like deja vu man. Yeah, except I'm in a new, new location. What do you mean new location. I've got a new background. Well, I'm actually, I'm in a shares room right now so. Is that like a big prayer wheels I mean dream. Yeah dream catcher. Yeah,
that's awesome. Yes, you catch a lot of dreams with it. Too many too many to even talk about yeah that's like the biggest one I've ever seen. Wow, I like that. Thank you. Yeah, Cindy keeps telling me I have to, you know, I don't want to put the green screen up because I use that bookshop all the time so she's, she's telling me I need to buy a new computer. A new Apple where I can get, you know they can do these, these kind of background things built into the computer, and then each one will have a little like logo Monday night group Tuesday night discussion group, that kind of thing. Yeah.
Yeah, I was looking into that a bit, I mean, so I think there's two things there, like I know people like Arthur have really big computer rigs, and they're able to do like, Yeah, amazing things with their backgrounds and it looks seamless. And then there's like where you could add, like screens like almost like make it look like a newscast, where you've got like filters and stuff during the live streams. And that's just software that you know we can even access now. Oh really. You think I get that. And just like download it from some site onto my computer is that what you're thinking. Yeah, definitely. I mean, and then the way to use that I mean, so we'd have to have we use that would be, you know, a little bit different, not as straightforward.
But yeah, yeah, no, well, can you maybe you can talk to Cindy and I about that because we're, you know, we're thinking about popping for a new computer. Again, I don't know shit about this stuff so if you have some sense of how we can do that just by by, you know, buying some software. Yeah, I definitely have some ideas when I was really thinking about the nightclub TV stuff I was really, yeah, cool, hearing more of a deep dive into it. Well that's good to know. Yeah, awesomely okay where are we here. Oh, let's bring him in. Okay, let me start the recording. Pepe LePew opened up for Pepe LePew. Let me go. Well I got the, I got Oh, before I forget, I got the go ahead with cool reach he's gonna join us, and also Ian Baker, so I'm gonna say a little bit about that so we got four people coming up to interview which is cool. Exelon pay, actually we didn't go Yeah, hold on one second. Here we don't go.
And now, here we go.
Ping, ping ping.
Hello everybody. So we get to do the big group hug right, big group cyber hug Hi, everybody. Nice to see really it's a delight to scan across here and say hi to all my humanoid friends out there. Hello humanoids, you know, you realize you don't exist right you're just, you're just little, little pixels of in floating in cyberspace, hitting my eyes. Nice Hi everybody, welcome back, we do this, this gathering, we started in case you're here for the first time we started last year, over a year ago with the virus thing just to kind of hang out and we're continuing to hang out. So here we are. I show up, I love these things because I don't have to prepare, I just pop up. If something comes to my mind I riff on it. If not, I go right to the question so I love it. And so I'll say a few comments about, we got some really cool things coming up, and then we'll see where this goes either with riffing on some of the questions that came in or maybe some of the stuff I was writing this morning but a couple of cool things. Really cool interview is coming up. For those of you who are nightclub members. So Benjamin Baird, I'm going to interview him tomorrow he's a really cool whippersnappers neuroscientists that have worked in Giulio Tononi lab who's He's like one of the world's most esteemed neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin Madison. And what's really cool about this is, he's the neuroscientists, one of them that I've been working with for the last couple months trying to design this study on what's called minimal phenomenal experience. You know that is you know the academics, the scientists, everybody has to have their own language, in fact I remember Candace pert one said, the esteemed neuroscientist, she said, she said that, you know for scientists to use another person's terminology is akin to having them use their toothbrush, which I thought was like perfect right, you just don't do that. So everybody has to have their special, you know highfalutin again I get it I totally get it, like legales, you know, you have to have the academia is the scientific ease. And so, Ben and I and a couple other neuroscientists and philosophers were teaming up to talk about minimal phenomenal experience, which is a scientific way to talk about formless awareness and things like attaining lucidity and deep, dreamless sleep so Ben and I. Tomorrow, I'm going to interview and we're going to talk about this, the study that we have in mind, how we're actually designing it, and then he's one of the leading researchers on the world these days on lucid dreaming. I met him. Originally, when I did a program with Stephen the bear so he's kind of a protege of Stephens, they publish papers together. He's really prolific he's really smart. And so I'm super excited about it because not only is he a really pretty brilliant neuroscientist, but he's also a practitioner and he's really into lucid dreaming, so that's really cool. So the other, I got a couple other really good ones so cool recharter he she's an MD, I mentioned her name a couple times she's finally committed, we're just trying to set up a time. She's really cool gal she, she's a neuro neurologist, MD, and also specialist in Ayurvedic medicine and Siddha Medicine, and she wrote this really great book. It's called sound. Sound medicine. Nice double entendre sound medicine, how to use the ancient science of sound to heal body, mind or something like that. This is a really good book, because she can joins some cutting edge science that I was not aware of things like psycho psychology how they're actually able to detect that every cell has its particular kind of signatures, almost song of, it's really cool stuff. And so she could joins, you know, again, her knowledge is a Western neurologist, and I think she's published like 20 papers with her work as a as an Ayurvedic practitioner and also a long term student of Hinduism, so we're going to go deep into a mantra. How do mantras work, how do they work with healing of the whole process of sound. I'm really excited about that with her. Ian Baker. I just got word from him this morning. He's a really cool guy. Those of you who took the program I did with
Bob termite a couple of weeks ago on tawdry pure lands you know I talked a lot, at the very end of that about these hidden lands, they're called bayaud, BYU well. In the US, one of the world's authorities on this topic. He wrote a wonderful book years ago called the heart of the world, and He gives these, in fact, I might actually see if I can bring him on to do this slideshow thing because I attended a slideshow. I mean, I met him originally in London years ago, it a joint thing that he put on that I was invited to present that. But he puts on the most mind bending slideshow about going to these hidden lands and what they're all about. So I'm super jazzed about being able to chat with Ian he's a really sharp guy voted one of the greats, I think by National Geographic one of the top 10 You know, adventurers on the planet today. So he's this kind of rugged guy who just is not afraid to get down and dirty in the most, you know, incredible kind of pilgrimage sites. And he's also a really deep scholar practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, so I'm really, I guess nailed that this morning. And then, Claire Johnson, who I mentioned, who is my dear friend wrote this book on the art of transforming nightmares, and she's booked for me so we got some really good stuff coming up. So today, what should we talk about. Here's what I thought I would start, and then, again, the bulk of what we do here is not me riffing. But more us talking about stuff that you all want to talk about, so this is the place to bring your questions, but I do want to mention a little bit I can share a few minutes. I sometimes like to share with you what I was just working on this morning in my writing so every day I get up pretty early, I do my practice, I come down here into my little man cave, and I do my little nerdy thing for hours on end. And in so this is what I was working on this morning.
This is
part of this book that I've been working on. Okay, I'm mindful now what exploring the wonders of the mind. And so this is section six of the book on the nocturnal meditations and so let me just read a little bit about what I was writing today just as is a, maybe a seed for some conversation. And then I'm probably going to return and say more about this in the upcoming weeks because especially this first topic on liminal dreaming. Very, very little material out there and so I'm doing a little research on it I want to share some of what I've discovered so this is what I wrote just this morning. The lightbulb went off it's surprising aspect of expanding our mindfulness includes opening to the wonders of the nocturnal mind so that's what this book does, it takes this incredibly precious, valuable mindfulness revolution. It kind of substantiates it and then gently criticizes it in terms of like, you know what, what's next. And nocturnal here not only includes traditional meaning of the night but it's also a code word for subtle. So nocturnal meditations are subtle meditations. As we progress on our journey into deeper and more subtle dimensions. We can step into the mysterious world of the night and uncover the treasures hidden within the unconscious mind. And so that's what the stuff gets super cool so I'm just gonna run spontaneous commentary on this, is that what what these nocturnal meditations really do that makes them so valuable is their their hybrid states of consciousness where you can the conscious mind can meet the unconscious mind, short of hypnosis, and even then only to a certain extent, that this just doesn't happen. And this is like super important because until we can bring these unconscious processes into the light of conscious awareness. That's what it means to be asleep, spiritually. That's what it means to live on automatic ignorance, raw sleepwalkers in that sense where the vast majority 95 You know you've heard me say this, commenting on the sciences that supported 95 At least 95% of what we do is dictated by these unconscious processes. I mean we're clueless as to why we do what we do. So with these meditations, we can bring these aspects of unconscious mind into the light of awareness. Five nocturnal meditations are here to greet us on this journey, and to guide us on the voyage into the center of ourselves liminal dreaming lucid dreaming Dream Yoga sleep yoga bhakti yoga. The trip is akin to what happens when you step outside from a brightly lit room into a nighttime VISTA at first you can't see a thing. Your pupils are so constricted from the light that you're temporarily blind right we've all had this experience right. But if you're patient and keep your eyes open you slowly accommodate to the dark, you become familiar with it the very definition of meditation and Tibetan. And you start to see things never seen before, right, you've done this right you step outside, you can't see squat, nothing. But if you just keep your eyes open. Everything dilates opens expands. Whoa, all this stuff starts to appear, it's like infrared wearing infrared nighttime goggles, you start to see all the stuff that was in there, always been there but you've never seen it before. You discover dimensions literally discover dimensions of your mind that have always been there but your daytime awareness was too constricted to see our journey into the night, and therefore into the subtle dimensions of the mind elegantly follows our theme of opening so that's one of the narratives of this whole book is opening opening opening. We're going to open the aperture of our awareness dilate our consciousness to allow more light into our mind and life. The wonders of the mind become even more wondrous when we step with eyes wide open into the marvels of electron aligned. Why should we bother with these practices life is already so full. Many people put up a Do Not Disturb sign when it comes to their sleep and rule out the nocturnal meditations, but in so doing they limit their lives. The nocturnal meditations that are a unique form of night school, if we take lucid dreaming alone. We spend over six years on the dream state and enter the dream world over 500,000 times the meditation master tucked on to Kurumba che this comes from his book, openness mind appropriately entitled
dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience that they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality in the dream state, our bodies are at rest, that we see and hear and move about and are even able to learn. When we make good use of the dream state is almost as if our lives were doubled. Instead of 100 years we live 200 Well, you get the idea, but his math isn't quite right. Because even if you were lucid throughout the entirety of the night that's only 33% of your life. And so lucid dreaming only comprises 25% of that 33% So his idea is good but his math is a little off lucidity is a code word for awareness a lucid dream is a dream where you're aware that you're dreaming. So by becoming lucid in your dreams you're extending awareness into the dream world. Just imagine how much you can learn by adding six years of awareness to your life. As the saying goes, you can't add more years to your life but you can add more life to your years, the nocturnal meditations are like inserting a creative night shift to your life, to row one said this is such a great line from Thoreau I'm a sensitive guy this this New England transit naturalist was only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. And so, yeah, I'll come back and say more about this later because then I go into this little riff on liminal dreaming. And so maybe I'll pause and we can start talking about things there's some really great questions that came in. And then, next time I'll riff a little bit more on this liminal dreaming thing stuff that I haven't really written about or taught on before, and also talking about liminal principle liminality liminal beings liminal spaces liminal times, which is a really interesting way to look at places times people that don't fit in the French post modernists, Michel Foucault talks about these as heterotopias. I picked up this term from Ian by the way. So I want to be talking to Ian Baker about hetero topia literally means other different and it refers to exactly these kind of Bardo like spaces that are like not here, not they're not there's not that which exactly what this liminal space when you're not awake not asleep. It's kind of plasma of mine that's super interesting to explore so next time we'll talk about liminal spaces liminal people, like for instance Trumper MPJ Trumper, he was a classic luminal being liminal being. He didn't fit anywhere. He didn't fit any conventional mode and that's why he rankled so many traditionalists and that's why you're irritated, so many people, because he could not pigeonhole this guy in fact I had a wonderful afternoon. A couple months ago with David Rome who was, who was reputated personal secretary for many many years and he knew I'm really as well as anybody and he's a marvelous human being he wrote this beautiful book called Your body knows the answer, which I highly recommend, by the way. And so we're talking about chakra che in it, and you know just how crazy he was. And he said, you know, he said, Andrew, the way I relate to him is he was just, he's an artist. He was just an artist of the mind. And he just really like artists can get away with almost anything. He, he, about, yeah, I mean he just lived at a threshold that transcended conventionality and so he's a, he's a perfect liminal being as our, you know LBGTQ you that that whole classification of people that don't belong, so to speak in traditional abode so liminality as a principle helps us understand unconventionality, and it opens again our aperture, our hearts, our minds to accommodate things that may not fit in to our conventional ways of looking at things so the liberal principle I think it's super interesting. So more on that next time. All right, let me go to the document, because it's much more fun to hear from you. Okay. Hold on. So now's the time if you want to start queuing up your questions, that'd be great but let me turn to what we got
from routes.
What do you what do you mean by mindfulness. When they can be said that it doesn't lead to liberation in one sense, but that is our natural state, and another sense, yeah okay so yeah mindfulness alone, Ralph, as I mentioned, and that's like, again, a big part of my critique in this book about mindfulness is mindfulness alone doesn't liberate it it pacifies it's a sedative, in the best sense it's today to literally tranquilizes the turmoil of the mind. That's colossal, I mean that's huge, you know, in an age where the world is on fire, tranquility is a colossal contribution and so if you want to just like chill out in the best sense. Mindfulness is for you. Fantastic. But that in itself you know a chilled mind isn't the liberated mind it's just the pacified mind. And so this is where mindfulness eventually that eventually if it's coaxed invited into Insight meditation of the passionate. That's what liberates. That's what liberates. So mindfulness or no will not liberate you can feel like it's liberation, just by contrast, in other words you sometimes when people have a fully pacified mind for the first time in their lives. A lot of people can mistake it for enlightenment, really, because it's so profound, the contrast from having a tumultuous minds you know like a real tremendous surface chop on an ocean, to a mind that is like crystal clear mirror like reflective surface of a pond that can be sometimes that transition can be so dramatic. When the mind ceases and the winds subtle that you can feel like you're enlightened. It's not enlightenment, it's a glimpse of enlightened aspects but it's not enlightenment or sugaring guaranteed on that one. This is where you get stuck in these, these Janata states, these Samadhi states these absorption states they're they're incredibly profound sleep spaces, but they're just the best of samsara, it's not just not nirvana. So, uh, but then the question about the natural state yeah so even though, mindfulness does not lead to liberation, it is a natural property of the mind, it's a natural state of the mind and that's, that's what I'm referring to there, that it's not the fundamental nature of the mind itself, but it is a natural state of the mind. So, that's the way you, you kind of reconcile that, if that's not clear, come on and I'll try to say it another way. This one's from John, this is a good one from John. I don't buy into the dot into Donald Hoffman's idea, that'll, that'll happen is, he's a really sharp cookie. You've heard me riff on him, he's this cognitive neuroscientists that uh you see. Where does he know, Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara anyway you see somewhere. I'm a cautious fan of his. I think he's tremendously insightful and he's really courageous. He wrote this radical book that's causing a tremendous stir actually in the intellectual community. You've heard me mentioned that great title. The case against reality by evolution hid the truth from our eyes. So I'm going to go is quite a somewhat long question, I read the whole thing and then run some commentary on it. It'll buy into Hoffman's idea that nature has created this stage video game perenne Grand Theft Auto and Fran, I agree with you on that my friend actually I don't agree with that either. In his metaphor where competition plays out in our, in his metaphor where competition plays out in our mind, keeping us from reality.
Overall has a lot of the boxes checked to be sure, in other words I You're saying you agree with a lot of what he says with an emptiness prognosis. But lanes entirely on liver die, pass on the genes mindset yeah this is this evolutionary psychology thing that that he, he, this is a central project of his, of his book that basically the principle impulse of natural selection which he obviously subscribes to is, you know, fundamentally the propagation of our genes, and that everything is secondary to that. And this is where I like you do not agree. I mean agree within the limits of the kind of Darwinian naturalist, natural selection point of view, for sure on that bandwidth of relative reality it's true but it's partial, it's true but partial and so again this is why I'm such a huge fan of integral approaches because what he says within the bandwidth of what he's saying is true, but it's partial and John this is where I think you're coming in, you realize the veracity of agree to what he says but it's limited because he's still, still sees the world in these fundamentally reductionist sorts of ways. I for one have trouble identifying with passing on genes with a beautiful body is really the one and only goal if you get my drift. Yeah, it's not the only goal, and I do get your drift. Genetic genetic drift. Part of the plan. In other words achievement or satisfaction is the reward of desire, Ken Wilber I believe has discounted survival of the fittest yeah he's not the only one, so many others that survival of the fittest has a particular bandwidth of applicability nature's red in tooth and claw. But as you say here, you know the cooperation, there's, there's, in fact, I think similar to the advent of natural selection Darwinian points of view, was this more cooperative indicator of reality, which you then turn to cooperation as an equal indicator of survival. Correct. Back to reality. What it boils down to what what it boils down to a much more obvious avenue of inquiry bifurcated brain, left brain right brain. Our existence is completely dependent on our existence is completely dependent and delicious. Once you accept this reality of macro and micro nested and fractal concordance of being left brain attempts to navigate the essence while the right brain circumnavigates the holes. A circum emulates the whole lb an empty universe, giving us never ending duality, or at least ever present duality, what do you think, what do you think of his bubbling up of consciousness. So when you talk about the bubbling up of consciousness I, I assume you're referring to Hoffman right. Well, here's the deal with these guys it I think they're fantastic. It's not just Hoffman, you know, Bernardo I mentioned recently. Bernardo kastrup 's work. Why, why materialism is baloney. What a great title for a book, these are really smart people. And if you're doing the Tuesday group with us the book study group I set links for interviews to a number of these people to both Hoffman, and to Bernard kastrup These guys are really great in that they are part of what I refer to as is the repeal and replace strategy again, you've heard me say this before. To me, I look at all this, like, like what the Republicans do with Obamacare, right, just, just repeal it, they have no replacement strategy. Let's just repeal the damn thing. Well, in a similar way, both Hoffman cast up, and a bunch of other really clever philosopher scientists, you know, too many to mention. They are all really powerful repellers In other words, in my opinion they don't replace but they help repeal it whatever helps put a dent in materialism. In representationalism, you know the correspondence theory and duality, whatever helps dent that view. I'm behind it, but because they still come from and I think actually Bernardo is work, this kind of cosmic consciousness that he has. That's really pretty resonant with Nandu Shiva Tantra views and even if you're cautious on Dogen views, anything that even points towards that I'm behind it. In, the only, not the only but one challenge. One so called, again this is just me, my silly bias
is that while these people are super smart, really articulate bringing tremendous scholarship science and even mathematics to their views. There's fundamentally as far as I can tell so far there's no practice and even though people like Hoffman have hung out with, with really cool, mostly Vedantic meditators and there's a lot of resonance with that kind of thing is, to the best of my knowledge in both their works and others. I have yet to see okay how do you actualize this view. And again, it's not. It's just a kind of phrase it for me, these, these approaches are true, but they're partial they're they're my opinion they're a little bit incomplete and again this is just my view. So this, this kind of what you're professing or putting forth is the you know the bifurcated brain approach the left brain right brain hemisphere, that has some validity, and I think one of the most interesting journeys there if you haven't read it of course is Gible Taylor's book my Stroke of Insight. And then, Ian McGilchrist monumental mazing book, the master and his Emissary. That is a real tour de force, those types of books really bring very interesting neurological neuro anatomical correlations to the traffic that I, you know mostly subscribe to. So I think what you're saying is really interesting John again, but I don't think I would even go. I wouldn't reduce it even to the brain. You know, so this whole neural correlate thing has a lot of provisional traction, but it's not going to take you all the way because fundamentally, even if you completely unite these hemispheres, in my estimation, in fact this is some of the things that the studies that I'm going to be assisting a little bit with Ben and some of these other neuroscientists going towards. We're trying to find if in fact there are any neural signatures at all period to these non dualistic formless states of mind, that's a real big question, are there in fact neural signatures, period. In other words, are these things, what kind of ontological primitive, do you have here, what kind of platform, do you have that, that, you know, makes these, these ideas kind of workable. So I think at a certain point, my bias on this and again these are really great questions so much to say here is they're fundamentally, these, these completely unified states of mind, not only transcend hemispheric properties but they transform cranial properties altogether. They're not reducible to brain. In my experience, Actually, I can't say experience. In my understanding, because again these are really subtle deep challenging issues, and I tend to be a little bit careful when there's any reductionist urge to slap it into any hemisphere left or right, or anything even neurological, but this is you know this is, this is part of the great journey. Some of this I remain agnostic on I don't know, but I just love the, the, the exploration, the query to me is so interesting. So great question, my friend, if you want to come on it and toss it around a little bit with me, that's great. But that's what comes to mind. Yeah Hoffman castered these other really smart people, you know, they don't replace but they help repeal. True but partial. Okay. All right, a couple other written ones and then if there's someone out there live that wants to ask when you're welcome. From Jolene, thanks for these meetings, you're welcome. Can you riff on freewill. I know I never said I knew I never should have brought that topic up in my book or in my commentary, can you riff on freewill or lack thereof as it pertains to lucid dreaming versus free will, or lack thereof in waking life, well there are no difference to me. It is only so much I'm kind of willing to go down this avenue right now Julian just because I've said so much about it recently,
that,
you know like what I write about in my book on a relative level, there is no free will, because whose will is free, I mean, on one level. It's really that simple. If there's no you whose will is free. So on one level and I love what Chris Wallace, this is, this is a paraphrasing of his thinking here which I think is spot on. You know that you that you think you are has no freewill, but the you that you really are big you is nothing but freewill. And so, this is such a colossal topic that I've spent so much traffic with somewhat recently, unless you're out there Julian wanted to ask you something specifically about it. It's only because I've been, you know, pinging this around quite a bit over the last couple of weeks and sent out all these links to book some scholars and writers on it that, Unless there's something in particular you want to say, I'm going to probably let that one go at that level. But you know, the idea is, first of all, if you're in a non lucid dream, there's no free will, period. I mean that's really obvious you know you're just being buffeted around by the contents of your unconscious mind. And so, when you become lucid in the dream of the type of freewill that takes place there. I mean I would see it as no different from the illusion of free will that takes place in the waking state. So again, if there's something in addition you want to kind of say about that you're more than welcome to come on, but otherwise, with your confirmation I'm going to direct you back to those sessions, especially the book study group where I went at it sections in my book were right about it. And then the you know the references I sent just Sam Harris. Anyway, all the stuff I tossed out there. Okay, so from Marina is there info. Oh, okay, this is about one of the courses is there info on the Bartos teaching. The new $149 course well thanks for asking about that, we just posted somewhat recently this course that's how you buy it in a second. I took the Pureline teachings on dreams of light courses with the Bardo teachings be different. Yeah, they're totally different. Totally different. So, what Marina is asking about is we posted a course I 10 week course I did last year on Bartos and everyday life which I think it's the best course I've ever taught, I have to say, I just loved it. And so it's completely different from the Pureline teachings, and in terms of dreams of light. Obviously there's some overlap, it's not like completely different, but the course we put up there is pretty darn different I haven't taught on most of this stuff anywhere else, so. So I guess when you're asking Will the Bardo teachings be different I think you're probably referring to that particular course. So they're really different. Again, this is like 30 hours of material. That's a lot. I mean, kind of, starting with some principles that I introduced in a brief thing I did for tri cycle magazine last year. That's kind of what seeded this course, I did a three session freebie thing for them. And then I was so jazzed with the material I said Well, you know, let's just run with it so I did this 10 week course based on that, it's it. There's nothing quite like it that that I've taught on yet. So thank you for asking from Sarah is attachment to attachment that thing, quote unquote, if so I think I've got it. What do you think you've, you've got it in terms of you understand it, or you think you've got it in the sense that you're attached to attachment. So you have to be very careful what you say on the show, Sarah, because we have to be really precise here okay. Is attachment to Attachment A thing well there's no thing, right. I mean, playing playing with what you're saying. There's no thing, but is attachment to attachment, a phenomena. Yes, for sure. And this you know attachment is is kind of passive grasping so
you know the traditions talk about the three major root poisons. Grasping passion aversion aggression or ignorance, and in so many ways, you know, ignorance is the primary poison. Because the ignorance brings out the view illusion that there's something to grasp after in the first place. So that's what generates the secondary, tertiary poisons of passion or aggression. And so, grasping is an active form of ignorance. Attachment is a passive form of that so it's basically, you know we're grasping, all I mean like, all the time, all the time, passively or actively active grasping, we can start to detect passive grasping almost by definition, you know, it's, it becomes buried in unconscious processes, but it's still grasping nonetheless it's just passive and so we don't realize the things that we're actually attached to. Until what until they're gone. That's when this grip is revealed. You know when someone you love dies when something you own gets burned or stolen. When your body starts to crumble and the things you take for granted, start to dissolve, then you realize, wait a second, then that level of grasping is revealed, that's when you start to freak. So is attachment to attachment a thing in terms of being a phenomena, for sure. And it happens at these unconscious processes, it's literally. There's so much to say here, Sarah, it's, it's what's called bhava samskaara it's the most powerful of all the samskaras that the fundamental habit that takes on colossal import, not only now when we're alive but especially when we die. So yeah, if you want to come on, again, anybody who I have addressed the question to if you want to come on and ping some more stuff back at me. It always helps. That way I'm not just trying to derive what you're saying from black and white scribblings on this computer screen. Okay so we got a couple live ones Judith, and then Katie so Judith, Are you there. There you go.
Yeah, I Andrew. Andrew, I have a questions about the in the doctrine, teaching. I think it's petrel rubbish I said to one of the students well, where is your mind. Okay, can you find, You know, can you find your mind, and yet you are many of the teachings, say, in the body. That's all you have is your mind.
Right. Correct. Isn't that a beautiful column, it's both of those. Yeah. So it's a way to work with it you know is this is actually a very powerful analytic meditation, the practice we started discussing on Monday nights that I have found this to be one of the most insightful shattering investigations I've ever done, really deeply, deeply for days, weeks on end, asking where his mind. I mean really, not not just saying, you know oh where's mine and then not really looking, but really looking where his mind. And so what the way you reconcile that with the Bardo teachings is that when you really take a look. You won't find anything. You won't find any particular internal agency that you can append the label mind. And this is when they say again I'm just, you know, spoiler alert right so I just I just saved you, one month's worth of investigations by giving you the answer. You won't find anything, but that has absolutely no meaning, unless you actually do the investigation, and especially if you don't believe me, that's all the more reason to do it is just literally, where's mine really look. You won't find anything. That's actually considered the best finding not finding is considered the best finding. So what that means is that, again, there's no, there's no, there's only a contradiction here if we feel that reality has to somehow abide by our conceptual restrictive machinations. So to say that you won't find anything is basically that's the emptiness aspect of the mind. So what you're talking about is basically, if you're looking at it through a way to summarize the irreducible questions for part two and three of that book so the first part of what we're talking about here is you won't find anything that's emptiness. Well, the minute you find emptiness, emptiness is also means fullness, that's the luminosity part. And so there's, that's where your second thing comes in. So on one level mind is nothing, no thing. On another level mind is everything. And that's exactly what people like, kastrup is saying with his cosmic consciousness approach. And so you can't actually have it both ways, you just don't have to don't subscribe to this binary Aristotelian way that it has to be one way or the other, it's both a one level mind is empty if nothing. On another level mind is everything in somewhere and there is you know the truth. So this is the irreducible description of wine in reality as luminosity and emptiness. So that's a really good question. And again, you know, it's not that terribly difficult to spit out the words, but to actually have this as your direct experience that's a different story. And that is much more important because otherwise what I'm saying here is just full of, you know, philosophy, you want to have this as your direct experience. And the really cool thing is that when you actually look within and just follow that one query, what is mine, it will lead you to this discovery by discovering the empty nature of your mind, you will discover the fullness of the mind at the same time. Okay.
Yeah, enter does that mean that when you enter the Bardo, and you haven't. You haven't sort of done that investigation that you. So, presumably when you die, what you really want is the ability to see emptiness, or experience emptiness.
Well, to recognize it. Yeah I mean here's the thing, again, there's so much to say here but yes to keep it in the context of what you're saying. Yes, that's what that's why they say in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, recognition and liberation, are simultaneous That's ultimate lucidity, just like in a lucid dream. So that's what you want to be able to do you want to be able to recognize, just like in a lucid dream, which is by depth is called the dream at the end of time, that in fact what you're experiencing is the radiant display of your mind. What that mind is depends on where you are the Bardo if you're still in the Bardo of Dharma Tada and that's rigpa that's awakened mind. If you don't recognize that and without preparation you won't. Why should you how can you expect to meet recognize something you've never met, then what happens is, you know, you kind of freak out because of that subconsciously and then and then the mind that kind of takes over as some confused mind. If you don't recognize that as the display of your own line then you contract basically out of fear and run away from that. So basically what happens in the Bardo are successive levels of trying to get away from yourself, because this is so fantastic, really, what happens in the Bardo is is a very concentrated unmediated exposure to the nature of your both radiant awake mind and your confused mind and our inability or lack of familiarity again, like in that reading the very definition of meditation. You won't recognize it, no recognition recognition no liberation, and you try to get away from it, you basically try to get away from yourself. So what constitutes reincarnation at the very deepest level is our inability to recognize ourselves and that's basically trying to run away from ourselves. So we, we run away from the luminous Bardo Dharma TA, out of fear of the radiant empty nature of our being answered the cosmic Bardo becoming. We don't wake up to that we run away from that yet again, and into, you know, this kind of reified distraction of what we know is our waking reality is so in a very real sense, We spend our entire lives running away from ourselves. And that's what makes death a little bit challenging because at a certain point, when you die, you can't do that anymore. Pardon the pun, because you don't have any more legs to run with right, so your legs. Your legs stop moving, the wind stopped moving, Everything stops moving, it's I think it's actually hysterical on one level really, you can no longer run away from yourself when you die right your legs don't work anymore, right. You have no choice. But then the question is, would you recognize you, you will be forced. That's what death is death is a forceful form of liberation raffle, you will be forced to relate to your mind when you die. The question is what are you going to do with it. And without some preparation without some understanding, you're going to run away from yourself after death, just the way you run away from yourself right now is what like our MPJ refers to as most of our lives, it's just a protracted form of active laziness, you know, we just get most of what we do is just active distraction therapy, trying, trying to get away from ourselves. I just think it's so bloody hysterical. And so yeah that's what's going to categorize categorize the journey after death is our inability to be with ourselves. So, again I leave on this note, what's, what's the invitation here, be with yourself now relate to your mind now become familiar with your mind now because when we die the journey after death is a journey of the mind, take that journey now. And then when you do that like to come up I said just before he died, nothing happens. No difference Bardot's don't even exist for a person like that. So the more you know the the point here is you can do a lot about this, you can absolutely totally 100% Prepare 100% Prepare, so that when death comes, you don't run away from yourself you embrace yourself, you make love with your mind you whatever metaphor you want to use. And then at that point you, because there is no you can do whatever you want. Until that point. Karma is going to run the show.
And you can I just ask you, if, if you have never experienced when and if it's described to you by someone else. Is that helpful,
or yes, it's all helpful, but you know here's the kicker, again, this gets very subtle but this is subtle stuff. We all experience it. It's just a matter of whether we recognize it. So, again, like right now you're experiencing it. I'm not kidding this is not a joke, you're experiencing it right now, the question is do you recognize it. So the issue is not one of experience issues one of recognition and recognition is born from familiarization. So the key is to read about it, that points in the right direction to have in fact pointing out transmission that points more directly experientially, and then through all the practices that these wisdom traditions give us experience that recognize the darn thing. If you do that, you're going to be good to go, because you know a brief relatively brief level of familiarity in life is amplified everything is amplified when you die. That means not just the bad also the good. So a relatively short, kind of almost, I wouldn't say glimpse but a relatively brief direct recognition during life can actually lead to full blown liberation when you die, but the teaching say you can go from the first Bhumi to the 10th Bhumi, in the Bardot's, so that's really good news. And that's why I'm riffing a little bit more extensively on this is that you absolutely positively can do something about it, there's really good news here if you take advantage of it. If not, good luck. Send me, Send me a text message from the Bardo let me know how it goes. Okay.
Okay. Thanks Sandra.
Hi. Hi Katie.
Are you there.
I am there. Thank you, or I'm here all over the place I guess so. Thank you, thank you Andrew. For your brilliant decoding of these otherwise pretty obscure teachings really fabulous how you make them understandable and fun at the same time like, Who knew that was possible, so
it's all a joke, I mean really, it's really a joke, with, with, if we don't change it with a really bad punch line right it's called death. But if you catch the joke there is no punch line, and the whole thing just becomes this hysterical display of like whatever, right. So, really, on one level it is it's just so it's just so silly. It's so funny, it's just as being playful game but anyway.
Anyway, so thank you, thank you. And so this is I want to share something and then if there's time I'll ask a question. So, this is about a movie that Andy was generous enough to show to us. I don't know, a month ago Aluna. Have you seen that,
I have not seen that. No,
I think, what good, because that's what I want to share. When you started talking a few weeks ago about the experiments with the cats in the dark and such, you know, I thought, you know this, Luna movie talked about a tribe in Colombia. And their whole mission for existence like their, you know mission statement. Their purpose is to save the world, like they're here to take care of mother earth.
Oh nice,
that's there, you know, razor edge so anyway so there's been a couple of documentaries based on the message that this tribe is trying to tell to the Westerners, about how we're damaging the earth, and it's based on their understanding of the ley lines in the earth, like this, that were screwing it up by messing with the waterways and they see the ley lines and so anyway so they figured, you know, they came out of hiding or somehow they survived the imperial rule of, You know, all the imperialists and but you know they come out of hiding because things are so serious now that they've got this vessel but anyway. So, what was the reason I want to share this with you and with others who didn't see the movie is that they have these shamans they call them mamas and they spend from age seven months till the time they reach manhood in darkness.
Oh, I've heard about that yeah,
wow, like they, they, and so I went back, because the facts seem so startling and you mentioned the cats and I thought well here's a human experience that's gone on for, you know, who knows how long, hundreds of years maybe 1000s of years where they put their Shamans in darkness, at age seven months. And so I went back to the movie to make sure I got that right. And so I wrote down a few things which totally relate to what you're talking about here so okay so they're called mamas that's the shamans, they're in darkness because there's no distraction. Thoughts are concentrated, because they're taught to stare at their feet. So imagine this, they're in darkness, and the discipline is staring at their feet, what they can.
What are these doing anyway go ahead.
Well, but you know, I mean their focus is down, you know, and the idea is to concentrate and connect with Aluna so Aluna is like the Great Mother, or maybe prajna paramita, you know, and so we're not allowed to look around. Or I would lose the thread. That's what this the guide said that's why they're told to look down, we lose the thread if we looked around, so they're in darkness looking down, they eat certain foods they bathe, only at midnight. And then they come out, and it was interesting, here's what the guy said about coming out. When I came out of the darkness, the whole world was white. I stood there staring at nature. I saw everything the sun, the trees, the creatures. It all looked strange. So I gathered, took a while but that was that what happened is that after that, the whiteness after staring at nature they were actually able to discern. Now, so I wanted to share that because those aren't cats, those are humans, and then the other thing I wanted to say shortly thereafter I was taking a walk around here and you know on the trails they have a lovely science there was something about the prairie dogs, and they showed a prairie dog colony, and inside you know underground, they have nurseries, the little prairie dogs are in underground nurseries and I thought well that's kind of like the mamas, you know, and then they come out at some point, and they have the connection with the earth. And these people who are the mamas have connections with the earth. Anyway, I just thought it was fascinating, like what would it be to be in total darkness. But, you know, connecting with earth like that. So anyway, so that that's their mission, and, um, yeah, so, so that I wanted to share that and then this is a question if it's okay for me to ask you a question now. Okay. A long time ago, like this is what I was studying in college. I mean I can't believe how lucky I was. This is what we're doing here at CU in 1972, studying the nature of human consciousness, Robert Ornstein had this anthology. And I remember hearing back then that different cultures experience pain differently, and then the, the story that I was told and I went back to find the reference but I couldn't. Is that some cultures experience no pain at all when they have their teeth extracted, but they do experience tremendous pain when they cut their nails. Have you heard of this.
No I haven't. And, I mean purely as a as a somewhat somewhat medically trained there kinda doesn't make sense on one level again I just don't know. Again, I can't speak with authority but I mean that, you know, this is keratinized tissue there's absolutely no sensory integration whatsoever in keratinized tissue like your like your fingernail so why they would experience pain I have, I'm like, clueless. I have no idea why that would be the case doesn't make sense to me. But I mean, who am I to say right. So, Yeah, I'm not sure, is there more a comment or a question around that Katie or I
just wondered if you heard of it you know you being a dentist like that. Have you ever heard that some cultures experienced no pain when they know
here's what it also, it all depends on, on what what these people are actually referring to as pain, you know, because in a certain real way and I suspect this is probably what he's getting at, you know, pain is a construct there, there is this raw sensory awareness. Yeah, but to, you know that left in it, in its in its own actually is not paying, and this is parenthetically why what the viewers meditations lead you to this discovery. So it all depends on how you're defining pain are you are you talking about pain is what, you know, there are scientists and medical inclined people called nociception where you're, you're actually having a very adverse stimulation to your nervous system, or are you talking about something, you know, secondary, tertiary built upon that. So on one level, it would make sense to me that that pain is actually a construct, that's a label that we throw upon raw sensory awareness, and so on that level, they're not feeling pain that makes sense to me. But you can't say they're not insensate that they're not having some kind of sensory stimulation otherwise they wouldn't be thinking and beings. So I think there becomes very you have to get really careful about the nomenclature, what do they mean when they talk about word pain and you don't have it, what are they exactly they're referring to. So, those sorts of things, I think, you know, They just kind of need to be teased out. Otherwise it's easy to run to some faster conclusions. So without let without really looking at it, those are some of the questions that I would bring to bear on something like this, you know, what's the reference here what are you actually talking about. But to me, you know, I love all this stuff because it just throws into question, conventional standard ways of relating to things like pain or perception, and whether it leads to real truth I can't say but anything they can again someone like I was saying with my introductory comments that kind of dense representationalism and normal ways of constructing our world I think is helpful. so maybe I should watch that movie, I have heard something about it. But if that's what the movies about, I should watch it because yeah that's pretty cool stuff.
It was pretty mind blowing. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, more than welcome thank you Andy and maybe Barry did very recommend that movie Andy, you remember,
um, I don't know, it was actually, Dr. Ed O'Malley who recommended that movie.
Oh, okay.
I'll have to check it out. Yeah. Great. Thanks,
Katie appreciate you. Yeah,
so one from Carla submitted the question raised by the medium last week has been niggling me all week, you have stated in the past that you can sense the departed, their karma persists, yet in your response to the medium you emphasize the 49 day limit to the Bardo the transition, the reincarnation process, and that we have no more contact with the deceased thereafter. Uh, that's not quite exactly what I said. It may be hit me, perhaps was interpreted that way. But you know, again these. Yeah, these are solid questions so the 49 day limit for one thing. There, that's just kind of an average number right they actually say within three weeks, generally you're transitioning. Some people make that transition literally within seconds depending on the force of their transitional karmas. So, you know, the idea is, were in fact in this liminal space, you know where is this mindstream their so called karma, where is it, and then during the transition. We have no more contact Well, yes or no, I mean, you don't have contact with their superficial expressions right I mean, what you knew is that body that's gone. But there there is some thing that continues, and that you can't have contact with, whether it's conscious or unconscious that depends on the level of the sensitivity on both ends. So this is why I say, you know, death is damned to the body, it's not the death of the end of a relationship. And so what ceases, is, is basically that outer gross presentation, the indestructible continuum, in fact, by definition, doesn't cease, that that goes on forever. And so when we talk about contact the contact depends on, I mean you can have a contact with any lifeforce at any time there's no statute of limitations on this, but the level of contact. Therefore depends on what level of being you're contacting, you're not you know that fundamental contact is always available, whether it's recognized accessible to either party that depends on the sensitivity the level of meditation power and that sort of thing. So, let me read this again and see if there's more than I can answer that we've seen in the past that you can sensitive party for sure their comment persists, definitely get a response to the meeting, emphasize a 49 day limit to the Bardo. Yeah, that's a limit to the Bardo, it's not a limit to the indestructible continuum, that's limitless. And again, like I mentioned the 49 day is don't reify that that's just the kind of average, they say, and always wondered about this like you know really, I, you know, with my little scientific edgy mind. How do they know that again I this is not, it's just a challenge like somebody take a poll. Right. It's like, nope, I've actually pressed some llamas on this and got a little snippy where you know they have these numbers in there. You know seven days after separate after every seven days you recapitulate the Bardo process well I actually tried to pin one llama die so why seven days. And he just never gave me a satisfactory answer, he just couldn't count me he goes, you know, fundamentally, I realized he was just relying on his understanding of doctrine. And on one level yeah that's kind of okay but on another level. I just I don't know I kind of struggle with these sorts of things. And that's why I take all these things in what's called it's the technical term, but it's called ritualized phenomenology where, you know how literally do we take these numbers and things. This is a very much an open question for me. So I don't you know, I abide by. Some of these principles as I've come to understand them. The literal aspect of that, that remains open to me. But the most important thing here is a contact tissue, you can have contact with them, you can dedicate merit to them. You can do that sort of thing, there's no statute of limitations on that. It's just that, according to these teachings, a lot of this makes tremendous sense, the longer, they've been transitioned the further they are ensconced in their next reified mind state, the harder it is for them to have overt recognition of this level of contact. Does that mean that there's nothing going on underneath no I don't think so. I think you can actually affect them and touch them at that level. But you know, this is just somewhat educated conjecture on my part, I can't speak with real authority on some of these issues. I don't think anybody but a blizzard can. Okay, so maybe one more from Lynn, who has raised hand, and then maybe unless something pops in we'll call it for today.
Hi,
I'm Colin
and when I ask about a statement I've heard a few
times that's attributed to Trungpa Rinpoche j, if
I'm not quite sure of the wording, I think it's every state of mind is workable. Or maybe it's every state of mind can be workable,
that would sound like something he would say,
Yeah, and I was hoping you were familiar with, it's like a get you to expand on that a little bit.
Sure, yeah, I can probably say something about that.
Yeah, actually I know what it is,
I think, I think I've heard it said the lion's roar is a proclamation is a proclamation that every state of mind can be workable at something like that.
Yeah, yeah. And again, that makes sense to me you know it's basically that if one brings more sensitive understanding to the workings of mind, then you really do understand that whatever arises, no matter how untoward uncomfortable. Painful disquieting it can be doesn't in fact become workable when you understand what's actually taking place right. So what brings about let's look at it from another from the opposite angle what brings about levels of unworkable ality are basically levels of our inability to relate to, to the display of the mind, right, you either take the mind to be so bloody solid you reify it so solidly. That, that, that particular situation becomes completely unworkable, you know it's just like I can't deal with this I can't work with this, it's it's whatever too painful to swallow too real too intractable. Well, that really, if you look very closely at that it was all born from a somewhat misinformed relationship to the display of that mind and that in in a real way is what these teachings are largely about, you know, to really understand, somewhat connected to the question earlier, but like where his mind. Another question is what is mind, what is mine effect. I think the last issue and Buddha Dharma magazine is devoted to this topic that you know when you really take a very deep look at this question, then you realize the utter workability of whatever arises, in fact, not only is it workable, but if it's related to properly as you know it's divine. It's not just workable, it's perfectly pure. Everything that arises as actually the display of the awakened mind so, not, not only is it workable, it's actually divine. But you know to get to that divinity, we have to start with a workability and that starts with the reifying altering our relationship to the traditional display. So things only become intractable and workable, because we impute project qualities onto the phenomenon arising, that are not inherent to that arising, then that gives them this kind of unworkable status. But if again we understand how it works, how we project who we confer how we impute how we, you know transfer power, that everything becomes workable and not just workable becomes delightful, you know the great perfection, the play, the absolute dance of of the awakened state. So I can't tell you exactly where that quote comes from, I sound pretty darn sure that the majority would have said something like that, and it makes a whole lot of sense to me so something like that. Does that land.
Yeah, that works,
that works. I love it that works see becomes workable, that works. Okay, anybody else are we good for today.
Oh, sorry. No, I just said Katie's and go back up if you want to other she's got the quote oh yeah what's up, read it, read it, Katie,
unmute yourself and read it, it's hard to read.
Whatever occurs in the confused mind is regarded as the path. Everything is workable. It is a fearless proclamation. The lion's roar.
There we go. Beautiful. Thank you everybody. I really appreciate it. Do usual song and dance. We got you know movie night on Sunday or Saturday, green sharing group all the things that we're, you know, trying to offer almost every day of the week, right now, so stay tuned for these interviews coming up I'm super excited about those. Thanks for your really great questions. And like I am doing more and more now to whatever extent dedication of merit means something to you whatever merit, we may have gathered that is of some value, we just send it out to the entire cosmos that really could use our help right now so between now and next time everybody take care of yourself always nice to spend time with you. See you next week.