Levels in Towards Infinity

Introduction

The spiritual journey is difficult to describe in words, especially those usually used for outward journeys. Still many mystics have tried their best to explain, their own, or the ones on which they guide others. They need not be alike.

Babuji wrote or dictated Towards Infinity, a travelogue/map of the Sahaj Marg/Heartfulness Way journey, in a superconscious state. So he didn't repeatedly describe all the details as one goes to or from each point or levels. But it is possible to come up with a general "algorithm" from going through all the descriptions and give an explanatory perspective on going from level to level.

(Daaji has given an exegesis of the yatra in Towards Infinity in a series of articles, collected in the December 2017 edition of Heartfulness Magazine)

General algorithm

At each point or level [1]:

1. sālokya-ta - "getting the air of the place" per Babuji
2. sāmīpya-ta - becoming roughly like that, near that level, start merger 
3. sārūpya-ta - taking on form of that level, continue merger
4. sāyujya-ta - merger completed, digested, assimilated

These make up increasing laya in or at that level. Babuji terms it laya-avastha in general.

Then living like that level/point and its characteristics, until that level has been sufficiently experienced. [2]

Then negativating those characteristics, that level and its vibrations, to leave for the next subtler level. Negativating means transforming the grosser level vibrations into their subtler cause.

(How? This can be done simply by reaching the next level. Or someone - whose mind-field has merged with that level - can go to that level and raise your own mind-field to that level by physical and mental proximity. Or by pranahuti - subtlest possible level - along with a sankalpa, by Master.)

Repeat...

Another perspective

In Towards Infinity, Babuji talks about sāyujya-ta or refined identicality and then about going to a subtler level to get to the next point. sāyujya-ta of two things is at the same vibratory level. Compare water in water against water in water vapour. Or, food is matter and when it is in sāyujya-ta with us, it has been digested in our material body such that we don't feel it any more. (In our spiritual yatra, we are food and we are also digesting ourselves in the Divine at different levels!)

Then we go to the next subtler level by changing the vibratory level. Babuji calls this negation sometimes. "I negativated it!" he said when light came to him in meditation.

The present layer is the effect of a subtler causal layer. By negation or laya or merger of the sāyujya-ta itself, we go from effect level vibration to cause level vibration.

Thus, our spiritual journey may be understood very simply as going from grossest to subtlest vibration levels.

Background 

A few background ideas, from Sāṁkhya-yoga, may be helpful to understand the logic and implications.

• There is a transformation - pariṇāma - from subtler to grosser levels (of vibration). [3]
• This transformation is real, actual. [4] A grosser level is always the effect of a subtler level. That is, a cause is transformed into an effect, but is still retrievable or achievable.
• The transformation can be reversed, i.e., from a grosser to a subtler level. [5]
• These transformations are not in physical space. [6] 

NOTES

[1] From what I have read till now, the idea of recurrence of these stages is entirely original to Babuji. In other paths, these or slightly different stages cover the entire spiritual journey, they occur only once. E.g., the vaiṣṇavites. Their analysis is obviously much more coarse-grained and so less helpful in daily sadhana or understanding one's journey across its many ups and downs. Sufism has a similar set - fanaa - dissolution - and baqaa - subsistence, which is supposed to occur only once. Again much more coarse-grained.

[2] To be determined (TBD) by one's Guide.

(Or, very rarely, by one's memories of past sadhana, perhaps from previous lives. Alternatively, by the Divine itself.)

[3] Another word for transformation is manifestation. Creation is a misleading word because it implies a creator separate from creation.

[4] advaitins want sadhaks to regard transformation as unreal. At least, until one is settled in a highly subtle stage. While a commendable intention, this confuses sadhaks and novices completely!

[5] Mentally, or better, in the non-physical inside the body. This reversal is not permanent, so one can go up and down the levels at will.

[6] There are physical effects, on the physical body, but physical space is not a factor. Simple example - one has subtle transcendental ideas and gross individualistic ideas using the same brain in the same head. While sāṁkhya-yoga does discuss transformation of physical elements [7], they are not necessary for a spiritual practice initially. Since physical space is not important, neither is time.

[7] Babuji, paraphrased - 

"matter to energy" says science, "matter to energy to absolute", I say.