The teachings of Mark Griffin draw from meditation, Yoga Tantra, Kundalini, the Siddha lineage, and the direct exploration of consciousness. This glossary provides concise explanations of the principal terms, practices, and spiritual concepts found throughout the Awakening Archives.
Each definition reflects the way a term is presented within Mark Griffin’s teaching system. Links connect these concepts to related Topics and individual Teachings where they can be explored in greater depth.
Use the alphabetical guide to browse the glossary, or follow the related links beneath each definition to continue exploring the Archives.
Browse the Glossary
A–E
Ajapa Japa
Ajapa Japa means repetition without deliberate repetition—the spontaneous arising of mantra from within consciousness itself. Mark Griffin uses the term to describe SoHam as “the mantra that repeats itself.”
Unlike a mantra intentionally repeated aloud or in the mind, ajapa japa emerges naturally when consciousness moves freely through the human form. The practitioner does not manufacture the mantra, but listens for and attunes attention to a vibration already present within the breath and life force. Through sustained awareness, this spontaneous current internalizes attention and supports the awakening of the totality of the human form.
Related concepts: SoHam · Mantra · Breath · Prana · Kundalini · Meditation
Explore: Prana, SoHam, and the Four Bodies
Bellows Breath
Bellows Breath is a breathing technique Mark Griffin uses to open the physical and subtle systems and develop awareness of the relationship among breath, prana, mind, and Kundalini. The breath is controlled through the diaphragm and solar plexus: with the inward breath, the diaphragm and solar plexus expand outward, causing the breathing apparatus to fill; with the outward breath, they contract and press the air outward.
Mark compares this rhythmic expansion and contraction to charging and discharging a bellows. The inward breath carries prana and the descending vibration of consciousness through the human system. After a brief interval, the bellows contracts and the outward breath rises. These movements make the descending and ascending currents of SoHam perceptible and stimulate the subtle-physical body.
Bellows Breath helps the human system remain open, relaxed, and responsive as prana and Kundalini move through it. Mark uses it as a recurring foundational practice for entering meditation, awakening the subtle circuitry, and preparing attention to recognize the still Space Between the Breaths.
Related concepts: Breath · Prana · SoHam · Kundalini Shakti · Subtle Body · The Space Between the Breaths
Explore: Prana, SoHam, and the Four Bodies
Bhairava
Bhairava is a universal and wrathful form of Shiva through which the principal operations of divine consciousness are expressed. Mark Griffin describes Bhairava as a presence of immense spiritual force rather than wrath in the ordinary sense of anger or hostility.
The activity of Bhairava flows through five rays or powers: creation, maintenance, withdrawal, veiling, and grace. Creation brings forms into manifestation; maintenance sustains them; withdrawal dissolves form into its underlying emptiness; veiling produces the apparent separation between consciousness and creation; and grace, expressed through Shaktipat, awakens and illuminates the practitioner.
Bhairava is also the hidden consciousness present within every quality of creation. At the most subtle level, Bhairava Consciousness is recognized where Shiva and Shakti, source and manifestation, arise simultaneously. Mark describes this as an emptiness full of everything—the infinitesimal point at which the Ocean of Consciousness becomes the radiance of the universe without ever becoming separate from it.
Through meditation and Deity Yoga, the practitioner enters into direct relationship with this universal force. The purpose is not simply to contemplate Bhairava as an external divine personality, but to recognize the same powers of consciousness operating within creation, the human system, and the Self.
Related concepts: Shiva and Shakti · Deity Yoga · Consciousness · Maya · Shaktipat · Emptiness
Explore: Shiva Yoga
Bodhicitta
Bodhicitta is the awakened heart-mind and the living presence of enlightenment within the human form. Mark Griffin presents it not merely as an intention to attain enlightenment or act compassionately, but as enlightenment itself arising within the individual. It joins awakened understanding with love, courage, generosity, kindness, patience, and the determination to turn away from actions that generate suffering and further karmic limitation.
Bodhicitta also has a precise seat within the subtle heart, near the base of the sternum and toward the center of the body. Mark describes this as a deep inner space where the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal bodies intersect. It is also the point at which heart and mind become a unified instrument of perception. Neither heart nor mind is complete when operating alone; joined through Bodhicitta, they perceive and respond with greater clarity and wholeness.
In the practice of raising Bodhicitta, the white Bodhicitta associated with consciousness, Ham, and the crown of the head descends toward the heart. The red Bodhicitta associated with creation, So, and the navel rises to meet it. Their equilibrium at the heart integrates the ascending and descending currents of SoHam, brings the four bodies into alignment, and illuminates the subtle circuitry connecting the heart and brain. This awakened structure is already present within the practitioner and does not have to be invented through visualization.
Mark describes Bodhicitta as an essential source of stability during intense spiritual transformation. It clarifies afflictive emotion, confusion, and distorted perception while helping the practitioner remain integrated through purification and changing states of consciousness. For this reason, he recommends generating Bodhicitta daily and calls it a failsafe position of consciousness from which the practitioner can meet the changing conditions of life without abandoning the awakened heart or awakened mind.
Related concepts: Consciousness · The Four Bodies · Integration · Purification · SoHam · Kundalini Shakti · Bellows Breath · The Space Between the Breaths · Subtle Body
Explore: Bodhicitta Meditation II
Blue Pearl
The Blue Pearl, also called the Blue Spark, is Mark Griffin’s description of the supracausal body perceived within the human form as a tiny, scintillating blue point of consciousness. Its appearance is paradoxical: universal consciousness, which is beyond ordinary measures of finite and infinite existence, becomes perceptible to individual awareness in the concentrated form of an atom or point.
The Blue Pearl is not an absolute or final condition. It is a doorway into the Ocean of Consciousness. As attention approaches and penetrates this point, the individual perceiver enters direct contact with universal identity. Mark describes this as the drop entering the ocean: the distinction between individual and universal consciousness is absorbed into a single field.
Through this recognition, awareness may experience itself as arising at all times, in all places, and as all things. The Blue Pearl therefore functions as the innermost gateway through which the relative Self apprehends the universal consciousness already present at the center of its being.
Related concepts: The Four Bodies · The Self · Ocean of Consciousness · The Fourth State · Recognition of Consciousness
Explore: Rupa, the Blue Pearl
Chakras
Chakras are subtle wheels or centers that organize and distribute prana, Kundalini, perception, and consciousness throughout the human system. Mark Griffin describes six principal chakras at the forehead, throat, heart, navel, pelvis, and root, together with the thousand-petalled Sahasrara at the crown. The centers from the root through the throat are related to the elemental energies of earth, water, fire, air, and ether, while the Ajna chakra at the forehead functions as a seat of Om.
The chakras are not isolated points. They form part of a complex circuitry that includes Ida, Pingala, Sushumna, the hundred fibers, bindus, drops, and the physical plexuses, organs, brain, and endocrine system. Their petals represent subtle circuits extending through the physical and subtle-physical bodies.
Through Shaktipat, Kundalini first descends from the crown and progressively opens the subtle system. As Kundalini is activated at the base of the spine, it rises through Sushumna and stimulates the chakras from below. This descending and ascending movement transforms the subtle body, alters the operation of the physical system, and prepares the brain and mind for higher states of consciousness and samadhi.
Related concepts: Kundalini Shakti · Subtle Body · Prana · Sushumna · Ida · Pingala · Purification
Explore: The Astral Body
Cessation
Cessation is the condition in which the movement of breath, senses, and mind temporarily comes to rest. It is not unconsciousness or an absence of awareness. Mark Griffin describes it as a moment of dissolution in which the mental activity that ordinarily produces the experience of separate being becomes still.
The Space Between the Breaths provides a natural entrance into cessation. While the descending and ascending breaths generate movement, the interval between them is neither rising nor falling. By aligning attention with this empty interval, the practitioner becomes aware of a corresponding stillness within the mind.
Mark distinguishes cessation from the fully stopped mind. In cessation, the mind is resting but remains capable of moving again. When cessation is repeatedly entered and sustained, mental momentum progressively subsides and the mind can become completely still. Cessation therefore provides the advantageous condition from which stopping the mind, samadhi, and perception of the Fourth State become possible.
Related concepts: The Space Between the Breaths · Stopping the Mind · Pratyahara · Consciousness · The Fourth State · Samadhi
Explore: Entering the Fourth State
Concentration (Dharana)
Dharana is the concentrated form of attention generated through the combined action of mind and will. Mark Griffin describes it as the “seizing and capturing of an idea with the steady burn of attention”: holding the mind upon a single subject without allowing it to wander, flicker, or turn in another direction.
Mark also describes one-pointedness as a tonality of Witness Consciousness in which the practitioner’s entire field of awareness becomes focused upon a single object, energy, mantra, deity, or question. At its deepest, this attention penetrates to the heart of its subject, and the consciousness of the perceiver and the consciousness appearing as the perceived begin to merge into a single force.
In the practice taught in Distilled Pratyahara, the object of dharana is the breath and the movement of prana. Attention follows the breath as it rises, descends, and becomes still, until the practitioner can hold breath, prana, mind, and the subtle channels within one field of concentration. Dharana gathers the scattered forces of attention and prepares them to deepen into dhyana.
Related concepts: Meditation · Dhyana · Pratyahara · SoHam · Samadhi · Witness Consciousness ·One Taste
Explore: Meditation Teachings
Consciousness
Consciousness is the single underlying reality within which perceiver, perception, mind, body, and the experienced world arise. In Mark Griffin’s teachings, consciousness is not produced by the individual mind or brain. The individual perceiver and everything perceived are relative formations assembled within consciousness itself.
Ordinary identity develops through the operation of the senses, ego, intellect, memory, mind essence, desire, and accumulated experience. Together these produce the apparently unified experience of “I” and establish the division between subject and object, self and other. Because perception is organized through these changing conditions, Mark describes its terms as relative or imputed rather than absolute.
Beneath these different points of view, consciousness remains undivided. The consciousness appearing as the perceiver and the consciousness appearing as the perceived are not ultimately two separate realities. Through meditation, discrimination, Shaktipat, and the Recognition of Consciousness, awareness penetrates increasingly subtle levels of identity until consciousness directly recognizes itself.
Related concepts: The Self · Recognition of Consciousness · Ocean of Consciousness · Non-Duality · The Fourth State · Blue Pearl
Explore: The Recognition of Consciousness
Deity Yoga
Deity Yoga is a Tantric practice through which the practitioner enters into direct contact with a specific divine form or formation of consciousness. Mark Griffin describes the practice as a mystical conversation: the practitioner establishes a relationship with a force from the higher planes, receives its grace and spiritual power, and is progressively transformed through sustained contact.
The practice begins by clearing obstacles, generating the mandala, and inviting the deity into the highest place within the practitioner’s inner architecture. In Shiva Deity Yoga, Shiva is established at the crown of the head and connected through Sahasrara and Sushumna to the chakras, heart, and base of the spine. Love, intention, mantra, breath, and concentrated attention may all be used to establish and sustain this connection.
Mark describes four general movements within Deity Yoga. First comes initiation: the mandala is established and contact is opened. Second comes generation and development, during which the relationship with the deity unfolds. Third, the deity’s force interacts with the practitioner’s own consciousness and subtle system, bringing opposing energies toward resolution. Finally comes completion, when the concentrated link is released, the subject-object relationship between practitioner and deity dissolves, and consciousness rests in the underlying emptiness that unites them.
The purpose of Deity Yoga is not merely to visualize or imitate a divine figure. Contact with the deity activates previously dormant dimensions of consciousness, accelerates purification, and elevates the practitioner toward the deity’s level of awareness. As the practice matures, the apparent barriers between practitioner and deity fall away and the divine presence is recognized as both a higher force and an intrinsic dimension of the Self.
Related concepts: Tantra · Yoga Tantra · Shiva and Shakti · Guru Yoga · Emptiness · The Self
Explore: Shiva Yoga
Dhyana
Dhyana is the meditative condition in which attention moves beyond exclusive concentration and becomes increasingly inclusive. Mark Griffin explains that, whereas dharana directs the mind toward a single object, dhyana begins when the observer, the act of perception, and the object being perceived start to fuse into a single experience.
In this condition, breath, prana, body, and mind begin to blend together until it becomes difficult to separate where one begins and another ends. The practitioner no longer merely observes the movement of energy but feels directly identified with its flow through ida, pingala, and sushumna. As attention deepens into the space between the breaths, ordinary physical boundaries become less distinct and awareness enters a subtler, more unified field of experience.
Related concepts: Concentration · Meditation · Stopping the Mind · Samadhi
Explore: Introduction to Meditation
Emptiness
Emptiness is the formless, invisible dimension of consciousness from which form and manifested experience arise. It is not merely an absence or a state in which nothing exists. Mark Griffin presents emptiness as the unmanifest source underlying the physical, subtle-physical, and mental worlds.
The world perceived through the senses appears solid and independently real, while the spiritual source from which it emerges remains unseen. Mark compares this relationship to the reflection of the moon in a still lake: the reflected image appears, but it is not separate from or identical to the reality it reflects. In this sense, manifested form is an appearance of a deeper consciousness that cannot itself be grasped through the senses.
Meditation opens conscious contact with this ordinarily invisible dimension. As attention moves beyond exclusive identification with physical form and mental activity, the practitioner becomes aware of the emptiness from which experience arises. In Yoga Tantra, emptiness is not separated from form; the two are complementary aspects of one movement of consciousness.
Related concepts: Form and Emptiness · Consciousness · Non-Duality · The Space Between the Breaths · The Fourth State · Mahamudra
Explore: The Deeper, the Higher
F–L
Form and Emptiness
Form and Emptiness describe the inseparable relationship between manifested existence and the formless consciousness from which it arises. Form includes the physical world, body, energy, mind, sensation, and everything available to perception. Emptiness is the invisible and unbounded source underlying these appearances.
Mark Griffin describes creation as a movement in which the invisible Ocean of Consciousness assumes the forms of the apparent universe. He compares manifestation to the reflection of the moon upon a lake: the reflected image appears within experience, but it cannot be separated from the reality and conditions through which it appears.
Yoga Tantra brings these dimensions into equilibrium rather than rejecting one in favor of the other. Consciousness flows through the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal bodies, joining the visible and invisible aspects of being. Form is therefore not outside consciousness, and emptiness is not elsewhere than the forms arising within it. Their union becomes directly apparent when consciousness and manifestation are experienced as aspects of one totality.
Related concepts: Emptiness · Consciousness · Non-Duality · Tantra · Shiva and Shakti · Mahamudra
Explore: The Deeper, the Higher
Grace
Grace is the freely given spiritual power through which awakening is supported and accelerated beyond what personal effort alone can accomplish. Mark Griffin describes grace as undeserved favor—a gift that cannot simply be summoned, manufactured, or earned.
The Guru’s grace is the expression of the Divine Will of God. It flows through the Guru, Guru Shakti, and the Siddha Lineage and enters the practitioner through Shaktipat, setting the process of awakening into motion. This transmission is specific and personal rather than random, acting throughout the physical, energetic, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the individual.
Grace does not make spiritual practice unnecessary. Pranayama, concentration, meditation, discrimination, Pratyahara, and Samadhi develop the practitioner’s attention, endurance, and capacity to undergo transformation. Practice trains the individual to recognize, align with, and cooperate with grace. When disciplined practice and the Sankalpa of the Guru operate together, every aspect of spiritual life can bear greater fruit.
Related concepts: Sankalpa · Guru · Guru Shakti · Guru Lineage · Shaktipat · Guru Yoga
Explore: Divine Will
Guru
Guru is the eternal principle of awakening and liberation expressed through both universal consciousness and an awakened human being. Mark Griffin describes the Guru as a spirit of pure consciousness rather than merely a person, social role, or religious authority. The Guru-principle is the unbinding force that returns conditioned consciousness to its original nature.
An embodied Guru is someone who has undergone this awakening through contact with a Guru and has become capable of transmitting it to others. The awakened light has permeated the Guru’s physical body, subtle body, mind, life force, and consciousness, dissolving the limitations that obstruct its expression. Through Shaktipat, the Guru conducts the accumulated spiritual power and authority of the lineage into the disciple and awakens the dormant Guru-principle within them.
Mark emphasizes that a genuine Guru acts for the liberation of students rather than personal acquisition, wealth, property, or influence. The Guru understands both the language of the spirit and the conditions of ordinary life, transmits awakening directly, and reveals the spiritual path within the disciple. The Guru does not remove the disciple’s responsibility by doing what the disciple must learn to do; instead, the relationship continually turns the disciple toward direct knowledge of the Self.
Related concepts: Guru–Disciple Relationship · Guru Lineage · Guru Shakti · Shaktipat · Guru Yoga · The Self
Explore: The Guru–Disciple Relationship
Guru–Disciple Relationship
The Guru–Disciple Relationship is the living relationship through which awakening is transmitted, cultivated, integrated, and passed forward. Mark Griffin presents it as a primordial conversation arising with consciousness itself: one being recognizes the totality of its nature and communicates that awakened condition to another. Its purpose is to transform the disciple from a bound condition into direct knowledge, realization, and recognition of the Self.
This relationship is not ultimately between two permanently separate identities. Through Shaktipat and sustained contact, the disciple absorbs the awakened nature of the Guru while the Guru takes the disciple’s limitations, karma, and obstruction into the transforming current of the lineage. As the process matures, the qualities of separation and discipleship dissolve, and the Guru-principle arises consciously within the disciple as the inner Guru or Guru of action.
The connection may operate through physical contact with an embodied teacher or through subtler forms of mental, energetic, and spiritual communication. Its central current is love: a direct communication from heart to heart, mind to mind, and Self to Self. Through this contact, the disciple receives protection, purification, guidance, and the accelerated unfolding of capacities already latent within the human form.
Mark also emphasizes that the relationship requires discrimination, openness, honesty, and personal responsibility. The disciple should examine a teacher carefully and remain straightforward once the relationship is established, allowing no deliberate division between word and action. Questions, difficulties, emotional reactions, and hidden patterns should be brought into conscious examination rather than concealed. These reactions frequently reveal aspects of identity that the process of awakening is bringing out of darkness.
The Guru does not replace the disciple’s intelligence, judgment, or responsibility. A genuine teacher continually turns the disciple back toward their own experience, teaches them to solve problems, remain grounded, and develop the capacity to withstand increasing spiritual force. The completed relationship therefore does not create permanent dependence. It awakens the disciple into the same liberating consciousness carried by the Guru and enables that light to continue through them.
Related concepts: Guru · Guru Lineage · Guru Shakti · Shaktipat · Guru Yoga · Grace · Sankalpa ·
Explore: The Guru–Disciple Relationship
Guru Lineage
Guru Lineage is the living network through which the force of awakening passes from one being to another across time and space. Mark Griffin describes it as the engine of transmission: one individual becomes illuminated throughout the physical, subtle-physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of being and then conducts that awakening into others.
Lineage is therefore more than a historical succession of teachers. It begins in the universal Guru-principle—the awakening power present within the Self—and takes personal form in beings through whom Guru Shakti has become fully active. As the transmission finds fertile ground in successive individuals, a single awakened presence becomes an expanding community or “forest” of awakened beings.
The authority of transmission does not arise from the personal power of one teacher alone. Each Guru remains connected with their own Guru and the larger chain of awakened beings behind them. The complete lineage therefore acts through Shaktipat as a unified spiritual force. Mark emphasizes that this authority must be exercised selflessly; if it is redirected toward personal acquisition or power, its integrity and authority can be lost.
The lineage preserves access to the higher planes of consciousness and holds that doorway open for those seeking awakening. Through contact with an embodied Guru, Shaktipat personally conducts the force of the lineage into the disciple. The inner Guru, which Mark calls the Guru of action, then begins to awaken and guide the individual toward knowledge of the true Self.
Related concepts: Guru Shakti · Guru Yoga · Shaktipat · Guru–Disciple Relationship · Siddha Lineage · The Self
Explore: Guru Yoga
Guru Shakti
Guru Shakti is the universal spiritual force that awakens and illuminates consciousness. Mark Griffin describes it as the essential fire of consciousness—an intelligent power that transforms darkness, impurity, ignorance, and unconsciousness into awakened light.
Guru Shakti is not confined to the personality of an individual teacher or limited to one religion or culture. It is a fundamental aspect of the Self and resides within everyone and everything. Through the Guru Lineage, this universal force assumes personal expression in awakened beings capable of conducting it directly into others.
Mark describes Guru Shakti as arising through the blending of Divine Shakti with the nature of the Guru. The Guru functions like a transformer within an electrical circuit, adapting the unlimited power of consciousness into a form that can be received and used in the transformation of an individual being. Guru Shakti acts through consciousness, bliss, knowledge, will, and action, progressively drawing karmically conditioned experience back toward direct awareness of the Ocean of Consciousness.
Within the practitioner, Guru Shakti descends from the crown through Sushumna and the circuitry of the subtle body. It illuminates the chakras and channels, awakens Kundalini at the base of the spine, and progressively transforms the physical, energetic, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the human form. Mark emphasizes that this force teaches through its own movement: by attending to it, the practitioner learns how awakening is unfolding within the system.
The Guru Shakti is characterized by extraordinary generosity. It accepts those willing to encounter the realities of transformation and carries each practitioner forward at the greatest intensity they can bear.
Related concepts: Guru Yoga · Guru Lineage · Shaktipat · Kundalini Shakti · The Self · Purification
Explore: Guru Yoga
Guru Yoga
Guru Yoga is the practice of bringing body, speech, mind, and attention into direct spiritual contact with the presence of the Guru. Mark Griffin describes this presence as both universal and personal, internal and external. The Guru is not only an embodied teacher, but an eternal awakening principle arising simultaneously with God and the Self.
In practice, the Guru is called with love to the crown of the head, which is offered as the Guru’s seat. Attention is established in Sahasrara and the subtle triangle beneath the Brahmarandhra, then directed through Sushumna, Ida, Pingala, the chakras, and the wider circuitry of the subtle body. Guru Shakti descends from the crown, illuminates the system, and awakens Kundalini at the base of the spine. As the descending and ascending forces intermingle, the practitioner’s consciousness becomes increasingly connected with the Guru and the Self.
Guru Yoga is not primarily a system of belief or an attempt to imitate the personality of a teacher. It is the direct conduction of the vibration of enlightenment into the practitioner’s own system. The practitioner learns to listen to the Guru Shakti, relax the illusion of control, and allow the transmission to illuminate and transform previously unconscious dimensions of being.
Mark calls the larger pathway Guru Margena, the path of the Guru. Its purpose is the progressively deeper enfoldment and unfoldment of awakened light through the practitioner’s complete nature. As the practice matures, the apparent division between Guru and disciple dissolves and the Guru-principle is recognized as the awakening force within the Self.
Related concepts: Guru Shakti · Guru Lineage · Shaktipat · Guru–Disciple Relationship · Kundalini Shakti · The Self
Explore: Guru Yoga
Ida
Ida is one of the three principal flows of energy within the subtle body. Mark Griffin describes it as the yin or feminine current, generally associated with the left side of the human system and carrying a red tone. It operates in dynamic relationship with Pingala, the yang or masculine current, and Sushumna, the central flow distilled from both.
Ida should not be understood merely as a fixed anatomical nerve. Mark explains that the architecture of the subtle body is transformable and that Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna are essentially currents of energy that can be generated, opened, and restructured through Yoga Tantra, meditation, and Shaktipat. Ida participates in the circulation of prana, the organization of mind and perception, and the larger circuitry through which Kundalini transforms the human form.
Related concepts: Pingala · Sushumna · Prana · Subtle Body · Kundalini Shakti · Pranayama
Explore: Prana, SoHam, and the Four Bodies
Integration
Integration is the process through which the transformations produced by spiritual practice are assimilated and brought into a stable relationship across the four bodies. Mark Griffin describes intensive spiritual work as an induction of light into the human system: consciousness expands the practitioner beyond previous limits, while integration allows the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal dimensions of being to reconnect, process the experience, and form a new center of stability.
During periods of accelerated awakening, the practitioner may temporarily feel spread out across different states, planes, or versions of identity. Familiar aspects of life may feel like remnants of an earlier self, while the new configuration has not yet fully assembled. Integration strengthens the connections among the four bodies so that the knowledge, power, and experience gained during a stage of transformation can be retained and carried into the next stage.
Mark identifies SoHam and the complementary movements of prana and apana as especially important instruments of integration. Their continuous movement through the whole cycle of consciousness helps the practitioner remain grounded while undergoing simultaneous expansion and contraction. As integration matures, the human system becomes capable of conducting increasingly powerful spiritual energy with less strain, fragmentation, or instability.
Related concepts: Purification · The Four Bodies · SoHam · Prana · Shaktipat · Guru Shakti · Consciousness · Subtle Body
Explore: Purification & Integration
Kali
Kali is the form of the Divine Mother that Mark Griffin identifies with Kundalini and the power of time. She is the essential force of awakening on the path of Shaktipat, acting as a source of protection, empowerment, purification, and accelerated spiritual evolution.
Mark describes Kali’s movement through the human form in two directions. As Kundalini rises from the base of the spine, she acts through dissolution: entering the central circuitry, absorbing the pranic forces that sustain karmic patterns, and drawing conditioned identity toward cessation. As Divine Shakti descends, she acts through the movement of creation. These are not separate powers, but complementary operations of the same Mahashakti.
Kali’s apparently opposing qualities—fierce and nurturing, destructive and maternal—express her role in removing obstruction while protecting and transforming the practitioner. Mark therefore calls her the mother of the Guru: the unlimited Divine Shakti whose power, blended with the nature of the Guru, becomes Guru Shakti and is transmitted as Shaktipat.
Related concepts: Kundalini Shakti · Guru · Guru Shakti · Shaktipat · Cessation · Purification · Siddha Lineage · Shiva and Shakti
Explore: Kali and the Guru
Kundalini
Kundalini is what Mark Griffin describes as a psychodynamic force and the creative impulse of creation itself. Within the human form, it operates as an energy and catalyst of creation and awakening through the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal bodies.
Mark describes two concentrated expressions of Kundalini: an intense, coiled force at the base of the spine and the “deep lake,” an expansive blue presence above the crown of the head. Kundalini descends from the crown and rises from the base, moving through Ida, Pingala, Sushumna, the chakras, and the wider circuitry of the subtle system. This movement transforms perception, mind, energy, and identity, eventually opening the practitioner to direct apprehension of the Fourth State.
Related concepts: Kundalini Shakti · Prana · Subtle Body · Chakras · Sushumna · Purification
Explore: Kundalini Teachings
Kundalini Shakti
Kundalini Shakti is the active power of Kundalini as it moves through and transforms the human form. Mark Griffin describes Kundalini as consciousness itself, the creative force that operates through matter, life force, mind, and the supracausal ground of consciousness.
Its movement may be experienced as pressure, heat, light, vitality, or an intensely concentrated psychic force. As Kundalini Shakti flows downward from the crown and upward from the base of the spine, it animates the principal channels, activates the chakras and their circuits, and changes the operation of the subtle body, brain, mind, and identity. Its purpose is not energetic sensation alone, but the awakening of direct perception and recognition of consciousness.
Related concepts: Kundalini · Shaktipat · Prana · Subtle Body · Sushumna · Chakras · Purification
Explore: Kundalini Intensive I
M–R
Mahamudra
Mahamudra, meaning the “Great Seal,” is the realization in which infinite consciousness and its manifested expression are experienced as inseparably bound together. Mark Griffin describes it as the condition in which consciousness and what he calls unconsciousness—the visible creation—arise simultaneously and flow into one another.
In ordinary perception, the visible world appears separate from the invisible consciousness underlying it. In Mahamudra, this division is sealed: there is no separation between what is seen and what is unseen, form and emptiness, or universal consciousness and its expression through the physical, subtle-physical, and mental worlds.
Mark connects Mahamudra with the Natural State and Sahaja. The practitioner does not need to construct a particular mode of meditation, but rests openly in the nature of the Self and witnesses the apparent polarities of consciousness and manifestation arising as one totality.
Related concepts: Consciousness · Non-Duality · Form and Emptiness · The Natural State · The Self · Samadhi
Explore: The Deeper, the Higher
Mantra
Mantra is a formula of sacred vibrations through which consciousness is assembled, focused, and transformed. In Mark Griffin’s teachings, a mantra is not merely a word or phrase repeated for its meaning. Its syllables are living expressions of consciousness whose combination releases spiritual energy and brings particular qualities into formation.
Mantra arises from Spanda, the primordial throb of Atman, and operates through Matrika, the subtle matrix of letters and syllables underlying manifested experience. A selected sequence of syllables functions like a key: when properly connected to its source in Spanda and Atman, it opens a passage from intellectual understanding into direct realization and recognition.
Through mantra practice, scattered aspects of mind can be gathered into a single vibration. The practice strengthens one-pointed attention, acts upon the subtle body, supports purification, and helps clear the karmic and mental conditioning that obscures consciousness. Its power depends not on mechanical repetition alone, but upon experiencing each syllable as a vibration of consciousness connected to its source.
Related concepts: Matrika · Spanda · Om Namah Shivaya · Consciousness · Concentration · Purification
Explore: Om Namah Shivaya
Matrika
Matrika is the hidden mother—the subtle matrix of letters and syllables through which consciousness contracts into names, concepts, qualities, and manifested forms. Mark Griffin describes it as a chain of fifty primordial syllables extending from Ah to Sha, comparable to an alphabet from which the language of creation is assembled.
Matrika forms a bridge between Atman, the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness, and Maya, the apparent universe. Through its syllables, unlimited consciousness enters progressively specific combinations and appears as distinct qualities and objects. Yet the syllables and the creation arising through them never become separate from their source, just as the rays of the sun cannot be separated from the sun itself.
The syllables of Matrika are not arbitrary signs or inert sounds. Mark describes them as living beings and essences of consciousness possessing depths beyond their outward forms. A mantra consciously selects and assembles these vibrational forces into a particular formula, allowing the practitioner to engage the creative activity of Matrika and redirect it toward concentration, purification, realization, and recognition.
Related concepts: Mantra · Spanda · Maya · Consciousness · Atman · Om Namah Shivaya
Explore: Om Namah Shivaya
Maya
Maya is the power through which infinite consciousness contracts into the qualities, forms, identities, and experiences of the apparent universe. Mark Griffin describes it as the manifested radiance of Atman: like the rays arising from the sun, Maya and its source appear distinguishable but are never truly separate.
Through Matrika, unlimited consciousness enters combinations of letters, vibrations, and qualities that give rise to multiplicity. This contraction produces apparent limitation without diminishing, contaminating, or altering infinite consciousness itself. Creation and Atman arise together as a single totality, while the consciousness underlying creation remains both present within every form and hidden from ordinary perception.
Maya becomes binding when mind and ego identify exclusively with contracted forms and forget their connection to the Self. The resulting division into self and other, attraction and repulsion, generates karmic action and attachment to the wheel of cyclic existence. Yet Maya should not be regarded as an evil or unspiritual force to be rejected. The same power that conceals consciousness can also reveal it when its forms are recognized as expressions of Atman.
Meditation, mantra, and Witness Consciousness expose this hidden relationship. As apparent separation is penetrated, Maya ceases to function as a false refuge and becomes the radiant display through which consciousness recognizes itself within creation.
Related concepts: Matrika · Spanda · Consciousness · Non-Duality · Witness Consciousness · Form and Emptiness
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Meditation
Meditation is the disciplined internalization and refinement of attention through which the activity of mind becomes still and consciousness recognizes its own nature. In Mark Griffin’s teaching system, meditation is both a practical method and a comprehensive path of spiritual transformation.
Practices involving breath, SoHam, concentration, pranayama, and pratyahara draw awareness away from external distraction and into subtler levels of experience. As attention becomes stable, meditation opens toward stillness, samadhi, and direct recognition of the Self.
Related concepts: Concentration · Pranayama · Pratyahara · SoHam · Stopping the Mind · Samadhi
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Nirvikalpa Samadhi
Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the state in which imagination, mental formation, and the individual center of identity are extinguished. Mark Griffin describes Nirvikalpa as “the extinguishing of imagination”: the waves of mind and the reflex of “I” have ceased, and consciousness exists in a universal condition without an individual identity operating at its center.
Unlike Savikalpa Samadhi, in which an aftertaste of the perceiver remains, Nirvikalpa contains no imputed thought or conceptual interpretation of the experience. Only consciousness of consciousness itself remains. Mark presents this state not as the completion of spiritual development, but as a transformative threshold through which the effects of universal consciousness progressively permeate the physical, subtle, and mental dimensions of the human system.
Related concepts: Samadhi · Savikalpa Samadhi · The Fourth State · Consciousness · The Self
Explore: From the State of Nirvikalpa Samadhi
Non-Duality
Non-Duality is the recognition that consciousness and manifestation, the visible and invisible, and the perceiver and perceived are not fundamentally separate realities. These polarities arise within a single totality and remain inseparable from the consciousness through which they appear.
Mark Griffin describes the manifested universe as the apparent or unconscious expression of an invisible Ocean of Consciousness. Although these may initially seem like two different worlds, universal consciousness permeates the physical, subtle-physical, and mental dimensions of experience. The visible world is therefore not outside or independent of its unseen source.
In meditative realization, these complementary dimensions are brought into equilibrium. Consciousness and manifestation arise simultaneously and flow into one another until no separation remains between what is seen and what is unseen. Non-duality is therefore not merely a philosophical assertion of oneness, but the direct recognition of consciousness and its expressions as one indivisible reality.
Related concepts: Consciousness · The Self · Form and Emptiness · Mahamudra · Shiva and Shakti · The Natural State
Explore: The Deeper, the Higher
Ocean of Consciousness
The Ocean of Consciousness is Mark Griffin’s recurring expression for the universal field of awareness underlying individual identity, mind, energy, and form. He describes it as the “substrata of substrata”: a reality beyond ordinary distinctions between finite and infinite consciousness.
Individual identity initially appears to possess its own separate awareness, just as a drop of water appears distinct from the ocean. Through meditation and the inner journey across the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal dimensions of the Self, attention approaches the Blue Pearl—the concentrated doorway through which the individual comes into direct contact with the Ocean of Consciousness.
Mark compares this recognition to pouring a glass of water into the ocean. The water of the individual and the water of the ocean become a single thing because their apparent separation never constituted an ultimate division. As attention moves more deeply into this universal field, the conditions supporting separate identity fall away and interconnectedness with all existence becomes directly apparent.
Related concepts: Consciousness · The Self · Blue Pearl · Non-Duality · The Fourth State · Samadhi
Explore: The Recognition of Consciousness
Om Namah Shivaya
Om Namah Shivaya is a Siddha mantra Mark Griffin teaches as a powerful practice of equilibrium, awakening, and liberation. Mark translates it as “I am Shiva,” expressing the movement from identification with the limited individual self toward recognition of the universal Self.
The mantra is built around the five syllables of Namah Shivaya, preceded by Om. Mark relates its sounds to the elements and chakras of the subtle system: Na to earth and the root chakra, Ma to water and the pelvic center, Shi to fire and the navel, Va to air and the heart, and Ya to ether and the throat. Om is placed at the forehead and represents the complete Matrika and the sound of Spanda, the primordial stirring of consciousness.
Through this arrangement, the mantra brings the elemental and karmic forces of the human system into balance. Om connects attention with Spanda and Atman, while the five principal syllables carry that originating vibration through the chakras and subtle body. Their combined action gathers the mind into one-pointedness, activates spiritual energy, supports purification, and transforms binding forces into means of awakening.
Mark emphasizes that effective practice involves more than repeating the syllables mechanically. Each sound is placed attentively in its corresponding center and experienced as flowing from Atman through Spanda. The mantra is also empowered by the Siddha Lineage, connecting the practitioner with what Mark describes as a continuing current whose origin and purpose are liberation.
Related concepts: Mantra · Matrika · Spanda · Siddha Lineage · Chakras · The Self
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One Taste
One Taste is a realization in which the same pure consciousness is directly perceived beneath the different forms and levels of experience. Mark Griffin describes it as a developed expression of Witness Consciousness arising after attention has become stable, penetrating, and capable of moving through the physical, subtle-physical, and causal dimensions of the human system.
Ordinarily, physical form, subtle energy, and mental formation seem fundamentally different from one another. Through sustained meditation, the Witness penetrates their relative appearances and reaches the Fourth State, the unchanging substratum of pure consciousness flowing through all three. These different worlds then possess a single “taste” because their underlying substance is recognized as the same consciousness.
One Taste does not make experience dull, uniform, or indistinguishable. Mark explains that its effect is the opposite: phenomena appear with extraordinary clarity, vividness, and freshness because habitual conditioning no longer stands between awareness and what arises. Each appearance is experienced both in its unique form and as an expression of pure consciousness.
This realization weakens attraction and aversion by revealing that the apparent diversity to which the egocentric “I” clings is not ultimately separate from its source. Mark therefore presents sustained One Taste as the beginning of liberation from the binding language of Maya and the wheel of cyclic existence.
Related concepts: Witness Consciousness · Consciousness · The Fourth State · Non-Duality · Maya · Cessation
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Pingala
Pingala is one of the three principal flows of energy within the subtle body. Mark Griffin describes it as the yang or masculine current, generally associated with the right side of the human system and carrying a whitish tone. It operates in dynamic relationship with Ida, the yin or feminine current, and Sushumna, the central flow distilled from both.
Pingala is not simply a fixed subtle nerve. Mark presents Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna as flows of energy within a subtle architecture that can be generated, activated, and restructured through Yoga Tantra and Shaktipat. Pingala participates in the circulation of prana, the energetic organization of the human system, and the circuitry through which Kundalini acts upon the body, mind, and perception.
Related concepts: Ida · Sushumna · Prana · Subtle Body · Kundalini Shakti · Pranayama
Explore: Prana, SoHam, and the Four Bodies
Prana
Prana is the vitality or life force that operates throughout all four bodies of the human form. Mark Griffin describes Prana Shakti as the first face of Kundalini—the power of life arising from consciousness and animating matter, energy, mind, and the supracausal dimension.
Prana is closely joined to the breath but is not identical to the physical air entering and leaving the lungs. Mark compares the breath to a horse and prana to its rider: the inward breath descends, the outward breath rises and expands, and prana moves with each cycle. In the physical body it animates the voluntary and involuntary systems; in the subtle-physical body it moves through the energetic circuitry; in the causal body it supplies the vitality of mind and mental formation; and in the supracausal body it merges into universal consciousness.
Because breath, prana, and mind move together, attention to the breath provides a direct means of working with consciousness. When the breath moves, prana moves; when prana moves, mind moves. In the still interval between breaths, prana and mind can also become still.
Related concepts: Pranayama · Breath · Five Pranas · Subtle Body · Ida · Pingala · Sushumna
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Pranayama
Pranayama is the disciplined refinement of breath and prana, the life force moving through the human system. Although commonly translated as breath control, its deeper purpose is to influence the movement of energy and mind through conscious attention to breathing.
Mark Griffin teaches that breath, prana, and mind are intimately connected: when breath moves, prana moves, and when prana moves, mind moves. Practices involving inhalation, exhalation, retention, and bellows breathing help stabilize attention, balance the subtle system, and prepare the practitioner for concentration, meditation, and samadhi.
Related concepts: Prana · Bellows Breath · Kumbhaka · Pratyahara · Meditation
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Pratyahara
Pratyahara is the process through which attention, breath, prana, senses, and mind are progressively internalized. In Mark Griffin’s teachings, it is not simply the passive withdrawal of attention from external objects, but a structured yogic method for redirecting the forces of the human system toward the central channel and higher consciousness.
In Distilled Pratyahara, breath and prana are first intensified through pranayama, stabilized through dharana, and deepened through dhyana. The pranic force moving through ida and pingala is then gathered into sushumna. As the senses are switched off, the texture of mind becomes silent and attention can move from manas, the ordinary mind, toward the no-mind condition. This progressive internalization culminates in stopping the mind and prepares the practitioner for the arising of samadhi.
Related concepts: Meditation · Concentration · Breath · Prana · Dhyana · Samadhi
Explore: Distilled Pratyahara Meditation
Purification
Purification is the process through which the conditioned material of the human being is exposed to and transformed by consciousness. Mark Griffin describes it as the removal of the accumulated layers or “screens” that stand between consciousness bound in ignorance and consciousness known in its liberated nature.
Purification is set in motion as Shaktipat, Guru Shakti, meditation, and spiritual practice open the practitioner to increasingly powerful currents of consciousness. This light commingles with the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal bodies, exposing karmic conditioning, psychological obstruction, energetic imbalance, and established patterns of identity. Mark compares the process to placing the material of one’s being into a spiritual fire that progressively transforms its nature.
Because an unrestricted influx of consciousness would overwhelm the human system, purification ordinarily unfolds through stages and episodes. Periods of intensive transformation are followed by periods in which their effects must be assimilated. Purification is therefore not moral cleansing or the rejection of embodied life; it is the gradual transformation that allows the practitioner to receive, sustain, and express greater consciousness without losing physical, psychological, or energetic stability.
Related concepts: Integration · Shaktipat · Guru Shakti · Kundalini Shakti · Consciousness · The Four Bodies · Subtle Body · Meditation
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Recognition of Consciousness
Recognition of Consciousness is the direct event in which consciousness recognizes itself through the individual perceiver. Mark Griffin describes it as one of the swiftest and most profound pathways to enlightenment because it penetrates the apparent division between perceiver and perceived at its source.
Ordinary identity is assembled through ego, intellect, memory, sensory perception, desire, and accumulated patterns of behavior. These relative conditions produce the experience of an individual “I” standing apart from an external world. Recognition occurs when attention cuts through these conditioned formations and reaches the universal consciousness already present within the Self.
Mark presents this movement as active, vivid, and direct rather than passive or merely intellectual. Through meditation, discrimination, breath, SoHam, and the Space Between the Breaths, the practitioner presses inward through increasingly subtle levels of identity and grasps the Blue Pearl at the center of being. Because the Blue Pearl is a doorway into infinite consciousness, this contact produces a powerful response throughout the human system.
In the moment of recognition, the apparent pull of individual identity and the pull of universal identity are experienced simultaneously. Mark associates this with Nirvikalpa Samadhi operating at the individual and universal levels at once. Although recognition may occur in an instant, repeatedly returning to it allows its truth to transform perception, identity, and embodied life.
Related concepts: Consciousness · The Self · Blue Pearl · Ocean of Consciousness · Nirvikalpa Samadhi · The Space Between the Breaths
Explore: The Recognition of Consciousness
S–Z
Samadhi
Samadhi, which Mark Griffin translates as “the intuitive knowledge of the highest truth,” is the direct coming together of the conditional aspects of being with pure consciousness. He describes it as the merging of formation and consciousness: body, mind, life force, and identity come into direct contact with the formless reality that exists beyond conceptual thought.
In Mark’s Yoga Tantra framework, samadhi is not a single state but a progressive process of transformation. He identifies four principal conditions: Laya Samadhi, in which realization exists as potential; Savikalpa Samadhi, in which pure consciousness is directly experienced while a subtle sense of identity remains; Nirvikalpa Samadhi, in which imagination and the individual center of identity are extinguished; and Sahaj Samadhi, in which the highest consciousness remains present within the waking state. These conditions are not simply stacked one above another but progressively fold into and transform one another.
Related concepts: Concentration · Dhyana · Savikalpa Samadhi · Nirvikalpa Samadhi · The Fourth State
Explore: The Samadhi Kunda
Sankalpa (Divine Will)
Sankalpa is Divine Will—the focused spiritual intention through which awakening becomes certain, personal, and directed toward liberation. Mark Griffin identifies the Sankalpa of the Guru as the “magic ingredient” in awakening: the will of the Guru, Siddhas, and lineage concentrated upon those who seek to awaken.
Sankalpa is not merely a personal wish, resolution, or act of positive thinking. It is an expression of the Guru Shakti and the Divine Will of God. Through Shaktipat, this intention acts directly upon the practitioner, awakening latent consciousness and moving the individual through the stages of spiritual transformation.
Spiritual practice prepares the practitioner to enter into relationship with this Divine Will. Attention is strengthened, personal will is forged through Tapasya, and the physical, energetic, and mental systems develop the endurance required to sustain increasingly powerful transformation. Practice does not create Sankalpa, but allows the practitioner to recognize its movement, learn its language, and align individual life with its liberating purpose.
Mark compares the Divine Will of the Guru to an invisible fiber or line drawing the practitioner toward liberation. When personal effort comes into concert with this force, awakening ceases to appear accidental and reveals itself as a precise movement of consciousness.
Related concepts: Grace · Guru · Guru Shakti · Siddha Lineage · Shaktipat · Skillful Means
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Savikalpa Samadhi
Savikalpa Samadhi is the direct apprehension of what Mark Griffin calls “the light of the ocean of consciousness” while a subtle sense of the perceiver remains. Consciousness is experienced as formless and without quality, but the practitioner can still feel that “I am experiencing God” or “I am God.” The experience of identity has become extremely subtle, but it has not been completely extinguished.
Mark describes Savikalpa as a condition in which the ego reflex, intellect, and memory base begin to dissolve and the practitioner comes directly into contact with the divine presence within. It is therefore a profound state of realization, but it still carries what he calls an “aftertaste of identity.” As the remaining waves of identity and imagination subside, Savikalpa progresses toward Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
Related concepts: Samadhi · Nirvikalpa Samadhi · Dhyana · Consciousness
Explore: Consciousness Teachings
Shaktipat
Shaktipat is the direct transmission of awakening—the descent of grace and the force of the Self into the individual. Through Shaktipat, the presence of the Guru and Guru Lineage is personally conducted into the practitioner, usually through the mind and the architecture of the subtle body.
Mark Griffin describes the primary pathway of this transmission as Guru Margena, extending from the crown of the head through Sushumna to the base of the spine. Guru Shakti descends through this central pathway, illuminates the chakras and subtle circuits, and activates Kundalini. Once introduced into the system, the awakening impulse begins transforming everything it touches.
Mark characterizes Shaktipat as accelerated evolution. Spiritual development that might otherwise unfold across many lifetimes becomes compressed into a much shorter period. This acceleration can be intense because the complete structure of identity is brought into transformation, but the Guru Shakti is intelligent: it pushes the practitioner forward without exceeding what the individual can ultimately bear.
Shaktipat is not limited to an initial dramatic experience. The transmission continues to unfold through breath, meditation, attention, purification, and the practitioner’s growing ability to cooperate with the movement of awakening.
Related concepts: Guru Shakti · Guru Yoga · Guru Lineage · Kundalini Shakti · Purification · Skillful Means
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Shiva and Shakti
Shiva and Shakti are the inseparable infinities of consciousness and creation. Mark Griffin describes Shiva as an inconceivable Ocean of Consciousness beyond form and quality, and Mahashakti as the radiance of creation—the light of “ten billion suns” through which consciousness appears as energy, form, mind, and the universe.
Their union is not the joining of two realities that were previously separate. Shiva and Shakti arise simultaneously and are equal expressions of one totality. The distinction between them exists only as an infinitesimal point of perception: the subtle space between the Ocean of Consciousness and its boundless creative radiance, between everything and nothing, and between the unmanifest and the manifest.
Meditation upon their union requires attention to move beyond the fixed architecture of personal identity. As identification with body, history, gender, personality, and other relative qualities is released, awareness can enter the subtle point at which consciousness becomes creation. The perceived separation between the Ocean of Consciousness and the manifested universe then dissolves, revealing Shiva and Shakti as the indivisible ground and expression of the Self.
Related concepts: Consciousness · Form and Emptiness · Non-Duality · Bhairava · Mahamudra · Tantra
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Siddha Lineage
The Siddha Lineage is the living current through which the power of awakening is transmitted from one realized being to another. Mark Griffin describes Shaktipat as the essential “speech” of the Siddha Path: a transmission of spiritual power and authority that operates through the Guru Shakti and awakens Kundalini within the disciple.
Although the lineage appears historically through particular teachers, it is not confined to their lifetimes or physical presence. Mark traces his immediate lineage through Bhagawan Nityananda and Swami Muktananda, whose transmission helped bring Shaktipat to the West. He teaches that the Shaktipat passed between them remains the same living power available in the present—flowing through time while also operating beyond ordinary limitations of time and space.
The realized teachers are therefore vessels of the lineage rather than its ultimate source. Its central power is Shaktipat itself: the continuing action of universal consciousness through which karmic obstruction is dissolved, the subtle system is transformed, and the practitioner is drawn toward realization.
Related concepts: Guru Lineage · Guru · Guru Shakti · Shaktipat · Guru–Disciple Relationship · Kundalini Shakti · Grace
Explore: Kali and the Guru
Skillful Means
Skillful Means is the developing capacity to move through the process of awakening with increasing ability, effectiveness, and understanding. Mark Griffin connects it with Shaktipat as accelerated evolution: as transformation intensifies, the practitioner learns how to undergo compressed periods of purification and change without becoming overwhelmed or obstructing the process.
This capacity develops through experience. The practitioner learns to recognize the movement of Guru Shakti, release fear and the illusion of control, pay attention to what the transmission is teaching, and cooperate with unfamiliar states of consciousness. What could not initially be understood or navigated becomes increasingly accessible through repeated contact and practice.
Mark connects Skillful Means with the essential meaning of yoga as “doing what is necessary.” It is therefore not a fixed technique or formula, but the practical intelligence required to respond appropriately to the demands of awakening as they arise.
Related concepts: Shaktipat · Guru Shakti · Guru Yoga · Purification · Meditation · Yoga Tantra
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SoHam
SoHam is a primordial vibration that arises spontaneously through the movement of consciousness within the human form. Mark Griffin describes it as ajapa japa—a mantra that repeats itself. It is not produced primarily through mental or vocal repetition; like wind moving through trees, the movement of consciousness through the form naturally produces its vibration.
SoHam expresses the inseparable polarity of Shiva and Shakti, universal consciousness and manifest creation. Mark places the vibration of So at the base of the spine, where it represents the arising of creation, and Ham at the crown, where it represents Shiva and the Ocean of Consciousness. With the inward breath, Ham descends from the crown and strikes So at the base. With the outward breath, So rises and expands. These descending and ascending forces operate simultaneously through Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna within the vessel of the Four Bodies.
Conscious awareness of SoHam transforms the ordinary cycle of breathing into a process of awakening. As its vibration moves through the human system, it activates and purifies the subtle circuitry and helps unwind stored samskaras and karma. In the equilibrium between its descending and ascending movements—the space between the breaths—breath, prana, and mind become still.
Related concepts: Breath · Prana · Mantra · Sushumna · Meditation · The Space Between the Breaths
Explore: Listening to the SoHam
Spanda
Spanda is the primordial throb through which still, infinite consciousness gives rise to vibration and creation. Mark Griffin describes it as the first stirring within Atman and as the membrane or point of transition between the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness and Maya, its manifested expression.
Spanda should not be understood as an event that occurred only at some distant beginning of creation. Mark describes one timeless Spanda occurring simultaneously now: a single throb through which infinite universes arise on countless planes and dimensions. Because it remains immediately present, the practitioner can perceive this primordial movement within consciousness directly.
Mantra and Matrika arise from Spanda. Spanda is the originating throb; mantra is vibration organized into an operative formula; and Matrika is the expansion of vibration into the multiplicity of letters, qualities, concepts, and forms. Practices such as Om connect attention with Spanda and trace manifested sound back toward its source in Atman.
Related concepts: Consciousness · Mantra · Matrika · Maya · The Self · Om Namah Shivaya
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Stopping the Mind
Stopping the mind is the condition in which thought, sensory projection, and mental modification have become completely still. It is not achieved by forcibly commanding the mind to stop, since the thought of stopping the mind produces further mental activity. Instead, the practitioner enters cessation and allows its stillness to deepen until the momentum of mind subsides.
Mark Griffin connects this process with breath, the Space Between the Breaths, and Pratyahara. Attention is placed in the still point where the breath is neither descending nor ascending. The senses are progressively disengaged from the mind, and the currents of Ida and Pingala are gathered into Sushumna. As sensory impulses cease generating waves in the mind, mental activity slows and eventually stops.
At first, a residual impression of thought may remain, like the sensation of a limb that is no longer present. As cessation is sustained, this remaining momentum disappears and the mind becomes transparent. Awareness can then perceive the Fourth State—the pure consciousness ordinarily veiled by mental movement—and enter into samadhi.
Related concepts: Cessation · The Space Between the Breaths · Pratyahara · Sushumna · The Fourth State · Samadhi
Explore: Entering the Fourth State
Subtle Body
The subtle body, also called the astral or subtle-physical body, is the energetic dimension of the human form and what Mark Griffin calls its “control panel.” It is the underlying support and energetic cause of the physical body: prana flows from the subtle body into the physical form, animating, sustaining, and eventually dissolving it.
The subtle body is also the practitioner’s primary instrument of perception and transformation. Its architecture includes the five pranas, Ida, Pingala, Sushumna, the chakras, the hundred fibers, bindus, and the white and red drops. Mark compares its substance to a luminous nebula—a highly refined form that becomes progressively illuminated through sadhana, Kundalini awakening, and Shaktipat.
Unlike the temporary physical body, the astral body carries the accumulated impressions, karma, knowledge, and spiritual development of the individual through death and transmigration. It is the form through which consciousness enters embodiment, undergoes transformation, and continues its journey beyond a single lifetime.
Related concepts: The Four Bodies · Kundalini Shakti · Prana · Chakras · Ida · Pingala · Sushumna
Explore: The Astral Body
Sushumna
Sushumna is the central current of the subtle body and what Mark Griffin calls the distillation of the complementary flows of Ida and Pingala. He describes it as a dark blue-green current coiled like a conch or spiral through the central axis of the human form. The spinal cord is its first physical expression.
Like Ida and Pingala, Sushumna is not merely a fixed nerve or structure. It is an energetic flow that can be generated, opened, and transformed through Yoga Tantra, meditation, Kundalini awakening, and Shaktipat. Mark associates the establishment of attention within Sushumna with ultra cognition, the movement beyond ordinary sensory awareness, and the development of awakened speech.
Sushumna connects the concentrated Kundalini at the base of the spine with the crown and the space above it. As Kundalini enters and rises through this central current, it activates the chakras, transforms the subtle and physical systems, and supports the movement into samadhi. Mark also describes Sushumna as extending above the crown into progressively higher spheres of consciousness.
Related concepts: Ida · Pingala · Kundalini Shakti · Prana · Chakras · Pratyahara · Samadhi
Explore: The Astral Body
Tantra
Tantra is a path of transformation that works with the complementary forces of consciousness and creation and brings their apparent opposition toward equilibrium. Mark Griffin relates the word Tantra to a loom and to “the resolution of warp and woof”: the interwoven energies of existence are drawn together and resolved within the practitioner’s own human form.
These polarities appear throughout the spiritual system: Shiva and Shakti, consciousness and manifestation, Ida and Pingala, ascending and descending energy, Ham and So, crown and base, form and emptiness. Tantra does not eliminate one side in favor of the other. It investigates the points at which opposing forces meet and transforms their tension into a more complete expression of consciousness.
The Tantras provide maps and practices developed through the direct investigation of body, energy, mind, identity, and the subtle worlds. Through meditation, Kundalini, mantra, Deity Yoga, Guru Yoga, sacred form, and subtle anatomy, the practitioner discovers and resolves increasingly subtle oppositions. Each resolution releases obstruction, reorganizes consciousness, and advances the process of spiritual transformation.
Related concepts: Yoga Tantra · Shiva and Shakti · Deity Yoga · Kundalini Shakti · Form and Emptiness · Non-Duality
Explore: Tantra Teachings
The Four Bodies
The Four Bodies are increasingly subtle assemblies of consciousness through which the human form and its experience operate. Mark Griffin identifies them as the physical body, subtle-physical body, causal body, and supracausal body.
The physical body is the outer body of matter, flesh, and bone. The subtle-physical body is the electrical or energetic body in which Prana Shakti moves through Ida, Pingala, Sushumna, the chakras, and the wider network of nadis. The causal body is the body of mind and mental formation, including ego, intellect, memory, and the mind essence called chitta. The supracausal body is the body of universal consciousness, present within the human form as Atman or the Blue Pearl.
The first three bodies are conditioned and transitory, corresponding to the changing states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. The supracausal body is constant and forms the substratum underlying them. Prana operates through all four and serves as the vehicle carrying awareness through these different sheaths. Meditation trains the practitioner to penetrate their increasingly subtle layers and directly apprehend the supracausal body and the Fourth State.
Related concepts: Physical Body · Subtle Body · Causal Body · Blue Pearl · The Fourth State · The Self
Explore: Prana, SoHam, and the Four Bodies
The Fourth State (Turiya)
The Fourth State, traditionally called Turiya, is the state of pure consciousness underlying the changing conditions of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Mark Griffin describes it as more subtle than mind and sometimes as “consciousness-before-consciousness”—the underlying reality that remains when sensory and mental activity have become still.
Within Mark’s Four Bodies framework, the Fourth State corresponds to the fourth or supracausal body. It is perceived within the human form as the Blue Pearl, an infinitely subtle blue point of consciousness. The Blue Pearl is not the final extent of the Fourth State, but the doorway through which awareness enters the Ocean of Consciousness beyond individual identity.
The Fourth State cannot be adequately reached through conceptual thought because the movement of mind obscures the subtler consciousness beneath it. Through breath, Pratyahara, the Space Between the Breaths, and sustained cessation, the senses disengage and the mind becomes still and transparent. Attention can then recognize the Blue Pearl and merge into the pure consciousness it reveals.
Mark presents this movement as direct rather than necessarily proceeding through a fixed sequence of stages. Although entering the Fourth State may initially occur only briefly, repeated recognition allows it to permeate the causal, subtle-physical, and physical dimensions of the human form. Ultimately, the practitioner recognizes the Fourth State not as something external or newly created, but as the ever-present nature of the Self.
Related concepts: Consciousness · The Four Bodies · The Self · Blue Pearl · Ocean of Consciousness · Cessation · Samadhi
Explore: Entering the Fourth State
The Natural State
The Natural State is the uncontrived condition of awareness resting openly in the awakened nature of the Self. It is not a mental state manufactured through effort or a special identity assumed during meditation. It becomes apparent as body, energy, speech, and mind relax and the practitioner ceases imposing a particular mode upon experience.
Mark Griffin connects the Natural State with Sahaja—the presence of awakened consciousness within ordinary, embodied awareness. In this condition, the practitioner rests in the Atman nature of the Self and witnesses consciousness and manifestation arising simultaneously. The visible and invisible dimensions of experience are allowed to remain together without separation or conflict.
Spiritual practice prepares the human system to recognize and sustain this condition, but it does not create the awareness being recognized. As the physical, subtle-physical, causal, and supracausal dimensions become integrated, the Natural State can increasingly express itself through perception, action, and everyday life.
Related concepts: The Self · Consciousness · Sahaja Samadhi · Non-Duality · Mahamudra · The Fourth State
Explore: The Deeper, the Higher
The Self
The Self is the total nature of identity, extending beyond the body, personality, senses, memory, and ego into universal consciousness. Mark Griffin distinguishes this deeper Self from the assembled experience of the egocentric “I,” which develops through the accumulated operations of perception, thought, desire, behavior, and personal history.
The personal identity is not entirely false, but it operates through relative and changing conditions. Mark compares its different patterns and personas to threads gathered into what appears to be a single, solid identity. When these threads are examined closely, no independent entity possessing an unchanging quality of “ego” can be found beneath them.
Spiritual practice carries attention through progressively deeper levels of the Self: from sensory and physical identity into the subtle-physical and causal bodies, and finally toward the supracausal body and the Ocean of Consciousness. Mark describes this journey as the relative perceiver becoming aware of the totality of its own nature. The true Self is recognized when the apparent division between individual and universal consciousness is penetrated directly.
Related concepts: Consciousness · Recognition of Consciousness · Ocean of Consciousness · Blue Pearl · The Fourth State · Non-Duality
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The Space Between the Breaths
The Space Between the Breaths is the natural interval in which the inward breath has ended but the outward breath has not yet begun, or the outward breath has ended but the inward breath has not yet begun. Mark Griffin describes this still point as a doorway into the innermost stream of consciousness and the enlightened nature of mind.
When the breath moves, prana and mind move with it. In the interval between breaths, the descending and ascending movements become still: breath is neither entering nor leaving, and consciousness is neither directed inward nor outward. Mark compares attending to this interval with looking at the space between the objects in a room rather than at the objects themselves. It is a subtle shift of attention from what arises within consciousness to the open space in which it arises.
Mark also relates this interval to the space between the vibrations of So and Ham. So represents manifest creation, while Ham represents the Ocean of Consciousness from which creation arises. In the space between them, this apparent duality resolves into unity within Sushumna, the central current. Mark describes this inner space as empty or void and as being of the nature of enlightenment.
Resting attention in the Space Between the Breaths strengthens recognition of bodhicitta, the inherent enlightened nature of mind. With practice, this awareness can continue not only during seated meditation but while walking, running, or participating in ordinary activity. The interval becomes a doorway through which the practitioner can move beyond habitual perception and arise in awakened awareness.
Related concepts: SoHam · Prana · Stopping the Mind · Cessation · Sushumna · Ida · Pingala · The Fourth State · Samadhi
Explore: The Space Between the Breaths Meditation
Turiya
See The Fourth State (Turiya).
Witness Consciousness
Witness Consciousness is a luminous form of awareness through which consciousness observes consciousness. Mark Griffin describes the Witness as a reflex of fundamental consciousness expressing itself through the mind. It perceives experience without the agenda, prejudice, emotional conditioning, or personal interpretation that ordinarily shapes perception.
Mark compares the Witness to a perfectly neutral camera trained upon a subject. Even when conscious attention is overwhelmed by emotion, distraction, or habitual conditioning, the Witness perceives and records the complete field of experience. It includes not only what is consciously noticed, but also what remains unseen or unconscious and the underlying movements of cause and effect from which an experience arises.
The Witness should not be confused with a detached version of the personal “I.” In deep meditation, the ego, senses, body awareness, and ordinary mind may become completely inactive, yet the Witness remains. It does not experience itself as “I am,” approve or disapprove of what appears, or place an individual center within perception. It is consciousness luminous by its own nature—what Mark identifies as chit, the inherent capacity to be conscious and to know.
Through meditation, the mind comes into sustained contact with this unconditioned perception and gradually takes on more of its clarity. The Witness first develops through one-pointed attention and penetrating insight. As it deepens, it reveals the same pure consciousness underlying physical form, subtle energy, and mental formation, giving rise to the realization Mark calls One Taste.
Related concepts: Consciousness · Meditation · Concentration · One Taste · The Fourth State · Cessation
Explore: The Witness
Yoga Tantra
Yoga Tantra is the applied discipline through which polarities within the human system are identified, awakened, and brought toward resolution. It uses the methods of yoga within the Tantric understanding that consciousness, identity, and subtle anatomy can be consciously reorganized and transformed.
Mark Griffin describes the human system as a field of complementary forces: Ida and Pingala, Sushumna and the surrounding channels, Sahasrara and the base of the spine, the descending and ascending currents of prana, and Shiva and Shakti. Yoga Tantra works directly with these forces through meditation, breath, SoHam, Kundalini, mantra, Deity Yoga, Guru Yoga, and the architecture of the Four Bodies.
Transformation proceeds by discovering specific points of opposition and establishing equilibrium within them. In Shiva Yoga, for example, Shiva’s grace descends from the crown while Kundalini Shakti rises from the base. Their simultaneous movement brings the entire system into a point of resolution along Sushumna, Ida, Pingala, and the chakras.
Yoga Tantra may follow prescribed stages, particularly in practices involving Deity Yoga or Guru Yoga. Contact is initiated, developed, brought to its transformative point, and finally released into the underlying field of consciousness. Through these processes, physical, subtle-physical, and mental capacities are purified and uplifted, while identity becomes increasingly open to its supracausal source.
Related concepts: Tantra · Deity Yoga · Guru Yoga · Shiva and Shakti · Kundalini Shakti · Sushumna · The Four Bodies
Explore: Shiva Yoga