We read and reflect upon a teaching poem written ten centuries ago by the great Kashmiri sage Sri Abhinavagupta reveals the functions of God-Consciousness in these final days of this holographic presentation we call the world. Even more importantly, the difficulties of spiritual seekers are explained, as well as the way out of the illusion of individual existence.

Science now supports the logic of nonduality and the primacy of consciousness. The empirical evidence from parapsychology and studies of near-death experiences also portends the return of spiritual powers that have atrophied in our species due to our dependency on technology—and because of being brainwashed into believing in materialism, Darwinism, atheism, and nihilism.

Manifest reality can be perceived through the language of words, illuminating the symbolic meaningfulness and aesthetic qualities of its subtle spiritual nature. But the world can also be translated into the language of number. In the last ten centuries, human consciousness has become increasingly mathematized. Capitalism is all about quantity: how much is something worth, how many are available, what will be the amount of return on my investment, how large will be my profits in the coming year, etc. Mathematics is the main instrument of social control, military power, and economic policy. Without higher mathematics, there could be no weapons of mass destruction, no electric grid, no digital surveillance, no nanotechnology for biowarfare, no geoengineering, and no agents operating with artificial intelligence. The Word creates, Number destroys. Mathematics has no meaning, no heart, no mercy. We have all become mere numbers in the social order, dehumanized and devalued as useless eaters. But there is a third language of God: the language of Silence. Word creates, Number kills, but Silence saves. To save our souls, let us learn to commune with God in Silence.

It is not useful to try to silence the mind. Instead, become curious about how much you could expand your consciousness, how much more intelligence you could activate, and what new wisdom you could download. Or perhaps you might wonder how it feels to encounter the Presence of God. Or you might want to know the experience of divine grace, or becoming divinized. Any of these interests will lead you beyond thought to the Stillness of the Absolute.

The ego is the shadow of fear that haunts our lives and creates our suffering, increased by the ego’s addition of the compensatory defenses of anger, envy, hatred, avoidance, and other emotional tendencies that produce unhappiness. Inner work culminates in the recognition that the ego is unreal and obsolete as an operating system. Consciousness is then free to realize its unborn, formless, loving, and infinite nature.

The childhood wound from lack of love or toxic versions of affection can only be healed by the willingness to love oneself, and by contemplating deeply the nature of one’s I-am-ness to discover its true essence is none other than the infinite Self. Because the Self is all, the heart naturally opens to love the Self in all beings, and thus the wound is healed.

The ego suffers from nostalgia for the lost pseudo-paradise of the womb and the adoring mother at birth. The soul suffers from gnostalgia for the lost ecstasy in the Heart of God. The God-Self laughs, as nothing real was ever lost.

Once you recognize that you are not your wounded ego narrative, your natural curiosity about your real nature will reveal the divine light and love shining behind the clouds of egoic affect and noise. Your love for happiness and freedom become the courage to realize the Self.

In this opening class on the analysis of a Buddhist book of poems on the attainment of enlightenment, we learn to focus on the unspoken implications of the text, to unravel metaphors, and to perceive contradictions and points of incoherence.

In answering a question about the relationship between tapas (heating sanskaras with the inner Light) and shunyata (emptying out all projections and turning within), it becomes clear that by returning to the Source of the Light, the power of tapas increases exponentially. Thus, the two are complementary aspects of meditation practice that ultimately are recognized as the same.