The Three Streems

The Three Streams:
1st: Yoga	2nd: Vedanta	3rd: Tantra
Stabilizing and clearing the clouded mind, first by meditation on attitudes of lovingness, compassion, supportiveness, and acceptance. Cultivating the qualities such as non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, purity, contentment, self-study and surrender. Meditation to reduce  the colorings of ignorance, ego, attachment, aversions and fear. Cultivating razor-sharp discrimination to systematically move inward in a process of concentration, meditation and deep absorption. Seeking to know Purusha, pure consciousness as separate from Prakriti, the subtlest material and all of its evolutes, which include the levels of mind and matter.	Witnessing the four functions of mind: manas, the coordinator of actions and sensation; chitta, the storage bank; ahamkara, which allows "I" to interact with objects; buddhi, which is the higher faculty of knowing, deciding, adjudging, and discriminating. Exploring in contemplative meditation the three levels: waking, dreaming, deep sleep; conscious, unconscious, subconscious; gross, subtle, causal. Directly contemplating on the center of consciousness, seeking to experientially go into the heart of the question, "Who am I?" Seeking to know the Atman, the center of consciousness, which is ultimately found to be qualitatively the same essence as Brahman, the Absolute.	Balancing the internal energies of the chakras and the flows on the two sides of the body, ida and pingala, sun and moon, ha and tha of hatha yoga. Opening the central stream of energy, sushumna, the subtle counterpart of the physical spine. Allowing the latent energy to awaken, flowing upward in this channel, so as to reach the point from which it originally emerged. Deep reflection and meditation on the conscious, unconscious, subconscious, and waking, dreaming and sleeping states. Seeking to know the pre-existing union of Shiva and Shakti, which are the latent and active aspects of manifestation, sometimes called masculine and feminine.
Finally, seeking to know in direct experience  that  which is  beyond all of these words, names, and forms, where each of these "systems" converge into one pre-existing whole, which has been called for convenience sat-chit-ananda, existence-knowingness-bliss, although actually indescribable. That direct experience is found when consciousness recedes up the sushumna channel (central channel of the subtle spine) in a process called kundalini-awakening, withdrawing into the brahma nadi, the finest channel leading to sahasrara, the crown chakra. Along the journey of receding, all experiences collapse, so to speak, into a point from which all experiences arose in the first place. That point is called Bindu, which means Point or Dot, and is sometimes likened to a Pearl, and is often related to the principle of a Seed. The Bindu is near the end of the subtlest aspect of mind itself, after which one travels beyond or transcends the mind and its contents. It is near the end of time, space, and causation, and is the doorway to the Absolute. To understand this principle is extremely useful, if not essential to Advanced Meditation. Convergence of practices: Awareness of the nature of Bindu helps tremendously in seeing how all of the various practices are complementary, not contradictory, with each, in its own way, leading in the direction of the Bindu. The Bindu is the convergence point of Meditation, Contemplation, Prayer, and Mantra, and is part of the mystical, esoteric aspect of many, if not most religions and meditative traditions. The experience of Bindu is an actual, internally experienced reality, which is the convergence point of the highest principles and practices of Yoga, Vedanta, and Tantra. Seeking to experience and then transcend the Bindu serves as an organizing principle and focal point for all of those spiritual or yogic practices that are intended to lead one to direct experience.