I compiled more questions and their respective answers here:
Q: Is a liberated one necessarily celibate?
A: No. Just as he can continue living his usual life prior to Final Liberation or become a guru, he can do whatever he wants regarding his sexual life, become celibate or keep a family life, etc. Anyway, all that is of no importance to him because of the excessive Bliss he enjoys at every second during his trances. Although I am using the masculine gender for the sake of convenience, I am including women who attained Final Liberation, obviously. To write “he/she” all the time is bothersome, so I use the masculine gender.
Q: Can you explain better why sexual life is of no importance in his case?
A: Due to the massive Bliss he is able to experience during his trances. His trance is perpetual indeed, but there are valleys and peaks in it. Trances in his case are not only had in a sitting position and with eyes closed. The intensity of the Bliss varies according to physical capacity of a person. The high voltage of the Power of the Self must be regulated for one’s system not to be blown to pieces. If the intensity is too much, the liberated one is forced to discard the body.
Now, that liberated person starts to experience trance full of colossal Bliss. What is colossal? For example, and I am not exaggerating at all, an average trance generates Bliss equal to one orgasm per second, so in one hour composed of 3600 seconds that liberated person will have the Joy an ordinary person enjoys after 3600 orgasms. During the peaks of Bliss, the intensity is even stronger, ten orgasms per second. I am using the pleasure of an orgasm as unit of measurement in order for the reader to have a better idea of how massive the trances of a liberated one are. Sexual pleasure is sought by so many people around the world day and night because it is one of the greatest pleasures a human being can experience according to those people, but when compared to the Delight of trances it is close to zero. Of course, Bliss is never exactly like a regular sexual orgasm, but the comparison is handy in showing the magnitude of Bliss in the case of a person who attained spiritual enlightenment.
The Power of the Self can deliver infinite Bliss, but if It did so the body would not survive. So, It regulates the voltage for the sake of preserving life in a human body. Obviously, you now surely realize that if you could have the pleasure of 3600 orgasm in the period of one hour of trance, all your former interest in usual sex would be gone. Having usual sex after the experience of Bliss is like drinking honey from a honey barrel and next being given honey candy. Yes, you could enjoy the honey candy but not because you were in real need but as a mere pastime. Now you realize that a liberated one is in perpetual trance with peaks of Bliss, which transforms usual sexual pleasure into something absolutely ridiculous.
And I said “usual” sex because according to the scriptures there is a special way of having sex, which is able to deliver the Bliss of a trance. Anyway, these scriptures also specify that in order to do all that two great spiritual personalities are required (most people attempting to practice that type of unusual sex always forget to read the minimal requirements). On top of that, they must be completely conversant with scriptures, i.e. they must be scholars too. This sacred way of having sex is related to higher states of consciousness and not to mere physical positions. But if attaining trance is already such a difficult task for one person, you can imagine how difficult it is to have two fully fit people practicing sex in order to bring about trance according to the regulations of those scriptures. Fortunately, that type of practice is not at all indispensable, i.e. one person is perfectly able to attain His Bliss by himself, without having to find another spiritually advanced in order to have sacred sex. To find such a person is so difficult that if Final Liberation were to depend upon that type of practice, there would be only two liberated persons per century, as it were. All this is too demanding as far as the level of knowledge/consciousness for an average spiritual aspirant of today.
A very advanced spiritual aspirant can have trances extending up to three hours, i.e. a pleasure equivalent to around 10000 orgasms in that period of time. After that, it is pretty normal that he will not be interested in having usual sex, right? When most people hear about trances, they do not fully understand the magnitude of that achievement. The word “trance” is samādhi in Sanskrit. Therefore, trance is above meditation. Trance is attained by advanced aspirants who usually have meditated for many years. Once the stage of trance is reached, the only duty of that aspirant is to continue experiencing trances, day after day. What else could he do after all?
So whether such a person is celibate or not becomes a trifle. If he is not celibate, he can keep a family life as a kind of disguise, or else he can have sex out of compassion for another person, or in order to bring a divine child to this planet, and so on. Whatever the reasons for his giving up celibacy, one thing is sure: he is not having sex to get usual sexual pleasure. This is very clear, isn’t it?
People who are very interested in sex behave like that because they do not know how massively Blissful their Self is. If they could have a glimpse of His Bliss, they would immediately lose their interest not only in sex but in many other things that attract their attention. When His Bliss emerges, it is unprecedented Bliss, i.e. no other previous bliss is like His Bliss. This is a shocking experience that marks in that fortunate one who had this experience, the beginning of the end of mother bondage and all her progeny.
Q: Your explanation of Bliss is mind-blowing! Are you sure?
A: Yes, absolutely, because I have direct experience of all that. I am not speaking about something I’ve read somewhere or because someone has told me that. Evidently, no number of wells will exactly show the immensity of an ocean, but again my comparison was made in order for people who have not experienced trances to have a good idea of the magnitude of Final Liberation. The subject called Final Liberation is generally dealt with like this: “You know, Final Liberation”, but the magnitude of this achievement is hardly apprehended till one experiences it. When one experiences Final Liberation he just cannot believe his eyes. In the end, that person becomes totally uninterested in getting pleasure from objects, other people and so on, because he is drinking the Supreme Nectar all the time.
Q: Could you describe how that person gets such massive Bliss?
A: The state of a liberated one is not exclusive to him but occurring all the time in all people. It is the State of the Self who is a dense mass of Freedom and Bliss. The Self is everywhere and at all times. There is no time or place where He is not present. What is the difference between a liberated one and the rest of people then? His Grace. While He (the Self) wants to reveal Himself in a liberated one, He does not want to do so in other people. The process is quite complex but I will explain it to you with a very simple example. There are two groups involved in sensual perception:
- The group of sense organs such as eyes, ears, nose, etc.
- The group of sense goddesses
The first group is inanimate, not divine, while the second group is divine. The first group is composed of organs which are essentially devoid of life. They appear to be alive due to the presence of the sense goddesses, who bring life to them. These goddesses or deities are like rays of His Power. The process of perception through the senses (e.g. through the ears), it is fully carried out by those goddesses and not by the organs, which are mere inanimate instruments. This is difficult to understand, I know, but it’s the truth.
Now, when a person listens to his favorite music, the music is a sense object, his ears are the sense organs, and finally, the goddess of hearing bestows hearing pleasure. While he is listening to that music he begins to feel more and more delight till he reaches a level where he cannot derive more delight. Why? Because the goddess of hearing kicks him out. Only a fraction of her Joy is passed onto him in the form of the pleasure he experiences. Why does she kick him out? Because the Self does not want him to enter His Abode. This is also very difficult to understand because I have to use human language to communicate all these teachings. The goddesses are forms of the Power of the Self. Every person tries to get in touch with his Self through His own Power, but mostly he fails to do so completely. The reason is simply that the Self does not want it. If He does not want, His Power acts immediately and kicks out that person so that he will not be able to experience more pleasure than the usual measure. This constantly occurs in all the limited individuals.
Now, the limited individual, being devoid of His Grace, thinks: “This music is giving me such a great pleasure”, and he is pleased with that. That limited individual has no idea what he is missing. Thus, bondage thrives.
Q: Why bondage?
A: Because that limited individual depends on something external to get a limited measure of happiness. He is convinced that his favorite music is the cause for his pleasure. So, if his favorite music is not being played, he will not experience the same pleasure. In fact, if the most horrible music ever is being played, he will experience a lot of pain. The root of his problem is the absence of His Grace, which brings about the false notion that joy comes from music and not from the goddess of hearing. This way, he is highly dependent and never free. Even if such a person is one day taught that his pleasure is not coming from his favorite music but from the goddess of hearing, who is a form of His Power, he will get kicked out by that goddess every time he wants to fully get in touch with her. Why? Because the Self wishes so. There is no Grace and therefore no full Bliss in his case. One can accumulate an enormous quantity of knowledge, but without the Grace of the Self, all that is fruitless in the end. One will simply be kicked out by the goddesses over and over again. This is a mark of lack of capacity. Hence, all the people that are not able to delight in His Bliss are not fully capable.
In the case of a liberated one, the situation is entirely different. Not only does he know the secret that happiness never comes from the object but from the goddesses, but he is also allowed to enter His Abode. So, when he hears his favorite music, he embraces the goddess of hearing, as it were, and enjoys full Joy. As that goddess is a blissful ray of the Power of the Self, he can gain access to all the possible Joy. The magnitude of his achievement is immeasurable. This is not possible without the Grace of the Self. The goddess does not kick such person out because the Self has mixed His Grace with her. This is very difficult to explain by words, obviously.
And as that liberated person always bypasses the sense object and gains connection with the goddesses directly, he is not dependent on the sense objects to experience Bliss. He is able to experience Joy while he hears this or that, while he sees this or that, and so on. His condition is one of perpetual Bliss under all circumstances. And along with the wave of Delight there is the experience of His Absolute Freedom, which belongs to the Self alone. In the peak of his trances, such a person attains complete identification with the Self because there is nothing but the Self everywhere.
Q: What would this world be like if everybody was liberated like that person?
A: It would be a very strange world, really, hehe. As a matter of fact, all these limited individuals are constantly looking for the Self, but their only problem is that they ignore that. They look to make money, but why? To be happier. What is happiness? A little fraction of His Bliss. They look to have sex, but why? To be happier. What is happiness? A little fraction of His Bliss. They look to do this or that, but why? To be happier. What is happiness? A little fraction of His Bliss. Even if they do horrible things, they do all that in the name of being happier according to their particular viewpoints about what happiness is. But in the end, all that happiness is merely a little fraction of His Bliss. The whole Bliss is His Power which is one with Him. So, everybody is looking for Him.
A liberated person is someone who can finally meet with Him directly through His own Power, and not through objects, people, etc., which are residual emanations of this Power. He does so through His Grace and not otherwise. Nobody can enter His Dwelling-place without His permission. Therefore, to get the Grace of the Self is crucial in order to attain Final Liberation. Knowledge is always important but not crucial.
In 1970, my family bought a TV set. It had no remote control, but I thought at that time that it was pretty normal to have to stand up and go up to the TV set every time I wanted to switch channels. Now that I have had a remote control in my hands for a long time, I cannot understand how I could tolerate all that. Well, in the same way most people are more or less pleased with what they experience because they don’t know about the existence of something much, much better in themselves. They behave like children, from a spiritual viewpoint. You can see them running after this or that all day long in order to be happier but they are never completely happy. This is incapacity.
One day, the Self says: “This person has been running after this or that uselessly for so many births. Let him stop running!” This is the first touch of His Grace appearing in the form of “let this dull search be stopped!” As a result, that person becomes a spiritual aspirant who starts to learn about the Truth. He learns that real Happiness comes from within and not from without. But however hard he tries to attain Bliss, he cannot. Next, he learns that he can attain Bliss only by the Grace of the Self. So, he practices some spiritual techniques for years in order to accumulate merit and experience in order to receive His Grace. But this is not enough. Therefore, he will continue meditating and making all possible spiritual efforts for years, decades or even lifetimes. One day, He will say to His own Power: “Let him come in”, and that spiritual aspirant will become a liberated person.
When Final Liberation accrues to him, he realizes that he is really the Self and not a limited individual. It was all a self-delusion and not a delusion perpetrated by someone else. All this is fully understood after the attainment of Final Liberation but never before that achievement.
Q: Why not before?
A: Because the Self is convinced that He is a limited individual. At the same time, He is the Self all the time and everywhere. This is beyond the sphere of human understanding, so do not try to understand it. It is always about direct experience and never about reasoning. I keep my explanations in the sphere of dualism for the readers to be able to understand these complex processes. But the achievement of Final Liberation is always non-dual or full of identification with the Self. In the end, one is promoted to the State of the Self where dualism and non-dualism rest in the form of pure Consciousness. All this cannot be understood by the mind, obviously. All these words fall short in explaining this State of the Self because the former come from the latter and not vice versa. How could these words that are never full explain the nature of the Full One?
Q: How long will people live in ignorance?
A: Until the moment He makes the decision to reveal Himself. Along with the powers of manifestation, maintenance and withdrawal of the universe, the Self is extremely effective in concealing His essential nature to practically everybody. At the same time, He can reveal His nature to the ones He chooses from the group of spiritual aspirants. It is all His Play.
As He is beyond space and time, whether those people remain in bondage for one or one gazillion years, it is the same to Him. He is a dense mass of Bliss in full Freedom. He is a dense mass because He occupies all space and time. He also occupies all the three states of consciousness (wakefulness, dreaming and deep sleep), hence one can detect the transition from one another. If He were not a compact mass, nobody could detect those transitions. He is so obvious that it is absurd to conceive that someone will have to spend so many lifetimes looking for Him. Anyway, in His Play He decides to remain hidden from Himself that way. And He is extremely effective in doing so. Watch the world if you do not believe me. The Self is in each person but they look for Him in other people, objects, activities and so on. All those fans of “someone” could not exist if He were to reveal Himself to them. A person who realizes his own Self cannot admire anyone else except as a mere pastime. In all those things you can see how powerful He is when it comes to “hiding from Himself”. This is a great Mystery that is finally unraveled at the time of achieving Liberation and not before.
This explains why the world process proceeds based on the idea that He does not want to reveal Himself to everybody. As He is the Highest Self, who can force Him? Nobody.
Salutations to this Self who is able to conceal Himself from everybody while being all of them! Who could be more Free than this Self then? Whether He remains hidden or revealed, one must worship Him, one’s own Self, constantly. Other than His Abode, where else could one go to?