With Don Lee Daniels

(Swami Jñānānanda Saraswatī)

Exploring Advanced Meditation grounded in the tradition of Nondual Shaiva Tantra, Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) known as the tandra state in ancient yogic texts, and Kuṇḍalinī/Śakti — the underlying force that mystics of all traditions have always known.

If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe for free at: www.donleedaniels.com

This issue is different.

For the past eleven issues, I've written to you in essays — direct teaching, personal experience, frameworks for understanding what happens when consciousness opens beyond the boundaries of ordinary awareness.

Today I'm giving you something I've never published before. A poetic interpretation of one of the most important texts in the tradition I practice — the Spanda Kārikās, the Stanzas on Vibration — a foundational work of Nondual Śaiva Tantra, attributed to the sage Vasugupta twelve hundred years ago.

The Sanskrit word spanda means vibration, pulsation, movement. But when I sit in meditation and touch the deepest states I know, the word that comes is heartbeat. A throbbing. A rocking. A pulse that rises from somewhere beneath thought, beneath breath, beneath everything the mind can name. I have felt this pulse for over forty years. It is the same pulse I felt the first time Kuṇḍalinī Śakti exploded through my body at nineteen — before I had a teacher, before I had a tradition, before I had any framework to understand what was happening.

The divine heartbeat. That is what spanda is.

What follows is my poetic interpretation of the first twenty-five verses of the Spanda Kārikās — Section I, Svarūpaspanda: The Essential Nature of the Divine Heartbeat. This is not a scholarly translation. Translations already exist, and they are excellent. This interpretation comes from the place where those translations meet forty years of direct practice. It is what I hear when I read these verses — not as an academic, but as someone who has lived inside what they describe.

Read this slowly. Better yet — read it aloud. Let the lines breathe. If a verse stops you, stay with it. The Spanda Kārikās are not information. They are recognition. Something in you already knows what these verses are saying.

I am also recording a narrated audio of these verses — the first episode of a new series on my YouTube channel called "The Divine Heartbeat — Teachings from Nondual Śaiva Tantra." When the audio is ready, I will send you the link.

1.

whose nature is Kuṇḍalinī Śakti,

the source of all powers of consciousness.

This is the divine Spanda heartbeat —

one beat: everything arises.

One beat: everything returns.

The entire universe lives in that sacred rhythm.

2.

In whom all of creation rests,

from whom it endlessly pours forth —

nothing can obscure the living pulse of divinity,

this heartbeat.

Not even aging.

Not even death.

For nothing exists outside of it.

The divine heartbeat is all there is.

3.

Even as you move through your waking life,

through dreaming,

through the depths of dreamless sleep —

who is the perceiver of these states?

The pulsing of the divine heartbeat never stops.

Whether you notice it or not.

Investigate and become aware.

4.

"I am happy." "I am in pain." "I am limited."

These rise and fall like waves on the ocean.

But the one in whom they rise

is the silent, still depth beneath the waves.

That one is eternal — the real you.

5.

No suffering, no pain,

no subject, no object,

no experiencer and nothing experienced —

where everything you thought was real,

your entire self-created world,

has fallen away —

the divine heartbeat,

Kuṇḍalinī Śakti,

is what remains.

Pure awareness.

Pure consciousness.

Pure bliss.

6.

Deeply examine and recognize this

with your whole being:

the mind does not move by itself.

The senses do not reach out alone.

They rise, they grasp, they let go —

all of it infused and animated

by the divine heartbeat that lives beneath.

7.

Absolute freedom,

what we truly seek,

has been here all along,

hidden in plain sight —

the divine heartbeat that flows

and moves through everything,

yet remains untouched.

It gives the senses their fire,

which you can learn to feel and know,

and asks nothing in return.

8.

Understand: the small you is not the one

driving the current of your will.

But when you touch the source,

the divine Kuṇḍalinī Śakti —

when the divine heartbeat recognizes itself —

you and the heartbeat of the universe become one.

Thy will be done.

9.

When you have a direct experience of your true nature,

the endless desires,

the striving,

the limitation of believing you are small

fade away on their own —

and the supreme state of awareness arises,

the way dawn arrives,

silently lighting up the sky.

10.

Then your true nature, pure consciousness, reveals itself.

You feel and know what needs to be known.

You do what needs to be done

with absolute freedom.

Not from effort.

Not from thought.

Flowing from the deepest place inside you —

where you and the heartbeat of divinity

have always been one.

11.

The yogi who sees and experiences this —

who stands astonished and filled with wonder,

beholding the divine heartbeat

flowing through and presiding over everything —

how could the wheel of suffering

touch that one?

12.

It is difficult to contemplate formless non-existence.

And when you emerge from the deepest states

and say "I was not aware" —

who is it that remembers

not being aware?

The pulsing heartbeat of divinity was there.

You simply did not notice.

13.

That state you experienced as emptiness

is only the surface of deep sleep.

But the divine heartbeat

is not something you later remember.

It is something you recognize —

alive, right now, this moment, in this breath.

14.

In this divine heartbeat,

there are two states of consciousness:

the things that are done,

and the one behind it all, the doer.

What is done will pass away.

The one behind it all

is eternal.

15.

In the deepest stillness,

only the effort toward doing dissolves.

When that effort falls away,

the unawakened believe

"If I am not doing, I no longer exist."

You have not disappeared.

You are what remains when the doing stops.

16.

Your innermost nature

cannot be hurt.

It cannot be broken.

It cannot be lost.

It is the home of all knowing —

and there is no other: only Awareness.

17.

The fully awakened one

feels and knows this pulsing heartbeat without interruption.

Through waking, dreaming, and deep sleep,

the heartbeat never wavers.

For everyone still learning,

it reveals itself first in the liminal gaps

between one state and the next.

18.

In waking and dreaming,

the divine heartbeat appears

as both the one who knows

and everything that is known.

In deep sleep and beyond,

it shines as pure consciousness alone —

undivided, unbroken, complete.

19.

Every movement of energy,

every quality of nature,

every shifting current you feel —

all of it draws its life

from the one universal heartbeat.

None of it can obscure or even dim

the awareness and joy

of one who knows this.

20.

And yet, for those still asleep

to their own divine nature,

these very energy currents

veil what is real,

pulling these sleeping souls deeper, like a riptide,

into the limiting wheel of forgetting.

21.

The yogi who constantly turns to and feels

this Spanda heartbeat,

again and again —

not waiting for sleep,

not waiting for death,

not waiting for the right time,

not waiting for extraordinary states —

discovers their own true nature

right here, in the waking world.

22.

The divine heartbeat can also be experienced

in the extremes —

when time stops —

in a surge of anger,

in a wave of sudden joy,

in the moment you run for your life,

in the pause when you do not know

what to do next.

At the edges of intensity,

when the small self is momentarily stunned,

the breath stops,

the heartbeat of the universe

floods in.

23.

Once you have tasted this —

once the heartbeat has revealed itself —

you rest and trust in it completely

and make a sacred vow:

"Whatever this deeper knowing,

my innermost Self, tells me,

this is what I will do."

24.

Immersing oneself in the heartbeat of Spanda,

the breath itself subtly transforms.

The inbreath and the outbreath

merge in the central channel, the Suṣumnā,

the divine column of light,

transform,

rise together,

and leave the body and this world behind.

25.

In that vast space of consciousness,

where the merging of the sun, the moon,

and the breath has melted into the light,

the one who has not yet recognized

their own divine nature

falls into a stupor like sleep.

But the one who is aware —

truly aware —

remains open,

unveiled,

luminous.

Free.

This interpretation draws on the scholarly translations of Jaideva Singh, Mark Dyczkowski, Christopher Wallis, and Swami Lakshmanjoo, interpreted through the lens of forty years of direct practice in the Nondual Śaiva Tantra tradition. The Spanda Kārikās are attributed to Vasugupta (9th century). Kallaṭa, Vasugupta's direct disciple, wrote the earliest known commentary.

 The remaining twenty-seven verses — on awakening, practice, and transformation — are coming in the next issue.

If something in these verses stopped you, if a line opened a door you did not expect — sit with it. That recognition is the teaching doing its work.

Direct experience reshapes your reality. And you can learn how to access these states of consciousness deliberately — and at will.

To view on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XkQD4d8oGtA

Don Lee Daniels

Swami Jñānānanda

donleedaniels.com