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Wisdom of the Masters

Professor Sri Raghavan Iyer ~ The Great Breath

20 Jan 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

6.494 - 28.904

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Chapter 2: What is the nature of primordial consciousness?

32.313 - 61.102 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

In order to comprehend consciousness from the standpoint of the cosmos as a whole, consciousness must refer to that which exists even before a cosmos comes into being. It is that which subsists and persists during the epochal manifestation of a cosmos

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63.683 - 113.245 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

as well as that which endures after the dissolution of the cosmos. If that stream of consciousness is unborn and undying, unbroken and ever existing, It must also be unmodified by all that is experienced through involvement in a form. Consideration of the nature of primordial consciousness is essentially the recognition of changelessness in a world of change.

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117.751 - 171.363 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

That which is entirely changeless is beginningless and endless, unconditionally eternal. To begin to contemplate this unbroken consciousness, and to consider the meaning of manifestation in the light of such an eternal reality is something the human mind is scarcely prepared to do. When confronted with such a prospect, the mind, which tends to be conditioned by sense experience,

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172.747 - 227.101 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

by memories and by anticipations, immediately begins to reflect the succession and variety of changes. As the mind is itself part of nature and part of matter in the deepest sense, it encounters profound obstacles to the ceaseless contemplation of the changeless. Yet, it is possible through meditation to penetrate within ourselves beyond the veil of concepts

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Chapter 3: How does meditation help us understand changelessness?

228.299 - 264.074 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

to a deeper sense of being which is beginningless and endless, unmodified by the mind. It is possible to experience oneself in relation to that which has no frame of reference in terms of space and time, No images refer to existing or possible objects.

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277.912 - 299.495 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

To rise to this level of imageless consciousness requires unremitting perseverance, because one must put aside innumerable layers and levels of language and thought.

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301.452 - 325.212 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

To understand this is to recognize in relation to the mind that which intuitive contemporary physicists have begun to understand about the many-layered and many-leveled structure of space. Employing what is now known as quantum physics,

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326.242 - 368.682 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

One can generate models which allow, at any given time, myriads of possible worlds in reference to any single atom, electron or photon. So too with consciousness. It is possible to use the mind to abstract away altogether from what actually exists. Yet, at the same time, one may preserve a sense of being

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374.335 - 426.952 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

The absence of a framework need not cause one to dissolve away and altogether lose one's sense of self-existence. To think in these ways is to begin to draw upon the metaphysically profound and purifying potential of space. At the simplest level one may, like Ralph Waldo Emerson,

428.268 - 484.968 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

see the heavens as a great cleanser and purifier of consciousness. An uninformed eye sees the sky as bare space, but many people are by now aware that space is not totally empty. that there is matter and radiation in all the spaces between the galaxies. It is empty only by reference to the familiar space of the world of objects. Turning the idea over in the mind again,

485.288 - 504.104 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

One might ask why the night sky, seemingly so empty, in fact suggests an indefinite extension in every direction, provides an intimation of a million galaxies.

Chapter 4: What insights do contemporary physicists offer about consciousness?

506.635 - 567.031 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

It seems as if there is at once some kind of structure and some kind of transcendence of all possible structures. To reflect upon these lines is to begin to approach the esoteric conception of space, which is neither a limitless void nor a conditioned fullness, but both.

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569.984 - 630.481 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

To persist in this thought is to raise fundamental questions about real being as opposed to embodied existence, about that which is within and without, omnipresent and invisible. by removing consciousness from its habitual confinement to narrow categories. Such meditation will cleanse the mind.

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633.721 - 681.983 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Meditation must go even deeper, however, in order to generate a notion of absolute abstract space, without reference to subjects or objects. The point must be reached where there is a dissolution of the sense of I in reference to a pristine sense of self-existence. The notion of an I cannot arise unless there is already a separation in consciousness

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682.979 - 695.602 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Between the self within and the self as embodied. Between the self in contemplation and the self that is extended without.

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Chapter 5: How does the concept of maya relate to our perception of reality?

703.6 - 730.364 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Anyone even remotely familiar with the persistently intrusive nature of eye consciousness during attempts at meditation, much less daily life, should understand the tremendous effort of abstraction, of imagination, and of depth in meditation, needed to reverse the false order of priority.

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732.338 - 791.08 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

which immersion in the imminent world of space-time imposes upon the pure stream of unmodified consciousness. Ego consciousness insists upon pronouncing this or that as real. It imposes its own polarized constructions on appearances, maintaining that that which is more real is dark or empty, and has to be discovered by removing perceptible layers.

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793.021 - 845.587 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

In fact, however, the opposite is true. Spiritually, what is real is what is unmodified, what can never be penetrated by analysis of the differentiated realm of space-time, of subjects and objects. From the standpoint of spirit, everything that emerges is unreal, because it is only a veil upon that which is hidden behind it, not in the manner of subtle phenomena veiled by grosser phenomena,

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848.152 - 897.882 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

but in the manner of noumena which transcend phenomena entirely. All phenomena, whether they seem subtle or mundane, are equally unreal. Their reality is at best a relative mode of existence, relative to the observer and to most sense perceptions, relative to the concepts and the cogitations of individual subjects, relative to phases and states of evolving consciousness,

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911.956 - 956.675 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Even more fundamental than the veil of concept is the veil of maya, illusion itself. Even to speak of Maya is as mysterious and metaphysical as talking about blankness, absolute abstract space, or nothingness. The doctrine of Maya is really a doctrine about time and causality.

959.307 - 1012.227 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

about consciousness and veiling, about the many layered nature of space. When the contemporary physicist says that the universe is space and matter, This is but a dim reflection of the ancient idea that the universe is both nirvana and maya. There is something illusory about matter, but there is also something at the root of matter which is pure, homogeneous,

1013.712 - 1071.239 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

and eternal. There is numinal substance beyond maya. There is also that about space which is beyond all possible dimensions. Even thinking of space as multidimensional does not reach to the soul of the concept. To ascend in consciousness into the realm of pure, noumenal substance

1072.876 - 1101.209 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

and absolute abstract space, one must come to terms with the problem of the ego. The ego, or the sense of I, is that which consolidates, separates and appropriates both subject and object.

1103.96 - 1130.555 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

nurturing a sense of possession and self-protectiveness. It is that in consciousness which seems to be engaged in a dubious process of preserving something, a sense of identity, but a something that turns out to be nothing in the eye of eternity.

Chapter 6: What barriers do we face in accessing pure consciousness?

1159.31 - 1218.035 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

as simply the periodic potencies of infinite space. Space in the ultimate sense is both infinite expansion and all pervasiveness. infinite growth and infinite preservation. The ancients did not conceive of this universe as something which could expand perpetually or be totally annihilated. For them, expansion, preservation and annihilation

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1219.148 - 1280.101 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

were relative to a location or plane of existence. Anything which disappears or appears on one plane emerges from or is absorbed into another plane. Beginnings and endings are not final. They simply exist relative to an observer. Given the postulate of absolute abstract space, however, no set of instruments could exhaust the possibilities of growth.

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1282.295 - 1336.852 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

or of absorption and annihilation. As soon as one begins to view this entire universe as a limitation of potential existence, one of myriad possibilities potential within infinite space, it becomes clear that there must be an illusion about egoity. It is an illusion of indefinite preservation. In the worst and saddest cases, this amounts to an identification with a body.

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1339.096 - 1396.707 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Given the cosmic nature of craving and the thirst for existence, it is a long and difficult evolutionary process to elevate consciousness beyond the realm of maya. Even human beings who have successfully generated a sense of selfhood, independent of the body, have attachments still to the mind through concepts, expectations and images. Even if they have gone beyond the latent tendencies,

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1398.108 - 1412.806 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

and have begun to inhabit a realm of higher ideation, they have still, out of their love of meditation, or their desire to help the human race, an inherence in form.

1429.85 - 1454.116 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Thus, owing to the universal tendency towards an illusory inheritance of consciousness in form, every human being attempting to contact the stream of pure, unmodified consciousness is bound to discover certain barriers that are extremely difficult to cross.

1456.917 - 1511.879 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

and which cannot ultimately be wholly dissolved while the capacity for incarnation still exists. Owing to the habitual eye-making at the level of physical name and form, Human beings are typically terrified of death. They should instead learn to expand their consciousness and consider the myriad human beings that they once knew or did not know who must have been their ancestors. Where are they?

1519.439 - 1538.39 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Can one imagine a consciousness after the moment of death? Can one imagine a consciousness that is capable of including innumerable human beings who have disappeared as bodies and forms?

1546.557 - 1572.376 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

One might imagine entering a gallery of ancestral photographs and understanding that none of the human beings represented there still resemble the images that portray them because their forms have all been buried or burnt. That particular form has disintegrated.

Chapter 7: How can we transcend the limitations imposed by ego?

1574.401 - 1635.607 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Yet, if one concentrates on the pinpoints of light in their eyes, one can come to see these as a kind of collective veil upon the eternal sentient rays of light that are their true natures. dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, was not spoken of that light, it was spoken of the body, not the soul. There is, after all, nothing to be afraid of,

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1636.94 - 1695.749 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

because whatever the object of one's fears, it will eventually be dissolved. Secondly, there is nothing to depend on, because whatever the crutch of one's weaknesses, it will sometime be reabsorbed. Instead of placing one's reliance upon ultimately ephemeral forms, no matter how abstract, one should awaken and strengthen a sense of spiritual solidarity with the Great Breath.

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1697.774 - 1721.5 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

To begin to become one with a great breath in consciousness means re-educating all aspects of one's being. This demands much time and hard work because of the vast numbers of miseducated life atoms in one's vestiges.

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1723.846 - 1777.998 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Through craving and ego clinging, masses of these miseducated elementals, conjoined with brain electricity, have left astral grooves, memories of mortality and insufficiency, of limitation and finitude, Because of this fragmentation and discontinuity of consciousness, one constantly tends to look outside oneself for that upon which one may rely.

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1780.546 - 1832.555 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

Owing to this exteriorization of all the sense organs and faculties, one has virtually no acquaintance with the vast internal range of these organs. The divine sight and divine hearing, the sense of inner touch are scarcely accessible to the self-crippled victims of this ego clinging. Thus, as human beings withdraw identification from the lower forms of ego belief and clinging,

1834.175 - 1861.428 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

they can learn to inhabit self-consciously the stream of divine consciousness of the gods. If even the gods exist only sempiternally, but to be reabsorbed at the end of the great cosmic cycle,

1863.52 - 1890.487 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

This is certainly true of all human beings, unless they become self-consciously immortal in spirit. But humans are greater than the gods, and one may realize that it is not only possible to revolutionize one's thinking,

1891.094 - 1941.905 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

feeling and breathing in relation to the vestiges, raising them to a divine level. It is also possible to abide self-consciously in the self-existence of Sat Chit Ananda, being consciousness bliss. beyond the realms of the gods, beyond causation and maya, is the transcendent and absolute ground of all causality.

1943.98 - 1973.157 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

During the long night of manifestation, when the previous subjective universe has dissolved into that great causal body, and is held in solution in space, which is filled with the unconscious pulsation of the great breath, the one form of existence is in causeless, dreamless sleep.

Chapter 8: What is the significance of the Great Breath in spiritual evolution?

2066.83 - 2131.63 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

given to all human beings who seek to enter the silence of the divine dark and experience the reality of the unmanifest. If one senses the possibility of rising to and remaining in that consciousness, then one will begin to awaken a mystical sense of inner touch in relation to the impalpable, beginningless, ethereal substratum which interpenetrates all life in every atom and form.

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2133.74 - 2208.428 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

It is through this highest and finest veil upon pure space, upon deity itself or Parabrahman, that the wisdom magic of transmutation works. The more one uses this teaching to awaken a deeper sense of reality and self-existence, the more one may comfortably dispense with all the subtle ways in which Maya controls human beings through the interconnected chain of causes.

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2210.774 - 2239.58 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

The realization of consciousness beyond all maya cannot conceivably be understood as a once and for all process for any human being in any given incarnation. Yet if human beings have lived on earth for millions upon millions of years, distilling the pure spiritual essence of consciousness through myriad lives,

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2241.352 - 2292.533 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

They should not underestimate their noetic possibilities as men and women of meditation. By receiving the sovereign, sacrificial teaching for the sake of serving all humanity and aiding in the divine evolution of ideas, one may become an authentic co-worker with nature and a true servant of the boundless age.

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2294.862 - 2358.886 Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

By awakening the spirit of compassion, one may recover the initiation experiences of past lives that are locked in the causal karmic body. Then one may nurture fresh flowers of devotion, pure awareness in action, to be consecrated to the eternal, incognizable, rootless root of all. The ever-acting, causeless cause.

2361.923 - 2498.257

Amin. Amin. Amin. Sous-titrage ST' 501 Amin. Amin. Amin. Abba, abba, abba. Abba, abba, abba, abba.

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