closely connected medically very similar. In terms of upcoming things almost forgot about this. We have a new the new dream song. There used to be the dream sharing thing but Marianne, who's a very skilled member of the nightclub community is offered to host these things every other Saturday. So Alyssa is going to post these little events on that in the chat column. So we're really excited about starting that up again as well. Finally, finally, finally get the Delson Armstrong interviews, ready to go. So we're gonna post the first one probably today or tomorrow, the second one next week. And then I spent three hours this Monday, talking to Bernardo kastrup, which was super fun. This guy's amazing. He could arguably be the sharpest mind I've ever interacted with he's incredibly intelligent individual and he has a heart of gold. So we had such a great time. He just wanted to keep going. So hey, I just kept going. Because there was so much material here. It was pretty deep, a little on the thick side. We're probably going to parse this one into two because I think a full three hours might be a little bit of the overload but that probably won't happen until I come back in August but really excited about that opportunity. Also, when I come back, Sean SPR and Hargens he's agreed to do something he's a PhD internalist He works with some really interesting stuff. He's deep into integral eco ecology. And he also wrote one of the most original outrageous papers I've ever read a couple of years ago on what's called XL studies, which is a branch of discipline these days that works with non human intelligences and things like extraterrestrials and stuff and when I first read the paper I had to look at the date after the first 20 minutes I said it's just like an April Fool's joke or something because it was so out there. But then it just got more and more and more brilliant. And he has this ontology spectrum thing that is I think is bloody brilliant. So I did a little book group thing with him. I was invited to talk to him to group of scholars that he's a member of. And so because we have this connection, I invited him to join me for a podcast probably in early August. So anyway, lots of cool things happening but already Alyssa big pause recording in progress. I didn't forget. All right. So a bunch of cool questions today. Let's just jump right in. These are the ones that came in from our lease. Okay. I often hear you cite Robert Thurman it's not safe to die if you still have an unconscious mind. Yes, I do that because I think it's a brilliant statement. I actually asked Bernardo what he thought about this very interesting response. I like it, but I also wonder what it exactly implies was such a fully conscious aware being
be present.
Despite whatever happens to its physical brain during a surgery and a comatose state or after drug abuse or with dementia. Yeah, good question. Yes, in short, yes. Someone who has made the entire dimension of their unconscious mind conscious. In fact, Jung talked about this is the process of individuation. I talked to Bernardo on Monday about this is one way I think at a deeper level. Post individuation. You could talk about what it means to be awake. I think that in western psychological jargon, this is one way to talk about enlightenment really, there's no such thing as an unconscious mind and awake being and then I'll be very specific about your question. This is one reason these people don't sleep. They don't dream they don't die because there's nothing left sleep is a product of ignorance, ignorance, and this now I'm talking literal sleep at night. they literally don't sleep. doesn't mean they're staying up all night playing video games. What an image right? The 24/7 Buddha, playing PacMan or whatever. I don't know anything about these games or dates me Pac Man, right? Prehistoric? No It means that their mind never turns off. They maintain a 24/7 awareness. And literally they don't sleep they don't dream or another way to say this is literally dreams do see something classical says there's nothing to see the dream. And Delson Armstrong has this capacity by the way. He doesn't dream anymore. I totally believe it makes complete utter sense. And you'll see when I talk to him this guy, he's he's a real deal. He's not he's not jazzing me. And actually what I was gonna say so yeah, they don't dream in the way we know it. That type of dream completely ends but another way to say this really same saying the same thing. Everything becomes a dream. Everything is seen to be a manifestation of mine. Exactly the stuff I talked to Bernardo about. And then they don't die because there's there's death is also a product of ignorance, my rigpa so that sleep dream doesn't apply to a piece of a person like this. And so literally during surgery, they don't go out. They literally don't blackout in Rupert Spiro shares the story he had a podcast interview with Sam Harris, you can listen to it. A couple points get super interesting. And Rupert in a in a solid wouldn't say well, I guess it is rare. was talking about how when he had surgery, he didn't black out and that's not at all uncommon when you have a deep, deep understanding of the refined dimensions of your previously unconscious mind. You don't go out even under an anesthesia. There is no drug abuse. Dementia, all this stuff. comatose only works with brain states upper superficial dimensions of you bang the cat you know, the neuroscientific community would categorically dismiss this as bullshit. But that's because they have a very limited myopic understanding of mind. The conflate mind to brain brain is correlated to mind. It's not causative, there's a difference between correlation and causation. So everything you're saying seems to imply some type of reductionist again, I'm not being critical, or at least but there seems to be an implication that you're associating mind with brain, only gross mind is associated with with girls bodies slash brain, these higher dimensions, it's not. So they don't sleep, they don't dream they don't die. Drug Abuse does nothing. Here's another story classic. There are many of these, the famous one by rom das giving his guru 25 hits of orange sunshine. Nothing happened, right? People with dementia doesn't apply to these to these individuals, right. So what it implies is basically yeah, there's no such things on unconscious mind. For these people, there's no such thing as death. So if you want to come on and say a little bit more about that because it is a really big topic. That's what comes to mind. For us who haven't brought these processes into the light of consciousness. This is what meditation does. This is why Trump or mache famously said meditation is not a sedative. It's a laxative. I love this line, because all the crap in your unconscious mind has got to come up. But if it comes up in meditation, that's what it does. You become familiar with it, the very definition of meditation. Then there literally, there's no such thing as unconsciousness and these types of minds and you can train yourself to do this. I wouldn't say it's common. It's definitely not common, but it's actually not that uncommon. These people just fly below the radar. They're not out there. The real ones they're not out there touting their wares. I mean, the the most realize people that have this level of mind are the most humble, modest ones. So let's just say but maybe that's enough. Okay, from then do the stages of Dream Yoga. correspond to the four Yogi's of Maha Mudra. Who this is an easy one? No.
They don't. The four stages, the four years of Maha Mudra one point at this simplicity, of one taste, not meditation. It's just one way to classify the four degrees of awareness in the Maha Mudra tradition. They do not correspond to to my stages and Dream Yoga. That's an easy one. Okay, here's one from Tim. Yeah, I I'm interested in finding a Buddhist teacher in the Chicago area. I don't live in Chicago. Sorry. Do you know any temples, churches, teachers I can recommend? I don't. Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of them out there. You know, my friend Don Maury Ali wrote a book actually, two editions, Buddhism in America or something like that. I don't know when the last edition or if there's even a third edition out there. I have the first two. He lists everything. So you might want to ping him that book. I think I think it's literally called Buddhism in America is quite a big kind of dictionary of all the centers, probably a little bit outdated. I would I would guess that there's probably a Tergar community there, but I just don't know, too. I'm sorry, but. Okay, from Fred. And there's another one from Tim, but I'll come back to that in a second. All right. I repeatedly say to myself, this is a dream very good. But do you mean it? Do you really mean it? I mean, I'm just saying don't don't flap your lips really mean it right? And maybe if you do, that's great. We finally say it myself. This is a dream as part of the loose reform practice during the day trying to imagine my current experiences as a dream. That's good. Because it is a dream. We just need to understand what dream means here. manifestation in the mind, trust me on this. This here, look around your room. This is just as much a dream as your nighttime dream. Guaranteed. But these daylight experiences are bright and vivid. Yes, that's because you're so excessively familiar with them. It's a it's a type of Wake centricity, photo centricity, sight centricity. All in the service of egocentricity, that through the power of enormous habit, personal habit, Culture Society myology we think this is real and my time state is not these experiences are bright and vivid. Yes, they are. My nighttime dreams upon awakening and recall my nighttime dreams upon awakening and recalling them always seem darker. Manually as vivid and rarely do I perceive color in them? Okay, that's not unusual. Given the difference, it's difficult to sustain the illusion of daytime dreaming and nighttime dreaming being interchangeable. Yes, it is difficult because we're again we're so habituated. I mean, we have all these forces my languaging cool, conspiratorial forces of the dark side. And for really profound reasons that I also discussed with Bernardo with just this underlying fear. We create a kind of ontological impute a type of ontological supremacy to the waking state for a ton of reasons, one of which is fear and psychological. And so when we're trying to de reify this reality, and then another way to talk about what you're mentioning here for is the reifying this in a certain sense, reifying the dream state. That's not an easy thing to do. That's why these yogurts are somewhat in advance, and they take a lot of effort because we just don't see the world in these completely awakened spaces. So what you're sharing find is 100% normal, I would say 99.9% of the population would say exactly what you're saying. But that doesn't mean you can't change this. Because this is not really the way reality is, really, trust me, all the wisdom traditions. The non dual traditions will tell you sleeping, dreaming, dying. It's all a dream. We just need to understand what that what dream really means dream cold language for manifestation of mine. So you just you just keep going. His Holiness Dalai Lama, what does he say? He never give up. And slowly, slowly, slowly if you just keep going at it. Eventually eventually you will find actually as your mind stabilizes, meditation is colossally important here, because your mind stabilizes becomes more clear, more vibrant, more lucid, and then that mind is released free of sensory constraint. In the dream arena, guess what happens? Your dreams become more clear, stable, vibrant to the point, literally where you can have hyper lucid dreams some of you listening have had these were those dreams are more real than this. Their death experiences are like this when I interviewed Evan Alexander about his now quite famous near death experience. I mean, his whole thing was a massive hyper lucid experience
and so it's really it's just a matter of habituation and degree that we reify the state and then, you know, kind of categorically dismiss the ontological equivalence of the nighttime dream. And so the only thing I can tell you, my friend is what you're sharing is 100% normal, but it's not the way it is. So you just keep at it. You study more about Dream Yoga, you study the teachings on emptiness, you do the so called spiritual path, and then eventually guaranteed, your dream state becomes more and more real, this becomes less real and eventually you will see the democratic nature of all states, right? Not easy, not easy, simple to say. Not easy to do, for so many different reasons. And that's usually why people give up because the stuff is subtle, so many forces working against them. They just say it's just not worth the effort, and that's fine. But if you really want to wake up in the spiritual sense, this is kind of the only game in town. Okay. All right, Joe. What is the difference between open awareness and Xhosa? Okay, good question. Big one. Come to manleigh so cheap, I'll put up my lemonade stand anywhere. This is exactly what we're going to talk about in menma. But anyway, open awareness when you're talking about Xhosa and by the way, I'll define both these terms. So action is arguably the highest Liberty means great completion, great perfection teachings. It's the highest page of teachings in the NEMA tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. And when so when you say jokes or meditation again, not only are there dozens and dozens of meditations just like there dozens of sports so when people say meditation and literal absorption, my first question is what meditation are you talking about? So even though chan what meditation are you talking about? Sounds to me like you're probably talking about traction versus toggle. So there are two main practices in Xhosa and I bet you're referring to the cutting through the called cut back fracture cutting through to primordial purity versus toggle the dip toggle which is crossing over just spontaneous presence. So the duction meditation usually when people say devotion, they mean structure. It's similar to open awareness, but also a very subtle way quite different. And so there's so much to say here. Here's the way I work with the practice of open awareness, open monitoring in the scientific community. That's the word they use non referential shamatha awareness of awareness shamatha without assign formulas shamoto There's a bunch of different names for this, but I like open awareness. Open awareness is what jokes can degenerate into it still dualistic open awareness even though it's incredibly refined? It's not it's not. It's not non dualistic. It's still dualistic. It's still very, very subtle. Duality. And so when one's option, somebody meditation, the generates the generates into open awareness. So therefore, you can use open awareness as a platform into absorption See, and that's why it's so bloody important. Because if you really get good at the open awareness thing, and this is like just like my main favorite practice these days to teach. This is a practice that will leave breadcrumbs breadcrumbs for you like Hansel and Gretel you can find your way back to reality, to Dzogchen through the practice of open awareness, so they're not the same XO Chan is completely non dual nature of mind. Open awareness. Isn't it's still in the realm of Sam versus Regpack. And so even though they're very intimately connected and the very highest, you know, you can't do hard, cold steel categorical distinctions between these because the very highest bandwidth of open awareness actually bleed in to touch absorption Mahamudra and that's the genius of this practice. And so in fact, this book I'm sending off I finished
it today.
I finished this book today. Yay. Big Pat for me. A book I thought I had 18 months to finish. I finished in three. So I'm super excited about this book, and I devote two chapters to the practice of open awareness and its relationship to the full formless meditation. So open awareness is still a very very, very subtle form. So Chan is completely formless. Okay, so difference between Semin rigpa form and formlessness. Also, same person Joe also sometimes especially right before I wake up, it's a liminal space probably hypnopompic. There is a state of mind that is without object. Fantastic. Good for you for saying that right. state of mind is without object content or me. It seems totally relaxed and open high five. That's fantastic. Sometimes it lasts for a while and sometimes a short time. That's normal. How would you label that state of mind? Oh, that's always so tricky. Right. So here's let me I'll do my best to tell you what I think it is. But here's here's an interesting story. I think I heard this from rom das I'm not sure where God and the devil are walking, taking a walk. What a great image right? God in the devil or taking a walk together. And God looks down and see something, whatever, quite beautiful. pointed out to the devil and the devil. looked at it picks it up and he goes, this is fantastic. I'm going to name it what a beautiful story. So it's demonic on one level, to label things. Why? Because we tend to reify our labels we tend to live in the world of maps. And so whatever I always my little red flags come up. How would you label that state of mind and I will do my best to label it with with this caveat. We always need to know the map is never the territory and anytime you throw a label and anything, whatever it whatever you see it is it isn't so Korzybski the great some ethicist said that and so what I would label that if there's truly Joe, if there's truly an experience of object listeners, no content no me, then that's that's great GPA. Again, anybody can have this experience. Anybody can it's just a matter of recognizing it. So if this is in fact the case, and I don't doubt you, and when you wake up in the morning, and this is what's so bloody cool about these hypnagogic hypnopompic space, the liminal spaces, is this is pre, you're talking about precisely the gift of this dimension of the nocturnal mind, which is why I'm riffing more and more about liminal spaces because of exactly what you're saying here. So the high five for you when you're in the liminal space going into sleep. You can watch the self sense deconstruct you can watch the narrative self sounds fall apart as you fall asleep. When you first wake up in the morning before that narrative self sense comes back online. There is a gap there's a Bardo there's that's before the narrative in the crappy storyline that ends up being you or speak about sell me. It's not there that page is still is ripped out. In that dimension. You can totally have an experience over a PA, nature minds ocean and so if this isn't fact, no sense of me, I'm not even having that experience. That's it. Really, that's it 100% Legit, that's very cool. So resting in awareness, resting in awareness of awareness, if there's absolutely no sense that I'm having this experience that usually comes after the fact it's a postscript retrofitting. If you actually feeling exactly what you said, That's very cool. Okay. All right from Katie. Kathy. from Estonia, Oh, how wonderful Estonia I've been to Latvia I've meant to Lithuania. My mom was Lithuanian. I used to speak it was my second language after Spanish. I learned Spanish when I was in Bogota. I was born in Bogota, Spanish, Lithuanian, English English was my third language. Lithuanian is actually the closest language to sounds great. Isn't that interesting? And so I've never I've not been to this Baltic state but I've been to Lithuania and Latvia and so hello, Love lovers, lovers. Lovers lovers, so okay, I wonder if I have understood correctly. In Buddhism, a mind is considered a continuum of mental moments. Each moment causally emerging from the previous moment. Okay, so I'm going to run commentary as I go through these because otherwise, it's too long for me to just backpedal and restart the whole thing.
Kathy, it depends on when you say mind again, this is important. This is part of the granularity the articulation, the elegance of these traditions where when you say mind What What are you talking about? Are you talking about Sam, are you talking about rigpa? Are you talking about low so what when you say mind, what kind of mind are you talking about? To me? Based on your question, you're talking about sim Lo? And in this case, yes, in the Abbe Dharma tradition, and also neuroscience will tell you this mind and that's not even mine. I talked to Bernardo about this I think. I think I'm not sure. Because I've talked to a lot of people these days. It's not even mind. Its minds, plural. Because otherwise we think there's a monolithic unifying. Secondly, called Mind is a mind it's not mind its minds, plural. And every moment as you say, here, yes. In a lightning fast under the zero point energy field, and I did talk to Bernardo about this. Mine comes up out of the zero point, energy field says emptiness manifesting at lightning speeds through these atoms of experience called dharmas small d. And exactly what you say it's true. It's called Santana in the Tera Vaada tradition stream of mind, which is really more staccato of mind pixelated quantized mind. Williams, James coined the term stream of mind, but it's only a stream of mind due to what neuroscientists call flicker fusion. Basically, the speed of the mind that freezes these discrete, discontinuous moments of rising so when you really, really slow down, you discover the quantized pixelated nature of reality and that somewhat connected to the previous question means not only reality there, but reality here. You realize that you're a Seraph painting pointillistic painting, just like the phenomenal world and the Abbe Dharma Buddha, psychological tradition talks about this with tremendous elegance. So if you really want to understand this stuff, read the Abbe Dharma text which there are many, many glimpses of Abbe Dharma is my favorite one, like Trumper Rinpoche, because it's a tantric rendering of the Dhamma teachings. Also, just started this I spent two hours in my second interview with Delson talking exactly about this topic. This was the entire two hour conversation, talking about mind moments within the context of dependent origination per teacher somewhat harder. So when that's posted in probably end of next week, we spent two hours on this topic. Okay, in Buddhism, my mind is considered to continue have metal moments. Yes, Sam. Is not rigpa each moment causally emerging from the previous moment. Yes, provisionally and again, this is where it gets really interesting. On a relative level, there is a causal connectivity from one moment to the next, but not so on an ultimate level and the work of the great Indian philosopher sage Nagarjuna basically shows you that even causality is an illusion. So on a relative level, yes, what you're saying at the level of seven is true. On an absolute level, it's not the present moment, this is you again, the present moment is born from the depth of the last moments mind. Yes, at the ivy Dharma turbine level. Between each moment there is the gap. Yes, there is. So in that part, correct. There is a gap. Reality is discontinuous. It's parsed. Oh my gosh. There's so much literature here. The other one if you're a little bit deeper, more academic sciency. Nerd, like me. The classic book here is the embodied mind because this book almost started the whole cognitive neuroscience movement revolution, Francesco Barella, Evan Thompson, Elena rush I read this book, the minute it came off the press, it just blew me away. I think MIT Press. So if you really want to start study this at a scientific level, that's the book to get the embodied mind. Question number two, how to understand a moment. That's a really good question. I imagine that it does not equal a second it definitely doesn't. As a Western measurement of time. Does this length depend on the individual for sure? Is it really possible to perceive even the fading dying of the previous moment? Yes or no?
These are great question. I love this stuff. So from again, from a terrible bottom perspective, yes, you can you can detect these arising feelings at this highly refined level with a really highly refined mind. And so this is where study scientists have studied this. They study mind moments. I'm not entirely sure if Francesco Perrella was the first one to do this, but he was big into this and what his studies and others have shown since then, they do so interesting studies, they have shown roughly speaking, that the untamed untrained mind has what's called an unintentional Blake or an ability to resolve reality at around 200 to 250 milliseconds, the millisecond is a 1,000th of a second. And so in an untamed mind, you see roughly at that frequency, that bandwidth bandwidth and attain really trained minds 10 To 25 to 50. I don't know exactly the numbers, but it's literally a tenfold increase in resolution. And so these people literally, this stuff is not hypothetical. This stuff is the direct experience of people who have these highly refined minds and they test these things they, they put them into a call to kiss the scopes, which are fancy strobe lights, where you know, depending on the level of the light arising and untamed mind, would would see let's say, I don't know roughly the resolution frequency for the flicker fusion and frequency is usually around 16 to 24 Hertz. That's when we create the illusion of not only visual but auditory continuity. If you slow your mind down, you start to see the breaks and reality literally you literally deconstruct reality. In your in you're able to see in a much more refined level. So what we would see as continuous light and untamed mind a yogi would see back to alternating current above you would see as light flickering on and off. So this is this brand is a lot lends a lot of credibility to this traditional proclamation that that meditation increases awareness. It's not a metaphor. It's true. meditators hear more, feel more smell more, taste more, because their awareness is so heightened. And so there are several ways to talk about this this thing called mind I'm sorry, moments in time. So just like those questions are so rich, just like there is no causality. Your first question, there's no time and an absolute arena. So the realm of the absolute and this is one way to know when you're in the absolute there's no space there's no time. There's no causality. It's complete non dual experience. The minute you contract away from that into the world of Sam samsara then time is created. It's not it's it's not the backstage of reality. Even Einstein said this look at the I mentioned this, there's a I think you can get it online. Nima Our Connie Hemet, Princeton physicist, famous talk space time is doomed. This is from a hardcore theoretical physicist, space and time are constructs. So science is now even coming to this conclusion. So spacetime, causality these are all constructs. So, back now we come back to the level of relative reality. Is there a thing called an irreducible moment? Well, yes and no. Mostly no trying to find it. They try to measure it, try to find it. So here's the way here's this is what the way I play with this. It's actually very interesting. Bernardo writes about this too.
Which book?
He's written about 10. It's either in my two favorite books. I've heard so far. Science ideated. His most recent one, I think, and then the idea of the world. These are two jaw droppingly Brilliant books, not easy, especially the idea of the world. It's a series of articles that you wrote for scientific academic journals, a bit heavy lifting, but really brilliant and so I can't remember which book it said maybe science ideated where Bernardo what I'm going to share with you goes about it in a in a much more expanded way basically decimates the notion of time. And that fundamentally, there's only the present moment. That's the only thing that even exists. But even there, the present moment is provisional, because even the present moment doesn't exist. And so there again, there's so much to say here, but briefly, here's here's one way to play with it. That logically if you really play with this, this may seem like Can it really be this easy to decimate time? Yes. But you have to really engage it. Tebow Carter said this so we can all agree there's no future right future doesn't exist yet. Right? Raise your hands you agree? For sure. We all agree the past doesn't exist right? Past this dead. Future has not been born past this debt doesn't exist, right? Raise your hand. Yes. Okay. What then is the present moment? The present moment is this is my languaging the present moment is an imaginary line drawn between two non existence. Even the present moment doesn't exist in the garden of proves this. So on one level relative level on and it's completely viable when we do our meditations. Yes, we come back to the present moment. And that's really the only thing that exists for now writes about this beautifully riff. But even then, the present moment can be taken apart. Even the present moment doesn't exist. And if you're starting to feel a little queasy, and a little groundless, that's actually a good thing, because this is what this leads to. The topic of emptiness. Time is empty of inherent existence. So this investigation will lead you when to run pulling effect where your reality will be pulled out from under your feet. And so what we do in meditation, and I'll probably pause and let this go because there's so much more to say here. We use the present moment provisionally, we come back to body and breath we come back to our senses. I'm not dissing this at all is super important, because the present moment is illusory as it is, is a heck of a lot more real than the past in the future. So you come back to the present moment, you come back to your senses, because your senses only operate in the present moment. You literally come to your senses. But then eventually you get to the point and this is exactly the point in the earlier question where open awareness transitions into Dogen. So what I'm talking about now is a way to answer the question from earlier. You come back to the present moment, that's still Sam that's still open awareness, still around with samsara. But eventually you get into that it's like a conduit. It's like a funnel, rivet into reality, where eventually the present moment or you come back to your senses. Eventually the present moment falls away, to reveal what Padma Sun bhava talked about is the fourth moment connected to Turia in Sanskrit. There is beyond past, present and future it's quiet, why it's called the fourth moment is beyond. Past, present and future. And Surya das talks about this very, I like his languaging. Here is Buddha standard time is brilliant, but a standard time. Beyond Time, for time, time doesn't exist. So one last thing here and then maybe that's enough, because there's we can talk about this all day. Does this rhythm of moments and gaps disappear when one awakens? Yes, because time disappears. So when you're fully enlightened, there are no Bardot's there's no gaps. There's no time there's no space. So yes, what you're saying there is true, great question. These are all good. So there's one more here from Tim is a good one too. Okay, another small topic, karma. Lordy? How much negative karma do you gain? I would say accumulate because you're not gaining anything but how much negative karma do you gain accumulate when you kill a bug
all reminds me of that that line from what is it on the waterfront with Marlon Brando remember that great line? She looked at me like I was a dog. Right. So I don't I don't know how to answer this. Tim. It depends on Well, let me read the rest of it because I think you I think you get into this a little bit. Is the intention more important than the Act? In this case? Yes. This is where it really understand this my friend and by the way, karma everybody talks about it. Only a Buddha knows what karma is. It's along with emptiness, the most sophisticated complex topic and all of not just Buddhism, but Eastern thought karma is really complex. So a way to play with this term a little bit and I write about this in my book preparing to die is to understand the four aspects of a fully loaded or fully constituted karma. What is it? What are the four ingredients that makes a Karma fully loaded? This is important because it has to do with intentionality. Behind things like euthanasia, suicide, abortion, so this stuff gets a little bit important, right? So because the topic again is so big, my friend, again, my my book, I think it's in the section called the difficult topics or something like that. There's a whole there's a 2345 pages where I talk about exactly this topic. Meaning if you kill a spider in your sleep, because you rolled over it versus killing a spider consciously out of anger, fear absolutely positively, if there's no intention involved. Then the heaviest ingredient for karma is not there. So the four just briefly the four aspects of a fully constituted karma are the object, the act, the intention, and then the sense of completion. So if you have an intention to do something, you do it then you rejoice in that. That's as heavy as a Karma can be. If you roll over a spider and kill it, there's can I say there's no karma there? I don't know. I don't think so. Because there's no intention involved. But I'm a little bit agnostic on this ask a Buddha. Spider, maybe your spider man and your past life here. Tim, what if the spider is known to be deadly? Should you still try to capture it alive and let it go outside? I don't know, man. I mean, really, these these questions just kind of stop my mind. Read. Again, I want you to make your own decisions because I'm not going to be responsible for your Karmic Account, right? If you're going to create a heap of negative karma, don't blame it on me. You got to take responsibility to read traleg Rinpoche is beautiful book. He wrote it. I think it was actually published posthumously before he died. His book karma. That's the title, what it is why it matters, blah, blah, blah. I think there's another subtitle to it. It's probably one of the easiest renderings of the whole process of karma. I might recommend you look at that. Kind of a crazy follow up question, but are we not killing millions of bugs and parasites and microbes? Every time you go to the bathroom and flush? Does this build negative karma? Yeah, exactly. This is exactly my thing around this. We are. Most of the microbiome in our body is non human. If we didn't have antibodies if we didn't have an internal antibiotic system, ie our immune system that lives on killing that which is not us, we wouldn't be here. So as we're speaking now, you don't have to go to the bathroom for this Tim. Right now your body like 3 trillion chemical reactions per second. Something like that is crazy and your body is constantly killing other forms. Does that create karma? I don't think so. But
you know, life lives on life. So, these are really these are deep questions my friend and again, the minute somebody mentions the word karma, I just kind of go cataleptic because there's, there's so much to say here. And some of these things. I tell you, they're really, really difficult to answer. And so what what I heard that from an HRT once is a series of questions like this. And female Acharya said something quite beautiful. She said you know, the way I work with this, the way to work with this is learn as much as you can about the stuff, study the teaching, study the implications, do your homework, and then use your judgment. Do do your own thing, based on some information. And so that's the way I roll with this. I study as much as I can. intentionality is huge. If you're just going around stomping on everything, that's not so great. If you're, you know, mosquito lands on you or a tick and they're carrying Lyme disease or West Nile like where I live it, am I going to lovingly put it a little in a jar and pull it off? No, I'm going to sweat the sucker. I'm sorry. I'm going to kill it. And so does that create negative karma? I don't know. But I'm not going to take a risk of getting Lyme disease or West Nile or letting the you know the critter do its thing. So I get I get really a little bit edgy about these sorts of things. I can't I can't speak with any authority on this. This is just my I wouldn't say dilettante, but my somewhat informed but not completely informed interpretation. So whenever these kinds of karmic questions come in really, that's kind of where I go with them. Okay. So let's take a couple of live ones and then I think I have to go to my other little folder to see if I'm missing anything, but I think I got most of the ones that came in. Perfect. Let's see. I'll get married. Oh, wait, I did forget one. Oh, sorry. Let me get this one. Sorry. And then we'll turn it from Bianca. Question about the Dharma talk, then I'll get I'll get yours. When the reaction of aggression is expressed, because there's an energetic felt experience from the act of injustice, what would be the best way to tame that felt truth to have it to have more equanimity? Oh, god, he's such good questions. It depends. Again, it depends on who you ask. And what tradition they're speaking from. So a teravainen Would we would respond differently from Omaha. Yanis would respond differently from a tantric practitioner. If you take what the Dalai Lama says to be true, and again, I Who knows if it's true, it makes sense to me. Mahayana transcends but includes Indiana. Tera Vaada varje Lana train transcends but includes both therefore budget Mian is the highest school. That also is a somewhat contentious, controversial topic, but it makes sense to me. Just like quantum you know, linear algebra and calculus is a little bit more advanced. than than arithmetic, algebra. So from a tantric perspective, you don't you don't want to tame that felt true taming, it is a more teravainen approach. I write about this in my book.
First Book, power and pain. Think I have two chapters on what I call the four arts. abandon it remedy at transform itself liberated where I talked about this within that kind of schema, so terrified and may want to tame it. A Mahayana would transform it, a virginiana would transmute it. So let's just because it's such a big topic, let's talk about transmutation. What you then do is you take this energy, there's nothing wrong with the energy to address aggression is very interesting. It topologically the word literally means to step forward. That's all it means. Aggression gets a negative connotation because it's usually associated with violence. But to add grass literally means to step forward to act. So the key here because there's so much to say is transform it or transmute it. I should say, use that energy as electricity to have you act properly born of wisdom and compassion, instead of self referential self righteousness. So the best way to I wouldn't say I wouldn't say tame it the best way to transmute transform it is twofold. First of all, Check Connect it to the other question. Check your motivation. If you feel an energy of aggression, you will almost always feel contraction. This is aggression in the pejorative sense. If you feel that aggression based on contraction, then number one, just don't move. Don't act on that because that will create karma if you stay with that energy and you transmute it. That energy then transforms into what's called discriminating I'm sorry, Voyager energy, Varsha family energy. incredibly clear, articulate, energetic, emotional space. That will then allow you to go into the world to work with injustice, to work with everything that's happening in the world, but now from a non referential point of view, where now you're actually acting as a representative of a reality instead of a representative of yourself. So maybe for the purposes of time, Bianca, in my book, power and pain, I have 12 chapters about this kind of thing. This is a really great question. That it's not just aggression, how do you transform all the poisons? The Five Root poisons passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, pride. How do you transform all those because the Buddha's have these emotions, they have these energies, they're not effectively emotionally whitewashed. They have these these emotions, but they don't create karma. They're literally connected to what I call the four cars they don't create karma, aggression and being like that does not create karma. Because it doesn't come from a contracted space. It comes from a spaceless space of non referential space of openness. And therefore these beings when they act, they step forward, add grass into the world. They're tremendously beneficial because they're no longer working from this egoic perspective. So this is a really great question. And so that's what comes to mind around that Bianca really good one I really appreciate that. That's a great one, not the other ones. They were also great as well. Okay, Marianne fire away. I'm going to clear these other files here. To make sure we got them all. Okay, I'm listening. Yeah. Hi, Andrew. multitask?
That was a great question. That was a great answer. Thank you. I'm so inspired by what you just said. I think I hope to go out into the world like that eventually. Um, I've been reading this book you recommended waking.
What a great book, isn't it?
It's even a beautiful covers.
Heaven is a rock star. I really liked the guy. Yeah, he's, he's awesome. He's nice. My Club interview guests from about a year and a half ago. I interviewed him. Yeah, he's awesome. He's awesome.
I am curious about a couple things. Um, can I read a little bit out of the book? Okay. Questions about Okay. So, um, he quotes ALAN WALLACE. And when they were in this retreat together, Alan said, when you're awake, it's always better to be mindful but not mindful. When you dream. It's always better to be lucid than not lucid. Right. Being lucid means being both ignorant. Wait, not being lucid. means being both ignorant not knowing you're dreaming, and deluded, believing you're awake. When you recognize the dream state in a lucid dream you replace not knowing with knowing and delusion with true comprehension. And then, and then, Evan said, this way of looking at things its its strong, prescriptive or normative placement of lucid dreams above non lucid ones troubled me. during the question period, I've tried to explain why. And so Evan says, non lucid dreams may have non lucid dreams may have their own value. So we shouldn't think of them as being inferior to what they would be if if we were lucid in them. Right. There seems to be different kinds of dreams, dreams where you replay recent memories, what Freud called de residue dreams. And this is the part that really interests me, and dreams with a wholly different quality of clarity, and intensity and creative imagination. Yeah.
Yeah, let me just say something about that. Yeah. I remember that very well from the book. Yeah. These are both amazing individuals. I really I have tremendous respect for both of them. And I think I'm a certain level that both right and by that what I mean is that, again, this kind of this narrative of transcend would include so what Evan is doing, this is just my interpretation. Evan is talking a little bit more from an interpretive psychological relationship to dreams where it's 100% True, it's absolutely true. And in fact, that's what you're going to be doing on Saturday with your group.
Is that part of the reason I brought it up, I wonder,
yeah, the dreams arise. What did Freud say? Something like uninterpreted dreams like an unopened letter. Your body is in your unconscious mind which are the same thing. constantly sending up messages not all not all dreams are messages. This is why it's helpful to understand the spectrum of dream some dreams are not just merely day residue. Some of them are just neurological noise, they're meaningless. There are other dreams that have this intermediate bandwidth of importance that are psychologically helpful, and that's fantastic. The source of dream interpretation, Dream Therapy. I have tremendous respect for that absolutely viable as a particular bandwidth of relating to the natural mind. However, with that said, I also agree with what Elon is saying that a higher level is complete awareness of all states and this is one thing that Evan did not talk about. You can have a lucid relationship to the contents of your mind without interpreting them. So lucidity therefore, really is the trumpet. Oh, that's a dangerous word. lucidity is, I think, a higher form of dreaming whether it's an overt lucid dream, or whether it's a witnessing lucid dream, or what Wilbur calls cannibal recalls tell lucidity, which is full lucidity in the dream. But without interrupting without doing anything with it. You're simply watching it so you're still having exactly what would Evans alluding to the mind is still doing its creative thing. Its interpretive thing all this stuff is still coming up. But with lucidity. With witnessing awareness dreams, you watch that with full lucidity. And therefore you can almost interpret it on the spot. Right? You don't have to wake up to interpret it. So I think they're both right. But I would say that that Alan's view is and again, this is tricky. I think it's the more evolved elevated view, it makes more sense to me. But see what why not why can't you honor both right? Why can't you have both on one level, completely viable, whatever the saying, but I think a little bit more viable, what Elon is saying. Okay,
and I wonder too, that there's another kind of dream that's not lucid, and it's not psychological. It's a big dream. It's a transformative dream. Maybe it feels like a dream that came from somewhere else or a dream that informs me towards my own awakening. That's psychological.
Absolutely, exactly. Again, that's another really beautiful intimation of the spectrum of resources, natural resources we have to the cream world. And so the reason to understand things like Dream Yoga, sleep, yoga, and all these other ones, is because the psychological traditions don't traffic here at all. And therefore, they don't really have a ton to say about it. You may even be somewhat dismissive of it. The thing again, like Adrianna associated with the other ones, the same transcend include narrative with that higher view. I wouldn't say look down but you can, again, not in a pejorative sense, but you look down so to speak. You see all these other dreams playing out you honor them, you charge to them in terms of like integral dreaming. And then you realize just like with anything else, there are spectrums of skillful means spectrums of dreams, spectrums of ways of working with it, and so on. Why not work with a model? This is why I love the whole integral. approach. So the way to reconcile the ALAN WALLACE Evan Thompson thing is an integral approach. That just really speaks to me. Okay. All right. Again, thanks for helping us out on the on these groups starting on Saturday. Oh, yeah,
I'm looking forward to it pretty cool.
All right. Sorry. puja primed us.
Yes, sir. Yes.
Yoga Chara or Abbe Dharma are both today.
It's something simpler that I might understand. That was that. That sounds great. My question sir, is in the in the Nigma presentation of the nine yannaras.
I
think I have a misunderstanding that these are successive stages that one has to pass through, but maybe that's not the right way to think about it because, like, it seems like nobody really talks about, you know, Korea or Giardia we do. And like anew yoga is like deliberately not talked about. So just so so. If you could maybe clarify all that to me.
In 30 seconds, or less or less. I'm laughing with you because your questions are just so good. Yeah, so that's so yes, it's just what you said. So Jana means vehicle. There's classically three Yamas if you even subscribe to this view. So like from a terrified and slash Indiana perspective, they're gonna raise their eyebrows to this whole thing. So we have to understand that right off the bat, that not every tradition is going to subscribe. To this. So what what the subject tradition does is it takes basically the three on approach and expands it into a nine vehicle approach. Now in terms of like how helpful this is it depends on how depends on your predispositions. It depends on the level of your granularity depends on how deep you are as a as a as a student as a country. In that case, and I'm a little bit in that camp, then understanding the whole nine, IANA thing is extraordinarily helpful. And they're, you know, most of the teachings I've received and I'm trying to think of anything I can refer you to. Most of the teachings I've take taken on these come in lectures, transcripts, they're not published. They're there if I if I was to move my camera, way over here, all these bound volumes, here are all the transcripts, you know, 1000s of pages of transcripts that have never been published. And so I can't refer you to these because I don't know how you would get them. But I think these are all completely viable and there are traditions that their teachers who talk about all nine vehicles, especially the six inner and outer Yoga is the ladder six, not the first three, which are more basically those are heading out of Mahayana and so I'm not sure where to go with this just because the topic is so bloody big. You know, most of the emphasis is in the numerator. Justin is actually on bhakti yoga, you know, the ninth
but um, so my question then is the the six you know of the outer and inner yoga is how essential Are they as a prerequisite to even doing, you know, nature of mind practice?
That's a really great question. That's again, it depends on who you ask. In traditional, spiritual pedagogical approaches, they're very important because it's a classic maximum. The preliminaries are more important than the main practice. And so here's the way I roll with this these days. This is just from this is just my my riff on this is it if you really, really want to do devotion properly, then then you go, you enter grade school, this is this is no different from going K through 12. This case is K through nine. You go through them all. Because otherwise what can happen and this happens all the time. People they feel somehow special. If you will, exempt maybe in the West more than the east. I'm going to shoot all the way to the ninth Jana, I'm going to study linear algebra calculus three differential equations before I study my arithmetic right. We all feel that we can just shoot to the top of the ninth Jana and because it does transcend and include all the others. I'm just going to go right to the top. Well, good luck with stability and that good luck with recognition there. So this is where it just depends on your teacher. Some teachers will say that, especially in the last time your life is short. We're just going to go right to the top we're going to concentrate on Xhosa and there's a lot of people who do that, as you know, it's completely viable. I am not dissing it. But what I am saying is come back to that community 20 years 30 years after the fact and let's see how they're doing stability wise. Let's see how they're doing foolish analyze. So I'm not in any way in a position to judge the efficacy or lack thereof of doing that kind of thing. I can only tell you there's a reason for this pedagogical approach. This is not an academic thing. The nine Yamas were clearly articulated as a way for really serious deep students to go through all nine so then when they finally get to aka yoga preliminaries are more important than the main practice you get to know in practice and guess what happens. It works. It sticks you become a Buddha. Otherwise you're you're having a little bit of pot shot locked with a ninth Jana so I you know I this is one of these things again, this is totally my personal approach. This is just my gig on it. I'm sure somebody else would tell you something different. I personally don't think they are taught enough. But most people on the west don't want to plod through all these sorts of things. You know they want to go right to the ice cream. They want to go right to the desert, whatever metaphor you want to use, and then they suffer indigestion.
But I think part of part of the problem is also that you know kind of the Mahayana approach is kind of is thought to say that oh you know, it may take 200 or more lifetimes using that kind of approach while we got the you know, you know, surefire one shot, you know, and
and they're true but then then you know, get back to me about stability, right. I agree. Yeah, you can you can, I mean, it's right here right now under any condition. That's what traction means cutting through being seeing through appearances, realizing it's all right here right now. 100% viable, but then the question is stability. What are you going to do with that? So to me again, these things are very viable and also worth throwing into the mix is always remember that budget piano is a subset of the Mahayana. There's only two vehicles fundamentally Hinayana Mahayana virginiana, which is the six yoga is of the outer and inner. These are just not just these are skillful means implementation strategies for the Mahayana. So the Mahayana is it watching out as a subset of the Manyana. So even when you're talking about the six outer and inner yoga, that's still this is important. It's still a subset, so to speak of the Mahayana which is why we should never forget the compassion the bodhichitta all the things that make these higher yawns work whether Trump JSA so beautifully. Studying the larger Jana without Mahayana without bodhichitta is like having the most modern electron house with every conceivable electrical gadget again and Anjana six years, but no hook up. Nothing works. So that's why even he knew this. That's why you never forget to hinny on up and never vehicle. You never forget the Mahayana because otherwise in this narrative of transcending, but include the inner and outer yoga is of the higher six, they're not going to work. So that's the other thing that we need to keep in mind is impatient Westerners and this is what I love about Pema children's teaching her her whole thing. She's soaked in all the tantric teachings, but her big her great gift in this life is Mahayana Mahayana Mahayana bodhichitta compassion. I mean her whole thing is like, we need some retrofitting here we need to backpedal and really work with compassion, really work with love, really work with kindness, because otherwise these fancy technologies it's a little bit like going to Silicon Valley and getting bewildered by all the gadgetry and all that sophisticated the latest app, you know, what is it? iPhone version 10 to the third power, right? I mean, how many iPhones, we want the latest gadget. And so that's one of the slippery aspects of having all these gadgets that we can play with. So anyway, a really great question my friend best I can do with it in short notice.
That's great. I appreciate the the emphasis on rigor because I think that's often missing.
It is especially in the West, you know, we were all we just want the quick easy fix. Doesn't seem to work that well. Okay. All right. Maybe one or two more keen and my friend. If there's somebody out here who wants to say something I noticed there's some wonderful, serious, serious, senior people. You want to throw in some comments here more than welcome. Okay, my friend fire away.
Okay. Hi, Andrew. Well, just just want to engage with you a little bit. When you were talking about the present present moment. It just came to me a definition one of my teachers use which is the present moment is a hole in time.
Oh, that's really
nice. Who am I like?
There's Francis Lucille is like,
if I didn't Nanta Yeah, big, big influence on Rupert Spiro, who's one? Bernardo Castro. That's a that's a great line. Thanks for sharing that. I'm looking. I'm pulling aside I have a one over an hour's book here. I'm trying to find which, which are the ones that are here today? Yes, it is. I found it. So in Barnardos book, science ideated. The fall of matter and the contours of the main next stream scientific worldview. Part Five on physics chapter 22. Do we actually experience the flow of time? You have to read it? Okay. The guy's bloody brilliant anyway. That's a good contribution. Thank you for that.
Yeah, interestingly, I was just gonna say just occurs to me I'm these days. I'm doing some meditations on time and using the Kashmir Shi'a tradition as the umbrella there is this whole idea of the 12 colleagues that an idea but a whole set of teachings, where the Collie is seen as an embodiment of time. itself. And to working with these energies, you can have a more stabilized sense of this movement from no time to time. Oh, nice. Very nice. So it just occurred to me in reference to the last conversation you were having of this idea of stability and working with the tantric traditions. Yeah. In my experience, being in non duality, Indian non duality traditions. It seems like it is a little bit masculine in its approach or a lot because it totally rejects the tantric aspects of, of working with the energy so to speak. They're completely the Sharpie aspect completely misses at times, at least in Advaita Vedanta Yeah, it
is not the same in Buddhism, because in Buddhism, I would argue, is actually the female it's the male or the female penetrates the male in Buddhist Tantra. Sandali. The core main practice of the six yoga is is wrathful. Female wrathful. feminine, right? So I, Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. They're not quite the same on that front. Yeah, in fact, sleeping dreaming dying. That's the feminine that's actually more important than the masculine anyway, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Oh, no, absolutely. I was gonna say, in my life, Kashmir Shaivism. That seems to be the actual case. Is that the Shakti is supreme, whereas Shiva comes afterwards, but it seems more in the Western Hemisphere and the Western modern teachers. It seems to us the reverse and that, from my understanding, that could just be a colonial view. These
traditions, Buddhism after patriarchy Well, unfortunately, it's not after patriarchy, because patriarchy is alive and well. As you know, as you know, Kenan, this is ultimate androgyny. We're talking about two sides of the same coin. And unfortunately, this is actually very interesting that because of culture, because of patriarchal views, that unfortunately, there is this kind of patriarchal dominance and it kind of trickled down bad economics where it still can affect even spiritual things. And so fundamentally, these young approaches the deities Shiva, Shakti, Samantabhadra, some Autobild, re Lumina, luminosity, emptiness, it's the same thing. It's just the same thing quote, unquote, but just basically emphases on different aspects of that same thickness and so, unfortunately, the the kind of patriarchal eco residue stain is still there. And it's an unfortunate thing and so, good luck with cleaning that one up, right.
Yeah. I had a quick question for you. You mentioned you just finished a book is that the book on permittees Okay, cool.
I just read Yeah, yeah. Big Peter Kingsley's book. A dear friend of mine, Jonathan Brookland, who's quite a fine scholar recommended this book three years ago, I finally got around to reading it. What was it called in the dark places of wisdom and I liked it so much. I just bought his other magnum opus here it is. I haven't read it yet. This is a seven 600 Page monster. This is his magnum opus reality by Peter Kingsley. This guy's really interesting. He's He's a polymath. He's really bright guy. What he has I pause because I can run with that. Maybe that's not where you want to go. But I recommend reading up because just very briefly, what Kingsley does with incredible rigorous research is shows you know we whether we know it or not, we basically live in Plato's world fundamentally, Whitehead said it all the Western philosophy has been a set of footnotes to Plato. It's true. But what people don't know is Plato was monumentally influenced by permittees. And permittees was a mystic, whole hearted, deep practitioner mystic. And so for a lot of reasons and one chapter in his book is beautiful, killing the Father. He talks about how Plato killed permittees and what that means is he killed his teacher because it didn't fit into where it played wanted to go. And so it basically what means is the foundations of Western intellectual approaches logic rationality is actually on really shaky footing, but it's actually permittees. We need to rest on that Plato. This is no small thing, but I'll drop that because I'm not even sure that's where you want to go. I like I
was just just curious, because there is a code of parliamentary teaching that I've been contemplating for the past few years, and it always results in some dream message or something like that. And the teaching is nothing comes out of nothing. Sounds good. And that's one of the quotes to permittees and the more I contemplate that it always brings home some some kind of message and I was just curious if this book kind of dives into it, and shows anything that surrounds that.
I think this book knows reality, not not so much the short the in the dark places of wisdom is kind of an introduction to his work. And it's a good one. But reality which again, I just got this in the mail, haven't read it yet. But my understanding is what you're talking about isn't that's
okay. Yeah. Okay, I'll check. Check that one out. So I won't take more time but I was just going to say earlier when you were you met you were talking about about karma. I was once a few months back, I was reading the book on karma and I had a dream. And in this dream, the I was in a situation which I was also in the waking state with my family and I was trying to figure out how did we all get there? In this kind of gridlock kind of situation. And in the dream, I would go into the situation and try to resolve and try to figure it out. And then the message would be you can you cannot just handle the fact that there is no cost to anything. And I would I just been trying to try to understand that I know maybe at this level, we can't understand that there is no cause and effect. But if one was to absorb that teaching, my question would be How does one then try to find the best way to live life in the world. terrible situations we are in cause and effect. Yeah,
that's a great question. This is where you always have to or should, in my opinion, understand in balance relative and absolute truth. Because this is where a lot of the real raging confusion comes from. Because when we're talking about causality, we're talking about space. We're talking about time we're talking about karma. We cannot deny that the relative world operates at that level. And if you deny it, which some new agers and spiritual people do that is classic spiritual bypassing at best, and nihilism at worst. And so therefore, what did I miss him obviously your view should be as lofty as the skies, but your conduct should be as fine as barley powder, which means you have to join relative and absolute Heaven and Earth non duality with duality otherwise you fall into a ton of problems. John Well, we talked about it he coined the term spiritual bypassing he also talked about Advaita speak. And I talked about this in a listen to the interview I did with Swami several pre Ananda, we go after this a little bit and I'm gonna when I talked to Rupert Rupert Spiro, who as you know, right, he's big and I'm gonna ask him exactly the same question about absolutism. absolutism is a real problem in the Advaita tradition. And I asked Swami about this and he completely agreed with me that it's very easy for the pendulum to swing into the absolutist ik department, and then you become dismissive of unity disparages individuality, non duality disparages duality, and you get into all these just ridiculous elitist approaches to the spiritual thing, where fundamentally it's complete loss of tantric views because tantric is what one of the things that defines Tantra is redeeming body redeeming matter where basically this is my whole book that I want to I just sent out today, you know, it's all it comes back to me again, and you have to remember that it's all about me. It's really about finding heaven in hell finding spirit in matter finding the sacred and the profane. That's real integration, that's real spirituality. And so this whole absolutist ik thing in the in the the non dual Advaita traditions, they can absolutely slip into that As Kant Maha Mudra as Kenzo chan as can Kashmir Shaivism anything you know, it's the near enemy, the shadow side, you can slip into these absolute cystic approaches, and those are actually in one way they're worse. I mean, what Nagarjuna say he said, you know, those who believe in emptiness are deemed incurable. In other words, if you reify even that that's the that's even worse. So what I would do if you really isn't with your mind is a deep diver if you haven't read the moolah, majolica characters, the fundamental entrance to the middle way like Arjuna. That's mandatory reading. I mean, my teacher Khenpo Rinpoche requested that we his students read that book 10 times. So I think it's called Son of wisdom, my favorite translation commentary by Khenpo, tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche and Ari Goldfield highly, highly recommended with your capacity. I mean, when Carlo Rovelli wrote the Italian physicists read this, it just blew him out of the water. So the guards everybody deep divers in the Buddhist tradition, this is mandatory reading mandatory because he will then decimate causality. And he will talk about all this stuff in an incredibly elegant sophisticated way. That That means like 1000 years after this guy and he's still having a massive impact on thinker scientist as today. So check them out.
Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. Actually, what you were describing is kind of my own journey of being in the Advaita Vedanta circles and then moving on to Kashmir Shaivism and actually I to meetings such as yours, because that's where I feel like you know these these questions are addressed. So thank you for that. And I love your interviews with Evan, Alexander and Christopher because we're base Yeah, yeah. Sweetheart, so it's amazing because I think those introduced highlights something rebar remarkable that even though they have such a deep dive into those, those states, they seem to be more enthusiastic about living the human experience coming back.
Isn't it beautiful? Totally. Totally. And that's what I'm really big into. Now. You know, if you can't find the spiritual and the material, you're going to slip into spiritual bypassing and all these traps and that's, that's the great, that's the gift of Tantra. Right? Find the spirit of the matter. And then you'll see there's no difference.
Yes, yeah. Thank you so much, Andrew. Just in on a closing note. I am doing a podcast these days. I started like four or five months ago inspired by you. At some point I would love you know, this is my lemonade stand. I would love for you to engage.
Okay, paint the paint me oh, you know where to find me.
I will do that. I'll do that.
Thank you so much. Nice to see you my friend. Okay, let me see if there's anything else here in the in the chat column. Otherwise, there were two that came through the chat. Next book for the book study group from Barry Yeah, maybe Barry. Yeah. The title of the book. Where is it? Here it is. Here's my here's my last run through here's the title. So this is version three. So what I do, the way I work, the essence of writing is rewriting if anybody is a writer out there, you know, it's so true. And so when I write, write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, and I do this forever in computer form. And then I always print it out in hardcopy form and choose so this is a third version third hardcopy print out and I go through you see all marked up it is. Here's the title reverse meditation. How to use your pain and most difficult emotions is a doorway to inner freedom. I feel quite good about this book, actually quite sight. So yes, Barry will do that as the next book study group just for you. Oh, yeah, and he posts the Nima or Connie Ahmed. That's a listen to that thing that'll blow your socks off. Okay, when you're fully enlightened, there's no Bardo. Correct? There's no gap. There is no what there is no, I'm not sure what the implication is there. So where's the Buddha now? Oh Buddha here now. I love playing with you a little bit. So So here's Where's Buddha now Okay, so here what comes to mind? Is somebody you've heard me say this before. And this connects actually, to what Keenan was just saying about the unification of matter and spirit. Were no criticism here, but this is a legitimate cartoon. Somebody sent me. There's a Christian monk all dressed up with a big, big sign you know, Christ is coming. In in the background, there's a little Buddhist monk with a tiny little business card very, you have to look really close. Very humble, says Buddha here now. So where's the Buddha? Right here right now. You are the Buddha. You just don't know it yet. That's not lucidity. So you just have to wake up become lucid. And you will discover you are the Buddha right now. And that's what's gonna happen when you finally do wake up. It's like TSL yet to return us from where you began and see it as if for the first time. You are the Buddha. You just don't know it yet. Is there a link to the dream class? Yes. I think we have it up there, right. Oh, yeah, there it is. Here's the link to the page. Francesca. Hi, Andrew. From one to 10 How likely are you to host a retreat program in Europe in the not too distant future? Yikes. Not too likely. The travel thing is a nightmare. Now if you've been paying attention, it's it's just that I don't have anything in the works. Francesca. So closest thing is the member program. So some of my European friends. I'm pinging them say hey, come to New York. It's better than Colorado. It's closer. But until things settle with the traffic thing and the COVID thing. I'm not too inclined to hop on a plane. I hate to say it. I appreciate the gesture but probably not too likely. Yes, Pema children's. Oh, she's 86 today. Oh my goodness. Happy Birthday Pema. What a beautiful soul. I think she just did her very last public teaching. I know for sure it omega last time. I think she may. I'm not entirely sure maybe somebody here knows she may be completely retiring from teaching altogether. But her latest book just recently came out on death and dying. I haven't read it yet. It's got to be good. She's the best. She's just the best. What is the most read book just mentioned? I don't know. Oh, Peter. Kingsley.
What was the title of
something it was something wisdom and dark places or something? Ah, all right. Did Did I not for my question and a question submission earlier today. Tracy? We didn't get it. If you're here want to ask it or write it. We didn't get that one. Everyone that comes in I kind of remember. So if you're here want to ask it fire away. I'll wait. I'll pause a second. Otherwise we might be done for today. I'm going away next week. Maybe I'll come back. I haven't decided.
Okay, are you there? I'm here, Tracy. It's Tracy. I'm Pennsylvania driving to the movies. But anyway so my question was because I had my first lucid dream. I was so excited. And when I was up there, and the wind blew me up and I was up there and I didn't come down. I said, Oh my God. I said, Am I dream? Is this a dream? Oh my gosh. I'm having a lucid dream. And but anyway, so then I went back down and but my dream didn't end. Like I was so excited to tell somebody about having a lucid dream and I found somebody in a abandoned fair to tell who wasn't nearly as excited as me, but it's not like exact count or do you have to wake up after them or
Oh, totally counts. Are you kidding? Absolutely. So celebrate. That's fantastic. And very often what happens is is somewhat similar to what you share. People get so jazzed, so excited, he kind of tends to wake them up. And so what you can do is there's ways to work with that. briefly looked down engaged to dream participate, and then you'll find you'll be able to stay on the dream longer and longer and longer, but that absolutely totally counts. And, you know, maybe you've cracked the door open. And now you can find your way back in and maybe you'll have these a little bit more regularity frequency. So
my tips from your books and all the things I listened to and other stuff I read and yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Excellent. Yeah, so come back and file some more reports. We love sorts of things.
I will and I'm coming in September coming. Okay, my husband.
That sounds like a plan. Look forward to it. Okay, everybody, so we do this totally geeky thing if you want. You can turn the camera on. You don't have to but this big kind of hug fest. I'll be back in probably two, three weeks, or Yes, almost forgot. We also if it means anything to you dedication of merit. Everything of that may be of any benefit we did in this last hour and a half. Don't keep it for ourselves. We send the merit out for the benefit of all sentient beings. And we tried to do some good in this planet. We stepped forward and grass in the best sense as a way to benefit otherwise, what are we doing here? You know, talking about stuff we need to act, we need to do things in the world. So until next time, everybody Ciao, ciao. Great to see everybody so fun. Gotta say hi, bye to everybody here. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. I think so in the meantime, all the best to everybody. So great. To see you. Well TaoTao
