Verities of Being, Part II: Siddha

Jul 24, 2025

“Siddha” is Part II of a series of talks for the Theosophical Society of San Francisco.

In this Substack post, I have included the full text and accompanying slides for Part I.

You will also find an embedded video of the talk itself at the end of this post.

To register for Part III (8/18/25) and Part IV (9/21/25), via Zoom, use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/.../register/ygrx3Z1ESHCR9muMtKrwDw

Merriam-Webster Definition:

Verity

1. the quality or state of being true or real

2. something (such as a statement) that is true especially: a fundamental and inevitably true value

3. the quality or state of being truthful or honest

Plural: Verities

Primal Reality. The Pathless Path. The Lineage of No-Lineage.

The emerging Global Wisdom Tradition. Gaian Politics. Gaian Poetics.

The Ascendancy of the Feminine.

Altruism and Sustainability as Spiritual (& Existential) Imperatives.

These are the themes my work has focused for over the last thirty years.

This is a time of great trial and tribulation for my country and for our world.

Life-affirming. Celebratory. Empowering.

I hope that’s the experience you take away from this current series of talks.

Meanings

Collins American Dictionary – Siddhi

1. Yoga - miraculous power imparted by the late stages of intense meditation

2. Buddhism - Any occult power acquired through discipline

Siddhis = Powers

Siddha = A Powerful Being, A Being w/ Powers

Lists of Marvels

Here are two lists. A list of 9 siddhis from a Himalayan Academy Glossary. And a list of 19 siddhis from the first chapter of the Kakṣapuṭatantra. A few of the powers enumerated are rather sinister. Think Hydra or Magnito. LOL.

In this presentation, we are going to delve into eight siddhi which do not appear in either of these or any other such lists. They are taken for granted.

Primal Reality, Infinite Power

My list of siddhis randomly added up to eight.

According to Keith Dowman in his introduction to Legends of the Mahasiddhas: “The great powers, are enumerated differently in the various traditions, sometimes as seven, sometimes as eight.”

I had no idea. Coincidence? Haha.

3, 5 and 7 are holy, holy numbers. Magical numbers. Potent. Dynamic.

Of course, in a broader all the so-called natural or whole numbers, i.e., 1 through 10, are holy. All R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Pythagoras. But you know what I mean.

8 belongs with 3, 5 and 7, as not just generically holy, but EXTRA holy. LOL.

There are the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga in Yoga and the Eightfold Path of Lord Buddha. But they’re not what I’m feeling here.

I’m feeling the #8 in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, the “Strength” card.

That maiden holding up the jaws of a lion.

The first card I ever drew from a Tarot deck.

You’ll see the “Strength” card, the 8, also has a sideway 8 (a lemniscate) over the maiden’s head. The infinity symbol. Typically you’ll be told there are only two other cards in which the infinity symbol appears, the “Magician” card and the 2 of Pentacles.

BUT a closer look reveals a fourth appearance, in “The World” card, the last of the Major Arcana. You’ll see the lemniscate in the form of partially obscured banners, above the goddess’ head and below her feet.

BTW, this example of the Strength card is from the Waite Deck. You should know that although Arthur Edward Waits held the copyright and was listed as the author, Pamela Colman Smith was the artist who illustrated the entire deck, and she was not acknowledged for her formidable creative accomplishment.

Siddha

Before we move on to the eight siddhis that I want to draw your attention to, I feel I must invoke the presence of the Mahasiddhas.

There are four women among the 84 great ones whose lives are celebrated in Keith Dowman’s translation of “Legends of the Mahasiddhis.”

Of course, there were many more whose names the patriarchy conveniently disappeared.

But here and now it will suffice to simply tell the tale of one of these four.

Her name Lakshmincara a.k.a. “the Crazy Princess.”

I have told her story before. But it must be told again, here, in this context.

In the dakini realm of Oddiyana …”
One king decided to wed his sister to another king to forge an alliance.
The girl, Lakshmincara, was 7 years old.
“Lakshmincara was an extraordinary being. From birth she had been blessed with all the qualities of the elect … her family managed to postpone the marriage ceremony until she was sixteen …It felt as though the end of the world had come when the prince's escort arrived to take her away … she departed from [her home] ac¬ companied by a retinue of Buddhist friends and an enormous dowry and sumptuous gifts for her new family.”
As she was waiting outside the walls of her husband to be’s palace …
“… there was a great clamor of horns and baying dogs and horses' hooves, and then a royal hunting party came galloping past, obviously returning from the chase. At the head of the group rode a stem-faced man in gorgeous clothes soiled by the bloody carcass of a slain doe he had flung across his saddle … her hair stood on end and the blood drained from her face when she learned that the prince she had seen was her husband … She had all the chests and boxes and bales she had brought with her opened on the spot … she began to give away her entire dowry. Every¬ thing … she locked herself into the chamber her husband had provided … she tore the clothes from her body, smeared herself with oil and lamp black, unbound her hair and covered it with filth until she looked like a wild woman … She greeted [the royal physicians] with hysterical screams, hurling oil lamps and hairbrushes at their heads, and attacking them with her teeth and fingernails … To all appearances, Laksminkara was hopelessly insane … One night, when the guards at her door had gone off … Laksminkara crept out of her room … slipped down the back stairways of the labyrinthine palace … hid among the piles of trash and gar¬ bage and escaped through the back gates when the sweepers came to collect the refuse. She made her way to a cremation ground and, renouncing the world to become a yogini, she lived by scavenging food thrown out for the dogs … For seven years she lived in this manner, continually deepening her experience of the essential nirvana …”
“A sweeper of the king's latrines, an untouchable, served her faithfully during this time, and when she gained her realization, she gave him initiation. He quickly attained Buddhahood without anyone knowing of his achievement except his preceptress.
“… the father of her former fiancé, went out on a royal hunt… He got lost … fell asleep and woke late at night ...his attention was caught by something in the distance. It seemed to be a light … it was ema¬ nating from the mouth of a cave ... There a wondrous sight met his eyes. Seated upon a jeweled throne was Laksminkara, her body glowing with a golden radiance that suffused the cave with light. She was surrounded by a circle of adoring goddesses … he remained there all night watching the events in the magical cave.”
Next day, he … returned to his palace, telling no one what he had seen … BUT he “could not keep himself from returning to the cave … Finally, one night … he entered the cave and prostrated himself before the yogini … he begged so humbly for instruction …”
"You cannot be my disciple … Your guru is one of your very own latrine sweepers. He is one of my disciples who has attained siddhi. “I have many sweepers," said the king. "How shall I know him?" … "Put your trust in the man who feeds the poor after he has finished his work. Go to him at night for instruction” … it was not long before he dis¬ covered the identity of the sweeper-guru. He invited the man to the palace … He led the untouchable to his throne and seated him there … the king prostrated himself before his guru and requested instruction … thereafter, Laksminkara and the sweeper performed many miracles in the kingdom … before they both ascended into the Paradise of the Dakinis.”
- Keith Dowman. Legends of the Mahasiddhas

Just a bit more groundwork ...

In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman declares, “I sing the body electric

He asks rhetorically, “And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?”

Whitman knew. In his own way, he knew.

Early in the Civil War, Whitman moved from Brooklyn to Washington, D.C, and served as a volunteer nurse in the Union’s military hospitals.

Although they never met formally, and remained strangers, Whitman often encountered Abraham Lincoln as POTUS rode through the streets of the Capitol. They would acknowledge each with a nod or bow.

On her “Born to Die” album, released in 2012, the great Lana Del Ray offered up a sorceress’ spell, a siren song woven around the first line of Whitman’s poem, “I sing the body electric, I sing the body electric, baby …”

And I just felt strongly to include the energies of Whitman and Lana in this presentation.

Human incarnation is a temple within which our primal reality dwells, let’s briefly highlight some elements of the temple’s architecture.

5 Bodies
Soma
Vagus Nerve

5 Bodies

I have written and spoken at length about the Five Bodies, I am not going to go into all of that here; except to say it’s important to get out of the trance of imagining yourself a mind and a heart in a body, or a soul in a body, or a heart, mind and soul in a body, this trance is samsara itself, it is ignorance.

You have five bodies. You can call them sheaths or veils.

You can say there are seven instead of five. Seven bodies as the version laid out in the Theosophical teachings. There isn’t really a difference. It’s just splitting hairs. They are not mutually exclusive. They do not contradict each other. The seven-body version is more granular.I default to the five-body version: Physical Body (Annamaya Kosha), Energetic Body (Pranamaya Kosha), Psychological Body (Manomaya Kosha), Intuitive Body (Vijnanamaya Kosha), Bliss Body (Anandamaya Kosha).

Note that I say “Psychological Body” – typically, you’ll read it translated as the “Mental Body” – for me that too limited, it misleading, it doesn’t contain enough information.

I could go on and on about the Five Bodies. It’s an important shift in perspective.

Look it up in the Table of Contents for “Wyrds of Power.”

Soma.

It’s a word that’s use in several different ways now … I am talking about Soma in the context of Somatics and particularly Somatic Psychotherapy.

In ancient Greek, “Soma” meant body, the physical body, today, understanding embodiment, understanding trauma, we understand Soma to mean the whole space, not just the physical body and energetic bodies, but how the psychological body (i.e. the emotional and the mental) are interwoven. In Somatic Psychotherapy, for example, we discover how trauma and grief, are held in the physical and energetic bodies.

Again, I could go on and on. But for here and now, I will say this - Just as after Einstein, it no longer made any sense to talk about “time and space,” knowing what we now know about real embodiment, it no longer makes any sense to simply talk about “psyche.” Just as it is much more accurate to say “spacetime,” it is much more accurate to say “psyche-soma.”

In the same way that knowing about the 5 Bodies allows for an important shift in your perspective, and therefore in your experience, so does factoring in Soma.

The Vagus Nerve

The Vagus Nerve is not the longest nerve in the body. That’s the Sciatic Nerve. The Vagus Nerve is the longest cranial nerve, i.e., the longest (and most complex) nerve that originates in the brain. “Vagus” is derived from the Latin word for “to wander.” So the Vagus Nerve “wanders” through the upper body, INNERVATING vital organs along the way, and ends in the abdomen. Heart, lungs, digestive tract, liver …

The Vagus Nerve is central to the parasympathetic nervous system, it’s primary nerve.

Studies show that stimulating the Vagus Nerve helps you deal with PTSD, because you’re activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and so you’re moving from “Fight or Flight” to “Rest and Digest.” It can help you reset your immune system and educe inflammation … As with the Five Bodies and Soma, I could go on and on.

But for here and now, belly breathing please, inhaling and exhaling, SLOWLY, FULLY, DEEPLY, to and from your belly, yes, and singing, whispering, breathing “Huuuuu” or “Ahhhhhh” into your heart center, and Yoga and/or Pilates and/or Tai Chi, oh yes, and simply Legs Up the Wall, for 10-20 minutes as often as it suggests itself to you …

Touch

Touch is the first of the eight inborn, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis we will be celebrating in this talk, it is as all eight are an integral aspect of our primal reality.

The skin is, after all, the largest organ in the human body. Even though, generally, it is not even seen as an organ. Not viewed the same way as the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, the skin is largely ignored (except cosmetically). And yet, the power of touch, and the desperate need for it, span human life from birth to death.

I have referenced Ashley Montage’s TOUCHING: The Human Significance of the Skin in talks and writings over the years. It’s a very important book.

512 pages, first published in 1971, a few hundred thousand of copies sold.

“… as a sensory system,” Montague writes, “the skin is much the most important organ system of the body …”
“The loving touch, like music, often utters the things that cannot be spoken.”
“What the child requires if it is to prosper … is to be handled, carried, caressed, cuddled, cared for …”
“Tactile needs do not seem to change with aging – if anything, they seem to increase.”
“The raw sensation of touch as stimulus is vitally necessary for the physical survival of the organism.”

Touch

Reading from Wyrds of Power –

Montague invokes the great Helen Keller to make the point that you can be deaf and blind and still live an extraordinary life, but you can’t live at all without your skin. Furthermore, the way that Helen Keller broke through her isolation to create an extraordinary life for herself was through her skin and by the power of touch. And what was it that the Aboriginals drew in those caves in Australia tens of thousands of years ago? Human hands. Consider the 50,000-year-old Abo cave paintings in Mutawintji National Park (New South Wales). These hands have touched me. For 50,000 years they have been open, for 50,000 years they have been asking, 50,000 years they have been welcoming, for 50,000 years they have been reaching out to feel for the throbbing life of the universe. They are as immanent, and as relevant, and as full of technical information as the Siva Sutras or the Bhakti Sutras of Narada, or any text in any tradition, in any era. It has all been there since before the beginning really …
Yes, the power of touch is an aspect of the primal reality.

Laughter

Laughter is the second of the eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

Where does Laughter come from? Seriously. Where does it come from?

The liberating power of laughter reverberates down through the centuries.

From Hotei (the Laughing Buddha) to Shakespeare’s brave, brilliant Fools, to the Mulla Nasrudin seated backwards on his donkey, riding through Konya, to the stand-up comedy of a Sarah Silverman and or a Wanda Sykes …

Laughter frees us from twisted human predicaments and warped predilections. Laughter is sometimes irrepressible. It doesn’t even need a reason. It just arises.

But where does it come from?

Writing on “The Divine Grace of Laughter” in Psychology Today, Nicole A. Tetreault Ph.D. elucidates:

Research shows that laughter ignites mental states similar to meditation where the gamma brain waves are oscillating and the entire brain is engaged, similar to being in flow … When we laugh with others, we connect more deeply and build more positive relationships. Science shows we like one another more when we laugh together. Laughing together activates mirror neurons in our brains causing us to see and reflect one another; in that instant, we laugh as one … Laughing also releases endorphins—feel-good hormones that help reduce pain. When we laugh, we get a nice shot of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that improves our mood and attention, and serotonin, which enhances our connection with others and stabilizes our mood. This influx of neurotransmitters can help us shift the mind out of fear and separateness and shape neural connections for greater love and connection.

Writing on “The Science of Why We Laugh” for Scientific American (6/26/19), Giovanni Sabato provides background on a vital distinction -

Wilson and Gervais applied the concept of group selection to two different types of human laughter. Spontaneous, emotional, impulsive and involuntary laughter is a genuine expression of amusement and joy and is a reaction to playing and joking around; it shows up in the smiles of a child or during roughhousing or tickling. This display of amusement is called Duchenne laughter, after scholar Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne … Conversely, non-Duchenne laughter is a studied and not very emotional imitation of spontaneous laughter. People employ it as a voluntary social strategy … Spontaneous laughter has its roots in the games of early primates … Controlled laughter may have evolved later, with the development of casual conversation, denigration, and derision in social interactions.

In a paper published at phys.org, “Study shows that apes are more optimistic after hearing laughter” (6/26/25). Indiana University offers insights into Laughter’s origin story -

Great apes, including bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, all produce vocalizations resembling human laughter during play. Previous research using acoustic analysis suggests that these vocalizations all share an evolutionary origin with human laughter. In other words, human laughter likely evolved from a sound made during play in a common ancestor of all the great apes …

So, what is Laughter?

Laughter is of the nature of the Primal Reality itself. An integral element.

Anne Lamont, writer, progressive, real Christian, says it best:

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Yes, carbonated holiness.

Sleep

Sleep is the third of these eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

Consider these provocative insights from Ramana -

Whether the estimable state of turiya, true jnana, is described either as ‘the excellent sleep totally devoid of waking’ or as ‘the unique and unceasing waking that has nothing to do with forgetful sleep’, you should know that both descriptions are entirely appropriate. - Ramana Maharshi, Guru Vachaka Kovai

Sleep is not ignorance, it is one’s pure state; wakefulness is not knowledge, it is ignorance. There is full awareness in sleep and total ignorance in waking. - Ramana Maharshi, Ramana’s Gospel

I have talked and written a lot about dreaming and deep sleep.

Here’s a bit more from Wyrds of Power -

We put our head on a pillow, if we're fortunate, and we close our eyes. And something happens. We enter a different state of consciousness, in which we dream, and dreaming sometimes seems like gobbly gook. Other times, you have dreams that have information. You have dreams that have information about events that haven't happened yet. If you write some strange dream down, you might surprise yourself that a dream that made no sense at all – a few months, a few years, maybe a couple of decades later -- turns out to be a precognitive dream of some kind. Where does that information come from? Where does that information come from? Where does the information in a precognitive dream come from? That question alone opens a whole can of worms. But we won't stop there. And other kinds of dreams are like koans. We work on them all our lives. They're mystical dreams, shamanic dreams, they have meaning to us, and such a dream may have multiple meanings through a course of life. You'll find there are different facets to them. And then, there are other kinds of dreams that are just working out our psychological problems. We have dreams where we work out our problems, or face things we're too afraid to look at in our waking mind, or too depressed to look at in our waking minds. Consciousness brings them out in the dream state, and we kind of unpack them, dismantle them, and put them back together again, and take a look at them in the process …
People would come to him pursuing the ultimate truth, because it was clear, from his atmosphere, that he had it. He tried to teach in silence, and he tried to draw a picture, and he tried to answer questions. One of the things he said that struck me was -- he asked, "How would you describe the state of deep sleep?" And the person in dialogue with him would typically describe as a numbness, a deadness, a complete unawareness, a blankness … And Ramana’s point was that the deep sleep state is closer to Samadhi, closer to what you want to call Samadhi, or Nirvana, or the enlightened state. It's Buddhahood. Yes, it's closer to that realization than either the waking state or the dreaming state or anything else. In fact, the farther you get away from the waking state, the closer you are to Samadhi, and that challenges some people's clichés about enlightenment, because you might think enlightenment is some sort of imaginative place …
So, I want to leave you with that idea of what sleep is, of its multidimensional nature, and of its mystical nature, and the fact that no one taught you to do this ... This is something that's natural to you. It is something that puts you directly in touch with the divine reality. The human reality and the divine reality meet [merge really, are absorbed into each other] within the cycle of every 24 hours. They meet in deep sleep. On your way to deep sleep, you're going to get information from various sources … various virtual computers that have been working on various problems and various agendas some of which you haven't even seen with your conscious mind … This is direct. This is immediate. This is our life. This is not somebody else's. And don't ever let anybody tell “you can't meditate,” or “that's not the right way to mediate.” Don’t ever tell yourself … “I can't meditate” …

Sleep

These two paintings are the work of Tamara de Lempicka. One of the most heralded artists of the Art Deco period. You might recognize Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti). It depicts Tamara “at the wheel of a Bugatti racing car, wearing a leather helmet and gloves and wrapped in a gray scarf … a personification of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility” (Wikipedia).

In 1917, [Tamara’s husband] was accused of being a Tsarist agent and arrested by the Cheka. She offered herself to the Swedish consul and he secured her husband’s release.

They escaped to Paris, where they sold the family jewels to survive.

In 1928, they divorced. That same year, an Astro-Hungarian baron, an art collector, commissioned Tamara to do a portrait of his mistress, a Spanish dancer.

In the 1930s, she achieved renown in the art world. Her paintings hung side by side with the work of Georgia O’Keefe, Willem de Kooning and others,

Tamara and the Baron had married in 1934, a year after his wife’s death,

At the beginning of World War II, Tamara and the Baron fled to America.

Openly bisexual, her liaisons with both men and women were made for scandal at that time. Desire and seduction were powerful themes in her work. Even earlier, while still in the Paris of the 1920s, she had intimately aligned with lesbian and bisexual writers and artists, such as Vita Sackville-West and Colette …

Madonna is an admirer and collector of Lempicka's work.

The painter’s work appeared in music videos such as "Express Yourself" (1989) and "Vogue" (1990) and on the sets of Blond Ambition (1990) and other world tours.

Conscience

Conscience: An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior - Oxford Languages

Conscience is the fourth of the eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis that we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

“The relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience." - Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called Conscience. - George Washington, "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation"

Just as we drew a distinction between two kinds of humor in our exploration of the Laughter siddhi, here we need draw a distinction between two kinds of conscience, i.e., Conscience with a capital “C” versus lower-case c conscience.

In the context of what Kierkegaard called “the God-Relationship” and George Washington called “celestial fire,” we are of course talking about Capital “C” Conscience.

But meanwhile, for millennia, a lower-case “c” model of conscience predicated on patriarchal values has been superimposed over of this portal into our primal reality.

In this era of the Great Shift, we are breaking through that rigid, skewed frame, to re-establish a mainline to the “celestial fire” of the Capital “C” Conscience.

The great Margaret Atwood, the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” explores this.

In “The Year of the Flood” (2009), a dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic world, Atwood wrote, “Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.”

Indeed. Hunger opens your eyes. Hunger introduces you to DESPERATION. Everything is reordered. What is right, what is wrong, what is unthinkable. Everything. And yes, as we hurtle deeper and deeper into the Planetary Climate Emergency and the Sixth Great Extinction … Well …

In a charming essay, "Margaret Atwood: Voicing transition in the Conscience of Women,” Neha Dubey, Indian psychotherapist (AND Bollywood movie star), wrote:

“Women need to be in full control over their existence ‘to reshape and re-write it by re-writing culture’ … Perhaps this is the reason Atwood presents such an openly oppressive culture endorsing subtly the patriarchal mind-set, hoping that it might be refuted by both her protagonist and her readers … Through enigmatic female protagonists, Atwood has voiced the transition that has occurred in the women’s conscience over this past century, from wanting to fit into the stereotyped image of a good woman, to women who are becoming more aware of their inner self, and their own wants, and not afraid to express themselves, the new woman.”

Conscience with a capital “C” is feminist - green, woke and feminist.

And it is accessible to you directly, immediately … you know this, you feel this …

Otherwise, it is very unlikely you would be hearing my voice or reading my words.

You can see it all play out in Handmaid's Tale, as the characters come to grips with perverse societal mores superimposed over their own real, innate primal reality Conscience, the big C Conscience, the celestial fire Conscience, the God relationship Conscience. The big C Conscience is telling them what is right and wrong about the societal norms that they're are expected to accept in the patriarchal, oligarchic, misogynist, racist society they find themselves in. That's all of it.

And this might seem like a tangent, but it isn't.

That Conscience with a capital C is feminist, green and woke.

Green, woke and feminist. That is Conscience.

It is accessible to you directly immediately. You know this. You feel this.

We are struggling to come to grips, individually and collectively, with the Planetary Climate Emergency and the Sixth Great Extinction. We are struggling to facilitate, open up, accelerate the Ascendancy of the Feminine, to break down what's happened with the patriarchy over all these centuries. These two challenges, dealing with our relationship to Gaia and hastening the Ascendancy of the Feminine are of paramount importance. The impetus for both is coming from that Conscience with a capital C, from that celestial fire, from that great God relationship.

This capital C Conscience has been with us since the caves. Just like the power of Touch has been with us since the cave. Just as the power of Laughter has been with us from the caves. This capital C Conscience, the celestial fire, has been with us. It is civilization. This is civilization. These in-born, plug and play, hardwired Siddhis are civilization. Along the way, our genius contiually creates new challenges, new morality plays, for us to to come to grips with, learn from, and either survive or not.

Voice

Voice is the fifth of the eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis that we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

What is the recitation of mantra really? What is japa? A work-out for building mystical muscle? The process for polishing inner gemstones? A spell to remove obstacles or attract desirables? A vehicle for traveling from point x to point y on one’s spiritual journey? A worshipful offering to a God or Goddess projection? Without rejecting or demeaning any of these intended purposes let me offer another view, a different perspective, one which doesn’t supplant any of them, but can occupy the same space.

I say your voice doesn’t serve the mantra; the mantra serves your voice. I say just as your voice utters the sacred syllables; those sacred syllables are uttering your voice.

You may imagine your voice to be chalice from which the mantra is poured; I suggest to you that the mantra is a chalice into which your voice is poured.

And remember, I say, “your voice” IS literally an aspect of your very being, your primal reality itself.

There are two voice-based techniques in the Vijnana Bhairava -

15. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you.
66. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH effortlessly, the spontaneity.

So, together, let’s do a version of that 15th technique.

This is how I intone A-U-M:

Relax yourself, shake yourself loose, sit comfortably, take a few breaths, gentle breaths, into the lungs and into the heart, inhale and exhale.

Place the index finger and the middle finger of either hand (your choice, no superstition) on your heart center, just the fingertips, lightly.

Inhale gently but deeply. On the exhale, sing “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”