[11] Exploring the Bardos: Insights from the Dark Retreat

1:22AM Jan 19, 2024

Speakers:

Andrew Holecek

Alyssa

Keywords:

bardo

consciousness

mind

reification

dark

psychosis

projecting

retreat

reify

projection

die

reality

light

distraction

primordial

teachings

talked

profound

world

practice

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me me right? My second favorite one right? Mind Mind Mind Mind Mind, mind, mind, mind, mind, mind, mind, mind, mind, mind mind like a petulant two year old or if you're Jewish predisposition. My favorite one? I yeah, I. So these are seed syllables, seed seed mantras that we then formulate all our other mantras. You know, what can I get out of this? How do I fit into this? It's all about me. We're constantly resetting these monitors whether we know it or not, that's a form of involuntary rebirth. The mind is being shaped by ignorance, habit, pattern, karma into this particular form. Well, we also do so visual visualization wise, we have psychosomatic relationship to our body. We're always visualizing samsaric forms. And so the mind again, is always taking birth. So the genius of these tantric practices that's why they're like alchemical, is they take an infrastructure that's already intact, and they transmute it lead into gold, poison into medicine, that's the genius. And so therefore, if you understand this point, now, it's like, wow, these people were so clever. This is why we do these practices that can seem so like, esoteric, and so like, why am I doing this? Well, this is one reason why it's just so beautiful. And then when you get Eagle Eye, okay, I'm gonna go I'll go in for a year. I'll recite a million of these mantras or visualize myself as whatever. Now I get it. Because then that becomes your habit. And then that habit takes over when you die. And then instead of arising as Joe Schmo, schmuck, that's me. You will arise as a deity that's liberation at the level of this I'm Boca kya that's what this section is about. Well, this heavy front loading on this book, man, I hope it gets easier. Whenever you have to read the stamp but the 49 day, here we go. You are working with enlightened sound. That's mantra. And enlightened lights. That's visualization. You're working with the light of the mind. You're working with the primordial sound and light show of reality. The templates first forms, right? These are platonic, not union archetypes. The first forms of sound and light. They are things reducible to sound a night, physicists will tell you this string theory on David Bohm and other fiscal tight physicists reality is made of a nation of light. We're sure you're working with enlightened sound and enlightened light, the very first forms these archetypes in the Platonic sense that arise out of the Dharmakaya In other words, that the sun Bulguksa the 49 day dark retreat, also called a barter retreat of Tagalog, this is the penultimate preparatory practice for death, by the way, is among the most powerful and dangerous of all meditations. If you don't go in there properly, right you white knuckle it you don't get enlightened, you get insane. This is why the practice went out of favor, because unprepared practitioners would go in I can do this much Oh 49 day thing. And they didn't they came out cuckoo. That's it. It's actually interesting why that takes place. If you're interested, we can talk about in the q&a, but this alone is a massive topic. What brings about that psychosis? It's very interesting actually. All has to do with reification okay, yes, duck retreat requires support in terms of food, basic necessities and spiritual guidance. In this practice, you enter a room where light is gradually removed, resulting in total darkness at a certain point. Visions appears clear as day actually clearer than day. These are the visions of the Dharma thar the luminous shine of your own mind. So this stuff is just oh my gosh, this is just beyond profound. The topic is colossal. It's enormous. For those of you who do have some interest Trungpa Rinpoche in his seminal introduction to his translation of the Tibetan Book, of the dead, there's no like 14 of them. Here's was the second one after Evans went some 60 years ago. He has an incredibly interesting, I wouldn't say psychological because that that tends to psychologize The Book of the Dead and he definitely doesn't do that. But his introduction is just genius. And he talks in some real elegance about this particular practice, the 49 day dark retreat, so if you're interested in that, you can gain some information from his introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead. So much to say about this. Okay, over the remaining weeks of the retreat and becomes familiar with the very definition of meditation gone with these visions which are the expressive power of the mind and diluted by daily distractions. So this is this is so great. Oh my god. This is when the mind is shining. This is not the shine of the Great Eastern sun. This is the mind is radiating it this is this is so profound, it's so beautiful. So on the mind is just radiating in this stage of the dark of the Bardot's. Its third turning teachings, it's the luminous radiant, thermonuclear display on the mind. And then what happens that is so amazing, is what transforms the Bardo. Dermatol into the Bardo, becoming, is radiance is flipped and perverted into projection. Oh my god, this is like crazy. And so that that's that same shine blurry mind is there, but now it's it's kind of filtered twisted through the prism that turns out to be a prison that refract that light and then that the radiance then turns into projection. And then this entire manifest samsaric thing is nothing more than the light of the mind flipped, perverted and poisoned into projection. Everything is a projection. Everything. The primary ontological projection is the illusion of externality itself. But there's something out there. That's the primordial projection. There's no out there out there. David Bohm, sorry, John Wheeler, student of Einstein. There is no out there out there. The physicists will tell you this, not that we have to capitulate to them. But it's nice when they say these sorts of things. There is no out there out there. So what we do is we project quality of externality that's the primordial projection born of the primordial distraction and then upon that twisted rock, ego built, it's perverted church. That's pretty good. Right? So then on your projection after projection after projection, all the way from these fundamental philosophical spiritual ontological projections. To all the epistemological projections, all the psychological projections, all the shadow work. And so I just published I just sent an article off to Buddha Dharma magazine. Under the yoga they wanted me to write this riff. And so I wrote a little bit about this practice for them. And I realized when I was writing a single oh my god, this would make Carl Jung really quite proud because he was really he wrote the introduction to the first translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I'm so into Carl Jung these days again. This is what we're doing. When we're working with Bardo, we are working with the deepest shadow work possible. I mean, he coined the term shadows, this a phenomenal genius about how we take you know, all these elements of the unconscious mind, which is it isn't like consciousness obfuscated. And we project onto the world. I mean, he said, you know, what did he say? Projections turn the world into a replica of one's unknown face. may say that again. Projections transform the world into a replica of one's unknown face. We're all narcissist. We're all looking and be Witched I'm like Narcissus looking into the pond. You want to know the contents of the structures of your unconscious mind. Look at your world. Where is your unconscious mind? Here? Where's the collective unconscious? Here? It's like beyond profound so I digress. But what's happening here and this is why this stuff is so important. This is the new intake. This is the heart essence of the whole thing. So right here you have the display of the mind the Soboba radiant and the archetypal display, the deities are coming up. You know, recognize those puppies, twisted, flipped, projected. Those archetypes of deities, then reify they're no longer just qualities. The Deities represent qualities principles, why Trump Rinpoche always played the qualities game for those of you who know this. The only thing that exists are qualities principles. There's no thing out there. So that is flipped, projected, reified. And so then what you have when you look at the world, frozen, frozen like frozen deities, these are all the Deities frozen in the light of the mind. It's just like this stuff is just beyond profound. So psychologically ontologically, spiritually, this is the root essence of the whole crap show of how it is that we create project samsara start here mazing so when we're doing when we're dealing with the stuff we're dealing with this, Carl Jung would be so heavy. We're dealing with the deepest possible Shadow Work.

reintegrating doing doing the shadow integration thing, which means owning up to your projections. In this case, what it means is owning up to your power, owning up to the incredible extraordinary thermonuclear power that you have to create worlds systems that in a solipsistic narcissistic way. That's just the overlay but in his most compellingly profound kind of cool, creative way. So amazing. Over the remaining weeks, the retreating becomes familiar with these visions because they're just the play of their own mind. The expressive power of the mind and diluted by daily distractions, so it's still radiating it's not projecting yet. We remove any fear of the dark by stabilizing the realization. That's what realization is stable. Then whatever appears is just the display of our mind, saying, by the way, you think this is just happening down in the Bardot's now it's happening right now. You're projecting right now. You look out on the world. You see the world separate from you. You see it solid? Yep. You see l is lasting. Yep. You see it as independent? Yep. You're projecting? You're projecting. And this mind is basically good. The fear of darkness is removed just the fear of the unknown depth of our empty voluminous mind. We finally become familiar with the absolute ground of the mind, which of course is groundless. Fear is removed because as it says in the apana shots where there is other there is fear. The dark retreat removes any sense of other so dark retreat is incredibly powerful because it's a boundary buster. It's this is also like, death itself, like retreat is a forceful method of elaboration. Liberation. I often say I think I might have said this before. If if silence is for bumping into yourself. I like that actually. Silence is for bumping into yourself. Bardo yoga, and dark retreat and death. There for slamming into yourself. That's what's going to happen when you die. You're going to slam into space, you're going to slam into yourself. But because you're not familiar with this infinite dimension of your mind is going to be this whiplash effect. That Whiplash is what that's the that's the retraction that's that I shouldn't say retraction. That's the primary distraction, the whiplash so we don't want to slam into ourselves when we die. We want to gracefully glide into our nature when we die. So it's not so shocking. It sounds so stunning because this is for those who understand the Bardo yoga in the 12 Madonna's This is what transforms the 12th link death into the first link. Ignorance ignorance doesn't start by itself. In the 12 links of dependent origination. I always have this Tonka behind me. Everybody says oh, it starts with number one. No, it doesn't know can start anywhere in the cascade. So the first leg of ignorance is just a provisional starting point. Every link is conditioned and conditions the succeeding preceding and succeeding link so what is it that conditions? Ignorance, the 12th Madonna, what's that? Death right. Oh, my I guess I have to stop otherwise. We'll be here till midnight. This is what's so amazing about these Bardo. Teachings, right? Because we're talking about the singularity of reality here. This is the cradle and the grave, the woman the tomb of all manifest reality. Everything returns to this. Everything comes from this. And that that's why just like a fractal. The more you look, the more you find all the Dharma is in here. All the teachings are in here. This is reality concentrated. It's like when you make your orange juice, right, you go to the can you go to the fridge, you take out your orange juice concentrate, and then you water it down so you can consume it. Well, the Bardo is here. This is reality concentrate. Everything is reduced and healthy form of healthy reductionism. Everything is reduced to these fundamental points. And that's why there's so much to say here, because the entire Buddha Dharma is condensed into these Bardot's and in particular, into what we're talking about here. These these these core, you know, the Bardo dama TA, this is the whole body shebang. And that's why like everything is wrapped up into here because everything is here. This is the DNA of reality. This is where this is where the whole shebang. So it all starts from and that's why there's so much to say.

Yes, fear as you move because as it says in the apana shots where there's other there's fear, the dark retreat removes any sense of other that's for sure. Also, because you can't have self without other they call merge, they lean on each other. You can't have self so it's not just other than disappears in the dark. You disappear. That's the whole point. That's why you go in there. You go in there. To die. It's fantastic. Highly recommended. You may lose your mind. Yes, you might lose your mind. That's fine. Oh, what you want to lose is your egoic mind. You want to lose your mind to find reality. Okay, what are these visions that seem so real? Why do I see them when my eyes are open or close? So you're in the dark, right? Where do they appear? Who's saying What? Are they in the outer space of the world, the inner space of my mind or somewhere in between? Are they other than me? No, they're not. Just like in death. It's only you. And so when you're when you're in darker gee, this is actually quite playful. It's quite funny when your dog retreated after X amount of days. And you want to do a backflip and break the door down and run out screaming. You just can't stand it anymore, right? You're going effing crazy. And they're going stir crazy what's really going on? What are you trying to get away from? Yourself? Yourself. Because when you're in the dark, there's nobody else is you? So parenthetically, I've said this before, if you're in a relationship, cut your partner some slack. If you can't even stand to be with yourself, how can you expect anybody to stay and to be with you? So give your family and partners and whatever a real break, right? You can't stand yourself and so what happens is you want to get out exactly what's going to happen when you die. You're going to run out of the Bardot's exactly the same way you run off your meditation cushion. You don't have to go into dark retreat to experience this. Stay on your cushion for six hours. Are you going to feel I want to do a backflip off this cushion and just get the f out of here. What do you want to get away from yourself? And death. I'm sorry. There's no place to go that you're not. That's why you better become familiar with yourself. Otherwise, you're gonna run out of the Bardot's. Just like you run out of the cushion. Just like you run away from the present moment, just the way you run out of the dark retreat in a iterative display of distraction to pull away because there's no room for personal identity, either in the dark in the present moment. It's there's no you're not there. So you move literally ego knows move it or lose it. But I don't move I'm going to die. Maybe have this experience on meditation that in 20 minutes you will but give yourself a couple hours. Sit a session so the datain right. What's the primordial habit to pull up and he says this number one habit, the habit of all super habits. The habit for movement the habit for distraction the habit for karma. That's our primary habit. And this is what brought into light when you meditate. You establish your relationship with that urge. I've got to do something man. Right I've got to move I've got to act like move like Jagger. Well if you move like Jagger, you're welcome to samsara. You want to not move like the Buddha don't move like Jagger not move like the Buddha SIP die and then when you're forced to the ultimate sit sitting in the coffin at the moment of death, you can do it. See the logic here? Makes total sense. Okay, where are we are they the other than me? No are not. No, not there. You will not have solid basis some traction. That's actually that's the most important practice. That's the cutting through practice. Emptiness. It's easy to take these visions to be real that's where the insanity comes from. Instead of becoming enlightened, we'd become insane. Instead of finding reality, we lose it. We don't know what's real anymore. It's hard to separate inside from outside. So this is incredibly profound. This is this is the basis of all psychosis. Which fundamentally means what we're all psychotic. psychosis is a matter of degree. All psychosis is just as all psychosis is a matter of progressive stages of reification you go crazy and this is why everything is so revelatory here. You go crazy in the dark or after death because you mistake what's happening to be real. It's not real. It's empty. It's just your mind. Same thing here. We think this is real. You're psychotic. You know. We say you're asleep. That's very polite. You know? But fundamentally, you're nuts. This is why Trump mache often talked about enlightenment in psychological terms. He talked about enlightenment as ultimate sanity. It's beautiful in that regard. But reification is is a psychosis is directly proportional to levels of reification you get a catatonic schizophrenic or you get someone who's just completely reifies the contents of their mind and hears voices. And you know, my sister schizophrenic so this this is not a theoretical thing for me. I mean, I tried to connect to her and work with her. I don't want to get too clinical because she's my sister, but it is incredibly painful and incredibly interesting. All people in these extreme states just reify that's the definition really archetype we that's what constitutes arguably, psychosis. It's all a matter of degrees, so to greater or lesser degrees, we're all psychotic. Really. And then Saturday becoming enlightened Yeah, yeah, so instead of finding a reload, we lose it. We don't know what's real anymore. It's hard to separate inside from outside for the unprepared mind this insanity is only natural even drink a is just as insane when this bad habit of reification taking things to be real is extended into the dark or into the Bardo. We flee from the display of our own mind. part because we think the display is real. And in into madness, or in samsara, which are fundamentally equivalent. It's like running away from a nightmare, or in this case, into one. Let's not, that's not bad. Well said. We run from the Bardo of damata reality sprint through the barn.

Andrew, are you there?

I think he may be frozen Give me just a second we'll see if he comes back

Am I the only one that disappeared?

I you you cut off and we couldn't hear you anymore, but I don't see either. Cosmos

to shut up. Really? Nobody else disappeared. It was just me.

Yeah, you're the I don't even see you at all. I can hear you.

No I can't hear you.

I see lots of people saying that they can see him that's interesting that I can't Oh, they think he may have laughed we'll see if it comes back.

I'm going to pause the recording Hold on one second.

I'm gonna shut up. That's weird. I got cut off twice. Okay. We'll stop here. There you are. Yeah, that was bizarro. That's probably a good place to stop because I'm probably gonna get killed off again. That's that's actually I pay attention to these sorts of things, actually. So I'll pause there because otherwise I will be forced as a forceful method of liberation. You will be liberated from me. Right from the for the third time. I'm a little thick, but I get it. I'll pause. And there was one question that came in. I'm going to turn to that. From Marie. And then Questions, comments from any of you and we'll pick it up again. Again, I really, this this is the heart essence of this whole thing. And like I've said every time I don't want to rush through it, there's just it's there's so much here. And so instead of like charging through with your permission, I'd rather we take our time. Because once we get into the practical stuff, you'll see it. I mean, there's not a whole lot of elaboration there. We'll be able to, I think click a little bit more rapidly, but for now, especially with the message from the phenomenal world that I'm getting will stop so let's see the questions came in. There was just one hold on. There it is. Okay, Marie, somewhat technical question but a good one. Can the seven consciousness still play a part in our rebirth in the Bardo after we have left this human life for sure, big time. First of all, the some of the consciousness is not as separate as you know, Marie, it's not a separate entity, the seven consciousness in the spectrum of the yoga Chara teachings, which talks about the eight consciousnesses seven consciousness is basically minds inability to recognize its own nature. That's what it is. And that is in fact, what constitutes the whole rebirth journey. So does it take part in the rebirth process? Hell yeah, it's front and center. Can it still alter or influence the karmic winds of the eighth consciousness? Yes, because it is those winds and again, the seventh and eighth there, they're heuristically centrifuge down so we can kind of relate to them. But there it's not like there's eight separate streams and bandwidths of consciousness know. The eight consciousnesses are eight aspects, eight facets of one consciousness. So do they influence the karmic winds? Yes, they are the karmic winds, the eighth consciousness itself. I'll leave it there because there's more questions. We can get lost in the weeds here pretty quick. Can the seven consciousness bring images of people into my Bardo surroundings? From my current patterns that I currently allow to evoke a version Yes for sure. Because that's what the seven consciousness does. It it scoops stuff out of the eight the latent predispositions the buck chuck the beaches from the eight consciousness it scoops them up it spits them out, and manifest them as seeming externality in the Bardot's in life that will also feed material from the seemingly external back in in the Bardot's that's not there. Because there's no externality is just our mind. And that's why the mind becomes super heightened, because there's nothing external to dilute it. So what you're really saying when you die, Murray, you're saying the display of the seventh and eighth consciousness. That's what you're witnessing there. So that's why your question is a fantastic one. That's fundamentally what's going on. One through five are gone. smattering of six, principally seventh and eighth. Okay, from what I understand, we hear and see things that are wild. Yeah, well, there's nothing wild in there, right. It's your mind if it's wild. It's your mind. There's no pre existing wild of this out there because there's no out there out there. It's your mind that's wild. That will infer that the first and second consciousness are there with us. No, they're not one through five are gone. They've gone through the chipper right through the first five stages of the outer dissolution, they're gone. That's why seventh and eighth becomes now concentrated and stand out because they're no longer deluded by the distractions of one through five or even six. I'm currently working on watching my actions, reactions and becoming more aware of how I am allowing the seven consciousness to create twist situations that are drama, good for you fantastic. into negative responses that are unnecessary high five, excellent. Open awareness is the main practice for this. If I keep practicing well that confidence in being aware of those incidences occurring and staying with me, staying with more, staying with more equanimity in everyday life helped me to have a nonreactive to whatever arises in the Bardo. 100% absolutely, positively. If that is the case, is it even more important if the seven consciousness follows or ceases? One my breath ceases. Well, it doesn't. It will temporarily go offline very, very briefly. At the very end of the moment of dying in the first stages of the bardo domata But that wind is actually what's going to kind of propel that momentum is what's gonna actually propel you through blow you through and into the Bardo. Becoming. I feel like I'm rambling. No, you're not. Yeah, so yeah, great questions. Maria. Hope that's helpful. Again, along with the trachea. The Yoga Chara teachings on the eight consciousnesses are the principal template, in my estimation, of all the nocturnal meditations and in particular Bardo. I mean, they constitute the eight stages of the outer inner dissolution there that central a man the whole thing is reverted. We're coming that up. Coming to that when we come up to the hourglass image, whole thing is reflected on the backside. From eight come seven, come six comes 54321 The whole thing then just kicks out the back end. And so this particular description of mind samsaric mind is huge, huge when it comes to the Bardo teachings. Okay, all right. Let me see if anything came in in the chat column. Okay.

How does darkness induce psychosis? Yeah, Premadasa is like I said, darkness itself doesn't do anything. Darkness is neutral. Darkness. Dark retreat is like a is what I call a Rorschach meditation. It's like a Rorschach block. Oh, you know what? Remember those member that's a way to work with projection. You know, Ross, Aki ROSAT. You have these these inkblots? They're basically neutral. And then what do you do you you extract you project Oh, I see whatever in there. I see all this stuff. No, it's not they're not there. You're painting it in your image. So darkness doesn't do it. Darkness can't do anything. Darkness is neutral. In this case, darkness acts is a mirror. Even dark practice acts as a mirror you stop projecting before you can go in. So basically what it does, is it brings about it doesn't invite psychosis for the unprepared mind. Because there's no dilution of experience experience becomes very concentrated. And that's that then becomes reified. It becomes solidified. The mind just does it that's its principal habit. That's what defines the ego the ego is defined by reification. That's what ego is as an arrested reified form of development. That's what ego is. Ego is an arrested reify form of development. And therefore what does it do? paints the world in its image like King mighty samsara that's the basis of psychosis against psychosis as a matter of degree, if you're in samsara, you're partially psychotic psychotic. And then from there, you get, you know, exaggerated instances of bad and what we know is conventional psychosis. degree we all have these participe dispositions and Layton propensities with Ms. Okay mentioned what causes that psychosis How can we avoid that? DVF Psy, D. reify. Emptiness, the teachings on dependent origination honestly, you could say fundamentally, all of the Dharma, all the Dharma helps you to reify what's what's

Andrew, can you hear me You're frozen again

we'll see if he comes back

Oh, that's downright weird. Why is that happening? So I'm gonna blame that I knew.

I can take the blame. I'm not sure.

I mean, I've done probably 500 of these. I've never been caught off five times. Think it's trying to tell me something. Yeah.

We lost them. Again.

Andrew disappeared again.

Andrew oh wait for him to come back.

Thanks, everybody for your patience.

Well, now I'm not sure if he's going to make it back.

Let me see if I can get a hold on. Give me just a second.

Okay, so I just talked to him, it will not let him back in. He's going to try and update his zoom, but we will just call it a night for tonight. So thanks, everybody for hanging out when we tried to get it sorted out. Hopefully we can figure out what's going on. That's never happened before. So we'll troubleshoot on our end and see what happens but thanks everybody. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.