28 Spirituality Studies 9-1 Spring 2023 but most of the time the breath will not be natural carrying the risk of prāna residuals appearing in the system to take place. A proper sankalpa could, however, help here as well. Similarly, to our vegetative nervous system, operating systems do many tasks in the background that we are not conscious about as an end user. It is not only the operating system, but users can also instrument a process to run in the background [4], allowing them work on another job simultaneously in the very same terminal. This way, one can ask one’s deity with the proper sankalpa and offer to run a mantra in the background in order to enjoy its reflected vibration. At this point, one’s only job is to relax one’s attention on one’s breath, which will be aligned automatically with the corresponding vibration. The reason for this lies in the fact that breathing and mind are the two branches of the very same tree. If the mind resonates with a vibration, the breath will reflect it. After some time, kumbhaka (Sa. “breath retention”) will also take place automatically, without enforcing it. This practice took advantage from the combined application of sankalpa and offer to create a loop between the native and deity as well as the concept of background processes. 3.3 Sankalpa to Schedule Events During meditation one can easily slip into unexpected states of mind and there is no easy way out unless one formulates a sankalpa before to bring one back after a given period of time. One such a sankalpa could be to run our personal mantra for 108 times for ten minutes only. The advantages of this approach are multifold. First and foremost, one can frame one’s practice by time, secondly, one doesn’t need to put extra effort to keep a counter in mind or use a mala. Lastly, one’s mind gets automatically focused into the “dharana practice without any worldly effort” (Sa. kriya sakti). 3.4 Sankalpa as an Automation Tool Another great area for the application of sankalpas is to let the mind absorb into different states consecutively for a short period of time in order to “warm up” the corresponding mental centers and prepare the person for meditation. One such an example is when in a dualistic approach, one asks one’s chosen higher deity to help one automatically visits the petals of a chakra in order to let the mind absorbed in the states represented by them for a while. A great test is to use the six petals of the manas chakra (Woodroffe 2017, 55) where each petal corresponds to a binary state helping the mind to turn on and off the five indriyas and the “dream state” (Sa. svapna) for a given native. This technique is especially useful for anavopaya dharana [5] practices when consciousness uses an object, so the practice itself takes place at the level of objective consciousness. As mentioned earlier, one such an object can be a mantra or a sequence of syllables. For example, the Dharana 7 (verse thirty) of Vijñanabhairava (2022, 27–28) can be automated in a way that the twelve consecutively higher energy centers (i.e., Janmagra, Mula, Kandha, Nabhi, Hrd, Kantha, Talu, Bhrumadya, Lalata, Brahmarandra, Sakti, Vyapini) absorb the vibration of the corresponding vowels (i.e., a, a, i, i, u, u, e, ai, o, au, am, ah) one by one by means of a corresponding sankalpa in a way that each center start resonating with its syllable and the shift to a subtler, spanda-manata (Sa. “vibration, pulse”) state will emerge smoothly. “This vibration allows for piercing all the constituents of the subtle body and an upand-down movement of supreme Energy starts flowing in the sushumna nādī,” according to the Netra Tantra (7:10, quoted in Bäumer 2021, 57). After a while, this movement automatically ceases, and one enters a subtle, firm state, which is followed by the state of all-pervading Siva called “para” where the “mind dissolves” (Sa. cittapralaya). From this highest state of ascent, one should descend to the hrdayam (Sa. “spiritual Heart”) to fill it with supreme Energy as described in more details in the chapter 6. 3.5 Sankalpa to Leave A key aspect of meditation when the mind enters an undifferentiated state, for example, by merging the mind into the vibration of Ōm. If properly executed, the mind totally gets absorbed into Ōm, where the observer the observation process and the observed are identical and cannot be separated. As a consequence, there is no “personal I” (Sa. traces of asmita) that could navigate back the native to its original dimensions. However, a properly formulated sankalpa can also help by using the timing method mentioned in 3. 3. This way, one can safely enjoy the advantages of the Ōm vibration without the fear of total dissolution.
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