A recording in progress. Yeah, so we're going through this book at this rate. Maybe we'll get through it before I die. I kind of doubt it. Yeah, preparing to die, we left off last time on page 115 I believe esoteric practices correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's where we left off. And what do we do? This is actually kind of a traditional thing, believe it or not, auto commentary, where somebody who writes a text just reads it and rests on it. I originally had this idea when I attended Ken Wilbers 15, 1015, years ago. He went through my favorite of his books, integral spirituality. He did, like 40, I don't know how many hours around this book. And it was, I thought it was just so much spanking bum. So I figured we'd give, we give it a crack. So esoteric practices, the last section on what to do for others as they die. Okay, some like, how tense of the Bardo package. Oh, let me show you here's show you what it looks like. I got mine right here.
So I'm not gonna completely unpack everything that's here, but this is great. I this is a very this is a very delicate kind of gift. Cost 108 bucks, and it's, I have given it to a couple people, but as you might suspect, there has to be a certain population pool that's going to willingly accept a Bardo death preparatory package, right? So it's got all kinds of really cool things in it that I don't really want to completely unpack here. It's got a CD of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, chanted and written. It's got this, what's called POA powder. It's got this tuck draw, which is this beautiful, long blanket that you put on people. I'm not sure if it's still available. I get this from from the namzo Namo banzo Bookstore, karma Triana Dharma Chakra in upstate New York, Kenpo kartar place. They were selling it. I know Lama Zopa Rinpoche, others are doing similar sorts of things. If somebody here listening is familiar with other ways of getting this sort of thing, don't be shy to chime in. So this is discussed on appendix one. Some of the contents of the Bardo package can be applied here. The sacred pills can be placed under the lip and the sacred sand on top of the brahmarandra, yeah. So these are, again, these are, these are pretty heavy duty, serious Tibetan Buddhist thingies. And are they necessary? Of course, not, not at all. Are they helpful? Of course they are. You know, if you subscribe to this sort of thing, you empower these things with the power of your belief system. It's a very effective kind of placebo effect in the best sense. But I do also believe they have their own efficacy. I mean, this is just me. I drink the Tibetan Kool Aid. But if it doesn't work for you, just don't worry about it again. The only thing you need to do. I mean, no kidding, I'll say it 100 times, open, relax. That's it. That's all you need to do. Really, I am not kidding. Only the single best instruction for good death is just get out of the way. It's only thing in life you don't have to do. You know, you can't really do death. Just let death do you that's actually what makes it challenging. Because we're not human beings. We're human doings. Oh, I've got to do something about death. Let's do something about death. Let's fight it, tooth and nail, defeat it. We have to do something. Oh, no. No, just, just get it. Just get in harmony. Just get in alignment with what's happening. Chill, relax. Just let this natural process do its natural thing. It's no big deal. Oh my gosh. You're just changing worn out clothes. I mean, just nothing, really, nothing happens. You can write the vajra guru mantra. Om ah, home, Vajra guru Padma city home, fold it into an amulet and place it at the heart. Oh, this reminds me I was able to get do I have it here? So next week, I'm not going to go into this now, but I got this guy, this author, who wrote this amazing book. His name is Gregory Shaw. He's a great scholar. I just established contact with him this week. Check out that subtitle this book. This is great, the theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus, right? If you want to have a best selling subtitle, this is one way not to do it like Guzman tight, unbelievably profound, compelling book just absolutely blew me out of the water. I'm really deep into the Western esoteric wisdom traditions, Parmenides and pedocles, Plato, the neoplatonists, plotkines, now Iamblichus. I was not familiar with Iamblichus, and this book that Gregory wrote. Blew me away. So I mentioned this because I'm going to be interviewing Gregory next next week, and in this book on kind of Hellenic Greek approaches to non duality, there's some incredibly interesting stuff that I had no idea about in the theologic liturgy, in the theologic tradition, theology basically means the activity of the gods. It's a way in the Greek tradition which is really the tradition we live in, whether we know it or not. I mean, we live in Plato and Aristotle's world, for sure, primitives world, whether we know it or not. And so to unearth these, these wisdom traditions, the non dual aspects of Western philosophy and intellectual theory, to me is it's been a really game changers have been a big deal. And so Gregory writes very beautifully in this book about how the theorists invoke the divine activity of the gods, completely analogous to deity Yoga, you don't practice Guru Yoga. It's the same thing, but you just replace the Eastern deities with Western gods. Like I always say, they're all cross dressers anyway, it doesn't really matter, really. You just invoke them, you cultivate them, you bring them down. That's the energy invoking the activity of the gods, so that you then become a representative, a spokesperson. You become the Divinity incarnate. It's so cool. So I'm really excited to talk to Gregory. In fact, I don't know how I'm going to get through all this in one interview. This book is, is really fantastic. So anyway, Mantra, fold it into an amulet and place it at the heart center. That's the other thing that's in this Bardo package, you get a little amulet that you can put over your heart center as well. Guru Rinpoche himself said, Remember, he is the great tantric master that brought Buddhism from India to Tibet he's the co author, really, of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Co author, meaning he's the guy who wrote it, so to speak, the discoverer the terton was, was jimain Lipa, a Karma link. I believe he's the one who actually discovered it. Again, bodar and then hence, this is what we know, is the bed Book of the Dead. So allegedly go. Rinpoche himself said, when you die, if this amulet is burned with your corpse, rainbows will be seen and your consciousness will be transferred to the realms of supreme bliss. Hey, I'll take that. That's Dewa Chan. That's sukawati. Don't do this too early. It might unsettle the dying person if they feel their caretakers already view them as dead. I mean, unless they unless it's somehow in their dharma, will their advanced directives, especially if they're non Buddhist, oh my gosh, don't do any of this. Don't do any of this. Just go in there with an open heart, open mind. Hold them in the container of unconditional love. Do not spew any of this stuff. Meet them where they are, connect to them where they are, and just forget about all this other stuff. But if they have a connection to this, then yes, they can be in their dharma will you as an executor, a Dharma friend, can then implement this, and these, these sorts of things, really can create this wonderful environment around the end of life, unless they request that otherwise, do these things when they're semi comatose or in your death care, caregivers and loved ones should gather around the upper part of the dying person, not at the feet. So this is a little bit esoteric thing. Oh, actually, let me read this and see how much. Yeah, I think I actually talk about it here. This is because the attention of the dying person will naturally focus wherever there is activity, according to the laws of POA, actually transitional karma, the the teachings on transference or rejection of consciousness. We don't want their mind together and eventually exit from lower portals and therefore into lower realms when Death is Imminent, avoid touching lower parts of the body. Gently caress the top of the head. I actually do this. I still do this all the time, even when my mom, both my mom and dad, who weren't Buddhist or friends, you know, I just, I will caress the top of their head. Or, for instance, this is just me when you're putting a pet down. What I did when, when we're putting our cats down. Literally, the vet thought I was nuts, but I don't care. So the vet is delivering the medicine, and I'm holding the top of the the head of the cat, and I'm actually, I'm just flicking quite firmly with my finger at the very top of the head. Ping, ping, ping. Because I believe in a karmic theory. This just makes so much sense to me. It's a way to bring the mindstream up. It's actually a form of emergency. POA, I think I mentioned this earlier, pretty esoteric stuff, but like, Hey, we're doing esoteric stuff. What do you do when you're about to be killed in a plane crash? Are car accident? You. You know, this is it? Well, any Rinpoche says, First, look up, that raises the winds that brings the attention up, look up. Literally, look up. And then secondly, recite one of two mantras, either Om Mani Padme home that opens, I'm sorry No, om Omani Padme home serves to close the gates of rebirth to the six lower realms, because each of the six syllables is designed, in fact, to do that. Or the other option is om amide WA, which is opening the portal to the Pure Land stuff, so pretty heavy esoteric Tibetan Buddhist stuff. If it speaks to you, go for it. If not, no worries, according to the laws of transitional POA, we don't want their mind together and eventually exit the lower parts of the body when Death is Imminent, avoid touching lower parts. Caress the top of the head. You can even tuck on the hair at the brahmarandra, that's the suture at the very top of the head, up here.
Or tap the head at that point, this draws the mind up and invites consciousness to exit there. The idea is to block off all possible exits into the lower realms and to keep consciousness on track for the higher realms. Right? This is a stairway to heaven, one of my favorite songs outside of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Led Zeppelin. Stairway to Heaven is a close second, right. So this is the Highway to Heaven, bringing everything to the top of the central channel. Was called a brahmarandra at the top of the head the final fifth instruction for what to help, or what to do, to help others during death. Create a peaceful space, hold whatever happens with love, give them something to look forward, to let them go, right? Let them go. So the grasping thing is not just from their side or your side. When you're dying, part of a graceful exit is for you, the person, so to speak, left behind. Such a strange phrase like, somehow, this is the superior dimension, and we're left behind. I mean, where we came up with that one? The idea here is to just release from your side, let them go. Let them go, because otherwise they're grasping. I mean, you're grasping. Can affect them deleteriously, right? Okay, chapter five, here we go. What to do for yourself after you die from Soga Rinpoche, I'm now going to say something that may surprise you. Death can be very inspiring. Sometimes I see that the dying person also feels this atmosphere of deep inspiration and is grateful to have provided the opportunity for our reaching together a moment of real and transformative rapture, nice and once again, the view right? The view the mind leans all things. If you are well trained, your first after death experience will be the luminous Bardo of dharma. Top, only if you're familiar with these super subtle states of mind and have done practices that are specific for this recognition. Otherwise, the vast majority of people, this Bardo doesn't exist for them. There may be just a few little flickers of light, some I mean, you can gain an intimation of this, by the way, as you fall asleep, some of you, when you fall asleep, you may notice different flashes of color. You may notice some of that taking place math, the vast majority of people, and this is why three of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism don't even really talk overtly about this luminous part of dharmata. This is a Nyingma contribution, so most people will not experience the bar of dharmata at all unless they're familiar with these extremely subtle dimensions of emptiness and also the luminosity. If you're unfamiliar, most people are simply because they haven't done the practices. It's that simple. If you're unfamiliar with these subtle states of mind revealed in this Bardo, it will flash by in a finger snap, completely missed. Those who have practiced the meditations that facilitate recognition will reap the rewards and attain liberation at the level of the Dharmakaya or sambhogakaya. So it gets a little technical here again, but we talked about this two months ago. First phase of the luminous bardo dharmata Is the emptiness phase. That's the Dharmakaya phase, the mil thing this phase, second phase is the sambogakaya phase, the luminosity phase. That's where all the Deities appear. And so if you're not familiar with the empty nature of your brain, you're not going to recognize phase one. If you're not familiar with the fully de reified luminous nature of your experience, you're going to miss phase two, and you're going to skip over that and basically pop in, right into the karmic bar to be coming, which is highly analogous or concordant, to the dream state. And then what happens, just like in in a dream. That's why it's called the dream at the end of time, by the way. What takes over, if you don't, it makes so much sense to me. What takes over if you don't, your habits, just like in the dream. What controls your dream if you don't, your habits, your karma. What controls your dream at the dream, at the end of time, same thing, your habits, your karma. What did Trungpa Rinpoche? Rinpoche say, what is it that reincarnates? What did he say? Your bad habits, that's what takes control. So the idea here, this is where the lucidity practices come into gear. You know, when you want to have a lucid death experience, Dream Yoga comes into play. Here, for sure, you want to wake up and say, Oh, wow, hey, I'm dead. Cool, awesome. What do I do now? Oh, I remember this guy reading this dumb book, talking about this practice, well, then send me a text message, send me an email. I'll pick it up in the dream, and I'll go high five. You made it, and then off you go, whoosh, just a coffee or some really cool place. Okay, keep me in mind, not me the lineage, those who are practicing meditations, yes, okay, without this preparation, most of us will wake up in the comic bar to be coming just like in a dream. For nearly everyone, the first experience after gaining consciousness is a sense of being in their own body. Just like, tell me you fall asleep, right? You probably haven't thought about this before. You think that you have a body in your dream, right? You don't trust me on this. Castaneda was wrong when he said, By the way, I won't get into the story. I talked briefly. I talked to a guy wasn't when I was in Costa Rica Hamish, you may remember him, right? He hung out with Castaneda and Juan. I had the most amazing conversation with this guy, and he told me that Don Juan was a really cool guy, and that he really didn't like Carlos at all, because Carlos basically, the first one or two books were original. They were basically based but then Carlos, again, I'm just telling him, telling you what he said me that Carlos basically realized he could make a lot of money and started writing this stuff that was basically just fiction. So I'm just telling you what I heard from this guy, but I thought his his conversations were pretty compelling. So the idea here is, carcinoid is in the art of war. I'm sorry, the art of dreaming talks about looking at your hand. Well, what he doesn't say, is there's no hand to look at in the dream. There's no dream body in the dream there isn't you create it. This is generation stage. You create it in the act of looking at it. There's no dream body. There's no dream hand in there. It's exactly the same in the Bardo becoming there's no body in there. It's actually, literally no body. It's empty, empty form. It's actually created. Perception is creation. Is created in the act of perception. This is so cool to me. Yeah, so everybody wakes up a sense of being in their own body. Why? Because that's the biggest habit. That's the strongest habit, the habit for habitation. I love the play on words. This is this. The next sentence is really quite profound. We take on existence because we believe in existence. Let me say that again, we take on existence because we believe in existence. This is why the teachings on emptiness are everything. So you're going to come back into a body, because when that rug is pulled out from underneath you and you're sent flying, well, unless you're equipped to fly like a sky dance or a dakini, you're going to panic. You're going to contract because there's too much space. Space is the Buddhist version of God, another great line from Trungpa, Rinpoche. Rinpoche, this God is pretty scary, because there's no place for personal identity and face in the face of this god. I like this so we contract out of fear. The very contraction creates the sense of self. You're contracting onto nothing, right? You're literally, even at this moment, you're not contracting onto the Self. The Self, the contraction creates the illusion that there is the self that's huge. You're not referring contracting to a self because there isn't one. The contraction itself creates the illusion that there is a self. And it's because of this reason that you're going to contract, literally, eventually through the contractions of your mother and then be popped out into it yet another birth. So this grasping contraction thing all born of inability to recognize emptiness or fear of being so open, that's what drives the whole show. Really trust me on this. Send me another postcard when you figure this out in the Bardos, my inbox is always open from text messages from the Bardos. I always, I always receive those, so don't be shy to send me one. Okay. I love to hear from people when they transition, even though the mind is without a body at this point, the habit karma of being so embodied is so strong that it continues. This is the. This is called the bhava samskara This is the heaviest of all samskaras. The samskaras are your makers. When you die, you're going to meet your maker. Your makers are your samskaras, your habit patterns. And so if you understand this phenomenology and process, now you can meet your maker now through deep meditation, through dying, before you die,
you feel like your old self, but you don't know that you're dead. Why? Because you're it's a non lucid death experience, just like you don't know that you're dreaming when you're dreaming, just like the movie sixth sense. Biggest problem in the Bardos is not realizing that you're in them. You don't know that you're dead when you're dead, when you're dead, just like you don't know that you're dreaming when you're dreaming, it's exactly the same phenomenology. So one way to prepare lucid dreaming, Dream Yoga, for sure. Padmasambhava, right? Same guy, Guru Rinpoche. It's an archetypal number, so don't take it literally, but he guarantees if you can attain lucidity seven times seven times means, with some regularity. Then that level of of kind of constancy or ability to recognize dreams comes to fruition at the dream at the end of time. You attain lucidity, conscious dying at the dream at the end of time. And then guess what? Just like in a lucid dream, you can control, you can shape. You can form your formless awareness intentionally. This makes it's just to me, it's just physics. This makes so much sense to me, amazing, since this Bardo was ruled by the winds of karma, this is the Bardo of windy. Bardo of becoming the experiences are particularly fickle. These winds are not literal winds, of course, but a metaphor for how we are blown around by the power of our karma. Exactly what blows us around in a long lucid dream, it's the same kind of inner wind, because we have a mental body in this Bardo, just like in the dream, we're tossed around like a leaf and an autumn windstorm. That's a great image. Actually, I like that one, helpless. In the previous Bardos, there's at least a theoretical order. In the Bardo of dying, there are the eight stages of the outer and inner dissolution, and the Bardo of dharmata, we have the two phases on the march of the 100 and peaceful raffle of deities over 12 meditation days. It's like, it's like the 12 days of Christmas, right? I love this. This is just the 12 days of the Bardo, somebody. We have a musicians here. We have to come up with, like, you know, on the first day of the Bardo, Samantha Badra came to me. I mean, we could go through this every 12 days and plug in a couple deities. I mean, like, why not? Right? That's actually not a bad idea. In the Bardo becoming there is no such order. That's what makes a Bardo becoming so difficult. It's so disordered, It's so chaotic, because all the laws, there are four main laws of transitional karma that being played out. And this is why it's just such a big kind of mess. Cacophony as all these habit patterns get sorted out, the Bardot text presents a somewhat standard set of experiences, hanging around people in places, from your last life waking up to the shocking fact that you're dead. What do they say? Like a fish roiling in hot sand with a great image coming upon the three precipices, the three Grand Canyons. These represent the Grand Canyons of passion, aggression and ignorance that are the principal three poisons, that are the three principal habits of inappropriate relationship to reality. So when you come across the three Grand Canyons and the Bardos, they represent, as everything does in a dream, they represent these three principal Grand Canyons of habit patterns. I want it. I don't want it. I could care less. This is just so profound. This is so cool. It's just a big dream. Uh, yes, coming across the three precipices coming before Yama, the Lord of Death, that's just basically coming. You're not coming before any external agency. This is just you. We're so busy judging ourselves and other people. Well, we're going to judge, so to speak, ourselves in a in a somewhat dramatic way, in the court of the law of the Lord of Death, seeing the lights of the realms of samsara, seeing your eventual parents in union, etc, etc. So they're all this stuff is rift and pretty tremendous, tremendous detail in the third part of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And also Francesca Fremantle, incredible book, luminous emptiness. She has like 100 pages on this stuff. It's really great stuff. Now, the timing is not definite. Nothing's definite here. Nothing is fixed in this Bardo. That's why it's so challenging. It's groundless, it's fleeting, it's windy. That's what makes it so unsettling. All sorts of things can happen at any time. The only framing is the recapitulation of the dying experience that occurs every seven days. Days, as discussed below, we spend an average of 49 days. These are solar days. They're not meditation days. A luminous bardo dharmata is defined by meditation days. A meditation day is again, I'm just telling you. What I read is five times the duration that you can rest in the nature of your mind without distraction. Now, okay, that's either bad news or good news. So if you can rest in the nature of your mind for five seconds, you will rest in the luminous Bardo Dharma talk for 25 seconds. So that's going back in terms of like so called even though there is no space and time in that Bardo. That's why these are meditation days. They're not solar days in the Bardo, becoming according to these teachings, these are solar days. These are analogous to what we know in our world of space and time. Yes, though the time is not fixed because of all the wind in this Bardo, nothing is fixed. So what you want to do before a big hurricane is you want to pin everything down now, right? Get ready for a storm, batten down the hatches, pin everything down now. What do you want to pin it down to the present moment, resting your mind and awareness itself. You can do that. This is the great gift of the open awareness meditations, Mahamudra Dzogchen, these practices. This is gonna this a cupcake. It's gonna flow through this, and it's gonna be the most enjoyable ride. This barter can flash by in an instance, or you can get stuck there for years. But on average, the first half of these 49 days is associated with a life that has just ended, while the second half is associated with the next one. About halfway through this Bardo, there's a shift in experience. There's a growing dislike for the body of the previous life and the desire to get away from it. So this is what I'm basically doing here, by the way, is I'm just basically recapitulating all the dozens of books I've read and all the teachers I've talked to that espouse, with some consistency, these teachings, right? Take it or leave it to make things even more confusing. The world of this after death, Bardo sometimes overlaps with our own, especially during the first half. Bardo beings are called a Manomaya made of mind, or gandharavas, basically, like ghosts. Term also means celestial musician. That's a cool term. I like that. It should be a, there should be a band called The gandharavas, Hamish. That's for you, my friend, the Gandharvas, right? The celestial musicians. Okay, where was I here? Oh yes, especially during the first half. Bardo beans will hover over their own physical bodies and visit family and friends. This is why you can pick up on them. You can feel them. You can feel them in your mind. Space really open, open. You can feel them. They'll come they'll visit you in the dreams, they'll come around you in your mind, space, you can definitely pick up on these, these agencies. This is when you can really help them with your stability. You know you can invite them into your mind space. This is what I do when friends transition family and whatnot, they die. I always invite them. I call out to them. I always invite them into my mind space I work with, mixing my mind with theirs. I tell them what's happened. This is just me. You know how weird I am to say, you know, you've transitioned, you're in the Bardo, and I just kind of, you know, guide them in a very heartfelt, informal way. They tend to come by at meal times, fuss over our activities, and not even know they're dead, as we'll see, they're also clairvoyant. Yeah? So these beings, because they're they're no longer limited by the constraints of time and space. They have these temporary psychic capacities. They can read our minds, they can tune into all kinds of interesting things. Because they're not fully embodied yet. They're in a highly liquid, fluid and empty environment where these kind of supernormal powers are available to them, actually, and so this can be used to great advantage if, in fact, you recognize this and can take advantage of these powers. This is why we can call them into our mind space and help them. One marker of experience is that situations get increasingly chaotic. As one progresses through this Bardo, the winds of karma pick up strength the further we go. Recognition becomes increasingly difficult because of developing panic. And unless you know what's going on and can correct, can direct these wins into a fortunate realm of existence, you will be tossed around uncontrollably into your next life. Just look at your dreams. Look at your dreams.
Ka, Kala Rinpoche writes quote, it is an entirely automatic or blind result of our previous actions, habits, karma, and nothing that occurs. Here is a conscious decision on the part of the being. We are simply buffeted around by the forces of karma. Well, that's only if you're. Not lucid to it. If you're lucid to it, it's a totally different show, completely different, just like in a lucid dream, with one moment of recognition, right? And what is it, recognition and liberation are simultaneous. How many times does it say that in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, recognition and liberation are simultaneous with one moment of recognition, just like in a lucid dream, boom, what previously controlled you now you have control over, or at least you can witness. That's a massive game changer. This is why you want to work with these moments of lucidity, awareness, recognition. It's everything without recognition, habits take over. This makes so much sense. Once we leave the bard of dharmata, the display of wisdom is over. Right, right, all heaven breaks loose. In the bard of dharmata, in the bar to becoming all hell breaks loose. Because we're more familiar with hell than we are of heaven. We don't recognize our Heavenly Nature. So when Heaven is broken loose, we don't reckon I'm not a deity, I'm not divine, I'm not basic purity, I'm not God. And so we contract all hell breaks loose. Oh, that's me. That's my that's my life. I can relate to hell. I can't relate to heaven. That's because we practice hell. We work in hell. That's why confusion returns with a vengeance, and the luminous part of dharmata, oh, yeah, here we go. All heaven breaks loose. There's so much wisdom that the confused mind is overwhelmed. What did TS Eliot say? Humanity, humankind can only bear so much truth or so much reality, something like that. That's a good one. Same thing applies here. And the comic of Bardo becoming all hell breaks loose. There's so much confusion, we're overwhelmed. And the Bardos, the thermonuclear power of the mind, both its wisdom and confusion, is unleashed. Why? Because it's no longer restrained and held by a body. Just imagine. It's just it's just mind. This is why we want to become familiar with our wisdom and confusion. Now, while it's still contained and restrained by the body, what's the definition of meditation in Tibetan, to become familiar with, that's what the word literally means, G, O, M, gone, to become familiar with with who you are not. That's your confusion with who you are. That's your wisdom. This is what the path is designed to do. In general terms, the first half of the spiritual path is about becoming familiar with our confusion with who we are not starting with the gross form of our body, then the more subtle forms of our mind, we progressively dis identify from who we think we are. The path reveals that I'm not my body, I'm not my thoughts and my emotions. If something is mine, it can't be me, my body, my thoughts, my emotions, are something I possess, actually like they possess us. Basically, I am something more subtle than even the most subtle of forms. In a sense, we're backing our way into enlightenment, literally retreating, remembering. We're discovering who we truly are through the process of progressive disidentification. We are first identifying and then dying to our false sense of self. This is what the Hindus refer to as neti. Neti, the teachings are not this, not that, or in Christian language, the V and negativa,
the second half of the path is about become familiar with our wisdom, with who we are at a certain point, which is called the path of saying we finally see who we really are. This is where we want to get in this life. By the way, we want to get to the third of the five paths, which is just hard. They're not five paths. Their stage is not one path. But we want to get to the path of seeing in this life, because that's when you see who you really are. You see the nature of reality for the first time, that's a non retrogressive experience. You may not be stable, but in a real way, you're never fooled again. You've cut through appearance to see the nature of reality. Then you went to the fourth path, that's the path of familiarity, the path of meditation, where you, in fact, you stabilize that gaze into a that peak into a gaze steady, peak into a plateau. That's where you want to get in this life.
I am something more subtle than even more subtle forms. Here we go, the second half of the path. Here we go. Yes. So this is the path of saying a pivotal moment, a major before and after experience. The obscuring clouds have thinned out on the first half of the path to the point that the sun finally breaks through. The sun is formless awareness, your true nature, and this sun never sets. Jamala language. Is called the Great Eastern sun. It's the indestructible, very subtle bodies, also called machikpa, tiglai, the indestructible Bindu, which means indestructible continuum. This is who you really are. Your deathless to us, nature, the very subtle, indestructible body, the luminous emptiness Dharmakaya, that is your essential being, and it does not die. Why? Because it was never born. So my friend David Loy says this beautifully, such is the Buddh skull to discover that which cannot die because it was never born. That's pretty good. That's pretty good until the mortal forms that are gradually shed on the first half of the path, or rapidly shed during the Bardo dying. This formless awareness, precisely because it is formless is immortal. Formless means deathless. The second half of the path, called the path of meditation. That's the fourth of the five paths, or the path of familiarity is about becoming familiar with your true nature. Well, you know, basically, once you get rid of all the fake news, the real news reveals itself. Just get rid of the dust, get rid of the adventitious defilements, remove the obscurations, and truth is revealed. That's what the path does. This is what death does. Death is just a wrathful form of liberation in eight non negotiable stages, who you are not gets dusted away, right? That's just so brilliant. Basically, all the adventitious define us are brushed away, brushed away, brushed away. It's happened when you're aging, right? Look in the mirror, man, it's already happening. Dusting away, dusting away, dusting away, and then eventually got Aga. It's all gone, and there you are. You're left with your true nature. The issue is we recognize it. Yes, that's me. Tattvam, asi. Thou art that I am infinite, open space. I am God. I am the Divinity, whatever you want to call it. That's enlightenment. But if your mind isn't that big, if your mind isn't that open, if you're familiar with contraction and that openness, what do you do again? Whiplash, when your collision with infinity. I love that line, vertigo of eternity. Milan Kundera, right, Whiplash with a collision with infinity, that whiplash creates a contraction that throws you back habitually into a dimension of existence you are familiar with. I gotta make so much sense form, body, identity. Yes, that's me. I'm not nobody, I'm somebody. I'm not nothing, I'm something. Well, there you go. That's how rebirth takes place, right there, right there? You take on existence because you believe in existence. You take on a body because you believe you're somebody. I mean, write this down, tack it on your forehead, put it on your fridge. This is a big deal. Get over yourself. Realize you're nobody in the best sense. Realize you're nothing in the best sense, then you've won the game. This is so great. Yes, this is what the chandokya Upanishad refers to as tat swam ASI thou art that, or the via positiva. Once you have I positively identified yourself? It's like being in a lineup. I just is a great image, right? It's being like in a police lineup, right? You have to pick out the positive identification. Like, in this case, who are you really to line up get rid of all the fake right? Suspects. And then the positive identification takes place. Yes, that's me, nobody, nothing, emptiness, that's it. That's death, that's enlightenment, if you recognize it, once you have positively identified yourself, you suffer from a wild case of mistaken identity. Crime, like crime is an identity theft, right? Such a big deal these days, right? This is a primordial identity theft that takes place a crime in broad daylight every time we identify with form. That's what ego is, exclusive identification with form. This ID will be taken away from you, that wallet will be stolen along with everything else. Can you positively identify who you really are? Hey, really that's it. If you can high five, that's it. You can have a great journey. Otherwise, you're going to freak out. I am not that big. I'm not. The universe. So this is the other thing. I'll say this 1000 times. It's such a great swap. If you just get this, it's huge, right? It's such a great deal. But let's make a deal. Let's make a cosmic deal. This is the great swap. When you die, your body is going to be replaced by the universe. That's a hell of a deal. I mean, goodness, if you get that, I'll swap out this old, worn out thing for the cosmos. I'll become the cosmos. You are the cosmos. You just forgot. If you understand that, and you get rid of this frail, little contracted thing, you realize that you're going to be replaced by the universe, Mr. Or Mrs. Universe. Talk about a beauty pageant. This is a real beauty pageant, and you go, shit, I'll do this. I'll do this death thing. I'm going to become the cosmos. But of course, it's, I'm, quote, unquote, it's not you. It's not Putin or any big becal, old maniac, narcissist. This is the true you, the selfless, deathless. You, the big Su, big SS self. By allowing you Yes, okay, yes. Now yes, once you have positively identified yourself, that's the path of saying you now work to stabilize. That's a path of familiarization. Fourth path, become familiar with this newfound identity by allowing you to see who you are, not confusion, and then pointing out who you really are. Wisdom, meditation prepares you for every phase of death. These teachings bring to new meaning. The great Greek Ephraim is aphorism in the temple of Apollo, I believe, or maybe Delphi, maybe Delphi Know thyself. They were on at these Greeks. I'm telling you, I'm into it in a big way. I'm really into this Greek thing. These days, I had no I had no idea there was so much wisdom in the Greek tradition. I mean, I just had no idea. I'm blown away. Rinpoche says again, why do we live in such terror of death? Because perhaps the deepest reason why we're afraid of death, is that we do not know who we are. And if we don't know who we are, how do we know what we really want? I mean, think about that. If you don't know who you are, how can you possibly know what you want? We don't know who we are. So we think, oh, I want this. I want that. I want this. I want no, you don't. You don't want any of that. You don't need any of that back to him. We believe in a personal, unique and separate identity, but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up, our name, our biography, our partners, family, home, jobs, friends, credit cards, CV, resume, I it is on their fragile and transient support that we that we rely for our security, for our very identity. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea who we really are. We live under an assumed identity and an erotic fairy tale world with no more reality than the Mock Turtle and Alice in Wonderland, hypnotized by the thrill of building we have raised the house of our lives on sand. This world can seem marvelously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place, and what will happen to us if we have no clue of any deeper reality? That's pretty damn good. That's a great quote. A principal feature, how are we doing? Time wise, oh, we're good. A principal feature of the Bardo becoming is that radiance, that's the thermonuclear power of the bardo dharmata is perverted into projection. So the mind is continuing to shine, but it's no longer shining purely as it was in the dharmata, now that the shine is turned and flipped into projection. And so that same same thermonuclear power that would just radiate now basically projects an entire sense of externality, just like in a dream. There is no out there, out there that's a projection. And then on top of that illusion of externality, then we build all these secondary, tertiary, quadronary projections that are psychological projections, that are coloring book upon this primordial projection. And all that projection then, of course, is rejected, so to speak, retracted, brought back when we die. This is the combustion cycle of expansion and contraction. It's another way to explain this whole thing.
In other words, the luminous shine of the awakened mind that radiates on the bardo dharmata is now filtered, colored and flipped upside down by the lens of the three poisons, as depicted in our hourglass diagram. This happens rapidly in the first three phases of the Bardo becoming it's the mirror image or reverse of what happened in the last three phases of the Bartle authority. So this is cool. I sent this I sent this diagram to. Mike 11, who's this guy's going to win a Nobel Prize? He's an incredible biologist out of Tufts University. And a conversation with him and some people working in AI about a month ago, and I said he has this really mind bending stuff, way beyond the scope of what we talk about here, about this kind of bow tie image of the contraction and expansion of all phenomenal displays. And so I somehow got connected with this guy. We had a riff for about an hour. I sent him my little thing on the hourglass about this bow tie model being connected to the to the entire creation of manifest, phenomenal reality. And he was, he thought it was pretty damn cool. It's just another iteration of this sort of process. So just a sidebar there that was really pretty jazzed to see his his thinking along these lines as well, really. I mean so much to say, but I better not go there. Okay, it's the mirror image. He says, Yeah. So Black attainment, ignorance, red increase, passion, white, appearance, aggression. These are the three rude poisons act as a tri colored lens to transform the lucid luminosity of the mind into projection. Oh, this is some cool, deep stuff. Again, this is nice. I'm into this. Instead of shining out with non dual clarity, wisdom is twisted into dualistic confusion, this projective prowess of the confused mind is a central theme in this part away as it is in life. What did Carl Jung say? Projection turns the world into an image of one's unknown face. What an amazing line. Projection transforms the world into an image of one's unknown face. Wow, this guy was an effing genius. I mean, you think you're living in a world that's like pure perception. There's no such thing as an immaculate perception. We completely plaster the world in our image. Basically, we're living in a world of shadows, projections all the time. I mean, totally all the time. The power of thought and habit becomes overwhelming issue in this Bardo, thought becomes reality here, just like in a dream, but unlike ordinary dreaming, we can't wake up and take refuge in a solid body. This is why we freak. We're stuck having to face our own confused mind. This is precisely why you do things like dark retreat. Not no day at the beach, but you want to own up to your projections. Do deep shadow work. You want to go to the do the deepest shadow work. Go into the deepest of all shadows, pitch black. Go into the dark. To re own all these projections. There's other ways to do it, of course, but this is a good one. That's another reason I'm into that practice. We're stuck having to face our own confused mind, which is why this Bardo gets horrific. On one level, you can't distract yourself in the Bardo, distraction means you're distracting from something, some stable reference of body. In this body, in this Bardo, there are no reference. There's no hitching post. Distraction itself becomes your reality. So if you haven't learned how to control your distracting thoughts and emotions while they are still encased and therefore restrained by the body, when that body drops away and thoughts are set free, things get a little gnarly. Oh, this is, this is just fantastic. This is like classic gallows humor. I mean, we could get Monty Python to do something with this. This is so great. This is so sick. The untrained mind runs wild, Trungpa, Rinpoche. Rinpoche, the mind of the being in the Bardo becoming as a very hard time coming to rest at all. Therefore, the hallucinations are extremely intense, and there are very many of them. Yeah, that's all there is. The mind is so bewildered by all of this that it cannot control its thoughts of good and bad. Therefore, the most important preparation for this state is to develop stability of mind through the practice of mindfulness shamatha. To the degree that you can control your mind now you will be able to control it in the BARDA. What did Kabir say? What is found now is found then, and to the same degree you will be better, be better able to withstand the onslaught of your own thoughts. Wow. Another really great one, the Bardo becoming is a cosmic Pandora's box, the urge to escape from the contents of this box, the Bardo itself, is nothing more than the urge to run away from yourself, from the contents of your own mind. This is what makes darker repeats so difficult. By the way, you get in there for a little while, it's kind of cool for maybe an hour or so, maybe a day or so. It was kind of cool. Well, not so cool. It starts to warm up, gets a little hotter, gets a little hotter. It gets a little hotter. In there, it gets a little hotter. Why? Because you can't move to fan off. You can't distract wherever you go. There you are. And then eventually you just want to break the door down and run out screaming. Why? Why? What are you trying to get away from yourself? What happens in the Bardo becoming what hurdles you back into the next life? You can't stand yourself, right? Oh, oh, this reminds me. I don't mean to offend anybody here, but I'm big into what's his name? Wright, the comedian. What's his first name, Stephen Wright. Do you know him? The laconic one liner and talk I came across he was on Stephen Colbert a couple months ago. I love this guy. He He's so dead pan funny, and he says something that just floored me. So I don't mean to offend anybody, but this is pretty damn funny. So here's here's this joke. He says, Jesus loves you because he doesn't really know you yet. I don't know why I find that absolutely hysterical. So you know, just like Jesus can't stand you, you can't stand yourself. And actually think about this, if you can't stand being with yourself, how can you expect anybody else to be with you? How can you, how can you expect anybody else to stand you? So cut your partners and your intimate lovers, whatever. Cut them a little bit of slack if you can't even be with yourself, and that's what you're going to run away from in the Bardo. If you just can't deal with it, I can't deal with myself. I gotta run. I gotta move from what, from what, from yourself, and then what is that? That's the that's the primordial distraction. This is so profound to distract means to pull apart. So the primordial distraction, pulling apart from the nature of mind and reality, from the enlightened state, starts here, and it's recapitulated every time we distract in daily life. That's just a small bang from the big bang of this primordial distraction. So everything we do is basically distraction upon distraction upon distraction, fracture upon fracture, dismemberment upon dismemberment. And I'm arguing with these scientists, this what we can discover at dark practice. This is the basis of the metacrisis. This is what creates the metta crisis, fracture upon fracture, upon fracture upon fracture, healing upon healing upon healing comes back when you hold this is what happens fundamentally in deep practice or in the Bardos. This is so cool. Okay? Nothing more than the urge to run away from the contents of our own mind, who we are, our karma. So when they say you're being chased in the Bardos, they say, oh, all these entities are chasing us, just like when you're in a dream. You know they're chasing you. There's nobody chasing you in there. It's just your karma coming after you? It's just your habits following after you. It's your not your carbon footprint following you. This is why you don't want to leave just a karmic carbon footprint. You don't want to leave a karmic footprint, because if you leave a karmic footprint, they'll find you, they'll come after you on the Bardo. So, so great. This just makes so much sense to me. We want, yeah, what Listen, this is what forces us to take refuge on a new solid body. Give me some ground, give me some stability, give me something I'm familiar with. Give me some relief. Give me some form. This is the phenomenology of the rebirth process right here, this is the whole thing we want to get away from ourselves. In this regard, it's like a dream. It's actually a nightmare. We eventually do take refuge in a new form and wake up in our next life, and it all starts up again. Lovely, lovely. Finally, without the anchor of the body, things happen so quickly and intensely that we'll be hanging on for dear life, a colloquialism that becomes literal, that's pretty good. This is why we want to exit the Bardos altogether during the bardo dharmata, or as early as possible in the Bardo becoming otherwise the dream, like nature of the Bardos turns into a very windy nightmare. God, this is fun. This is great. I haven't read this in so long. This is this is kind of cool stuff.
I love it. It's all about me. Oh my gosh, it's seven o'clock. So okay, so here we'll stop for today. I try to limit this at an hour mark. So yeah, this is cool. So where do we leave off here? Any questions or comments or offerings? 25 I always try to leave a few minutes, I'll check to see if there's anything in the chat. But otherwise, this is the chance for you to chime in. If something doesn't land with you, let me know you'd always have. Agree with everything that's being spewed forth, you're more than welcome to say so sure about this.
All right, we have a couple hands
up. Okay. Fire away. Hey, Barbara.
Hey, Andrew, hi. I've been away for a while, so just coming back to this, and I have a couple of well, one is a question. One is, when you say that in the Bardo of the 49 days of the actual 49 days of the Bardo, that you can get stuck in it for years? How do you get stuck in it for years if you're already dead, and we're talking about 49 days and
yeah? Well, yeah, I can only tell you. So this is where I have to just rely on the tradition, right? So this is what creates these lost souls. I hate to use the word ghost, because we have so many kind of Western, silly, not so great associations and kind of with the ghost being. But there is a realm called The Hungry Ghost Realm, and there are all these realms of non human intelligence, as you know. And so what the tradition says here, and I'm just being a mouthpiece for what I've read, is that a being can become so lost in this particular dimension for reasons that are way above my pay grade, that they literally just don't know that they're in that transitional state. And there's some really haunting pardon the pun literature I might recommend if you're interested in this, a Reggie Ray's book, Secrets of the Varjo world the last couple chapters, he's got some really interesting riffs on this, and he shares a very personal story. I talked to other people who are at some of these events. It's too much for me to share. Now, I'd have to just pull the book out and read it from you, for you. But he shares some really interesting information about exactly this type of process and how it is that we can help people who get stuck in these interstitial spaces, these interdimensional Spaces, we're basically non lucidity and have our patterns are so strong again, just It's just like being stuck in a really bad acid trip or being stuck in A really bad dream for a really long time. Okay, so I don't have anything more to say about that. I don't have any recollection of these sorts of things, so I'm just being a representative of what I've read in the literature, but it's pretty consistent in the tradition. I have to say
that just yeah, that's okay. That's a clarification of what that means. Yeah, one thing I just wanted to say was just kind of, I started out today with, you know, when you started out and talking about how, well, you don't need this whole kit and so forth that, basically, you know, to just relax, get out of your own way. If you've lived a good life, a fairly good life, you'll have a fairly good death and so forth, and that's kind of reassuring. And then we get to the next part, and I'm just horrified, because I don't know that I'm going to be attaining this level of authority of mind and so forth, that the way things are going right now, it doesn't look like it. So it just feels like I'm more I'm dreading this more than I ever did before, even so,
so, so use this to your advantage. This is what's called wholesome fear. So let me this is what led to Miller rape. Is enlightenment. So remember, you remember Miller raper? Right? Yes. 37 people had some pretty heavy karmic Dudu, what did he say? In horror of death, I took to the mountains contemplating again and again on the uncertainty and the hour of death. I captured the fortress of the Deathless, unending nature of mind. Thus all fear of death is over and done with. So this is what's called wholesome fear. Lamozopa Rinpoche wrote an entire book by this title, literally called wholesome fear. Get it this is, this is healthy fear. This puts the fear of habit cap karma into your system. It's like, whoa. Wait a second here. I need to be a little bit interested, slash concerned, in the type of habit patterns I've created. So take this energy and use it as a driver to, um, kind of bring you to levels of of realization and confidence, where the fear is then transformed into fearlessness. So this is a
while, though. I mean, unfortunately, it seems what it does lead to more is paralysis and depression. So, but yeah, I of like, well, it's hopeless. Why? You know, I'm not going to get there.
Well, so then here's the other thing you do. So this, there's two ways to approach it. So this is, you know, from the from the jiriki, or self effort side, you do what I just said, or why? I'm recommending the other side is the tariqi side, the other power side, surrender open to divinity, to whatever higher power you have some connection with. The entire Pure Land tradition is based on this fact, tariqi supersedes jiriki tariqi. The tradition says that in order to go from the eighth of Boomi beyond, one has to pass beyond the limits of self power jiriki, and you have to open and surrender to greater powers. So if you're, if you're having issues with this, it's like Chucky Nimba Rinpoche said, I'll never forget this. He gave a teaching in Nepal when I was living there for a year. I attended every week. You have programs I attended every week, and I'll never forget one day he was talking about the Bardos, and he said something so point blank, it was great. You said, you know, you guys, I mean paraphrasing a little bit, when everything else fails in the Bardo and you feel like you're just losing and you don't know what to do, he basically said, Just cry out from the bottom of your heart for help. And so honestly, if, if, if, that might be the place to put some of your eggs in that basket, the tariqi basket opening I'm not familiar with, sorry. Sorry, it's a Japanese term. It basically means other power, encounter, distinction to self power, other power is everything in the Pure Land schools is basically where you open yourself to a power other than ego, other than you, and you again. What is it? It's a way to trick you into surrendering. It's a way to trick you into opening. And so you might want to explore the in fact, there's a, there's an entire book by that title, by a Japanese, I think, poet called tariqi. So, you know,
they're emunji, like, T, A, R, i, k, I, exactly,
exactly, yeah. And then look at the Pure Land schools. I mean, this is one reason I'm riffing on the Pure Land stuff. I did several programs with it last year, no, this year, oh my gosh, this year, in May, I did a whole week on it. I did? Yeah, I wasn't able to do that. The Pure Land. Things are non trivial. I mean, this is for most of us, this is the best we're going to be able to do. And so diving into that stuff to book peaceful destiny for rebirth, there's a substantial literature out on it now. Listen to the interview I did with Mark uno a couple months back, the Pure Land thing is non trivial. Some pay, but live long enough where I write a book on it that may not happen. I
had just one other thing. Sorry, I'm taking time. So I did some ketamine sessions a few years back, and it was not well organized or whatever the word I wanted, which I can't think of right now, but some of the experience sad me, just kind of going into this deep pit of darkness of which I could not get out. And it was frightening. And afterwards, my kind of semi conscious mind was saying, I wonder if this is what it's going to be like during the death process. And so that was a little it's only going
to be that way in the upper bandwidth. Um, so this is where it's helpful to understand the structure of the mind. Remember, so just brief sidebar, because this is a really big topic. Like Bob Thurman says, beautifully, it's not safe to die as long as you have an unconscious mind. Why? Just like the paragraph we ended with, that Pandora's box is going to come up. But if you understand the dimensions and the structure of the mind, and I've studied this pretty ferociously for quite a while, it's only the upper bandwidths are, where the spiders and snakes handout, hang out. That's all the repressed Freudian elements. That's that's where all the crap that you're scared shitless about, because that's where all that repressed stuff is is stored. That's what actually creates that dimension of the unconscious mind. That's what you are falling into in your ketamine journey. You go below that. It's like going below the surface, chopping scuba dive below this the spiders and snakes are the sages and saints. Below that are where the deities and the gods and all the divinities. The farther you go down, the sedimentation of the unconscious mind, the purer it becomes.
So you just stick with it, rather than trying to run away.
Exactly. If you run away, what are you going to do? You can contract away from it. You're going to pop out and contract away from it. So establish a relationship to that fear. Notice the somatic, visceral reaction, which is one of intense contraction. This is exactly this is the principle driving emotion in samsara. Fear is the affective expression of ignorance. So when you're working with this fear, this is actually a really good sign we're getting down to the matrix of relative conditioned reality. And so if you understand that, and you don't capitulate to the contraction of that fear, which is going to squirt you right back out our entire lives, are an avoidance strategy of that. If you understand what that is. And you allow yourself to relate to that fear, to it, not from it. You'll drop below it. And once you drop below it, you drop into the radiance and the purity of all this incredible beauty and beneficence and sacredness it lies below that. So this is why it's really helpful to understand the structure of your being, to know yourself, to know who you really are, because that crap show is just a I've
been avoiding that for decades.
No, this is, this is Tantra, Alchemy, you know, don't avoid it. You know, go into it. Make friends with it. Relate to it. Cut through it. Cut that Truck Show. Cut through it. Use this. Use this as an alchemical invitation to drop a no, and then you'll conquer fear. I mean, trust me on this, because it's not who you are. This is just the bedrock of your relative self sense. Okay,
everything that you've said today is just like hitting bang on to everything that I've been going through and I've been listening a lot. Thanks to you. To Patrick Harpo, not listening, reading and listening, and along with him, Bernardo kastrop Again, thanks to you. And it's just these two and everything have just kind of come together to just begin to become a real opening into you know, everything that you theoretically know and you believe. But then it's you know reason captures you, holds you tight and says, No, don't go there anyway. So because I think Bernardo is talks reason, but he puts so he's talking to that aspect of myself personally, and just kind of debunking it all anyway. So along those lines, as I'm going, I feel like what I'm going through is this kind of in this Bardo at this present moment, whilst alive still, and where a lot of hallucinations, or what I would more call, like synchronicities, you know, popping up kind of very intensely. And so there's a couple things. There's one thing is, where there's this disassociation effect of myself. So I have a lot of disassociation due to a lot of different things, but the I use it to my advantage, and I use it to be able to separate the different parts of myself, kind of like the IFS system. So in doing that, I I've kind of found that there's the little girl self, who there is also the father who I like was taken away from when I was really little. And so I'm I don't know if he's dead or alive, but I feel like he may be dead, and I feel like what's happened is, for a very long time, I've kind of he's come into my mind space. And I don't know if you remember, but I've talked about this kind of figure in my my imaginative space for a long time, and he's kind of like a haunting present. So I really just kind of realized that it was an effect of trauma, kind of like what Jung talks about. And I've just found out that this is all related to my dad and me missing him and but I really think also it's an actual fact that he is actually in my mind space, as a person as well, or an entity, let's say so, disassociation, like where I have These different figures, I am interacting with them, and kind of, it's very windy. So all these figures are, as you said, we're on the, you know, the top, we're kind of going down this hole, and we're going through all this stuff. And very, very windy. It's destabilizing. But as you said, come back to, you know, the clear awareness that it's all just a play. So I'm able to do that, and I appear as, you know, I not appear as but I appear the self Me is coming with the Bodhisattva kind of intention and witnessing awareness and just kind of witnessing with this compassion towards all these disassociative figures going through this kind of hellish situation. So it is that alchemy happening? And I just kind of wanted to get your idea of, is this an appropriate way to relate to what's going on with myself and in creating the self? Is that what we're meant to be doing, like you, you said just now you go beyond down into this kind of realm of the deities and things like that, is creating the, you know, the kind of the core awareness of who we are into a deity, is that kind of what we're we're meant to be aiming to do? Oh,
there's so many questions here somebody go. Ones. Okay, let me take a couple of these. First of all, so cool that you're connecting to both Bernardo and Patrick. Bernardo put me in contract in contact with Patrick, and so I am trying to get him for a podcast as well, because, like you, I'm kind of blown away by the quality of his contribution. So stay tuned on that. And let me just say, Yeah, a couple things before I get to the last part of what you said. You know, you're so smart, you're so sensitive. Thank you so much for sharing what you did. You trust you know, trust the threat of your experience, trust your own wisdom. And I mean, there's nothing you're saying that really causes any concern or alarm to me, I might recommend just a couple of things, just to augment ways of working playing with what's happening. One is, sometimes I find that when my mind is is really windy. Sometimes, in the spirit of reverse meditations, I find it very helpful to make it even windier, because then what you realize is, by making it worse, so to speak, you realize it's all of your own making. Do you see what I'm saying? So there it is. Your mind's out of control. Is windy and whatever, and you're going, oh my god, I have to come back to some No, you don't, right? You know, you don't think you have to have any special experience to be free. That's the most important thing, basically, to somehow think that you have to come back to some sort of equanimity, to some sort of thing, oh, this is not spiritual. Get rid of that. And one way to actually do that is is to actually, I'll reinstate it, because it's so helpful to me is you're having a hard time sometimes. Make it harder intentionally. Just make it worse, make it windier. And when you do that, you realize, well, there's a there's a voluntary silent center to this cyclone that, again, like you mentioned, is creating this kind of witness awareness, where then you can dispassionately but compassionately. And you also said that right, dispassionately, it's more differentiation than it is dissociation. So dissociation, to me, has a slightly potential pathological tinge. It's the near enemy of differentiation. Differentiation is very healthy. Dissociation is when that can be somewhat siloed and reified. So I would language just a little bit differently, but the relationship of this kind of witness to the display is what's key here. And then, just to put an exclamation point on what, what, what you said, I would also sometimes when things get really intense like this, almost like a mantra, realize that whatever arising thoughts are the children of your mind. And by thought here, I mean any content of experience, any content of mind is a child of your mind. Love your mind. Love your children. And so when you're having a really hard time and everything is falling apart, sometimes I will literally say like a mantra. I'm not kidding. I will literally say like a mantra, love your mind. Love your mind. Love your mind because it's your relationship to that display that's problematic, not the display your mind is just doing what it's doing, and if you relate to it appropriately, it all eventually self liberates. So this is a purification. This seems like a purgation. This seems like a purification process where this this shits got to come up. Remember, what did Rinpoche say? Meditation isn't a sedative, it's a laxative. Well, congratulations. You're not doing window shopping. You're doing deep work. You swallow the pill and the shits coming up high five. What do you do with that? Let it come. Let it go. Love it, relate to it properly. Now the last thing, this is a really big topic. I'm not sure how far I can get into this. Now, in terms of what you're meant to do and meant to be, it depends. This is the great gift of these wisdom traditions, as I engage them. There are so many different very skillful ways to work with these types of displays. You're talking a little bit if I understood the last part of it properly in a somewhat a generation stage, approach, deity yoga type of thing, if I heard you properly, that's fantastic way to work with it. If that speaks to you, go for it. The other approaches, the metamitri approach, the formless approach. This is what makes this tradition and others so bloody rich, is we have so many different ways of working with it. So I would just play, explore, and maybe just, I'm basically just supporting everything that you've shared with me and that you've said, you know, there's a lot of purification taking place that sounds like to me, a lot of things breaking loose, coming up, a lot of wind energy, and you start doing this inner work, all the stuff that's trapped in your body, mind is going to come up. It has to it either is going to come up now, it's going to come up when you die, come up and let it come up now. Relate to it now. And then you'll find yourself. You'll find yourself, if you do it, it's going to come up again. And. Again and again, but you're going to notice it's going to come up with less force, it's not going to be as impactful, it's not going to be as real. That's when you know you're purifying. If it's coming back and it's more solid and it's more intense, then I would talk to a therapist, but I would work with with a psychotherapist, and to work with dislodging some of these relationships and more professional capacity. And that's not to say you can't have a professional relationship to it, but these are metrics that I use that keeps coming back, and it's stronger and it's not really uptunding, listening, maybe some outside support is in order. That keeps coming back, but it's a little bit weaker. It's not as solid, it feels a little bit lighter. This is part of the enlightening process. Then you know you're on the path of purification. Okay,
thank you so much. Perfect. Thank
you. Always nice to see you. Okay, two more, and then we have to close it, because I've got to eat. I get as prim das knows, I get very grumpy when I'm not fed. Hey, my friend, yes, sir.
Had a quick question about dreamless sleep, okay, if one becomes lucid in dreamless sleep, can one claim or is that equivalent to path of entering, the path of seeing
it can be and it depends on what dimension of sleep you're talking about, so
dreamless, right?
But even even dreamless, sleep has different dimensions of depth, going from Alia level that's dreamless, all the way down to substrate below substrate level, to rigpa. So it depends on how far down you're going, but if you're yes, indeed, if you're going down, touching into complete formless and first of all, you are not experiencing it. That's what creates the pointing out. Even when you have a pointing out during the day. One reason people miss it all the time is because, by definition, you can't experience it. See, by definition, this is, this is an this is not a state of consciousness. This is a state of awareness. So ego literally goes unconscious. It's actually not an experience, and that's why we don't recognize it. Ego, you actually, you, quote, unquote, become it and again, but yes, in short, what you said spot on, if, in fact, there's some level of recognition that is an instantiation of the path of seeing, yes.
So if you, if you get into that, that level of lucidity in dreamless sleep, into in the rigpa, then there's no, really, there's no, no need to posit a fourth state. Really, is there a Turiya? You don't, because you're, well,
that would be, I mean, that would be TURia. I mean, you know, the Budds don't use that language, but that would be true this language, correct? Yeah,
I'm wondering if that distinction is even necessary, because if one become, you know,
I'm not clear the distinction between what and what prom does say it
again, because in the in the Vedanta, there's the distinction of the three states of mind and then the fourth, but, and that's maybe a useful distinction, but for the practitioner, if one can enter The deeper lucidity, then it's not like you're you're leaving dreamless sleep to go, yes.
And so the other three states are what they're nothing more than colorings of TURia. They're nothing more than various degrees of expansion and contraction of TURia. So if you're using that language, Turia is all there is heart stop. What creates the other three states, or various degrees of condensation, contraction or expansion upon that fundamental state, see. And so therefore, at that level, yes, the distinction no longer applies. And that when you have that, then the fruition of what is turiyatita. So then that's when Turia is actually infused with the three other states. You go beyond the fourth that's turiyatita. That's the point.
So last question related to all this, do people that attain the path of seeing is this the most common way through, you know, in dreamless sleep? No,
the most common way in Hindu is Shakti. Shaktipat, the most common way in Buddhism is pointing out transmission or abhisheka. So it's not the most common way. It's actually a more difficult esoteric way. It's more difficult to recognize this in the nocturnal arena. It's easier to do it in a Shaktipat situation, or in a guru Yogi situation, or in. Abhishek or pointing out those are the more traditional ways of doing it. Okay?
Great questions, my
friend as usual. Okay, I think did Evelyn have one? And then we're we're done. Fire away, dear.
Hi. Thank you very much. Am I unmuted? No,
you are.
Yeah, um, I'll try and make this quick, okay, because I am in the in this particular section of the book, where we're talking about these various Bardos. And in my early life, I'd say, up until my mid 20s, I had many, many, many experiences of, you know, knowing the future, and often it had to do with death, and often it was, you know, people close to me. I didn't always know who, but and also, I experienced threats all my life when I was young, so I turned it all off. I don't know how you do that, but I did. And but in as a consequence, I started, I recognized that I also turned off all my intuition exactly right now and so but what I'm starting, it has seeped through at various times, and what I've experienced in particular that I'm I'm wondering about, is these experiences of people who are in the Bardos? Oh, yeah for sure. Yeah, one in particular who was a about 20 years ago, one who was an alcoholic drug addict, who was a dear friend and came to me and draped himself around my neck, you know, off and on several times over the course of a few weeks. And I had a friend who had the stability, emotionally and spiritually to help me send him on, because it was very disturbing for me on my own. But the thing is, what's starting to happen now as I meditate on a regular basis and working with Jeff, Jeffrey. Oh, yeah, he's
great. Yeah, totally.
I'm starting to have almost on a daily basis, the little you know, previews of what's coming that day. Nice. Um, just little stuff, nothing, nobody's died, you know, none of that stuff. But I wondered what you had to say about that relationship to people you know, experiencing, having relationships with, people who are in the Bardos.
Well, yeah, this is the tricky one, you know. And that, I mean, who am I to say? Right? Can I speak with any authority on this? Not really, but several things here, and I'll just leave it at this. And you have to see what lands with you or not. Two options here. One is for sure, these could indeed be, so called external agencies, entities entering your mind space and you're relating to them in the way that you're talking about challenging that in the slightest, that could very well be what's happening. I mean, His Holiness, Karmapa, for instance, 16th Karmapa, one of his particular characteristics. And there's some remarkable stories around these sorts of things, actually, where, when people would die that or transition that he had some connection with, they would always come to visit him in their, you know, like, unlike a final exit thing, as they're going into the barges. And he would often report these amazing things, sometimes pausing in mid teaching, you know, to like, check in with something. Kemple Carter has the most amazing stories on this. And then later, someone would say, you know, a tenant would say, well, his onlyness, that was kind of curious, interesting. What happened? Oh, he said, Well, this, this being that just died, came and transitioned and let me know. And I'm just like, non plus, just like, this is just what he did. So when one becomes open and porous and permeable to these sorts of things, and maybe you have this kind of empathic, shamanistic psychic capacity naturally, then, I mean, those are all consequences of openness anyway, then those are very legitimate experiences. The other thing that could be happening, and again, I just don't know, is that, especially if something is like, 20 years out, that makes that makes me a little bit more interested, these could just be manifestations of deep, unconscious, unresolved, whatever. In your own unconscious mind coming up. Yeah, so that that is I that's way above my pay grade to centrifuge out whether it's coming from within or from without. They're both completely legitimate. I can't tell you what it is, but you know, I would just again, trust your own experience. Follow the thread of your experience and just and just simply be open to it. I mean, some people really do have capacities to do this, talent skips and whatnot, and then you can become almost a guide and a healer and an aid for people like that. I've heard this. You're not the only one who share this kind of story with me, and it's kind of cool. Yeah, so that you might actually have the capacity to be of benefit with someone like that, like you were talking about, help them make the knowledge transition, help them process and that sort of thing. So what you're sharing is not at all uncommon. It's only common in this, this silly world where we think it's not uncommon, not common, I should say. And this, to me, is why it's so interesting to read literature like the work of Petra Kapoor, Jeffrey kaipal, there's a bunch of really interesting writers who talk about these sorts of things in both academic and New Age communities. I'm a little bit more inclined towards the academic end of it, where they just talk about the extraordinarily beautiful, vast, majestic world we live in, and all these different entities that we can have relationships with. So I'm not sure where else to go with this, outside of that Evelyn, but that's what comes to
mind. Who are those two authors you mentioned, the academic.
I mean, like Kimberly said, I'm a big fan of Patrick harpoor Harper, H, A, R, P, u, r, demonic reality the sorcerer's secret fire, is that what it's called, I just got to know another one of his books on the soul. He's a really wonderful, sensitive writer, and you can get some really listen to the interview he did with Bernardo kastrup on the Essentia foundation. It's about a two and a half hour interview podcast thing with the two of them going back and forth. It's really just totally delightful. The other guy is Jeffrey Kripal out of Rice University. I'm reading one of his books now. He's he's written a ton of stuff on the so called paranormal, the wild side of things. And then also go back and listen to the five hours of interview, two out to 222. And a half hour interviews I did on edge of mind with Sean Espeon hargans. Check out those two podcasts, because Sean writes really, really is an incredible scholar, super smart guy. He writes very elegantly about a field of Excel studies, non human intelligences and the like and ontology matrix. I like this kind of stuff because it just, for me, the way I roll, it just brings a little bit more rigor, intellectual, academic, yeah, yeah. And so I might recommend those dudes. They're pretty cool. There are others. I mean, there's that massive trilogy put out by Edward Kelly and what's his sidekick, consciousness, unbound, irreducible mind and beyond physicalism, 2000 pages, a massive three volume contribution from a series of dialogs at Esalen over like 30 years. That's a massive contribution to this field as well. Little heavy, a little bit more geeky, intellectual kind of thing. But for people who like to roll on that pretty cool stuff. Okay, thank you. Hey, thanks everybody. So remember, um, dedication to merit, to whatever extent it works for you. Whatever we've done here, we send it out to all senti Bings and these people that come to visit us or not, the people that may need are a benefit in the world, always remembering that if what we're doing here is not a benefit to the world, it's irrelevant doing this for the benefit of others. Much love to you all. See you around the block. TaoTao, you.
