You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

The spanda / 297
THE illUSiOn Of SpAnDA (THE THROB)
It is called the spanda, which is the throb or pulsation of
appear-disappear-appear-disappear—the blink whereupon
the “world” appears to arise and subside. Appearing and
disappearing simultaneously, and ultimately not at all. The
veil of I AM, makes us able to “know” only I AM, and unable
to know or experience I AM NOT.
“The Universe is simply an opening out (unmesa) of
the Supreme [THE SUBSTANCE]. The [rest] appears in
the course of manifestation.” (Siva Sutras, p. viii)
And as this is “realized” the illusion of cause-effect; the process
whereby the nervous system or condensed consciousness
imagines that the last “prior” event exists, has a past and has a
cause or even the concept of now as part of the continuum of
time, i.e. past, present and future dissolves into Nothingness.
Between appear and disappear is ksana (Sanskrit for moment)
which appears, according to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, 10 times per
second; according to other scientists, such as Itzhak Bentov, 17
times per second, appears “NOW” as condensed or contracted
consciousness on the screen of itself, which witnesses an event
that appears and disappears, along with the “I” which experiences
and knows it. With the appearance of I AM is the veil
of existence, past, time, space, etc.
“The whole universe appears and disappears alternately
but the interval called a ksana is so small that it appears
to be a continuous phenomena. We see a continuous
glow in an electric bulb with an alternating current but
we know that the glow is discontinuous and periods
of illumination follow periods of darkness alternately
at very short intervals. It is not only in Samadhi 1 that
1 The understanding that through the pulsation we are always going
into and out of Samadhi was discussed in “my” earlier work, The Tao
of Chaos.