Evolution and Enactment 2.

Let's continue here. (I can't understand why the Gaia-team can't just divide the threads into sections, like in all other forums.)
 
Bruce: “You're right that I was just trying to state the Madhyamika position, as I understand it.  But 'ultimate' isn't understood here as an Omega point, but more in the sense of 'always already' – meaning, it's not about moving from an empty void to the manifestation of things and then back to the void again.  Rather, 'empty' here is the mode of existence (or mode of appearance) of all things:  as dependently originated, with no 'bottom' or 'foundational essence' anywhere.  Asserting lack of inherent self-existence is a rather technical claim. [Yes! It's not something one can just casually assert in debate, like “big awareness”, which can mean so many different things, to different people. /Is]  It is not the denial that things exist at all; it is only the denial that anything can be said to exist independently from its own side.”
 
Well said. Hurrey!

David: “There will be an improvement [to emptiness] someday, right?”
 
By saying this I don't think you understand the meaning and the importance of the concept emptiness. Allow me to quote from the MMK, with Garfield's commentary (my emphasis):

If there were even a trifle nonempty
Emptiness itself would be but a trifle
But not even a trifle is nonempty
How could emptiness be an entity?
 
”[…] in [this verse] Nagarjuna is emphasizing that emptiness is not one of the many properties that a thing might or might not have. It is not that some things are empty and some are nonempty, or that all things happen to be empty although they might have been otherwise. Emptiness is important because it is the only way that things can exist. Moreover, emptiness is not an entity. It is not a distinct phenomenon to which other phenomena are related. It is exactly the emptiness of all phenomena. The conventional character of conventional entities and their emptiness are one and the same.”

So, you say that emptiness might improve in the future. What do you mean by improve - that it becomes non-empty? If not, how could it possibly improve? It is like saying, that perhaps in the future, space will improve. Space is a non-affirming negative, it implies nothing but the lack of obstructive contact, how could such a non-affirming negative possibly improve?

I think emptiness is a perticular expression of one of those gems which will be built upon by the stages to come, just like law and order were a gem of Amber on which subsequent stages are relying.

“I think inexhaustability is a good idea”

Yeah, me too. And I think it is very good to distinguish between ”assertions” (which as IS says can be further divided into ontic assertions and metaphoric assertions), ”affirming negatives”, and ”non-affirming negatives”. As Bruce says, if we want to exhaust ourselves with dualistic words about God, let's for goodness sake use words that increase wisdom, happiness and reverance, and decrease confusion, suffering and ignorance! :D

The idea of Kosmic Adress, as well as these different types of expressions given above, is an awesome start on this project; something that actually is developed right here on the leading edge of human evolution. I think we can be proud to be the few of the first to take part in it!

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Dawid, doesn't a non-affirming negative assert something, like infinite regress?

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

It's not about moving from an empty void to the manifestation of things and then back to the void again. Rather, 'empty' here is the mode of existence (or mode of appearance) of all things:  as dependently originated, with no 'bottom' or 'foundational essence' anywhere. 

Yes, that's emptiness in a non-evolutionary context, as a static realization, and I think it retains validity in meditation in an evolutionary context and, to a certain extent, in action, but this alone isn't quite sufficient for “enlightenment” in an evolutionary context. It is fine for meditation, but not quite enough for integrating meditation with action.

Almaas has a great appreciation for the Madhyamaka view, but he also adds an understanding of the energetic dimension of it. This or something like it would have to be added if we are going to put “emptiness” in an evolutionary context in such a way to include action:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

The notion of an 'energetic aspect of emptiness' is not new.  This is a key aspect of Bon Dzogchen teaching, for instance.  It's also part of Buddhist dzogchen, as the above quote shows.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Hi Bruce, yes, I know it's not new, but it is pretty new to speak of it in an evolutionary context as the optimizing force or evolutionary force as Almaas does, not that the evolutionary view is perfect or without pitfalls.

At least it's not something that has been covered that much. It was new to speak of it in the way that Aurobindo did as far as I know; I haven't read anything like that in Buddhism.

I keep looking for a glimmer of the same thing in Dzogchen, but I haven't seen much of it. I seem to get a glimmer of it from TSK, though.

On the link, it said something like, “People who realize this might display crazy wisdom,” and it qualifies it by saying one should have respect for others and such but then holds out Trungpa as an examplar. They don't sound that clear about it, really, and how people can end up expressing actually their lowest structure rather than their highest. This understanding is one of the gifts of Andrew Cohen's teaching, by the way.

I don't entirely rule out wisdom that appears to be a little unPC or something, but I agree with Adyashanti when he said that nine times out of ten crazy wisdom is more crazy than wise.

Maybe some Dzogchen masters really realized Clear Light/Supermind in the way that Wilber or Almaas or Aurobindo means it, but I haven't read anything that really gives me that impression. The paragraph in which they talk about energy is typical of everything I have read so far from Dzogchen about the energetic aspect:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Hi, David,

Yes, it's relatively new to speak of rTsal in connection with evolution.  I think you will find it in Herbert Guenther's books on Dzogchen – where he describes Dzogchen as the most thorough-going spiritual process philosophy to have been developed thus far, and explicates key Dzogchen principles through the language of systems theory, thermodynamics (dissipative structures, etc), and so on.  (Check out Matrix of Mystery or From Reductionism to Creativity if you're interested in this.  In my opinion, he relates Dzogchen principles to modern, evolutionary science in a subtler and more sophisticated way than does Almaas, though Almaas has his own strengths as well.)       

Regarding crazy wisdom, that is not the 'norm' within Dzogchen teaching, either.  The site I linked above is from a group called the Aro gTer, which is not one of the primary Dzogchen lineages; I linked it because it contained a brief summary of the Dzogchen notions of energy, nature, essence.

You said:  Maybe some Dzogchen masters really realized Clear Light/Supermind in the way that Wilber or Almaas or Aurobindo means it, but I haven't read anything that really gives me that impression.

I think Wilber, Almaas, and Aurobindo all give their own 'twists' to 'Clear Light,' but at least in the cases of Wilber and Almaas, they draw the majority of their teachings on this directly from Dzogchen and Mahamudra sources.

You said:  I think that's really good, but it seems like just the beginning of an understanding of the energetic dimension.

I expect you haven't read very much, then.  Again, Wilber and Almaas lift a lot of teachings on 'energy,' etc, almost directly from Tantric, Ati-yoga, Dzogchen, and Mahamudra sources.

You asked:  By the way, what structure do you think Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche tends to use?

I think he speaks on different levels, depending on the context.  But in my experience of him, he speaks most often in an “Orange” or “Green” way. 

In your opinion, what is the value of evolutionary and 'energetic' understandings or teachings?  What do these things bring to spirituality that is important?

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

I really liked that Almaas quote, David. Thanks.

David: “For one thing, it is not an evolutionary structure like Amber, so while it may be a building block in a certain sense it wouldn't be in the same way as 'law and order.'”
 
Huh? Just like law and order is a product of the evolutionary structure Amber, so emptiness (the non-finding of independent persons or phenomena) is a product of the evolutionary structures Green-Turquoise. All understandings have a kosmic adress.

David: “emptiness in a non-evolutionary context”

Without emptiness evolution would be impossible. Because, every phenomenon would be eternally locked into their inherent mode of existence. So instead of viewing emptiness as some kind of obstacle to evolution, see it as the foundation, that which which is necessary and allows for evolution to play out. If you truly want to be interested in 2-t evolutionary spirituality, you'd want to make emptiness your best friend as soon as possible.

But, since I believe you still want to have a reified view of emptiness, I'm afraid this point will be lost yet again.

Tom: “Dawid, doesn't a non-affirming negative assert something, like infinite regress?”

First of all we need to ask ourselves what the purpose of our current project is. Is it to a) end suffering or b) build a comprehensive theory about our relative world?

As you can see, a) conventionally deals with reality (“ultimate reality”) and b) conventionally deals with the convenient fiction (“conventional reality”). The only place where we can use the non-affirming negative in a fruitful way is in a). That is because ultimate reality can't be put into words, as we all here agree, and therefore it (the “n-an”) is the last possible outpost of words before the plunge into the non-conceptual not-knowing mind of ultimate reality.

However, when we deal with b), “n-an”s won't do any good, because in b) we want to be constructive and contribute with new conceptual knowledge in a digital way. If we use the n-an in b), then we would only find so called infinite regresses, and nobody would be happy. So n-an's in b) are quite useless, indeed.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

FYI there is no such thing as causal emptiness in Buddhism. That is a form of eternalism i.e. metaphysics. So trying to fit emptiness into a dualistic static flat map is a noble but ultimately futile endeavor. Lighting the map on fire may be a better way to approach “it”. You can then debate whether the burning map is neti neti or ontic positivism but in that case you should then proceed to light your hair on fire with the burning map!! :-)

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Bruce: In your opinion, what is the value of evolutionary and 'energetic'understandings or teachings?  What do these things bring tospirituality that is important?

My answer to these questions is: evolution unfixes fixity.  I was listening yesterday to an MP3 of Wilber and Cohen's recent webcast.  I noted in this conversation the many axially placed references to what I will call fixity items of the mind: Ground of being, always already, the timeless ground prior to manifestation, etc.  To my ear, these expressions are fixations that seek permanence.  In fact, several of the references show they constitute pointing instructions to the secret permanence amidst change. 

This emphasis on permanence suggests, to me, that the teachings being spoken of haven't sunk to depth.  Those teachings, for their part, tend to begin by emphasizing how everything changes, that egoity is a contraction in the face of change and a landing on untrue grounds, etc.  Then comes the somewhat surprising answer: seek the real permanent, that which never never changes.

But how can something never never change in an evolving universe?  Even an experience “of something prior to the Big Bang” per Wilber and Cohen is a time and development specific something.  (And by the way, doesn't every perspective retrodict in this way, saying 'this is the way things always have been'?)

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Here's a patch of that dialogue where Cohen, in my impression, budges a little beyond The Fixity.  What I do not like about Wilber's language is his absolute separation between form and formless, finite and infinite, time and timeless.  You can see in his first paragraph below he says nothing is outside evolution, including my awareness and consciousness.  But that's not true, because W then lapses and says “I have both of these.”  Thus, nothing is outside my awareness but the Ground of Being, which presumably is given to awareness, and to consciousness.  IMO, Wilber contradicts himself here, which can be seen when in the latter part of his segments below he pops back into Nirvana language after setting a spell with evolution. Cohen comes in at this point almost to correct him (but not quite, in my listening).  I personally guess Cohen will in the future diverge from Wilber on just this point.

C
Eternity in an evolutionary context is awakening to eternal becoming ever more, umm, and when we are really awakened to this evolutionary impulse or to process, it means that we as individuals at a deep deep level, in the deepest part of ourselves, have a relationship with eternal becoming, we are always aware of eternal becoming and always aware of the part of ourselves reaching toward that eternal becoming forever.  And as you mention, this is kind of a new, fairly recently emergent human capacity at the level of consciousness.

W
Some of the traditions had a notion of finite and infinite and timelessness and time.  But the thing that has changed so dramatically is the actual nature of evolution itself, and how that’s understood, and how it’s seen to touch all levels, all types, all aspects of existence.  I mean, really, right back to the big bang, right up to the triune brain in the human being, nothing is outside evolution.

C
Right.

W
And that means nothing is outside Spirit in Action.

C
That’s right.

W
And that means nothing’s outside of my awareness in a fundamental sense.  So I have both of these areas.  It’s still a not-twoness of nirvana and samsara.  Nirvana is still timeless, still formless, is still the utter ground of being where all peace and all radiance is found.  But samsara, the world of time, the finite world, has undergone a profound revolution in understanding, and it is touched by evolution.  So it’s a way to get … when we say now eternity is in love with the production of time, we mean eternity is in love with the production of evolution.  And evolution, though, is something you can feel in your bones when you awaken to Spirit in third perspective, it’s something that courses through your veins.  It’s something that is felt not only as this timelessness of being, but as this timelessness of being it is timelessly creating and dynamically pulsing.

C
Right, and the degree to which we actually experience it directly as the ecstasy of that intelligence that’s driving the process directly, that is, the degree to which that’s actually a direct experience at the level of consciousness, not just an idea, but we experience it, then I would say that the world of form ceases to be samsara but it literally is seen as spirit as constantly becoming, as constantly striving and that it’s not really seen as samsara any more, but it’s seen as Nirvana ever striving to realize and reach the perfection that is was before it decided to take the plunge [laughs].

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Here's an example of Permanence from the webcast:

W
Only this pure awareness is real, only pure consciousness is real, only this pure unmanifest awareness is real.  All these objects parading by in front of you are just like a dream, fundamentally not real.  They’re not real because they come and they go, they don’t stay.  The only thing that’s permanent is that which never changes.  And that means it’s also present in deep dreamless sleep, and the only thing that is that is this Pure Self.

C'est split, methinks.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

“Only this pure awareness is real, only pure consciousness is real, only this pure unmanifest awareness is real.  All these objects parading by in front of you are just like a dream, fundamentally not real.”

Yogachara supreme. Clinging onto Consciousness, capital c.

Wilber is wierd. I listened to an interview with him describring an experience of non-duality he had. He had pushed back into “pure awareness”, or “pure witnessing”, and his teacher basically told him: the witness is the last stand of the ego, and after that he experienced non-duality for the first time.

So maybe he's just using a kind of upaya. First trying to get people non-attached from objects rising and falling in awareness, and then when they get that far he hope that they will eventually discover the illusory (dependent) nature of even awareness itself, on their own. Kinda like Advaita teachers usually do.

I dunno.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Yah, could be.  I heard that segment.  “Ego,” we here all commonly understand, is separation, and what is separation but a thinking or experiencing that thinks or says it stands apart and witnesses everything!  The seer is the seen, IMO.

The “extra step” I see missing from this path, which would require an interesting reformulation of steps along that path, is what I take to be the natural dissolution, post-last-stand realization, of the fictional quality of everything before that step, of everything pre-nondual.  The witness is fictional in just the sense that it presumes to witness.  Yes, some manner of observing is happening in some regard, but the assumption that the witnesser is other than that witnessed is an ego-fictional separation-holdout. 

But you see, if one gives up the fiction of witnessing, one must also give up the fiction of “samsara,” the thing witnessed.  And the fiction of “objects.”  And the fiction of Original Ground.  And the fiction of Pure Consciousness.  And the fiction of an ever-relevant formulation of Absolute (whose formulation has never stood still—ask Luther!).

Let's put it this way: “Brahma is the world” fictionalizes—renders inaccurate—the previous two steps “the world is illusion” and “only Brahma is real.”  These latter are, veiwed in developmental rear view mirror, but quasi-artificial steps on a path to a more illumined sense of the sacredness, if you will, of everything.

Thus to my ear and sensitivity, to say “only pure awareness is real” is to rest in a lightly reified fiction.  There's a step missing, which W's teacher pointed out: pop the illusionary foundation of witnessing-in-that-sense.

Then take the extra step to rid your language of formulations derived from those earlier steps.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Is: Huh? Just like law and order is a product of the evolutionary structure Amber, so emptiness (the non-finding of independent persons or phenomena) is a product of the evolutionary structures Green-Turquoise. All understandings have a kosmic address.

I was just inquiring into the differences and similarities between how facts and interpretations unfold/enfold in higher structures (Amber, in this case) and how they unfold/enfold in a hieararchy of interpretations of states (emptiness).

I think there is a similarity, but I'm not sure it is quite the same. We have Nirvana –> Monism –> Nondualism, and Nirvana tends to be included in Nondualism, but I'm not sure whether Monism is. It could be, but I think “law and order” will always be included in Orange.

In any case, I don't think emptiness will necessarily be included in all types of Turquoise or higher; there are other interpretations that perform the same function.


Is: So instead of viewing emptiness as some kind of obstacle to evolution,see it as the foundation, that which which is necessary and allows for evolution to play out.

This is wonderful dharma, but it is not science. It is a zone-#4 claim made by someone who wasn't a zone-#4 authority. It sounds very nice, and I think there is something to it, but no one really knows why things evolve and how—Almaas, for example, offers the perspective that things aren't actually evolving, that nothing passes from past to present to future; they are ever new.

In any case, Nagarjuna didn't even understand evolution, so I don't think his teachings can be applied that much to an evolutionary understanding. I think they are important, though, and make for good dharma and might add something interesting to a meta-paradigmatic analysis about evolution as well.



 e: There is no such thing as causal emptiness in Buddhism. That is a form of eternalism i.e. metaphysics.

That's not the case. They just call it different things or in some cases might not be explicit about it. It may not pop up in every school, though, for example schools that don't stresss constant wakefulness through the sleep cycle.

But this is basically what the Buddha offered, for one thing. Wilber gets the “The witness is the last stand of the ego” line from a Japanese Zen master (Katigiri Roshi), and Vajrayana, Dzogchen, and others have the idea of first witnessing the three realms (waking, dreaming, deep sleep) until finally the witness is dissolved (though they have different names for it and some may choose not to explicitly name it at all, at least not often).

It's simply a state-training stage; nobody is saying that it inherently exists or anything.



Bruce:Yes, it's relatively new to speak of rTsal in connection withevolution.  I think you will find it in Herbert Guenther's books onDzogchen.

Bruce, thank you, I will check those out.


Bruce: I think Wilber, Almaas, and Aurobindo all give their own 'twists' to'Clear Light,' but at least in the cases of Wilber and Almaas, theydraw the majority of their teachings on this directly from Dzogchen andMahamudra sources.

I'm not sure this is the case. When I say “Clear Light,” first of all, I am speaking of the way he uses it in Wilber V, as synonomous with Supermind. It seems to me that Wilber's interpretation of third tier draws at least as heavily if not more heavily on Aurobindo than Buddhism.

In Integral Spirituality, after all, he correlates his third-tier stages with Aurobindo's higher stages, not Buddhism's, which are pretty much or sometimes exclusively of the state-training variety as far as I have seen.. Wilber has also said these Buddhists tend to be in the Amber-Green range,  so it would be just a very few of them to reach Supermind, if they did, and the rest interpretating those teachings in a different way.

Much of the time Buddhists (as well as everyone else) are simply talkiing about a nondual plateau state plus Amber or Orange or Green, etc. rather than truly integrating these deeper energies as permanent adaptions (third-tier stages) in the way that Wilber speaks of.

I also haven't seen that Almaas gets his idea of the “evolutionary force” or the “optimizing force” from Dzogchen or Mahamudra. I don't have any of my books with me now, so I can't check. I recall that he does mention Dzochen and Kashmir Shaivism as a couple of traditions that spoke of an energetic aspect, but I don't recall that he offered any thing explicit from either of them along the lines of an optimizing force or evolutionary force.

I'm also not sure that Almaas is clear on third-tier stages in the way that Wilber is, though I think he has some great stuff to add to that effort and is basically in that same ballpark. But I think that's one area he might be weighed down by metaphysical (in this case meaning, pre-given stages) ideas, so I'm wondering if he will come out with a new book that rehangs some of those earlier teachings after Wilber's criticisms of him in Integral Spirituality.


David: I think that's really good, but it seems like just the beginning of an understanding of the energetic dimension.

Bruce: Iexpect you haven't read very much, then. Wilber and Almaas lift a lot of teachings on 'energy,' etc, almostdirectly from Tantric, Ati-yoga, Dzogchen, and Mahamudra sources.

Well, you yourself said that it was new to speak of it in an evolutionary context, so I'm wondering what you are referring to. Did any teacher of these traditions teach it in an evolutionary context before before Herbert Guenther did in the twentieth century?

I have been looking, including in the Dzogchen books I have, by Tenzin and Norbu as well as online, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that they were differentiating clearly among higher stages. My impression has been like yours, that Tenzin, for example, is speaking about a nondual state plateau plus Orange, or Green, perhaps a little higher at times, who knows, and I haven't seen anything to indicate that he is speaking about third-tier stages. He speaks about there coming a time when “there are no rules” but there is also right view, so that sounds a little like Green plus nondual plateau state (not yet aware of the energetic aspect in the way that Wilber means it).

Where among the Buddhist traditions do they differentiate between third-tier stages the way Aurobindo and Wilber do? I think up through Wilber IV he was relying more on Buddhism, but that was his mistake. Had he relied more on Aurobindo he wouldn't have made the mistake of stacking states ontop of stages.


Bruce: In your opinion, what is the value of evolutionary and 'energetic'understandings or teachings?  What do these things bring tospirituality that is important?

I think the meditation/Now/emptiness/Self teachings (traditional enlightenment) and the energetic teachings are two sides of the same coin. Whether liberation or contribution is our objective I think it will be in our interest to integrate an understanding of both state training and these deeper energies. I think they are complimentary.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Hi, David,

I guess we might be having a vocabulary issue again, since I don't immediately connect 'energy' to 'development' or 'evolutionary enlightenment' in my mind (though I understand Almaas specifically does so with his notion of the 'optimizing thrust of Being').  The notion of an 'energetic aspect to emptiness' is what I was discussing, and I was pointing out that a number of these traditions have quite developed teachings on that topic, and that Wilber and Almaas have both drawn heavily from these teachings.  (I don't think they'd actually call energy an 'aspect of emptiness,' but they do speak of the inseparability of energy and emptiness).

Recall this from my thread on Guenther?

[T]he Yogacara thinkers' process-oriented view, which emphasizes the human system's process of unfolding, fitted well into the rDzogs-chen view, which emphasizes the system's self-renewal and freedom and expresses a fundamental complementarity in the system's overall dynamics. This truly holistic view, which has found its most profound presentation in the writings of Klong-chen rab-'byams-pa (1308–1363/64) does not derive from any Indian prototype, but must be considered as a distinctly Tibetan contribution, which revitalized Buddhist thinking and redeemed it from the rigidity to which a multiplicity of “schools” of thought had reduced it. There is no Tibetan author who can compare with Klong-chen rab-'byams-pa for depth of insight and vastness of vision.
Nonetheless, there have been attempts by the rDzogs-chen interpreters themselves, and by other lesser spirits, to reduce its scope and fit it into the narrowly circumscribed limits of their particular understanding. Rather than being a specific teaching, rDzogs-chen thought touches in its dynamics upon what in modern terms we would call the “principle of evolution,” “seeing” to it that the structures that evolve do so in the manner of a free play that determines its own rules as the play goes on. The play itself may be likened to a giant fluctuation preparing the meaning, a process of tuning in to the dynamics of the whole, to its movement toward its next structure. What in a static world view is the end, in a dynamic, evolutionary world view is always a new beginning.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Tom, thank you for transcribing that discussion; I enjoyed looking at that.

Tom: In fact, several of the references show they constitute pointing instructions to the secret permanence amidst change.

This emphasis on permanence suggests, to me, that the teachings being spoken of haven't sunk to depth. 

I think it might be a valid criticism that they aren't more clear and explicit about the finer points of emptiness/absolute subjectivity often enough (I think they both understand it, that it is beyond all conception, etc.), but I think when they speak of a permanence like this they are speaking metaphorically.

I think they are also speaking from experience. Eckhart Tolle, I believe, is one of the people who get very deep emptiness wise, and he speaks eloquently about this aspect of it:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David: “until they have realized constant awareness (through the sleep cycle).”

Man, being aware in deep sleep … it just won't happen to most people. I have lucid dreams a few times each month, but that's about it. Are you telling us we have to wait until we can ultra-“witness” in deep sleep before we are somehow “authorized” to see through the subject/object delusion? :P

And even if we manage to “witness” in dds, that doesn't mean that you will somehow transcend death or anything, which people seem to believe. There is still brain activity in dds. The way I see it is that the spiritual path has no real goodies for you as a separate person (such as being able to transcend death).

I heard some non-duality teacher say that what will determine whether you'll see through the human drama in this life or not is what kind of desire is burning in your mind. Do you desire truth more than you desire blissed out states or consoling beliefs? I like this video, kinda deals with it a little bit.

“This is wonderful dharma, but it is not science.”

It isn't suppose to be science. All emptiness is saying is that something that is independent in nature can not possibly evolve. If you believe that is possible, I'd be happy to have a formal debate with you.

“But this [causal emptiness, causal consciousness] is basically what the Buddha offered, for one thing.”

Nagarjuna, who I guess knew more about the Buddha than you, says in some various works:

“The Muni’s teaching that the entire world is mere mind is intended to remove fears from the simple minded. It is not a teaching that concerns ultimate reality.”
 
”Mind is but a name, it is nothing apart from its name. Consciousness must be regarded as but a name. The name too has no own being. Shunyata expresses non-origination, voidness, and lack of self. Those who practice it should not practice what is cultivated by the inferior.”
 
”Consciousness is just another guide, such as the Four Noble Truths, that help the inferior Buddhists get on the right track. If everything is ultimately empty, including emptiness, how can one even begin to think that the idea of consciousness, is ultimately true? The Yogacharins can create all the conceptual truths that they want, but all they are doing is creating more Hinayanas, that would have to later be abandoned.”

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Tom: But how can something never never change in an evolving universe?  

What if that something is not a thing bound to a beginning and end in time? Neither existing in the past nor the present nor future but experienceable nonetheless? Haven’t you begun to intuit this when the split mind rests? That any description of experience as “an evolving universe [entity or big changing thing]” is somehow insufficient to capture “this”. 

–

e: There is no such thing as causal emptiness in Buddhism. That is a form of eternalism i.e. metaphysics.

David: That's not the case. They just call it different things or in some cases might not be explicit about it. It may not pop up in every school, though, for example schools that don't stresss constant wakefulness through the sleep cycle. 

 In Buddhism there is no such thing as a causal witness as emptiness no matter the object of contemplation in any state. Emptiness is not the cause of forms. All things in all states (waking, dreaming, deep sleep, altered, etc.) as well as the states themselves are empty of self. Because your understanding of emptiness comes via Wilber, you don’t understand it as it was first proffered. Wilber has tried to marry the traditions and in so doing has confused people a bit coming to the traditions via his theory. Emptiness is not a Buddhist creator god nor a personal witness position nor a causal state of nothingness represented as sandwiched between non-duality and dreaming on a chart in a book.

The first Buddhist tradition accessed all these states via Jhana but did not consider them anything but conditioned states of mind. It was not about maintaining awareness thru time 24/7 but about having access to these states at will…at the drop of a hat. Once that ability was fostered, that was a basis to then contemplate phenomena. That is, as the mind was made malleable and wieldy via samadhi (state training), you then contemplated phenomena to see their impermanence, suffering and not-selfness nature. Maintaining awareness thru the states is a “poor mans” samadhi. That is, if you can't get there via meditation ability, you are relegated to trying to remain aware as you go to sleep.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Is: Are you telling us we have to wait until we can ultra-“witness” in deep sleep before we are somehow “authorized” to see through the subject/object delusion? :P

I'm not saying it's a matter of authorization; it's just a part of the higher standard for “enlightenment.”

These days there are some very weak standards for “enlightenment” and satsang teachers. Very few deserve the name “nondual.”

For one thing, even if you have some kind of nondual plateau state through the waking state and then black out like most people in sleep, then that nonduality really isn't so nondual, is it? It's a very partial “nonduality” if it is not including one's trip through the sleep cycle.

But you can do it, Is! I have great confidence in you!!!!!


Is: And even if we manage to “witness” in dds, that doesn't mean that you will somehow transcend death or anything, which people seem to believe. There is still brain activity in dds.

That's an interesting quesiton. The Buddha evidently thought so. Who knows. At any rate, if such a thing were possible it would make sense to me that it would require constant consciousness. The Tibetans, or some of them, evidently think the dream state is basically the same state as the bardo, or one of the bardo realms, so awareness there would help with choices involving birth and death (though I agree completely with Wilber that, if such a thing is possible, it is not an egoic choice at all).

Also, I don't think that brain activity in dds necessarily means that dds is a product of the brain. All it may mean is that the body is still alive and ticking. Even if the person does go entirely beyond the body in dds I don't think we would expect the brain to go dead during that time.


Is: The way I see it is that the spiritual path has no real goodies for you as a separate person (such as being able to transcend death).

I think that you're generally right that the spiritual path has no real goodies for the separate-self sense. Whether some sort of body transmigrates is another question, and that isn't necessarily a goodie, though perhaps it could be. The Buddha thought transmigration was suffering (and I don't think it's giving him enough credit to say that he believed in transmigration simply because everyone else in his culture thought so; this is the guy who said no religion had anything for him and became a lamp unto himself; I think he was a little freer thinker than that).


Is: I heard some non-duality teacher say that what will determine whether you'll see through the human drama in this life or not is what kind of desire is burning in your mind. Do you desire truth more than you desire blissed out states or consoling beliefs?

Yes, this makes sense to me. I think this is kind of what Wilber has in mind when he talks about not making egoic choices to “come back” in the bardo realm. It also relates to what he has said about “tiring” of experience. He has said that ILP is a good spiritual practice not necessarily because it will help you see nonduality directly but because it will help you tire of experience (along with all sorts of other benefits, of course).

In other words, as long as someone is hungry for experience they will keep themsleves from nonduality, at least the deepest realizations of it.


Is: It isn't suppose to be science. All emptiness is saying is that something that is independent in nature can not possibly evolve. If you believe that is possible, I'd be happy to have a formal debate with you.

I like the idea generally. What I was trying to say is that I don't think it's a reason to dismiss or give lower ratings to other paths and interpretations because we don't know why things evolve.

Emptiness, also, doesn't appear to have room for telos in the traditional interpretation. It would go well with Orange random chance and mutation, but why do things actually evolve not just change? The people who came up with that dharma just thought that the things changed and went around and around.

But I basically like the idea. Yes, if something were really inherently existing or solid through and through how could it evolve or even change? But those traditions who use words like “being” and “consciusness” and “awareness” and such don't think anything in the manifest world inherently exists or is permanent either; they just differ on the ultimate.

Anyway, I was thinking—can you imagine anything to be inherently existent or solid through and through? Try to. I can't do it. I think a shortcut to seeing “emptiness” might be simply trying to see anything as inherently existing or permanament or eternal. When I try to do that I can't, even with things that it is tempting to see as eternal like “consciousness” and such.

Still, it is not that anything is not eternal either. It is neither eternal nor not eternal.


David: “But this [causal emptiness, causal consciousness] is basically what the Buddha offered, for one thing.”

Buddha: Shunyata expresses non-origination, voidness, and lack of self.

I am simply saying that Wilber's “causal witness” is exactly the same thing as Buddha is speaking of here, just in different words. As Katagiri Roshi said, “the witness is the last stand of the ego,” so it's not quite true to say that the causal witness is absolutely free of self, though it is in comparison to self as we usually know it.

Maharshi's turiya is the same thing, casual witness, the Buddha's shunyata (of course the nondual emptiness of Mahayana is different, and Maharshi's turiyatita, “beyond the fourth,” is akin to that). I am not saying that all traditions have discovered or developed the same things, but Buddhism's “no self” is not the only interpretation of the causal witness. Other interpretations and names for it are not wrong. It's possible that the others are less helpful or confusing; you can argue that as you like (as Genpo Roshi apparently has tried to get Wilber to drop the “witness” word because he likes the “no self” phrase himself). In some cases these differences are semantic.


e: In Buddhism there is no such thing as a causal witness as emptiness no matter the object of contemplation in any state.

Right, that's why Katagiri Roshi said, “The witness is the last stand of the ego”!

Some schools, including Buddhist, have established all kinds of state-training stages, and something akin to the witness is one of them even though they don't use that word, of course.

Some of those schools might never even mention such a stage, but that doesn't mean that the understanding isn't there or that you won't find it written in any of their texts.

I understand that emptiness in the Madhyamaka sense is beyond the witness or awareness. I think you still might be saying that the Theravadans understood as much about emptiness as Mahayanas, is that right?


e: Maintaining awareness thru the states is a “poor mans” samadhi. That is, if you can't get there via meditation ability, you are relegated to trying to remain aware as you go to sleep.

The truth is just exactly the opposite. Those who can't take their meditation through the sleep cycle are those with the “poor man's” samadhi. Ramana Maharshi was very clear about this as well, saying if there wasn't awareness through the sleep cycle “he is not a jnani.”

I don't think “suchness” as Wilber means it can be realized until one realizes constant awareness. Suchness and the always already nature of it is realized after one has realized constant awareness, though I a lot of people throw those words and phrases around.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

“Whether some sort of body transmigrates is another question, and that isn't necessarily a goodie, though perhaps it could be.”

David … that'd be the ultimate goodie of all good goodies. And you know it. See, this is not about me not wanting to have another life after this one. Man, that would be awesome. Priceless. To be able to come back to try and benefit humanity again and again and again … But this isn't a matter of my personal feelings, right? It's about truth, and I care about truth very much. Just as much as I care for beauty and goodness.

And as far as I can see, all evidence points towards our - relatively speaking - continued existence as agents relies on activity in the brain. Apart from one or two accounts of out-of-body-experiences which are quite interesting, granted, but not sufficient for making me fall back into the subject-object absolute dualism.

“The Buddha evidently thought so.”

Beg your pardon? Here's what he said, according to this famous sutra:

“It's not the case that when there is the view, 'After death a Tathagata exists,' there is the living of the holy life. And it's not the case that when there is the view, 'After death a Tathagata does not exist,' there is the living of the holy life. And it's not the case that when there is the view, 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist,' there is the living of the holy life. And it's not the case that when there is the view, 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist' there is the living of the holy life. When there is the view, 'After death a Tathagata exists'… 'After death a Tathagata does not exist'… 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist'… 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,' there is still the birth, there is the aging, there is the death, there is the sorrow, lamentation, pain, despair, & distress whose destruction I make known right in the here & now.”
 
The Buddha was pragmatic and soteriological. Metaphysics, theories and heady beliefs did not interest him as much as the cessation of suffering for all beings. This is the reason I happily bow to him in the zendo; I have tremendous respect for this guy. And he lived 2500 years ago, too…

“It's a very partial “nonduality” if it is not including one's trip through the sleep cycle.”

That kind of state training all good and fun, and probably also quite useful. But don't you agree that we don't have the time to wait for people getting into this kind of über-state training? We want to end suffering, now. While we are bickering over these fancy deep dreamless sleep items, people are feeling like piss. I find it more important to help them “un-piss” themselves, instead of trying to get them to “witness” in dds.

“but why do things actually evolve not just change?”

I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. Intelligent Design-people don't know, and “Militant Atheists” don't know. So let's be open-minded and honest. It may be that there is a God who created everything to evolve to an Omega Point, or it may not. One thing we do know for sure though is that there is the appearance of a world, so let's celebrate this mystery? Let's cherish every moment we are given, because who knows, maybe a comet will destroy the entire planet and all of humanity in 5 minutes? Or a plague. Or you could get a sudden brain hemorrhage. Nothing is certain.

“I think a shortcut to seeing “emptiness” might be simply trying to see anything as inherently existing or permanament or eternal.”

Yeah, that is the first and most important step to seeing emptiness. How can we know the absence of something if we don't know what that something is?

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Ahh, a great sleep, and my morning coffee, back into another day … How'd y'all else sleep?

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

I slept pretty well, exhausted after 5 hours of teaching last night.  But I missed my coffee this morning!  Woke up late and didn't have time to stop for coffee on the way to work…

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Dawid, let me give you a view of nondual that differs from David's sleep-cycle version.  IMO, nondual is a stage of development.  The inputs upon and through which this stage develop and appear look to me to be many and complex.  In my view the reason for this complexity, and the correlating reason why reliable prescriptions for achieving nondual development cannot be found, is that nondual concerns integration at probably the deepest level of one's existence.  Integration, for its part, of necessity must regard individual difference—difference in capacity, orientation, background, aptitude, the works—such that any prescription must fall apart beyond generalities.  This is why, IMO, people who speak of attaining nondual awareness do so with pointing instructions.  The goal, if you will, that which they have attained, is distinctly known and felt—a fundamental relaxation in one's core—so those who have experienced this and teach others can do little more than give indications about—point to—how that modality appears in their life.  Those indications can serve as a lighthouse beacon.

But they don't prescribe a path.  Look, for instance, at Eckhart Tolle.  His path was, among god knows how many other things, to suffer extremely as a philosophical, heady type, then to wake up one morning to find he'd changed.  I suspect he was, at least immediately preceding his experience, unusually honest in his perceptive functioning, and he had an obvious intensity that showed in his suffering, and he is probably very smart.  These factors, and no doubt numerous others, intersected in such a fashion that they propelled a change in his awareness.  And an auto-appearing change that he did not prescribe or even contemplate or shoot for.

Tolle's path—whatever it actually was—almost certainly differs in fundamental ways from the path he suggests in pointers he gives.  One way his path differs from his pointers regards separation itself.  My sense is that Tolle experienced considerable separation in his inner process, which separation was IMO probably the basis for his later nonduality, both the fact of which and its apparent depth.  Dual necessarily precedes nondual as the necessary positive preceding its negative.  But Tolle doesn't preach “duality,” which was his real path.  Rather, he calls a split life in the most extreme of his wording “insane.”  That's quite a difference.

I could walk through a list of awakened teachers—Tolle, Krishnamurti, Byron Katie, Osho, etc—and nowhere in that list could I find a pattern bright enough to comprise a prescription for others.  Again, my explanation of this is that the nonsuffering of nondual—which you rightly finger as the hallmark indicator—is a weave so particular depending on the person, and so multifactoral, that only descriptive generalities as how it looks once arrived at, how one's arrival behaviour and feeling looks, will apply.  Thus if one lacks deep honesty, the sleep cycle prescription David speaks of will surely be minimally effective, if effective at all.  Also FWIW, if one is still afraid of death and absolute annihilation, one has IMO not integrated these teachings to depth. 

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

“Thus if one lacks deep honesty, the sleep cycle prescription David speaks of will surely be minimally effective, if effective at all.”
 
Yes! Fully agree.
 
“if one is still afraid of death and absolute annihilation, one has IMO not integrated these teachings to depth.”
 
Indeed. If one clings to rebirth out of fear of annihilation, one still identifies with the illusion of a separate self. I suspect the reason David focuses so much of his attention on dds-wakefulness is that he hopes that this will be the key for personal reincarnation.

Tom, I'm just still amazed by that realization that the Sun isn't big. I can't understand how stuff happen, or what that stuff is, while there is no space-time. Without the God's eye-view of science, how can I make sense of all this without falling into a mind-only or solipsistic delusion?

(Btw, about duality necessarily preceeding non-duality. Of course I am in agreement, but that doesn't lead me into believing duality is somehow more “naturally fundamental” than a non-dual/wave:y-kosmos. I simply believe that because of conditioning in all quadrants self-conscious beings necissarily construct their first cognitive perspectives based on duality. There can be no other way to do it. And when we become smart enough to realize that we've been mistaken in our mental constructions, we can ease our grip on dualism (to the point of non-dual-realization even), while still retaining the most effective way of dualistic communication (stages), because there is simply no other way to share ideas and feelings with other beings.)

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David to Dawid: The Buddha thought transmigration was suffering (and I don't think it's giving him enough credit to say that he believed in transmigration simply because everyone else in his culture thought so; this is the guy who said no religion had anything for him and became a lamp unto himself; I think he was a little freer thinker than that).


You keep coming at all this from people language. Just imagine seeing thru the self sense but everyone else around you identifies with the characters their culture has dished out to them. What could you do or say to help them? So he used the beliefs of the time to forge a path out of the delusion of identity belief in a separate self. You only have to look at the 4 Noble Truths. Where is the transmigration of a self mentioned? Besides he said he had put down ALL views. Maybe he was a closet Hindu huh?
 
–
 

I understand that emptiness in the Madhyamaka sense is beyond the witness or awareness. I think you still might be saying that the Theravadans understood as much about emptiness as Mahayanas, is that right?
 
I am saying Buddha understood all this. Look it all goes back to him. I have been thru far too many Buddhist texts in all the traditions. They all take an idea from the Pali Canon and run with it. The Mahayana made a big deal out of sunyata. There are at least half a dozen words you could build a school around. You can give me just about any teaching from any tradition and I will find you a sutta from the original canon where the idea originated from. But I really don’t see what the big deal is. Just enact the perspectives (or not). All this one-upmanship and teacher or tradition comparisons are rather mundane. Most serious practitioners couldn’t care less what place they are on in a map one smart dude made up in his living room. It’s not a race or cult of personality.

–
e: Maintaining awareness thru the states is a “poor mans” samadhi. That is, if you can't get there via meditation ability, you are relegated to trying to remain aware as you go to sleep.

The truth is just exactly the opposite. Those who can't take their meditation through the sleep cycle are those with the “poor man's” samadhi. Ramana Maharshi was very clear about this as well, saying if there wasn't awareness through the sleep cycle “he is not a jnani.”

I did not make this up. I was on a list for a few years where there were a lot of seasoned folks from all different traditions etc. This one woman had spent about 20 years in various ashrams in India. She had the most experience in the Advaita traditions…she really knew her stuff from a theoretical and practice perspective. This was her idea. My experience mirrors this. I lucid dreamed long before I learned to meditate. Besides from a Buddhist perspective, Right Concentration (Samadhi) is not considered a realization, just a factor of the path to be cultivated. My friend who has lucid dreamed every day of his life since he was a kid would not consider himself enlightened because of it. He would get a big chuckle out of that! Maybe you want to start a school around him, he could treat you and your friends real bad and take double image pictures you can ooo and ahh over. Come to think of it, he is quite the photographer. :-)

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

e: Most serious practitioners couldn’t care less what place they are on in a map one smart dude made up in his living room.

e, yes, and the paper was yellow full-scap.  I wonder what enlightenment would look like if the paper had been white. Or 8”x11” … maybe a reduced Coles Notes version?

“Ok, ok, I'm running out room, so all you guys, you gotta skip the lucid dreaming.  Dawid, that means you too, get off the pink flying elephant.  We need to go directly into DDS.  Cough!”

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David: “Whether some sort of body transmigrates is another question, and that isn't necessarily a goodie, though perhaps it could be.”

Is: David … that'd be the ultimate goodie of all good goodies.


I just meant that it wouldn't necessarily be a goodie because maybe it depends on how you lived your life. Some people could come back as this or this depe or if they're really good something like this. It depends.  :) And some people maybe want to get off the wheel and not want to come back, who knows. But yes, I think you're generally right. Total lights out at bodily death seems a little harsh. In fact, maybe anything, even coming back as an ant or an ardvark would be better than that.

I don't think it is lights out, though. Ernest Hemingway didn't either. He had a real out-of-body experience, which I have written enough times probably, and then at the end of a short story he wrote:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David, from reading Wilber's posts on his illness, I don't come away sensing he's really relieved himself of suffering.  Is there not a better source than Wilber for what is quoted above?

And btw, are you speaking from personal experience regarding DDS state training?

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Bruce: I don't immediately connect 'energy' to 'development' or 'evolutionary enlightenment' in my mind (though I understand Almaas specifically does so with his notion of the 'optimizing thrust of Being').

If we contemplate loading some wood into a truck we probably associate energy with that task, right? It is no different here, only we differentiate between biological energy, prana, prana with telos, etc.

When a person gets an impulse of desire or fear there is an energy behind that, right? It compels them to go act out of fear and desire, and you watch them do it. Then we can become aware, with ego awareness, of impulses that do not have that fear and desire as a motivation, and those also have an energy behind them. So third-tier stages involve going with the latter. Another way of looking at it—not something made up or some kind of fantasy—is that higher stages are actually run from higher chakras.

Adi Da, for example, might have been lighting up his crown chakra in meditation, but he wasn't all the time in action, nor the one below it.



Bruce: The notion of an 'energetic aspect to emptiness' is what I was discussing, and I was pointing out that a number of these traditions have quite developed teachings on that topic.

You were saying that a number of these traditions have quite developed teachings on that topic, but I still haven't seen any of it. I have been looking for years for something in Buddhism or Dzogchen that parallels Aurobindo or Almaas or Wilber or Cohen on this subject, and I haven't found it yet. I think it may be there, but I still haven't seen it. Now I see Guenther claiming that it does as well, but he doesn't show it either, nor that he really knows anything about something akin to Aurobindo's Intuitive Mind or Overmind. I'm not saying he doesn't; he really sounds like he might. I'm just saying I haven't seen it yet.

That's really cool stuff what you pasted before, though, and it's the best lead I have on the subject yet, but it doesn't actually come out and say anything particular about what Dzogchen has to add it. Guenther is very intriguing, though—I believe that would be just how it would be: some very developed visionary like Klong-chen rab-'byams-pa and then, as Guenther said, “no Tibetan author who can compare with Klong-chen rab-'byams-pa for depth of insight and vastness of vision”—most everyone else interpretating him from lower structures.

Sure, others say tsal and energy and stuff, but not as though they understand it as Almaas does, as “the optimizing force” or the others. I would love to see it if someone there does, though.




Wilber and Cohen once discussed this:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Hi, David, I'll write more in my next post.  For now, just a few quick comments.  First, regarding higher stages, I accept them and I'm not at all trying to defend against them or deny them; I am just saying that I think these labels need to be used more rigorously.  I agree with Stein's cautions in this area.  Second, regarding Wilber references to Buddhist texts as “third tier” being limited to his Wilber IV days, I don't think Integral Spirituality is Wilber IV, and in it he says the following:  “The first is that many of the great contemplative texts, sutras, and tantras were written in the cognitive line from at least the turquoise and often indigo or violet levels.”  Third, I'll see if I can type up some references from some of Guenther's translations of Longchenpa.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David: I understand that emptiness in the Madhyamaka sense is beyond the witness or awareness. I think you still might be saying that the Theravadans understood as much about emptiness as Mahayanas, is that right?
 
e: I am saying Buddha understood all this.

“All this” meaning what? It doesn't sound too evolutionary and postmetaphysical to say that someone who lived in the 5th century BC understood all of what we're talking about today. Did he say anything like “emptiness is form, and form is emptiness”?


e: I did not make this up. I was on a list for a few years where there were a lot of seasoned folks from all different traditions etc. This one woman had spent about 20 years in various ashrams in India. She had the most experience in the Advaita traditions…she really knew her stuff from a theoretical and practice perspective. This was her idea.


Neoadvaita has the easiest standards for awakening of anyone, probably. I wonder why they don't take Maharshi seriously when he said that if a person isn't awake in all three realms he isn't a jnani. This is why we see so many “satsangs” popping up everywhere; the standards are not very high.


Tom: David, from reading Wilber's posts on his illness, I don't come away sensing he's really relieved himself of suffering.  Is there not a better source than Wilber for what is quoted above? And btw, are you speaking from personal experience regarding DDS state training?

I would just suggest you read more of his work, One Taste, for example, and then read that piece again. Of course reading itself doesn't necessarily mean much; one has to take the injunction as well, if one is interested in finding out whether it is true. To some extent I speak from experience, yes, but I am not claiming to be a jnani.

At any rate, when I have spoken about constant awareness I have simply said that that is what the greatest realizers, such as Ramana Maharshi, claim it involves, and I think before anyone says it's not necessary or offers an alternative should see for themselves what it is all about.

 But of course it's very hard to take up serious meditation, so that's where most people will bow out and content themselves with saying it's not really necessary, which is of course fine, but let's not water down the standards for realization.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

e: I am saying Buddha understood all this.

David: “All this” meaning what? … Did he say anything like “emptiness is form, and form is emptiness”?


You tell me, I mean you seem to have the most knowledge and experience about Buddhism and Buddhists and their practices. I mean, you have been to the Kagyu temple…what…5 times for 5 translated talks? And you have read all the AC and Wilber interviews multiple times. So surely you can clue me in.

–

e: I did not make this up. I was on a list for a few years where there were a lot of seasoned folks from all different traditions etc. This one woman had spent about 20 years in various ashrams in India. She had the most experience in the Advaita traditions…she really knew her stuff from a theoretical and practice perspective. This was her idea.


David: Neoadvaita has the easiest standards for awakening of anyone, probably. I wonder why they don't take Maharshi seriously when he said that if a person isn't awake in all three realms he isn't a jnani. This is why we see so many “satsangs” popping up everywhere; the standards are not very high.


She lived with Poonja for 10 years. She was not a neo-advaitan in the sense of going to weekend satangs every few months. BTW did you know that orthodox advaitans consider Ramana and Nis “neo”? That is, if they even know who they are!!

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Hi Bruce,

I don't doubt that some were, including some Buddhists (as he says in the guru and pandit I quoted earlier). I am just making the point that those few just offered the very first teachings on the subject in their tradition, that they hadn't made a science out of that aspect of it as they had with emptiness, and that what was there on the subject is far from something that is generally accepted or taught: just look at the discussions we have about it here!

 In the quote you offer just above he's talking about all traditions up to the present moment, Buddhists, Aurobindo, everyone.

He speaks very clearly about this in the current guru and pandit. I won't quote it in full yet because it is not online, but it is available at your local Barnes and Noble, Whole Foods, etc. I will offer just the beginning of one line:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Here are some passages from the book, Matrix of Mystery, by Herbert Guenther.  Passages by Guenther will be in regular paragraph form, and all passages by Longchenpa (or other Dzogchen teachers) will be indented.

~*~

On indivisibility

The indivisibility of Being and Existenz (nonduality) can be illustrated by analogies taken from the realm of  science, which speaks of the indivisibility of energy and its radiation and of the vacuum and its fluctuations.  But in rDzogs-chen thought there is the additional factor of intelligence which inheres in the very dynamics of the unfolding universe itself, and which makes primordiality of experience of paramount importance.  The atemporal onset of this unfoldment occasions the emergence of various intentional structures, thereby allowing felt meanings
to occur.  Since this onset is structurally prior to any functional splitting, one speaks of the indivisibility of openness and its presencing, which involves the gauging of what will become the “world” (as the specific horizon-form of lived-through experience).

From out of the reach and range of the initially pure (kadag), which is open, lucent, uncompounded, and like the clear blue sky, there comes the presencing of a spontaneously available (lhun-grub) lucency which is there as a quincunx of light values of pristine cognitions, an internal glowing, like the sun, moon, and stars, never ceasing (to shine in the sky), and it is there as resonating concern possessed of the energy of excitation.

Center (dkyil) is a meaning-saturated gestalt (chos-sku), an invariant,
The creativity of excitatory intelligence, a ceaseless operation is the periphery (khor);
Therefore configuration (dkyil-'khor) is completeness in and as experience.

Nonmistakenness is the center, nonartificiality is the periphery;
This configuration of nonmistakenness and nonartificiality
Is complete in and as Being's internal logic (chos-nyid), as the impulse
toward limpid clearness and consummate perspicacity.

Energy is the center, the coming-into-presence is the periphery;
Energy and coming-into-presence is complete in and as experience.

Invariance is the center, nonartificiality is the periphery;
Invariance and nonartificiality are complete in and as experience.

Unorigination is the center, noncessation is the periphery;
The nonduality of unorigination and noncessation is configuration.

Indivisibility is the center, presence-cum-interpretation is the periphery;
Indivisibility and manifoldness is configuration.

Nonduality is the center, nonpremeditation (rtsis-med) is the periphery;
Nonpremeditation and nonduality is configuration.

Since the auto-excitatory intelligence has neither a periphery nor a center,
it is a point (dkyil);
Since it is this that is experienced, it is the attendant circle (khor).
Since the auto-excitatory intelligence beautifies itself, it is a dkyil-'khor (mandala)…

This self-existent pristine cognitiveness, dissociated from the restrictive (labels thematized as eternally existent or nonexistent) functions such that it cannot be localized as any thing since its facticity is openness; it never ceases coming-into-presence becaue its actuality is lucency; and it provides the ground (and reason) for the emergence of any and all thematic features because as resonating concern (thugs-rje) it never ceases providing for ever-new possibilities, and is therefore the ever-present existential reality.

Self-existent pristine cognitiveness is that which – as Being's excitatory intelligence, open, lucent, dissocated from mental-verbal proliferations, and like a transparent crystal – has come into existence as pure fact not allowing itself to be discursively constituted as an object.  Although this cognitiveness is there in its aspect of providing the ground (reason) for the emergence of thematization, in itself it is nothing that could be characterized as some thing that has or has not arisen; it shimmers in its own lucency, vibrates in its openness, and dissolves in the diaphanously pure ultimate.  That aspect of cognitiveness, which arises as a manifold out of its own reach and range, constitutes the structured horizon of subject-object dichotomizing.  Since what underlies this arising in its nakedness and this dissolution in the diaphanously pure ultimate – the excitatory aspect of cognitiveness – is there as pristine cognitiveness, one speaks of self-existent pristine cognitiveness precisely
because it is not amenable to objectification.

Self-existent (rang-byung) is what is meant by excitatory intelligence, it is free from causes and conditions, open, lucent, and spontaneously there; pristine cognitiveness (ye-shes) is the former's ceaseless lucency.  Singularity (nyag-cgig) means that although there is lucency this is not something in itself, for what is meant is the indivisibility of the three facets: facticity, actuality, and spirituality.

That which is open, lucent, invariant, a point-instant, virtual, singular,
Is the root of everything subsumed by the terms Samsara and Nirvana.
If the real meaningfulness of self-existent pristine cognitiveness is understood,
One becomes knowledgeable regarding the entirety of reality through
comprehending the import of the singularity (thigle).

The nature of auto-excitatoriness is the facticity of Being, an utter openness; the outward-directed glow of this openness is lucent in ceaseless radiation, yet in whichever manner it radiates it is not found as a duality of something open and something lucent.  this fact is the point-instant virtual singularity (thig-le nyag-gcig) and this term is so coined because as a point-(instant) (thig) it is the unchanging (invariant) ground (Being-as-such) and, since it remains unbroken and cannot be sectioned, it is termed a (point)-instant (le).  Since it is not something as such, in view of its subtleness it is termed virtual (nyag), and since there exists nothing that does not gather in it, it is termed singular (gcig).  It is like the root or the seed from which all (that which is encompassed by the terms) Samsara and Nirvana sprout.

All that exists, without exception, each and every thing, the whole of reality,
Has sprung from the one point-instant operational source.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Tom: “Thus if one lacks deep honesty, the sleep cycle prescription David speaks of will surely be minimally effective, if effective at all.”

The deep honesty you talk about is wonderful and important, but the evidence is that it is not required for nondual realization or constant awareness. Just take a casual look at all the nondual rogues out there, and that should become clear. Honesty is very important, and we should consider it an important part of integral enlightenment, but it is on a different line of development than state training and constant awareness.


Is: I suspect the reason David focuses so much of his attention on dds-wakefulness is that he hopes that this will be the key for personal reincarnation.

Project much?

Actually, I am just reporting what serious Buddhism and serious Advaita (as well as the other serious enlightenment traditions) are all about. If you prefer Boomeritis Buddhism and postmodern NeoAdvaita, be my guest.

You get a lot of people talking about “nonduality,” but very few of them are actually talking about the same pure emptiness as the greatest sages. Here is Wilber talking about his first “experiences” with constant consciousness.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David: You get a lot of people talking about “nonduality,” but very few of them are actually talking about the same pure emptiness as the greatest sages.

David, surely this statement reaches well beyond what you could possibly know, and absolutizes a limited preference for a style.  How do you really know what other peoples' experiences are?  What is your basis for saying “very few of them”?  If you haven't experienced that yourself, and if you haven't really spoken personally with any of those others about whom you speak, let alone crawled into the skin of any of them, which you can't do, your basis is a form of rough guessing from correlated inference, and the rougher the more distant you are from the person in question.  Assuming you've had some experience as you say with sleep-state practice, what experience have you with alternative methods that have given other people the very deep peace, not to mention constancy in suchness, I see in people like Ramana?  Presumably very little to none.

I mean, yes, Wilber has a certain liking for certain spiritual types.  And some of them, and some of the traditions from which they derive, have followed the sleep state injunction.  I doubt Ramana's method was sleep state practice.  Nor was Nisargadatta's.  Nor, would I suggest, was Rumi's or any of the Christian or Sufi or other mystics.  Nor Jacob Boehme.  Nor Jesus.  Eckhart Tolle, who seems to me very realized in Wilber's preferred manner, doesn't even prescribe meditation let alone sleep cycle practice.  Byron Katie likewise.  Eleven days?  She probably had close to two years.  Her practice is to recall—as in recalling a bad product—projections.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Bruce, thank you for all those excerpts! That is quite amazing stuff!

Yes, it does appear that that fellow was a great realizer along the lines of Rumi, a contemporary who also understood something about the “evolutionary intelligence” and such, though I think he could use a translator like Coleman Barks.

In quotes like this we have the energetic aspect along with a certain telos:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

The other question is, did Longchenpa have a specific yoga for realizing this, embodying this? Aurobindo had a specific yoga for this; so does Almaas, Cohen. The Dzogchen teachings I have encountered have been simply state training plus some energy work, meaning yoga and other healing techniques not “optimizing force” yoga..

Can you give some examples of the types of practices you're talking about?  That would help me better answer.

Did Longchenpa have any second-face of God going? I haven't had time to search his name yet.

Yeah, Dzogchen has well-developed 2p practices, in the form of guruyoga or lama'i naljor.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Tom, within the endeavor of realizing emptiness and nonduality constant consciousness through the sleep cycle is not a matter of a different type or style or method; it is the higher territory.

Now, I am not necessarily saying that the path of emptiness and nonduality or jnana yoga is necessarily the “most spiritual.” You can make the argument that the path of love and service is more spiritual, for example, or that some combination of the two are the best.

But within the path of liberation, “suchness,” nonduality, emptiness constant awareness through the sleep cycle (turiya) and when that awareness dissolves into emptiness and suchness (turiyatita) is simply the higher territory. If one doesn't have constant awareness through the sleep cycle one hasn't realized suchness but is calling something more preliminary suchness.

How do I know it's not what most people claiming nonduality have realized? Well, look at this conversation to begin with and listen to all those who are claiming nonduality. They will either never talk about it or say things to indicate that they don't (I heard one well-known satsang teacher say, “I don't even remember my dreams anymore!”) or express embarrassment if the subject comes up and they actually know that constant consciousness is the higher territory. It's also simply much more difficult; not many people claim it specifically …

If you visit these people you will learn to see when they reveal attachments. Ken Wilber once asked one Zen teacher of his how many true Zen masters there were in the world; he answered 6. You will simply find that very few of the people claiming nondual realization are jnanis or have realized the most pure emptiness if you study it, spend some time with it, take the injunction yourself, speak to others who have done the same.


Tom: I doubt Ramana's method was sleep state practice. 

I wonder why you say this when just a few posts go I posted this:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Papaji, Poonja, who was a student of Ramana Maharshi, was another, as you can see below. I would think that jnanis would be far more powerful transmittors than people who simply get a taste of deeper states in the waking state. That might explain why Maharshi and Poonja were able to influence so many people and give so many people powerful experiences.

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Hi Bruce,

Yes, I know they have second-face of God visualization techniques, but the deeper sort have to do with the guidance Almaas talks about or the surrender that Wilber, Cohen, Aurobindo, and Almaas talk about. Michael Murphy talked about Aurobindo's version with Andrew Cohen in the fourth video to the bottom here. The idea was to first realize the psychic being and then, as Murphy said, “it did the yoga.”

Here is Almaas talking about it:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David, in Buddha's Eightfold path there is the meditation, the morals, and the wisdom (prajñā - direct wisdom). You seem to focus solely on meditation?

The way I see it is that these sleep practice exist not as some divine end onto itself, but simply as an opportunity to increase one's wisdom. Wisdom of course being the core pillar on which liberation depends. Practically all religions recognize (original) sin or ignorance as the root affliction obstructing entry into heaven or liberation. And wisdom is the antithesis of ignorance. Or, like a mighty sword used to slay the dragon of original sin. Without wisdom, Jesus-like/Bodhisattva-like (selfless, altruistic) morals can not manifest; all our moral actions will be totally fake because they come from a place of lack, dissatisfaction, fear, etc, all rooted in the trunk of ignorance.

For example, some months ago I was lucid in a nightmare kind of dream and some bad dudes were hunting me on a huge matrix of LA freeway. Recalling the teaching of emptiness, I decided to put it to test. So I analyzed the dream-people as dependently arisen, and therefore as empty, and just stopped on the road. They were right behind me at that point. And I just stood still. Seconds later, they all vanished; they had absolutely no power to inflict any kind of pain or fear on me.

(A couple of weeks earlier I had the same scenario, but in a different setting and with different bad guys. (Dark forest road, scary nocturnal creatures.) Assuming a meditation posture I attempted the same thing, but my “swordmanskills” were too weak back then - when they attacked me I woke up out of fear. My untrained mind were still projecting inherent existence onto the creatures and the illusion obviously were way too strong.)

Now, the cool thing is not that I was lucid in the dream. I mean, who cares? The notion of some metaphysical Absolute Witness is so passé. The cool thing was that I managed to free myself of an affliction by recalling the teachings of emptiness. For me, dreams are invitations for us to practice prajñā.

The reason we have eternal life is not because we learn to identify with some Witness who will guide us across some bardo and into a new body while our old body dies. The reason is that nobody was ever inherently born to begin with, and if that is so - who is there to die?

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Is: David, in Buddha's Eightfold path there is the meditation, the morals, and the wisdom (prajñā - direct wisdom). You seem to focus solely on meditation?

Just a few hours ago I said this:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David, IMO you are in several instances above conflating an effect or a teaching analogy with a method, and are otherwise overlooking the actual stated or lived method these teachers used to arrive at their own version of nondual.  In the nondual state, one is out-of-stream of any state whatever, as every state is but a state differentiated from others, and upon that differentiation has by necessary implication limited encompass.  That limitation is a dead giveaway that a larger encompass exists.  Nondual, for its part, at least so far as my experience is concerned, in not partial however or whatever, or in any manner identifiably limited.  This an unpackaged interpretation of what Nisargadatta says above, where in the nondual state, he says, one “witnesses” the waking state (and etc, presumably).  I wouldn't choose the word “witness,” but I'm pretty sure I understand the experience he's pointing to, so I won't quibble.

To say “witness the waking state” is fine and well as a statement of effect (a necessary effect of nondual awareness), and as a teaching indictor, which I take it to be.  Nisargadatta, for his part, many times spoke of his path, which was one of absolutely trusting his guru when his guru said, “you are It.”  Go to N's books, you can read that message numerous times.  And also note that he does not prescribe sleep cycle practice—not once, in my memory.  Rather, he says, stick with I am, and see where it leads you.  Trust was his path.  The word “trust” derives from the same word as “truth,” so we could say truth was his path.

Wasn't it Jesus who said the truth will set you free?  Did he ever say witness dds?

The same analysis applies to Ramana.  David, surely you have read Ramana say, question who you are?  My guess is that questioning the self was Ramana's path.  Of course, by questioning the self, one objectifies anything that might be seen or thought as self, ever leaving the questioner out of objectifying reach.  This is a perhaps more analytical truth path.  The resulting objectifying muscle, IMO, is something that, once applied to one part of one's perception, can develop in other areas, and more easily than as in first instance.  This “spreading” function suggests that disidentification—or larger identification, to choose a positive languaging of the same phenomenon—can take root by any means by which one objectifies something that was before objectifying seen to be “me,” or seen in-stream, if you will.

This is a multi-path explanation that explains why so many spiritual teachers arrive at practically the exact same languaging though the path they took to that end differed.  Byron Katie, for her part, suffered intensely as an agoraphobic, among other things for years, became suicidal, then zap, something happened.  She saw a cockroach crawl across her foot and in that moment saw her foot as other than her—notice the objectifying.  She then spent two or more years walking in a desert and referred to herself as “it,” or “her.”  In that heightened objectifying state, she was able to disidentify from the thought stream that so tortured her the 10 years prior.

Something similar happened to Eckhart Tolle.  He was suffering intensely, was suicidal, then in a moment heard his language construction …. he heard himself say, as he'd obviously done tens or hundreds of thousands of times previous, “I [verb] me …”  In that moment, he realized there possibly could be no I separate from me, thus objectifying the duality that presumably fed his in-stream suffering.

Krishnamurti, for his part, and Bruce can clarify here, was quasi-objective from early years, a removed child who was very passive.  He had an experience after his brother died, where this incipient witnessing flowered.  K is one of the few teachers who actually made a teaching of the many-path understanding I'm sketching here.  Note that K often spoke of himself in his past self as “it,” or “him.”  One can see the objectifying mode clearly in his language there and elsewhere.

Almaas, for his part, didn't engage sleep cycle practice.  He investigated his feelings, among other things, and pursued a psychological form of investigating, an open-ended see-what's-there approach.  He didn't meditate—his body wouldn't let him, really, because he suffered an auto accident that causes him considerable discomfort when he sits without movement.  So he did his own thing, which was pretty unique among spiritual aspirants, a blend of psychology and spirituality, with a healthy dash of physics, his original study, operating in the backdrop.

Anyways, I could go on.  And I doubt Poonja's path was DDS.

These teachers, from what I read, didn't engage sleep cycle practice, some of them didn't at all, I'm pretty sure, and some of them did so only as a sidelight to a much different practice. What they did engage was their own version of objectifying, which led each and every one to virtually the same place.  Of course, it's fine to suggest a practice can take any practitioner to its intended goal, but that would be to overlook the particularity of the pathways down which those who lead in this field walked.  That particularity says “good luck” to following a precribed path, as any such prescription might be sufficient degrees off-base one's naturally needed path to actually prevent reaching the goal.  Follow your instinctual nose is perhaps a better “map” than any “map.”

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

David: take the injunction yourself …

In the face of the pathways different leading spiritualists followed, do you really think there is but one injunction or even a main injunction?  I'm hard-pressed to see any such, myself.

Btw, Wilber, to my sensitivity, is not in the same league as someone like Ramana.  Wilber feels to me too nervous, defensive and reactive, and looks to me to fear dying.  In my perception, if I sense a split in someone, which I do in Wilber in several aspects of what I hear from him, including how he says things, the emotional overtones I sense etc, that split, to me, normally suggests a form of clinging.  Clinging is unobjectified in-stream functioning.

A note from Ramana:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Here's another quote from Ramana, which points to Eckhart Tolle's method of realization:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

And in speaking of the path of inquiry, Ramana says, here, what I have said many times in these threads, that feeling is a primary guide.  Ramana's inquiry method is primarily dayworld examination, concentration, questioning, inquiry—guided by feeling.  Thus does Ramana say the heart is the seat of the I-I:

Re: Evolution and Enactment 2.

Some Wikipedia details about Poonja.

I seriously doubt if sleep state practice was something he engaged on his primary path, or perhaps even at all.  Looks more a combination of devotional + a later decisive injection of Ramana-like investigation.  No mention of dds. 

I've read and listened to alot of Eli Jaxon Bear and Gangaji—most of what Eli has produced, some of Gangaji's.  They are both students of Papaji.  Not once, in my memory, have they mentioned sleep state practice.  Eli's path was all over the place, and predominantly centred, from what I can tell, in psychology with-a-deeper-longing.  He found the end of that longing when he found Papaji, who told Eli to question his self, the “I.”

Eli likes using the Enneagram—again, as a means of objectifying a person's behaviour to show that person he or she is not the author or his or her activity, which is to induce awareness of one's mechanical determined nature to aid disidentifying.