit under the Aegis of the Initiate who supervises the development of the Soul—we call this attunement, Dhana.

The next octave of the Divine Will aligns the personal octave of will with the Soul’s purpose. In disciples, when the Divine Will overshadows their transpersonal will, it is possible for the personality to receive the knowledge of the Divine Will through the Soul—and align personal activity to carry out that impress.

We discuss the Divine Will and its interface with the personality in greater depth in our article, “The personal octave of the Divine Will,” with is available in our Library. It is also published in our book, A Mudrashram® Reader: Understanding Integral Meditation. [We highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to study the Mudrashram® teachings in greater depth and to understand the different types of meditations that are subsumed under the umbrella of Integral meditation.]

A Primer on Karmic Darkening

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By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: What is the mechanism by which people have a spiritual fall? To what levels could they ultimately fall?

A: The Fire of the Divine Spirit purifies the karma behind the ensouling entity to the next nodal point, and this moves the Soul forward to that nodal point. However, if an individual engages in adharmic action, this can negate forward progress; indeed, if there is sufficient karmic accretion, it can move the ensouling entity down to lower nodal points.

Most people have some adharmic activity in which they engage, which accrues new karma. These can arise from reactive behavior of the ego not in alignment with the Self’s integrity and the Soul’s purpose. They can also come from enacting aspects of the issues in the unconscious mind that make up the psychological aspect of Pralabdha or Destiny Karma.

This new karmic accrual layers within the mind to various degrees, which leads to a progressively greater intensity of darkening. These can be described as follows:

  1. Between 1 and 108 forms of karmic darkening – In this scenario, your Soul remains in its current nodal point, but a thin layer of darkening is drawn over the presence of the Soul. This can be readily effaced through extra practice of transformational mantra.
  2. Descending one nodal point – Here, the amount of karmic accretion is sufficient to move your Soul back one step to the next lower nodal point. This can also be overcome through extra practice of transformational mantra.
  3. Descending two to thirteen nodal points – In this type, the karma accrued is sufficient to move your ensouling entity back to the lower edge of the current Subplane on which it dwells. This amount of karmic darkening requires significant extra practice of transformational mantra, together with repentance and voluntary behavior change.
  4. Descending one or more Subplanes – While your ensouling entity remains on the current Plane on which it dwells, moving down one or more Subplanes results in the loss of intuitive knowledge, ability, and virtue. There is noticeable coarsening of expression. You may forget what you have learned. You may revert to previous behavior, habits, and beliefs. This may require weeks of extra transformational mantra to overcome, plus the most poignant repentance and strict discipline is required to redeem the territory lost in your spiritual evolution.
  5. Descending to the next lower Plane – At his level of karmic accretion, the forgetting of knowledge, vitiation of virtue, and loss of abilities is marked. Repeated commission of sinful acts can progressively lead to this outcome. Usually by the time you have generated this much karma, you may turn away from pursuing further progress on the spiritual Path, and embrace the passions that are destroying you. At this stage, you typically see obsession with the object of your passion, and in some case, addiction to it. Lust, greed, intemperate use of alcohol and drugs, rage and hatred, or narcissistic self-glorification takes over your behavior at this point, and this adds more layers of new karmic accretion.
  6. Descending through two or more Planes – This level of karmic darkening can lead you down to the edge of the current Division of the Continuum on which you dwell. This might look like, for example, falling from the Wisdom Plane to the lower portion of the Biophysical Universe. Here forgetting, vitiation of virtue, and loss of abilities are profound. Negative character changes commonly appear at this stage—this can take the form of personality disorders, delusional or paranoid thinking, and increased anxiety and depression. When you fall to this extent, you may blame others for your problems, and project your own failures and weaknesses on others.
  7. Descending to the next lower Division – This immense degree of karmic obscuration causes you to reawaken the ensouling entity of the next lower Division, and become re-identified with it. For example, you might fall from the Planetary Realm into the Subtle Realm through repeated, egregious patterns of adharmic speech and behavior. Usually, this takes the form of a fall into the Lower Astral Plane. Depending on the nature of your adharmic karmic patterns, you could fall into the Lower Astral levels—of the chemical snare (alcohol and drug addiction), the sexual snare (sexual addiction), the criminal snare (engaging in criminal behavior), the power and corruption snare (engaging in the misuse of corporate or government power), or the spiritual enslavement snare (creating a religious cult or terrorist cell and entrapping others)—and become completely immersed in these evil patterns.
  8. Descending into the Lower Realms – For those who carry out the most horrific acts, you could create so much negative karma that you move beyond the first nodal point of the Subtle Realm, and fall into the Lower Realms that lie outside of the evolution of the Soul Spark. Among these hell-like worlds are
    • The world of living demons
    • The world of terrible fear
    • The world of madness
    • The world of terrible pain

If you were to fall into these profound depths and you were not repentant, and denied the Redeeming Light, upon death, you would lose the human birth and be reborn in the Animal or Plant Kingdom—and you would have to climb back up to the plateau to human incarnation again through the long and weary journey of transmigration.

Working with Adharmic Tendencies of Mind

These tendencies of mind that operate independently of the integrated structures of ego, Self, and soul, Mishra [1] calls vitarkas. Those on the spiritual Path actively attempt to overcome these patterns, and may engage in activities or spiritual practices designed to counter these negative impressions arising from the unconscious mind. Some of these practices include:

  • Repetition of mantras or prayers
  • Baptism or rites of ritual cleansing
  • Formal confession and repentance
  • Austerity, including fasting, and voluntary suppression of speech, or carnal appetites
  • Thought substitution, replacing evil thoughts with good thoughts
  • Invocation of the Divine for succor through prayer
  • Remaining in an altered state of consciousness to avoid triggering latent karmic impressions

In those who experience a major spiritual fall, their highest state of spiritual attainment remains a distant memory. However, certain of the abilities and knowledge gained at this pinnacle of their development may persist in them, despite their spiritual fall. So a person who has developed persuasion and negotiation skills may retain them, although these abilities may appear in a distorted or corrupted form at the lower level.

Religious moral training is designed to enable people to recognize these negative karmic patterns, and to turn away from them. Religious groups may also offer some ameliorative practices, such as prayer, confession, ritual cleansing and absolution, or austerity.

Those who utilize a transform the ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality have the quintessential method to overcome the darkening effect of adharmic speech and action, but ultimately, they must eradicate these patterns altogether, so they cease performing this sinful speech and behavior.

We teach a transformational mantra in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We underscore that this transformational mantra is not designed to enable people to actively carry out sin and then try to clean it up afterwards. Rather, once you recognize these patterns arising in you, you will utilize all available means to root them out and to stop engaging in them.

We encourage you to learn this transformational mantra and practice it regularly. We also suggest that you employ the other methods included in these intermediate courses to work to rectify and overcome these wayward patterns of mind.

1. Mishra, Rammurti S. (1959) Fundamentals of Yoga • New York: The Julian Press • pages 147-150

Ways of Implementing Solutions

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By George A. Boyd © 2020

You may intervene in the life and behavior of another person for a variety of reasons. These include:

  • You are responsible for their care—for example, your children, dependent adults, or your elderly parents
  • The person is obnoxious and annoys you. You want them to change their behavior to make your own life less miserable and more serene.
  • You want to make a person aware of the impact of their words and behavior on you—they may be unaware of how their behavior and speech affects you.
  • You are in a professional helping position and you have the responsibility to provide treatment for your patients or clients.
  • You love someone and you want him or her to change to stop hurting or sabotaging him or her self.
  • You see the potential in someone and you want to assist him or her to actualize it.
  • You have experienced breakthrough, transformation, or enlightenment, and you want to share it with others.

They are several approaches through which people attempt to change other people. These methods—and their results on the other person—are described below.

Method

Result

(1) Criticize, but don’t offer a solution. Make the person wrong.

Their feelings are hurt; they feel demoralization and depression

(2) Offer a solution that the person can’t understand or utilize.

They experience confusion; they make no movement towards resolving the deficiency or problem.

(3) Force or coerce the person to implement the solution.

They may do what you want temporarily, but revert back to their former pattern when you are not pressuring them.

(4) Teach, counsel, or coach the person to be able to implement the solution.

They learn how to implement the solution and can begin to do it on their own.

(5) Assist the other person to implement the solution through volunteering your time. Act as a supportive partner to ensure the solution is implemented.

They feel supported; the task seems less overwhelming and challenging with your help.

(6) Use the solution yourself and experience transformation. Offer to share this solution with others, so they too can transform through a coaching program.

They feel empowered to make breakthroughs in their lives; they may also experience transformation through the solution you offer.

(7) Disseminate the solution widely through video, podcast, a published book, and media interviews.

Those who have this problem learn that a solution may exist. They feel hope.

Let’s look at the methods through which you might induce others to change; or ways others might attempt to facilitate you changing:

  • Many people may criticize you, but this does not produce behavioral change. In many cases, it may strengthen your stubbornness and resistance; this may lead you to begin criticizing and arguing with them.
  • Other people offer “helpful suggestions” that you cannot implement. Either the instructions are confusing and/or they advise you to do something you do not have the ability, knowledge, or resources to adopt.

  • In situations where there is an unequal power dynamic, one person may force or coerce you to do what they want. While you might accede to his or her demands while you are under his or her direct supervision, you will often feel resentful and will not continue to do the behavior when he or she is not threatening or coercing you.
  • If you don’t know how to do something, but are willing to learn, the other person can show you how to do it. They can impart knowledge, skills, or give you access to resources to enable you to put the solution into practice.
  • If you have far more work than you can handle, they can assist you through taking on part of the task and help you work on the steps of the solution.
  • If you apply a strategy or work the steps in a program and this enables you overcome a life challenge or to achieve your dreams, you may be motivated to share this with others. Those who likewise undergo breakthrough and transformation may wish to share their system with you.
  • If you are getting results with your strategy, program, or system, you may wish to disseminate this more widely and touch the lives of many others people who are struggling with this problem.

We suggest that methods four through seven are more effective than the first three. If you are finding that you cannot facilitate change in other person, you might wish to modify the way you approach changing them.

Those of you who wish to implement change in your life dealing with core issues of finding your authentic purpose and life direction, working out issues of having grown up in a dysfunctional family, recovering from addiction, or dealing with the aftermath of having been involved in a religious or political cult, you may wish to take advantage of the support available to you in our targeted coaching programs.

Exploring Your Truth

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By George A. Boyd © 2020

Integrity is founded upon you discovering your core truths. When other people attempt to persuade you to embrace their values, beliefs, and behavior, it is important to recognize what you stand for and what are your values—what is true for you.

Truth is not a unitary abstraction; there are seven orders of truth. We have explicated these different types of truth in an article that we published in Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing? We replicate this article here:

The Seven Orders of Truth

By George A. Boyd © 2009

When the seeker asks, “What is truth?” We respond that there are seven orders of truth. The discovery of the ground of Ultimate Reality comes when inner process has plumbed the other bands of truth and penetrated to our core. These seven orders of truth are described below.

Sensory truth – what is apparent and clear to healthy intact sense organs can be deceived by alterations of consciousness during drug use or mental illness (hallucination), misinterpretation of stimuli (delusion), misdirection of attention or inherent limitations of the sensory apparatus (illusion).

Cognitive truth – This is the model of the world that we construct inwardly, which defines the nature of self and our relationships with other people. It is our internalization of what we learn from others. It can be marred by analogical representations (symbol, parable, or myth) subject to multiple interpretations, representations of the individual by the class (stereotyping), emotional distortion (prejudice, scapegoating, displacement reactions), and fanciful learning not corresponding to objective fact (fables, folk tales, superstitions), and failure of memory (forgetting).

Cognitive truth is a subjective model of reality that is each person’s unique map of the world around him or her, and the world within; it changes with new experiences.

Representational or symbolic truth – the proofs of symbolic logic, mathematics, and geometry are representational truths. It is a lawful manipulation within certain parameters (game, set, universe of numbers) and certain rules, the results of this manipulation are uniform and unvarying.

Relationships between objects, forces, people, the social economic, political, and cultural environment, the workings of the objective universe can all be modeled by this means. The closer the original formulation of the mathematical model fits the observed data, the closer it may be said to approximate the laws that govern the world of matter, the world of the mind, the world of man, and the world of pure knowledge.

It is subject to the limitations of verification of a hypothesis, which must be done via observation (bringing in sensory distortion), researcher bias (bringing in cognitive distortion), limitations in the technology or ability to observe the phenomena, and following a wrong rule (miscalculation, logical fallacy).

Emotional truth – the experienced meaning or reaction to a life event (experience), a situation, an environment (mileau), another person, a stimuli, a memory, or an cognitive (idea, belief, thought). This truth is ever-changing, many-faceted, having many threads of association and meaning. It is what we feel in the present moment, the here and now.

It is subject to the distortions imposed by psychological defenses (repression, intellectualization, rationalization, fantasy, projection, denial); much of this material is not available to consciousness (subliminal or unconscious) and so is out of our awareness, and it is affected by the inherent limitation of language to describe to others the exact nature of what we experience emotionally.

Legal or formal truth – This is the one-to-one correspondence between a statement and its occurrence. When behavior matches what one’s stated intention, when an accusation is confirmed by the presence of objective witnesses, when an event is confirmed by the presence of multiple witnesses, it is said to be formally true. Formal truth is based on the construction of our laws, our consensus reality.

It is subject to distortion via differential interpretation of an event or a law, the implied ramifications of a rule or law that vary between individuals, the individual involved in presenting evidence may present only one aspect of what actually took place (impression management). Formal truth is what we use to determine someone is lying or deceiving us; what is observed or obtained does not match what was stated or promised.

Spiritual or moral truth – this inner arbiter of what is correct attitudes and behavior towards mankind, other species, and the world around us, and our correct relationship with the unseen worlds of the Spirit. Much of this material is learned, and internalized, by exposure to parental training, to teachings of schools and religious institutions, and to influential or charismatic people through the media, books, or personal contact.

This moral truth can be said to comprise the sense of conscience or Dharma. Spontaneous insight, spiritual revelation, intuitive understanding, and the contemplation of the inner structures or laws of the Inner Man form some portions of this truth; it culminates in illumination or wisdom. The violation of this truth results in subjective distress in the form of guilt, despair, and feelings of alienation or existential loneliness (abandonment). It is subject to the distortions inherent in learning, and determining an emotional or subjective truth.

Absolute or metaphysical truth – the horizon concept, or conception of the Divine: the greatest concept we can conceive. This conception may be the universe, a universal Mind, a Divinity Within man (a Higher Self), the Presence of God or gods in a spiritual Paradise, an Absolute Source of Life, spirit, and consciousness. This conception may be learned by exposure to philosophy, metaphysics, or religion—through studying the teachings of the exponents of philosophical, metaphysical, or religious schools—or it may arise through internal revelation or experience (mysticism, meditational experiences, dreams).

This model can be relatively stable throughout a lifetime; additional learning and experience elaborate it. However, exposure to conceptions of other people or other cultures through education or indoctrination can radically alter this “world view,” resulting in a new Absolute truth.

Metaphysical truths are the purported operation of so-called “inner laws” that impact upon our lives and destinies, and upon the workings of the universe. These laws are subsumed in an individual’s global conception of Absolute truth, they are subsidiary operations of Natural or Supernatural agencies working to produce the disparate phenomena of the external and internal universe(s).

In psychosis or severe mental illness, grave distortions can occur in the conception of Absolute Truth, throwing an individual into a frightening and chaotic inner world. Also, misinterpretation of abstract ideas can result in a distorted conception of Absolute Truth, creating a highly idiosyncratic or personalized version of the conception of the Ultimate Ground of All Things.

Each of our “truths” is subject to inherent or imposed distortions. Each of these are limited in its ability to determine the exact nature of the world without or the world within. It is important to understand that each of these ways of knowing truth has a realm germane to its functioning, a field in which it operates best.

  • Sensory truth is the truth according to our sense organs; it is what we perceive.
  • Cognitive truth is the truth according to our intellect; it is what we think or opine.
  • Representational truth is the truth according to our analytical mind; it is the proofs of logic, and the demonstrations of Reason.
  • Emotional truth is the truth according to our emotions, the world of our meanings, feelings, and experiences.
  • Legal or formal truth is the truth that substands the laws that form the foundation of society and commerce; it underlies the rule of law and the operation of jurisprudence in each nation.
  • Moral truth is the truth according to our higher emotionality, to our spirit, and is the inner principles by which we govern our lives.
  • Absolute truth is the truth according to our intuition, and reveals the inner and outer horizons of our world.

Truths change as man changes. The tenacity of our adherence to a belief or structure does not make it truer, it simply is a statement of our conviction or faith.

Our laws, religions, science, philosophies are all changing; their truths today may not be their truths tomorrow. As we unfold our spiritual vision within, our old ring-pass-not horizons dissolve into grander vistas of the Sublime.

Perhaps the contemplation of our truths must bring another in its stead, a growing humility at what we do not know, and a growing awareness of the limitations for the instruments by which we do know.

Using the Seven Orders of Truth

You can use these seven orders of truth to identify your current station in life and consciousness. You can use questions like the following to explore these levels of truth:

  • What are my sensory truths? What do I perceive right now?
  • What are the cognitive truths I have learned? How do I apply these truths in my daily life?
  • When do I use representational truth, the proofs of logic to test reality and to ascertain the veracity of an argument? When do I employ Reason to analyze what I have been told?
  • What are my emotional truths? What significant meanings, feelings, and experiences have colored my life?
  • When have I utilized legal or formal truth? In what ways do the laws that govern my city, county, state or province, or nation affect my personal liberty and the operation of my business?
  • What are my moral truths? By which principles do I govern my life?
  • What are my absolute truths that my intuition reveals to me? What are the core things I know about the world and my own existence?

As you explore these orders of truth, you begin to define who you are and what is your reality. Once you know these truths, you can utilize these orders of truth to answer specific questions. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you want to discover what you believe about death and dying. You could use a template like the following to explore this topic:

Your Topic

  

Question

What You Discovered

What is my sensory truth about this topic?

  

What is my cognitive truth about this topic? What have I learned about it?

  

What does my logical and reality testing mechanisms tell me about the representational truth of this topic?

  

What are my emotional truths about this topic?

 

What legal or formal truths apply to this topic?

  

What are my moral truths and realized values about this topic?

  

What does my intuition reveal about the absolute truth of this topic?

  

You may wish to examine topics about which you are uncertain or confused using a heuristic tool like this template.

Those who want to learn to gain deeper experience of the realm of their absolute truths will benefit from taking one of our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and on-line Accelerated Meditation Program.