PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO DZOGCHEN

Self Liberation Through Phenomenology and Dzogchen, Essays

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Wed, Oct 23, 2013 Rudolph Bauer Ph.D., Author

Phenomenology is the study of different kinds of giveness, the giveness of experience.There are various ways of being open to experiencing the world and the phenomena of the world. The phenomena and the objects of the world and the world itself can be experienced and perceived more or less directly and more or less in the present. The phenomena, the objects of the world and within the world as the world, can be experienced more or less in breadth and depth, and more or less in obviousness and more or less in subtlety. The world can be experienced more or less in translucidity and more or less in darkness, and more or less in openness and more or less in hiddenness, and more or less concealed and more or less unconcealed. There are many ways of experiencing the world and objects of and in the world which are the appearances of the world.
MULTIDIMENSIONAL
And most amazingly the phenomena of the world can be experienced in its many different dimensions. Truly we live in a multidimensional world and we are multidimensional beings in a mutlidimenisional world, a multidimensional cosmology. Multidimensional beings have multidimensional views and multidimensional experience. Experiencing through awareness and through the mind the various dimensions of our experience is the essence of phenomenology and the meditative awareness practice. Experiencing the phenomena of awareness both within ourselves as our own being and within the beings around us opens to us the multidimensionality of everything and everyone. Experiencing through mind alone is very different than experiencing within awareness. And since the mind can be integrated within this awareness such experience has its own difference than being located in either mind or awareness alone.
Our capacity to perceive the world in its various dimensions has been reflected upon for centuries in meditative cultures. And this experience of various dimensions of phenomena and the world of phenomena is confirmed by contemporary quantum physics and science .We know this is a multidimensional world and universe. All of the modes of giveness, appearance and experience are related. There is relationship intimately between and within them. The awakened modes of experience and appearance vary in light of their ability to give to us and our ability to enter into and penetrate the phenomena of the world as directly and clearly as possible. The phenomena can be given and experienced more or less directly and more or less translucently. This means that our experience of the giveness of phenomena opens us to more or less of the various infinite dimensions of the phenomena and the infinite dimensions of the world. Phenomena itself is awakened as is so eloquently described in the Guhyagarbha tantra. By world I mean the universe of experience everywhere and within everyone and everything, from the most subtle to the most gross. Our own level of perception gives us and opens to us to the levels of the giveness of phenomena, and the multileveledness of phenomena opens us to our own dimensional perception. Truly this unfolding is a co- emergent process. Awakened awareness is co-emergent within awakened phenomena. Awakened awareness is within an awakened world. This is the essential understanding of contemporary Dzogchen and contemporary phenomenology.
There is the awakened giveness of phenomena of appearance which opens us to our capacity to experience the different dimensions of presence. From the presence of a spatio temporal object concrete in its manifestations to the very beingness of the being of that object. From the presence of color and size and shape of an object, to the subtle energy of the object being manifested as an object in the field of being as a being. And so the different dimensions of the world that manifest to us in their giveness and their appearance reflect different dimensions of reality and of existence. The giveness of appearance reflects the different dimensions of the Beingness of Being in its manifestation and in its non manifestation. The giveness of the phenomenological configurations of the field reflect the field’s giveness as configurations, as an object and as an object configuration.
OBJECTIFIED OR SUBJECTIVITY
The phenomena of the appearance of the human can be experienced as an object among other objects. If the mind of the perceiver is objectifying and objectified itself by itself, then the otherness of an objectified human will be experienced. And the phenomena of the appearance of human subjectivity can be experienced and given to another human being if the other human being is in their own dimension of subjectivity within their innermost awareness which has no shape or form but is known in the wonderful co-emergent process of becoming aware of awareness in oneself and in the other. Truly awareness meets awareness...inside meets inside. The unfolding of intersubjectivity is mutually co emergent. Subjectivity is the primordial openness of awareness in time and space in the continuum of mind and body. Intersubjective is the openness passing through the openness of the other.
APPEARANCE OF WORLD AS OPENNESS
Phenomenology focuses on the appearance of the world and its various dimensions. Phenomenology is an experiential understanding of our experience of phenomena in and of the world. It allows us and presents to us the different dimensions of the world of reality and the actuality of the world. So, depending on the phenomena experienced, the reality and actually of the world shifts in profound and bewildering ways. As we phenomenologically become aware of awareness, the nature of awareness is experienced as openness, spaceousness. Experiencing this openness within one’s own self the openness within the world itself becomes more apparent.
APPEARANCE AS AN UNHAPPY ILLUSION
Buddhist idealists as well as Hindu Vedic idealists declare that the world is an illusion or delusion and is not real. What is real is the nothingness or spaciousness of the dharmakaya dimension or in the language of the Hindu, the dimension of shiva, the spaceous void. This understanding both comes from the experience of the masters of
meditation who use direct perception of meditative experience and also from the scholastic traditions in both Vedic and Buddhist religions. The Buddhist traditions used madhyamika reasoning as well as other forms of idealistic philosophy of logic. In a sense this reasoning is used to point out the unreality of the immediate situation and the conclusion is that things do not exist and also do exist and that they neither exist or neither do they not exist - a rather deconstructional stew that would even bewilder Derrida about what is or is not in this idealistic enframing. It is as if the language negates itself in the very speaking...and so what is left is only an aphasic experience. By aphasic I mean nothing can be said, nothing can be affirmed, and nothing can be thought.
This kind of deconstructionist thinking not only points out the impermanence of composite reality but moreover makes the attribution about the illusion of all appearance and the illusion of one’s self, and the illusion of experience and the illusion of the experiencer. This illusionary way of thinking is challenged by phenomenology in this matter of appearance and reality. Contemporary phenomenology has a great deal to offer Dzogchen’s presentation and understanding in this multidimensional and contemporary world.
THE UNHAPPY BELIEF IN THE ILLUSIONARYNESS OF LIFE
For the most part, many people simply believe these delusionary statements and attributions and work and live within this illusionary belief system with its advantages and disadvantages, including, at times the resulting problems of bonding and problems of schizoid like detachment. The well-established psychology of bonding is overcome by the nonattachment and nonbonding of detachment ethics. This kind of belief system over time structures both a personal and cultural viewpoint that can foreclose experience, invalidate experience and negate the very narrative schema of life’s experience. For many Buddhist idealists experience itself does not count and is without validity. In fact the world does not count. The phenomenological experience is without signification. As some Buddhist writers have said “phenomena never were and never will be”.
Unhappily the experiential question arises as to whom or for what is the great compassion if everything is illusion. Is compassion itself illusion? Does the great compassion manifest illusions? Is this the sport of consciousness...illusion for illusion sake. And from within whom does compassion arise? And for whom does compassion arise? Is compassion an experience? Is there an experiencer of givingness of compassion? And is there a whom who receives the gift of compassion?
In actuality the positiveness in which many Buddhist masters and students live is the manifestation of the indestructible compassion in action, confirming the worth- whileness of life, the validity of human experience, and the validity of the archetypical powers. The power and indestructibility of awareness and the manifestations of all of this vast human action goes far beyond the madhyamika and the idealistic philosophical view of life, the world and action. The actual action goes far beyond this philosophical muted view of human experience.
MANIFESTATION OF WORLD AND MANIFESTATION OF SELF
Phenomenology is the study of experience of the world and the phenomena of appearance both as the manifestation of the world and the manifestation of sense of self. Contemporary phenomenology can present the light of actuality and reality on these idealistic ruminations and solipsistic attributions about the invalidity all of human experience.
PHENOMENOLOGY UNDOES ILLUSION OF IDEALISM and UNDOES THE VIEW OF MECHANICNISTIC REALISM
Phenomeology challenges certain forms of western realism that sees beings as entities and thinks of Being itself as a kind of ontic entity. For western realism Being itself is a
kind of Big Being, a Big entity...the Biggest of all the beings...a super Being. And for some Being is understood as the totality of all the little beings or the Big Being is thought of as source of all the beings. For the concrete realist all the beings including the Big Being is an entity. Human beings are entities and God is itself the Biggest entity; an entity beyond the other entities but entity nonetheless. The big entity Deus is the cause of all the little entities. And all the entities including the Big entity and the little entities only have knowledge through mediation of language and priesthoods of some form. For many, Knowledge is a function of belief and not direct experience. For phenomenology knowledge is a function of direct experience.
For phenomenology Being is not a being among other beings. Being is not a being. And Being is not an entity. In this way Being is no -thingness and nonetheless Being allows beings to be and Being manifests the Beingness of Being in all the beings. BEING itself is empty or openness, radiant openness luminous openness. If one wants one could easily come to understand and come to think that Being is Deus. If one also wishes, one could easily understand Being as the dharmakaya manifesting the Beingness of being of sambogakaya and the beingness of the beings of nirmanakaya. And also if one wishes to come to understand that Being is shiva and the manifestation of Being of the various tattvas and realities as shakti.
The masterful phenomenologist, Heidegger, takes awareness of the experience of appearance as the source of knowningness. He states that the discursive mind alone in its discursive conceptualization can easily become solipsistic and foreclose knowningness of the Beingness of beings. Dzogchen Masters and Shavite Masters have a similar understanding.
MIND ALONE CANNOT GRASP THE BEINGNESS OF BEING AND CANNOT GRASP THE NATURE OF AWARENESS AS MANIFESTING SUBJECTIVITY IN THE CONTEXT OF MIND AND BODY
Phenomenology challenges the view that there are no differences phenomenologically between perception and hallucination. Phenomenology also challenges the view thatthe giveness of experience does not depend on whether this object exists objectively and really or not. Phenomenology challenges the Buddhist views of the world as a
hallucination or delusion. Phenomenology challenges the Buddhist invalidation of human experience.
Initially, Husserl himself thought that phenomenology was not able to speak about the reality of phenomena and appearance as reality. This was a very limiting view and located Husserl in the idealistic discourse wherein he was locked within the transcendental hidden I; a hidden world and a hidden I. So solipsism seemed to be the initial fate of phenomenology. The phenomenology whose inspiration was to the things themselves was becoming locked in the box of the mind alone.
HUSSERL’S EXPANDED VIEW: THE EPOCHE
Happily, Husserl radically transformed phenomenology as he expanded the reduction and epoche to the suspension of mind, opened the phenomena of actuality to relational actuality.
Husserl’s epoche and reduction allowed him to suspend the mind and enter into the experience and appearance of phenomena as they present themselves to us and within us. Based upon this phenomenological experience of the giveness to the field of awareness a reflection is possible. Reflection follows the prereflective experience of knowningness of phenomena. Reflection follows the prereflective awareness of the phenomena. Reflection follows the nonconceptual intuition of the giveness of phenomena. Phenomenology now focuses on giveness of experience and the knowningness of awareness. Gnosis has presidence. Direct perception has presidence. The phenomenologist now focuses on and within the dimension of appearance and giveness in order to reveal the inner structure of the experience of the world as the manifestation of phenomena. The shining of phenomena! Phenomenology elaborates the radical experience of the phenomena of the world in the light of their giveness and validity. From the givineness of experience a reflection and articulation emerges.
SUBJECTIVITY AS AWARENESS, PRIMORDIAL AWARENESS IN MIND AND BODY
The primordial giveness of experience takes place within subjectivity as knowingness. There is this primordial giveness to the experience of knowingness as the actual as it presents itself to us. Subjectivity itself is not an entity. Subjectivity is experienced within the entity of the mind and body, but subjectivity itself is no thing and has no form or shape...Subjectivity itself is primordial awareness manifesting in a particular time and place, and manifesting in a particular mind and body within the unfolding in a particular time and space. Subjectivity is the manifestation of primordial awareness in time and space. Subjectivity is timeless awareness manifesting in time and a locality of time.
This awareness of awareness which phenomenology undertakes allows awareness not to be focused on mind alone but in becoming aware of itself, the awareness of subjectivity openness up as to what it actually is. Subjecitivity is awareness whose nature is spaceousness, energy, light as in illuminating. To say that the self does not exist is bewildering and is confusing in the lack of experiential clarity. It is true the mind and body exist termporally and that as mind and as body the human being is an entity, a composite. And that this entity exists for a certain limited time . It is also true that the human being is also subjectivity within mind and body appearing in time and space. It is also true that this basic subjectivity that is not contained in mind alone is openness, vast spaceousness, luminousity and pervasive sense of oneness. This is the unborn and indestructible vajrakumara in dzogchen language. And moreover this subjectivity is mutldimenisonal as this subjectivity is awareness itself. This awareness is multidimensional and manifesting in time and space as the nirmanakaya manifestation of awareness emanating as flesh, the world of the human, the world as desire. It is also true that this very same awareness is the archetypical dimension that is luminously energetic and is power that is ontologically prior to the dimension of flesh. It is also true that this very same subjectivity is the manifestation of the primordial awareness itself that is unbound and infinite in its dimensions. Pure Subjectivity is the manfestation in time and space of the dharmakaya. Pure subjectivity is the manifestation of the dharmakaya in time and space. As Husserl would so often declare: ‘what is the wonder of all wonders pure consciousness and the door way is our own subjectivity!’
MEDIATED KNOWLEDGE AND UNMEDIATED DIRECT EXPERIENCE
There are two different ways of understanding. There is the understanding of the analytic objectified knowledge and the direct non-conceptual lucid knowing experience of appearance of reality that can then be reflected upon and articulated. Understanding is direct experience followed by articulation; reflected articulation. This is the science of phenomenology, the science of awareness.
REALITY AS THE PHENOMENAL AND THE ACTUAL
The epoche and the reduction are methods of Husserl’s phenomenology. Phenomenology does not exclude the actual world from being known and phenomenology is concerned with meaning of beings and with Being itself. For phenomenology there is no gap between meaning and the experience of beings. Even Being itself is a focus of phenomenology. From the phenomenological point of view, the actuality of Being and beings is the natural focus of awareness.
Later Husserl maintains that the epoche is used to suspend a certain dogmatic mind enframing towards the appearance of reality. The suspension allows us to focus more directly on the experience of multidimensional reality just as it is given. Epoche releases prejudice, releases enframing that is containing appearance and containing the experience of appearance of reality, not an exclusion of reality. The suspension opens us to be able to approach the experience of the giveness of appearance and the manifestations of objects as phenomena and as realities. Suspension of mind allows for a disclosure and unconcealment of what is given and the possibility of what is to be given. To speak of the sense and manifestations of the real in this context is to validate the giveness and significance of the multidimensionalness of phenomena and the reality
of appearance. Suspension of the mind allows the explicit use of the instrument of direct perception which is vast and subtle and can meet the vastness and subtlety of the various dimensions that are presented and given to us as reality and actuality. Suspension allows for gazing to manifest.
Phenomenology as method through the suspension of mind and the openness of the gaze allows a way of experiencing and consequent reflective thinking of beings and the Beingness of the world as actuality. Here, situated in the field of awareness one loses nothing of their own being and is able to enter into the depth and breadth of the multidimensionality of world and otherness. Through awareness one enters nonduality within duality, and through duality into nonduality.
BEYOND IDEALISM AND BEYOND MIND ALONE
To perform the epoche and the reduction is to activate awareness of awareness and to be able to experience the various dimensionality of actuality. Phenomenology does not stop at the focus on mental content and ideation. To stop at mental content and ideation alone is to take a path that leads to becoming located in idealism and solipsism. Phenomenology overcomes Self enclosed ideation of mind alone. In fact to perform the suspension of mind does not imply any loss of relatedness to realness. The phenomenological attitude makes completely possible the experience of reality through appearance and manifestation. In this way the very oneness of manifestation and subjectivity reveal the immanent oneness of the knower and the known
THE EXPERIENTIAL BASIS OF PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology rejects analytic and those scholastic philosophies preoccupied with the construction of purely formal and logical hypothesis. This rejection is the same for contemporary analytic thinking as well as the Buddhist hyperlogic of negation such as the mahyamaka as well as the mentalization of hindu vedantic thinking. Phenomenology is in opposition to the mentalization that is experientially distant from the world and its
manifestation. Phenomenology consistently returns to the experiential base of the giveness of phenomena and appearance which is the manifestation of the mutltidmenisonal actuality of which both the knower and the known are in oneness, primoridal oneness. Phenomenology is ultimately the method of direct perception which is gnosis or jnana. Husserl initially investigated direct perception as intuition and phenomenologists now understand intuition as gnosis or direct perception. This understanding was greatly influenced both by Heideggers and Merleau-Pontys work.
APPEARANCE AND REALITY ARE NOT DIFFERENT ONTOLOGICALLY
Phenomenology challenges the understanding that the world we live in might be nothing but an illusion. Husserl and Heidegger both came to understand that phenomenology being limited to the world of appearance as it is, in no way describes the world as illusion. Heidegger, Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty understood there is a prereflective oneness between us and the world, within us and the world. This prereflective oneness is the oneness of awareness. The oneness of awareness manifests as us and the world. This is the oneness of space, this is the oneness of light, this is the oneness of energy, this is the oneness of presence. There is this natural primordial nonduality from within which the duality of phenomena arises. Duality naturally arises out of nonduality. The duality of phenomena (the me and the you) arises out of the naturalness of the nonduality of primordial awareness. We can experience duality of phenomena within the nonduality of this primordial base of awareness. This relationship of duality, being and experience is not some kind of foundational mistake. The view of negation of view of Buddhism is completely unnecessary and reflects an alliance to tradition wherein from the beginning there was inadequacy of the use of language, the inadequacy of negation.
We are in the world and our subjectivity is manifested in the oneness as world. Because of the innate perceived oneness the knower and the known, the natural ground of realization is possible to be experienced by all beings, with natural immediacy. There is no original sin or big mistake of hallucinating a world that does not exist.
Heidegger says the fundamental question as to whether there is a world makes no sense since ‘dasein’ (awareness as the great expanse) is itself being in the world. The very asking is a manifestation of being in the world. The query is self-refuting since it presupposes that which it denies. This is also the understanding of the contemporary phenomenological neo thomist Jacque Maritan who consistently expresses the giveness of the world to human experience and that the knower and the known are essentially in oneness. If there is no prereflective oneness there could be no knowingness. Direct perception is the natural giveness of being in the world of the knower and known as knowingness itself.
Just as phenomenology is concerned with meaning, it is concerned with appearance. How things appear, how they manifest and what significance they have, is an integral part of what they really are. To grasp the true nature of the object is to grasp how the object as world manifests and reveals itself to us. The reality of the object is not hidden behind or beyond the phenomenon, but unfolds itself in the phenomenon and as the phenomena. As Heidegger once put it, it is phenomenologically absurd to say of the phenomenon that it stands in the way of something more fundamental which it merely represents. Although the distinction between appearance and reality can be maintained, this is not a distinction between two separate realms. This distinction is internal to the dimensions of appearance. How the objects might appear in one gaze and how the objects appear in and through a more subtle gaze will manifest differences within the sameness. Different dimensions manifested by the same phenomena, different dimensions manifested through the same phenomena.
For phenomenology the world that appears to us is the actual world although this world may consist of multidimensional realities and is infinite in its horizons. In this world there may exist hidden and concealed aspects of the world within the phenomenal world itself. Hidden and concealed dimensions of the world that allow the various appearances to differ depending upon their manifestation of the various experiential dimensions. There is more than one dimension to every experience. There is more than one view. Phenomenology has both horizontal and vertical dimensions of knowingness. The vertical represent ascendant states of the experiential field and horizontal represent relational states of the field. The two poles are completely contributory to the sense of
stability and continuity of the awareness field. And the appearance of phenomena is temporal and the very manifestation is duration itself.
AWARENESS AS THREE DIMENSIONS OF GIVENESS
How can we think of the three dimensions of awareness or consciousness as the three kayas?
Pure awareness in its spaceousness or great expanse Pure awareness as luminous radiance
Pure awareness manifesting as the embodiments of the worlds
We must think of phenomenological awareness as the three different modes of giveness. Each of the three kayas is a different mode of giveness or presentation. In a sense we can be aware of these different dimensions of awareness; the different manifestations of awareness, as different manifestations of giveness of appearance, the three dimensions of the one awareness, the three dimensions of giveness of the one awareness.
The appearance of emptiness and spaciousness of the unmanifest The appearance of radiance and luminosity of the manifest
The appearance of energy of the manifestation
Thus there are different ways of becoming aware of awareness and there is a relation of manifestation between them. The appearance and manifestation of awareness has three dimensions or three manifestations. The first is nirmanakaya which is the world as it appears with its conventional appearance. The sambogakaya is the world as radiant light and energy and the dharmakaya is the un-manifest view of spaciousness, of potentiality.
Depending upon what giveness or what view is being manifested multidimensionally, that will be the perception of the reality; of this multidimensional reality. Nirmanakaya
will seem and be reality, sambogakaya will seem and be reality and dharmakaya will seem and be reality. From the dharmakaya view, only the dharmakaya dimension will be actuality. From the nirmanakaya view sambogakaya and dharmakaya are actuality and from the sambogakaya view, sambogakaya and dharmakaya are actuality. Each is real or actual in this multidimensional reality depending upon the view.
Each view is contained within the other and present in the other in potential or in actuality. In dharmakaya everything is present in potentiality. In nirmanakaya everything is contained in actuality, namely sambogakaya and dharmakaya. The real or the actual is the manifestation of each kaya and so there are different realities or actualities in oneness. Existing or actuality is the manifestation of each reality, although each kaya implies a different mode of existing or different dimension of existence. Each implies a different level of subtleness and different kind of subtleness. Each reality is a different kind of actuality and yet all are the one reality of awareness or consciousness.
From dharmakaya the others kayas are potential but may not be in actuality. From sambogakaya, dharmakaya is present in actuality and nirmanakaya only in potentiality. From nirmanakaya, both sambogakaya and dharmakaya are present in actuality.
In meditative awareness one may have the experience of one or all of the kayas. All of the kayas are in oneness- in the same house, the one house with different floors or dimensions. One is not more real than the other and one is not less real than the other. There are three floors in the one house...there is only one house and within the house three different floors.
The word “real” as it is often used in most Buddhist texts is a mixed and weak signifier. There is actually nothing signified within this linguistic structure of the word real. This aphasic view is normalized in Buddhist language, and in this normalization dissociation is normalized. In the truest sense the real is the actual as in the actuality of potential and the actuality of phenomena manifesting. The use of the word real as meaning inherent existence or eternal existence is an arbitrary attribution to the word real. Something can be composite, completely temporary and briefly real, briefly actual. To be in time does not destroy reality but actualizes real in time and as time. Time is the manifestation of the actual... Just as time is the manifestation of the great compassion. The statement
that only emptiness is real is linguistically without signification and inaccurate in this contemporary language epoch.
Such languaging of the real and unreal meaning delusion is more of a historical political and polemic statement reflecting a hopeful continuity of philosophical tradition with early Buddhist understanding and tradition. The path from Hinayanna to Mahayana to Vajrayana truly stretches the word real beyond all recognition. The quest of validity of view is a consistent quest and source of quarrels throughout Buddhist history and life. The sense of validity of thought and empowerment is based on the historical person of the Shakyamuni Buddha who died over 2500 years ago. Much of what he is attributed to have said takes place on the mythological dimension.
Then there is the deconstruction frame of Nagarjuna and his relentless use of lack in his deconstruction of the actuality of experience and validity of person and the world. He uses Madhyamaka as a way of desconstructing the actuality of time and deconstructing the validity of a multidimensional view of reality with the use of the language of negation. Such as it is and is not, neither is nor is not, and never was. This is a way of using negation of language in speaking about the translucidity of the actual and its inclusive multidimensionality. This kind of muted language forecloses the actuality of the innateness of language as expression and manifestation of the primordial awareness itself. There is no logos. Phenomenology understands that language is the world and is the manifestation of reality itself. Language is the house of being. The Madhayamaka kind of aphasia forecloses the actuality of the Samadhi of syllables. This aphasic approach forecloses the sound dimension as well as the symbolic dimension of the vast multidimensional reality. This kind of presentation is a loss of and foreclosure of the power of logos, the power of awareness. Madhyamaka is the path of foreclosure.
The Dzogchen understanding easily holds the multidimensional view and also contains the independence of the mind view as described by Longchenpa. The porousness of reality and its various dimensions are expressed in Dzogchen understanding , yet these teachings can be limiting and psychically unavailable to contemporary cultures because of the rhetoric of delusion and the declared unreality of experience. In this contemporary philosophical world, the reality of experience and perception must be
taken into the formulation of Dzogchen. The reason is that naturalistic experience is so obvious and naturally validating. The way of negation and muteness of the symbolic and language function as being seemingly apart from the actuality of awareness itself is a step that actually mutes the experience of self-revelation which is the nature of the awareness itself. Self-revelation is the nature of the primordial guru. The way of muteness is a reflection of a view and way of life of rejection and foreclosure on human experience as valid with a language of melancholia, nihilism and solipsism.
The phenomenological understanding of Dzogchen does not require that everything arises only out of the mind alone, as a kind of mental projection. In early Buddhism, there is no independence of mind reality. Outside of the mind alone nothing exists. There is no independent reality outside of the mind.
Phenomenological understanding of Dzogchen does not require the belief that the world is an illusion which does not exist but rather that there are multiple realities within the same phenomena and within the same situation. Each of these realities depends upon the other in the sense of ontological priority but are different dimensions of actuality. Phenomena does exist in one dimension and in another dimension the phenomena may not yet experientially exist, may not be actualized, but only exist in potentiality.
As the philosopher Brentano pointed out, there is physical reality or material reality and there is psychic reality-one is visible and one is invisible. They are two dimensions of experience. Because you cannot find or see the psychic does not mean it does not exist.
UNIVOCACITY
The non-Aristotelian view of one, one substance of the world and different manifestations does not trouble phenomenology. Or rather, the view that there is one essence and many different manifestations does reflect phenomenology. If by each manifestation you mean a different incidental essence with one ontological essence, this does and can reflect phenomenology. Phenomenology is the approach of univocity rather then analogy or equivocality. Univocity reflects the oneness of essence, of
awareness, and the world of its manifestations. Univocity is the realization of equality consciousness and the purity of all beings.
GAZE
Awareness can become aware of its own self by the gaze turning back on the gaze. This is not the mind turning back on its self. The mind can reflect on itself and this self reflection can be the mind reflecting on itself, including its self as subject and its self as object. This is a self-object relationship. When awareness becomes aware of itself- when awareness becomes aware of awareness- this is the praxis of knowingness knowing knowingness. The full depth and breadth of awareness being aware of itself may require the awareness becoming its own object, awareness being aware of itself immanently. But this experience will never be objectified as it will never be thought. Awareness becomes aware of itself from within itself, immanently and intrinsically. When awareness focuses on itself it does not go outside itself to do so, awareness does not become otherness to itself. Rather awareness focuses within itself and through itself. Awareness locates itself within itself. It becomes itself in completeness and fullness.
This self-manifestation of awareness can be a function of awareness gazing into awareness but this will be a non-mindful approach or a non-thoughtful or non- conceptual approach, hence there will be no objectification.
So, first as method, there is the differentiation of the mind from awareness. Second, there is the experience of awareness as awareness wherein the recognition of awareness as a field phenomenon becomes manifest. This is a non-conceptual, clarity experience. This knowingness is without conceptualization and is direct perception. This perception of awareness of awareness in one’s self then allows for the perception of awareness in the other. Again this experience will be unmediated and come through the direct skills of the practitioner. The experience can be reflected upon, but the actual experience of knowingness knowing knowingness has actually taken place. This
reflective step is the step of languaging what has taken place. Putting the experience to words places the experience in the representational continuum.
Without the mind becoming separate from awareness, the mind reflecting on the mind will make this an objectified process of the thinking function. And this will be a self- object experience. The self will be conceptualized. When awareness becomes aware of its own self directly, this will not be a conceptual experience but a direct unmediated knowingness. Through this initial knowingness the kayas will present themselves phenomenologically: nirmakaya, sambogakaya and dharmakaya.
LONGCHENPA: THE RELATION OF PHENOMENA TO MIND AND TO AWARENESS
The Magical Realism of Longchenpa
I will use the words of Longchenpa to describe his understanding of the relationship of mind to awareness. Longchenpa said “Are you not asserting everything to be mind? Let me clearly outline the distinction to be made. In general, if the world of appearance and possibilities (whether of samsara or nirvana) is explained to be awakened mind -which is awakened awareness, or awareness, or awareness field - what is meant is that phenomena are alike in that they do not waver from a single awareness, and they manifest naturally as they display dynamic energy and adornment of that awareness. They are manifestations of awareness, primordial awareness. In this sense they are considered to be the mind, just as one calls the rays of the sun “the sun” when one says sit in the midday sun.”
Longchenpa continues “To hold that apparent phenomena are mind alone is to stray from me. The manifestation of primordial awareness is not the manifestation of mind alone. In ordinary speech some people hold apparent phenomena to be one’s own mind alone. They speak without defining the issues involved and commit error as ordinary mind and awakened awareness are not identical. Ordinary mind refers to the eight modes of consciousness and their associated mental events which together constitute the adventitious distortions affecting human beings in the three realms. Awakened awareness refers to awareness. Naturally occurring timeless awareness has no
substance or characteristics, the basic space of all samsara and nirvana. Since the world of appearance and possibilities arises as the dynamic energy and display of awakened awareness, awakened awareness which is actually their cause is simply the label applied to them as the result. While that which manifests as samsara and nirvana is understood to be the dynamic energy of awareness, one should clearly further understand that awareness itself constitutes an unceasing ground for the arising of things although it has never existed as a thing, whether of samsara or nirvana.”
Longchenpa continues on, ” apparent objects are understood to be clearly apparent yet ineffable and have never been mind alone. Empty yet clearly apparent, groundless, timeless and pure. When freedom occurs, the dynamic energy and display in being groundless are naturally pure which is like awakening from a dream. Thus one should know that self-knowing awareness without ever having wavered from its original state of natural rest. Unchanging dharmakaya is uncontaminated by any substance or characteristic.”
Longchenpa elaborates that “the Dynamic energy is the creative potential of awareness and accounts for the fact that samsara and nirvana arise differently, just as the very same ray of sunlight causes a lotus to blossom to open and a night lily to close. Display is used in the sense of the radiance of awareness, displaying itself like a lamp, displaying itself as light or sun, displaying itself as sunbeams. Adornment refers to the fact that naturally manifest phenomena appearing in full array arise of themselves as adornment in light of awareness. This is similar to rainbows or the sun and moon being adornments of the sky.”
“The essence of the dynamic energy is unceasing. Unceasing, non-dual and richly endowed. I have shown these to be the essence of display.” Longchenpa. These quotes I have used are from Longchenpa’s great text Words and Meaning.
EVERYTHING IS THE MANIFESTATION OF AWARENESS
Everything is a manifestation of awareness. Manifestation is the primordial giveness. There are three modes of giveness and three manifestations of awareness, or two with
one mode being unmanifest. The manifest is the appearance of awareness. The appearance of the manifestation of awareness is in oneness with awareness. Appearance is ultimately the nondual oneness of awareness becoming manifest. To become aware of awareness is to become aware of the different modes of giveness. It is to become aware of the different manifestations as well as the unmanifested dharmakaya. Ultimately awareness is the actuality of awareness as nirmanakaya, the actuality of awareness as sambogakaya and the actuality of awareness as dharmakaya.
To perceive the manifestation or the giveness of awareness is to experience the nondual oneness of awareness. All objects are configurations of and within the awareness field or manifestations of the awareness field. As dharmakaya the appearances are manifestations within spaciousness, and within radiance as sambogakaya and within the elements as nirmanakaya.
Gazing is the manifestation of gnosis. Direct perception or gnosis is our way of knowing the giveness of awareness. So, gnosis itself has three modes as does the manifestation of primordial awareness.
Gazing within opens the perception of the three kayas. Then from within the gaze one gazes into the openness of the world and gazes from the gaze into pure awareness, manifestations of luminosity and manifestations of the elements.
Gazing bypasses the mediation of the mind and yet can integrate the mediation of the mind into the awareness field. In the way one gazes both into awareness or the manifestations of awareness and gazes into the manifestation of nirmanakaya through the mind in the awareness field. Awareness comes through both in the mind and beyond the mind.
AWARENESS GAZING INTO AWARENESS
Awareness seeing awareness and awareness sees through the mind, awareness sees both at the same time. Depending on the Place of the UNFOLDING View, the world will seem actual or only potential. From the view within Nirmanakaya the world is
actual,phenomena, is actuality and exists. From the view within Sambogakaya dimension the energy and luminous archetypical dimensions of the world is symbolic and personalzed as actual and the very dimension manifests within Nirmanakaya. So these manifestations are considered actualities. From the view of Dharmakaya the spaciousness and emptiness of phenomena seems to that which is actual, the world of potentiality is the only actuality...
Gazing into phenomena opens up the phenomena, opens up the giveness of awareness. As one enters one dimension, the other dimensions of awareness easily open and become apparent. Initially the openness of the gaze within opens up the experience of awareness within oneself. The gaze views the same giveness of awareness in the other and in the physical world itself. One perceives the different dimensions of the giveness of awareness within one’s own self, within others and within the physical world.
The oneness of awareness is apparent in the oneness of the three modes of giveness of awareness. There is the oneness of spaciousness, there is the oneness of light, and there is the oneness of the elements, there is the sameness of oneness of awareness as knowingness.
NONDUALITY WITHIN DUALITY AND DUALITY WITHIN NONDUALITY
The nonduality of awareness for phenomenology takes place within the phenomenogy of duality. And duality takes place within the oneness of nonduality of awareness. Often in some idealistic eastern philosophical traditions in order to support nonduality the experience of duality is denied and foreclosed. The experience of duality of me and you in the oneness of nonduality is unseen and the experience is foreclosed. The indivisibility between phenomena and awareness is foreclosed. Phenomena are foreclosed. This view is often expressed in Hindu Advaita and certain forms of Buddhism. Nonduality does not foreclose the experience of duality within nonduality. Duality is phenomena in its infinite manifestations and nonduality is singular essence as primordial awareness. Duality arises from within nonduality. What is called duality is the
differences or differentiatedness within oneness of nonduality. In the dialectics of phenomenology’s magical realism duality and nonduality are not in opposition whatsoever. Duality within nonduality is mutually inclusive and using Deluze’s language the difference is nonessential difference.
GARAB DORJE: DEEP IMMERSION IN AWARENESS
I will utilized and transliterate the wording and understanding of Garab Dorje to describe the experience of the deep immersion within awareness. I will phenomenologize his language and understanding. Garab Dorge describes that given pervasive evenness or sameness of the field in which objects manifest and are conceptualized. Nonetheless awareness itself is not reified. And so body and mind dwell as a matter of course in the expanse of that evenness of the field, the oneness of the field. Regardless of how awareness appears to arise or whatever awareness manifests as a matter of course there is no wavering from this expanse of evenness and sameness and oneness. All difference is nonessential difference.
At the level of source or pure awareness objects with characteristics have no existence as objects when they are abiding in a state of deep potential. They are potential but not yet actual. Timelessly there is no duality and so no distinctions can be made. There is only potentiality. And so even within their actuality within the nirmanakahya there are still No distinctions between ordinary people and buddhas. There is no essential difference between samsara and nirvana at the level of nirmanakaya. What has substance and what lacks substance are equal in basic space. Buddhas and ordinary beings are equal in basic pervasive space of awareness in all of its manfifestations. Relative or conventional reality and ultimate reality are equal in basic space. These dimensions are in oneness as oneness. Flaws and qualities are equal in basic space. Up, down, all directions are equal in basic space. Therefore when arising, things arise equally without being better or worst. When abiding, they abide equally without being better or worst. When free, they are freed equally. They abide in the basic space of their equalness. Although they arise unequally and with nonessential differences they abide in the basic space of their equalness. Although they manfest within unequally, they
abide in the basic space of their equalness. Although they are freed unequally, they are free within the basic space of their equalness.
It all comes down to using the term Buddhahood to refer to nothing more than one’s own true face beholding itself.
The very essence of awareness has never existed as anything other than awareness. So, nothing exists within awareness that is not awareness itself. There is nothing to be found within awareness that is not free. This awareness is a field vast and infinite in its horizons. And although objects exist within the sea of awareness, the variations of the different objects existing in the sea of immanence are nonessential differences within awareness . These differences themselves are nonetheless awareness. Even the nonessential difference is awareness.
In light of this understanding Garab Dorge gives the following suggestions as path. Rest in suchness itself. Rest within awareness as awareness. Within the ultimate heart essence there is nothing to improve upon so positive actions bring no benefit. And there is nothing to deteriorate and so, negative actions inflict no damage. Within infinite spaceousness there is nothing to improve on. There is no karma within space and there is no previous life within spaciousness.
Awareness as such, dharmakaya in all its nakedness, regardless of what virtue has been created, nothing becomes any better and and no benefit is entailed. Since in essence it has never been anything, karmic traces do not exist. For one immersed in genuine being, the total resolution is called timeless awareness, pure emptiness in which phenomena are resolved. By abiding in this very essence of awareness, those immersed in genuine being realize this awareness. They have merged with the reality of what is. Those who are immersed in genuine being to the very highest degree relate to apparent phenomena in an easygoing way since virtue and harm do not exist for them. They never fall out of self-knowing awareness as such because, for them, there is only the understanding that awareness manifests naturally. Dakini laughter reflects this experience.
Many people are bound by fixation. Those immersed in genuine being realize that all phenomena manifest their freedom within the great expanse of awareness. Awareness as the sea of potential is nonreferential. This sphere has no edges or corners. There are no causes and condition. It is spontaneous presence free of limitations. People who reify this state will reify enlightenment, and try to grasp liberation.
PHENOMENOLOGY OF SUBJECTIVITY WITHOUT A SUBJECT AS ENTITY
One of the great contributions of Heidegger to phenomenology was his deconstruction of subjectivity as awareness being reduced to being a subject of mind alone or awareness field as the property of the individual subject as mind. For many, subjectivity is the subjectivity of the mind alone. Unhappily and unfortunately for most people, the sense of subjectivity and sense of entity are equated.
Phenomenology allows for the experience of subjectivity without being the subjectivity of mind alone. Pure awareness that is pervasive and is the source of individualized awareness and individualized subjectivity understood experientially. There is the deconstruction of subjectivity being reduced to a individualized subject as mind body continuum; as individualized awareness. Subjectivity is the vast nonlocalized field comparative to space. Space as knowingness, space as subject is not experienced as an objectified thing or localized unit of experience, but is experienced as unbound vast awareness, a limitless, nonlocalized field of pure awareness. This space both embraces and pervades all things and beings within it. This is the space of pure awareness or pure subjectivity or pure knowingness without being located alone as knower as entity or subject. In other words subjectivity without a subject...knowingess without the knower. Or as the knower knows knowingness the knower is only knowingness beyond time and space and in time and space.
So subjectivity is primordial awareness unborn and undying and is located within subjectivity as mind and body. Hence there is the double play of subjectivity as awareness within mind and body and awareness which is nonlocal. So the person can experience the range of subjectivity given to him or her. From highly contained within
mind and body to becoming aware of awareness itself; becoming unbound and experiencing subjectivity as primordial space itself.
And so all knowingness both localized within a subject and nonlocalized is pervasive, is the same knowingness. There is knowingness without a knower and knowingness within infinite knowers. It is impossible to think of knowingness without a knower, but this is the very ultimate nature of awareness.
Even in death the mind may dissolve but subjectivity is indestructible, the true vajra is your subjectivity itself. The subjectivity of the mind body configuration is a manifestation of primordial subjectivity itself. The subjectivity of mind is primordial subjectivity veiled within the mind and body configuration of space and time. Timeless awareness is subjectivity without a subject.
In this understanding the very sense of personal subjectivity is the manifestation of pure awareness, primordial awareness. And thus the simple act of becoming aware of awareness is the path of oneness, nonduality. As Husserl so often exclaimed “what is the wonder of all wonders, pure consciousness, and the doorway is our own subjectivity.”
Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. A.B.P.P.Author.
The Washington Center For Consciousness Studies. Elizabeth Ebaugh, MSW. Editor

HOW TO READ A TEXT, HOW TO HEAR A TEXT

Self Liberation Through Phenomenology and Dzogchen, Essays

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Wed, Oct 23, 2013
Rudolph Bauer Ph.D., Author

How to read a text and how to hear a text. How to open words and syllables so that knowledge arises within your own body, within your inner awareness. When you are located in mind alone, when you are located in conceptualness and concrete mind alone, you will be locked in and contained. William Reich described concrete minds as living machines. Concreteness can be described as rigidity, a mode of tense cognitive activity. Strangely enough, concreteness with its compulsiveness, its drivenness can distort the sense of presence and the sense of reality. The concrete mind in its literalness struggles to find the right solution. The literal view can be narrow, highly vigilant and stimulus−stimulation bound. The concrete mind struggles to find the right solution relentlessly. Of course whatever the solution, it never is enough. One becomes stuck in the stimulus of the word and stuck in the signification of the word. The nexus between the signifier and signified is without space and is densely bound.
There is a profound difference between mind and awareness. To know this difference is to know the necessary difference. Longchenpa suggests the poetic capacity of the opening of language wherein the language signifies not the mind alone but language signifying the awareness field. And so learning about awareness takes place not in mind alone but within awareness field itself. The awareness field is wisdom gnosis or direct perception. Longchenpa as well as Dudjom Lingpa in their attempts to demystify gnosis would suggest that everyone is intelligent enough to do this. The major limitation is concreteness of mind alone. This concreteness is not a function of intelligence, or the brightness. Concreteness contains the brightness. Concreteness mutes the brightness of experience, the brightness of thought. Concrete thinking can become a substitute for brightness. And this substitution becomes what is often called “figuring it out.”
The signifier of wording can be reflective of mind alone and so the signification results in mind- alone experience. In fact if the signifier style is concrete and mechanical and reified, then the result will be signification that will be at the same level of experiencing, namely, concrete, mechanical and reified. No matter what the content or context, cognitive style organizes experience. Thus language can be the expression of mind alone, resulting in the dense experience of mind alone. Thinking is redundant and unhappily thinking. Thinking and even more thinking does not lead to understanding, the nonconceptual understanding that is the nature of awareness.
Heidegger describes this actuality of the potential of language this way: Poetically does man dwell and Language is the house of being. So here the wording opens just like the icon opens
so that Being shines through the syllables, awareness shines through the syllables and awareness is manifested through the voice of the syllables. The wording unpacks and opens and there is within this openness, and within this openness arises the transmission of that which the words are signifying takes place. Signification arises within awareness and within the transmission of awareness.
Signifiers and the signified
In mind alone to mind alone the signifier can signify affective states or conceptual states, or memory or sensation or information. The signifiers from within the awareness field can also signify and invoke symbolic experience that is felt and known directly. Signifiers signifying and invoking symbolic experience of awareness of awareness. The signifiers of both language and symbols can invoke the spaciousness of luminous knowingness, the luminosity of awareness that is penetrating and within all phenomena in essence. The essence of the situation becomes manifest, the essence of appearance and emptiness becomes manifest. The indivisibility between appearance and emptiness becomes manifest. Awareness as knowingness, as luminous spacious openness takes place, and the translucidity of experience takes place within the place of awareness, which is you as you as a who.
When a person is experientially within in the field of awareness and so attuned to the other who is also within the field with them, then direct knowing can manifest, can arise. What is going to be said can be known before what is to be said is said. This is unmediated knowing. This happens when you are in the field in the same field as speaker and as hearer. This posture is very different than the times wherein the speaker and hearer and the space in between them is mediated by only words and cognition and affective states. Concrete mind speaking to concrete mind and concrete mind hearing concrete mind! When this concrete event happens there are never enough words and unending details, more and more minute details, to fill in the space in between. The space in between is what cannot be tolerated or held, which is awareness itself. Mechanical speech to mechanical ears results in a mechanical mind and mechanical knowing.
When the speaker and the one spoken to are within the field, then awareness is speaking to awareness as awareness. The space in between is now the field, and the space within each other is now the field. So there the speaker and hearer are the field, and direct knowing is possible. They are within the field as the field. Inside to inside happens, and knowingness arises from within.
As Bodhidharma said in the 6th century, beyond words and letters there is a transmission that does not belong to any tradition, it is the very nature of human awareness, which is the Buddha. The Buddha is not a person but primordial awareness within everything and everyone.
When you are speaking from the field within yourself and you are hearing from within the field, the field itself opens for direct understanding. From within to within, from self to self, from inside to inside, unmediated knowing. Knowledge arises, the mind is infused. There is a vast difference of a couple trying to making connection through mind alone, thinking alone. They
make points, I have point here and what is your point. Point making and point seeking. Life on the point. This is so different than when a couple is speaking within the field as field. This is the experience of being within the nonduality of the field as singular dualities. Being as singular dualities being within the nonduality of field is heaven. That is what the Buddha field is.
Many people are wonderfully able speak from the field and articulate their experience within the field of the present moment and in the present hour and also many people are able to hear from and from within the field. There is this great practice of speaking experientially near while being within the field of awareness. To practice this skill, to accomplish this learned skill is so valuable both in love and in work. It is a high aesthetic.
Speaking from your experience in the immediacy of what is happening is the simplest and most direct way to learn this skill. When you are only commenting on yesterday you will be in yesterday and your speech will not from the field. You may tell an interesting story but it will not be within the field. Some people can speak always in the field from the field as the field. It is amazing and wonderful. They make comments and the comments are reflections of their experience within the field. Some have this capacity. Some who have many opinions speak their opinions and comments from within the field...it is aesthetically fun and informing. But first they have spent hours of speaking experientially near, within the field of the present moment of the here and the now. Only in time have their minds integrated into awareness. Such completion takes time.
This is very developed skill. This capacity to be experientially near, from within your experience and from within your awareness. In learning this method of deepening your experience of awareness, commentary speech can be a distraction. Making commentaries about yourself or the other is a distraction from being within the field of your own awareness. When you make certain judgments about yourself and absolute judgments about others, this judgementalness will take you out of the field. In such absolute judgments you pretend to be the one who knows. It can give you false certainty, illusionary certainty, which actually is no certainty at all. And then you are surprised at what actually happens.
The concrete superego is a relentless commentary both on oneself and everyone else and everything else. Because primitive states of deprivation and annihilation are the primitive affective source of the superego formation, the judgments arise out of attempts at surviving annihilation, anxiety or deprivation anxiety. The person located in the superego will impose deprivation or annihilation on the one to whom or on whom the judgmentalness is focused. The person dominated by the superego equates this judgmentalness with discrimination or discernment and believes this cruel assessment is wisdom gnosis. More often than not religious fools equate divinity with their superego formulations.
The abyss of Emptiness! There is the metaphor someone presented recently about reading a self-help book sitting on the edge of the abyss of the Grand Canyon. It is really a great metaphor.
Many people are caught in this dilemma. Concrete books within a concrete mind. Surely you have been in a concrete situation looking at a concrete book with concrete mind and trying to find concrete operations for a concrete solution. This is technical mind, objectified mind, reified mind, and an obsessional style...a compulsive style. We will call this the obsessional moment...the waiting for Godot moment.
So this metaphor brings us to the question as how to read a text or hear a text.
So how to read a text....Most importantly how to read sacred or classical text, a symbolic text that reflects the awareness field of the writer and the field of lineage. Should you read it with your mind alone or read within the field of awareness? What do you think? There is that difference again. There is that difference between knowing within you mind and knowing within your awareness as awareness.
First, pointing out instructions
Pointing out instructions is not a self-help text. The instructions are not really concrete operational, and if you think they are you will suffer because you will read within your mind alone and nothing will happen. Nothing will happen since something is always left out, and you yourself have to discover that which is left out either from within the field of your being or you may discover it within the field of the person giving pointing out instructions. In pointing out instructions you are not actually being given information but you are being informed by and within dimensions of the awareness field that is manifesting or self-arising via transmission.
The pointing out is actually asking you to experience and gaze into what is happening within you in the here and now...in the here and now of the transmission.
In pointing out instructions the field is the teacher. The same field is within you and within the person giving the pointing out instructions. The same field is teaching both in the present moment...coming through both persons. Liberation is self-arising presence, self-arising knowledge, self-arising knowingness. And what is being spoken is not to your mind but to your awareness, which is abiding within awareness, within the field. In that direct experience of nonduality what is being said and being thought and being felt and pointed out is the experience that is arising from within you. There are words and letters but the actuality of transmission is direct and unmediated. The words are the winds that move and open us to experience what is being spoken about or felt or known. They are indicators, gestures, signs pointing to the opening of openness within you. Words as metaphors or words as metonyms!
In reading a text the same phenomenon is taking place. In reading a text you want to experience the mind of the writer, or better said the field of the awareness of the writer that is carried by words and even through the words and beyond the words. The words and symbols are like winds that stir the mind and most of all the innermost awareness. So that awareness gazes into the text and beyond the text into the mind to the writer or the awareness of the writer. The syllables are iconic doorways. Ultimately such texts are mind-to-mind transmissions or
awareness-to-awareness transmissions...all within the oneness of the timeless field arising in time...time within timelessness.
I grew up knowing this. Not all the time but some of the time. Whatever text I read I learned to gaze into to experience the mind of the writer. In my life this method has opened so much experience for me. Later I learned that this is how the masters have described how to read and how to hear.
So in reading a text you gaze into the text within text or even one word of the text or the whole text at the same time. Timeless awareness in time...timeless awareness manifesting in time as words and symbols...through your awareness field you lean into or enter into or penetrate into the text with your feeling or tone of the field of awareness.
Heidegger when asked what he wished to have said at his funeral by Professor Wendt, the famous theologian from Tubingen, he said, “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find and knock and it will opened.” This quote from the gospel of John is a great way to open the book of the text.
You gaze within the text and experience what arises within you. You experience the lineage of the text...the field of the text. The more concrete operational you become the less you will ever understand, as hard and as sincerely as you try. The tighter the focus, the smaller the space of openness. Your mind will lose space, and without spaciousness you are in an obsessional state...a place without space.
As you meditatively gaze into the space of the page, the words will manifest and symbols will manifest and syllables open and the vibrations are felt and knowledge itself arises. The text has opened and is giving its treasures to you. Gazing into givenness, self liberates.
You should have an open unbound focus and not a tight narrow focus. Your concentration should be lose and silky and at times you should gaze at the whole page and see what manifests both to you and within you. Such reading takes place within your whole body and not through eyes alone.
The more you love the page and love what is to be given through the page the more you will receive within you embodied knowledge. Some of you are in recovery. Learning to recover your lost skill of direct perception and knowingness that you had as children. Before your mind became so concrete and linear and hyperfocused, a mind always remaining in a mild, unending panic. Knowing knows fields, fields of knowledge are only fields of being.
When you are reading a tantric text it is necessary to invoke mediative awareness and feel the text with your whole body permeated by the field of awareness and extending your field through the text into the realm of the whoness of the teacher. As you join your whoness with the whoness of the text that is the whoness of the teacher and the whoness of lineage, that is the field of awareness becoming self-presence and self-knowledge. As you know this it is self- liberation.
At times you will find yourself reading randomly or being lead randomly. In a way the field is reading the field through the iconic forms of letters and words and the very space of the pages.
In a way a whoness wrote the text and the text itself is now a whoness...primordial awareness manifesting through words and letters as understanding itself. Is the who, the logos. As is declared in Genesis: In the beginning was the word and the word was with god and was god.
Passing through the text
Passing through is a fruitional practice of the power of extension. The power of extension is the power of the awareness field extending beyond your body into the body of another. The power of extension is the power of the light being extended into the light. The power of extension is the power of the bodhichitta, the great compassion. As the great lama Yangtang Rinpoche said in giving the empowerment of the bodhichitta, the absolute power of the bodhicitta is the extension into the present, the extension in the past and the extension into the future.
When extension takes place the light meets the light. Or as is described in the dzogchen text by Jigme Lingpa the Yeshe Lama, the inner ying meets the outer ying. As the inner field of one awareness meets the inner field of the other, arising out of the nonduality is the intensity of the light.
The same power of extension can be used in reading a text or listening to the words of a teacher. The nondual state arises and the intensification opens gnosis and knowingness to us.
Written by Rudolph Bauer, Ph. D. .A.B.P.P.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies

PRAJNA: THE DISCERNMENT OF DIRECT AWARENESS KNOWNINGNESS (GNOSIS, JNANA)

Self Liberation Through Phenomenology and Dzogchen, Essays

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Wed, Oct 23, 2013
Rudolph Bauer Ph.D., Author

Judgment as a function of superego can be relentlessly cruel and concrete. This cruelty can be focused on one’s self or the self of the other, the “self” of a culture or the “self” of a gender. The focus can be on the very self of one’s family or the very self of one’s closest companion. The internal drama of deprivation and annihilation are sources of superego judgmentalness and self- destructiveness. Survival, in its most primitive forms, is the source of much of superego orientation. The superego’s relentless pursuit of achievement and functionality destroys children’s psyches, relationships, and the sense of whoness in one’s self and in others. As the superego arises in ascendency, whoness (which is awareness itself) disappears both in one’s self and in the other. Objectivity of cognition pervades, and the sense of righteousness is paramount, so anything and everything can be done to anyone. The gods are truly on one’s side. Inflation is the superego’s arc, often followed by deflation. The hero-zero show.
When you look beyond the judgment of mind, there is the luminous discernment of awareness knowningness, gnosis, or jnana. As you look into phenomena, discrimination is necessary. The duality of phenomena requires discrimination for action. In the discernment of awareness you are looking directly, seeing directly, gazing directly into phenomena and into the essence of phenomena simultaneously. You are gazing both into the phenomena and the essence of phenomena simultaneously. As you gaze into phenomena, discrimination arises naturally; gnosis arises naturally. The duality of phenomena requires discrimination for action. The duality of phenomena requires the discrimination of right or wrong, good or evil, true or false, safe or unsafe.
As the Guhyagarbha Tantra suggests, “choose carefully who you connect your karma with.” The Guhyagarbhaar Tantra also suggests that the duality of phenomena arises from within the non-duality of primordial awareness. And so, within non-duality, there is duality. Within the vast unbound sea of non-duality, there are the infinite currents of duality. And within duality itself, is the basis of non-duality. To experience non-duality is to experience the oneness of the indivisibility of appearance and the essence of awareness, the indivisibility of appearance and emptiness. To experience phenomena as the manifestation of non-duality is to experience the purity and equality of all phenomena. And to experience the required action within the duality of me and you and within the duality of me and the world requires prajna . . . discernment and the discrimination that arises out of discernment -- gnosis or jnana. Duality is in actuality; it is not simply a distorted mode of thinking. There is a me, and there is a you. There are infinite
singularities of phenomena, infinite differentiatedness within the non-differentiatedness of the primordial ground awareness, emptiness, luminous potentiality, unbound knowningness.
This prajna is an empowerment of Guhyargarbha Tantra and also one of the six parameters. Prajna is the nature of awareness of awareness . . . rigpa. Prajna is direct perception, gnosis, jnana. Prajna is discernment and the discrimination that arises out of discernment. There is a discrimination that arises out of mind alone, and there is the discrimination that arises out of discernment.
The multiplicity of phenomena of the world requires discrimination for action to take place. Compassion itself is non-duality manifesting the dualities of phenomena. Compassion itself is the discernment of essence, and such discernment requires discrimination for actions. As the Shiva Sutras declare, knowledge is action. And so action requires the discrimination of prajna. Prajna is the remarkable direct focusing into the non-duality of luminous radiance of awareness within the duality of phenomena while simultaneously gazing into the duality of phenomena within the non-duality of primordial awareness. Prajna is simultaneously gazing into duality and non-duality. Duality and non-duality are completely complementary and are the two views of the manifestation of awareness as phenomena.
Some forms of Eastern philosophies declare that only non-duality is real and duality is delusion, and, in fact, duality does not exist. This view can result in lack of agency and lack of action. As phenomena is experienced as unreal and without validity, passivity and lack of agency takes place. If one sees only goodness, only purity, only the light of non-duality, and the singularity of the reality of phenomena is itself foreclosed, then there is a dissociation between the signification of experience and the luminous essence of the phenomena. In this splitting, the path of phenomena and emptiness is foreclosed, appearance and awareness is foreclosed. The path of one’s life is no longer the path of realization. The divinity of appearance is muted and glazed over by descriptors such as “delusion” and “illusion.” Such descriptors invalidate the actuality of phenomena, which is the path of self-illumination. Such descriptors invalidate the actuality that phenomena has character and signification, that phenomena is the manifestation of the infinite qualities of primordial emptiness awareness.
And when non-duality is foreclosed, as it is so often in the West, the person sees only phenomena, and only from mind alone. What remains is “technical mind” in a technical world. What remains is opportunistic life and opportunistic relationships. What remains is the thing
alone. This thing is the thing unto death. In this hobbled frame, the superego becomes so powerful and so destructive, as the superego, the source of judgmentalness, becomes the base of relatedness. Without the presence of non-duality, the medium of prajna does not arise, and the unbound support of non-duality of prajna, then gnosis, jnana is lost.
Duality and non-duality is like the horse and carriage, you “can’t have one without the other.” When gnosis or prajna is grounded in primordial non-dual knowningness, the dualities of phenomena become translucent and transparently open. The character of the phenomena is directly entered into, and the very light of non-duality manifests and reveals the character of the dualistic phenomena. Prajna is seeing directly into the character of phenomena and the nature of phenomena. The light of awareness reveals the essential purity and equality of phenomena, and the light of awareness reveals the character of phenomena. The non-dual light within the phenomena itself reveals the character of the phenomena. In this way prajna gives knowledge for discriminative action and knowing discernment of essence.
The action of direct knowningness takes place within the duality of non-duality. Within the very character of phenomena, there is the luminous light of awareness. Within the luminous light of non-duality, the character of duality shows itself and shines forth. By relating through the phenomena of duality, the pervasiveness of non-duality is completely experienced, and it completely supports our relating to the dualistic phenomena of our circumstances. Natural liberation takes place within the unfolding of dualistic phenomena within the context of timeless non-dual prajna.
In the Vajrakilaya practices, the drama of the phurba is the symbol and empowerment of awareness destroying demonic manifestations. From within the non-duality of discernment, the power of awareness cuts through the dualities of negation, the forces of negation and obscuration. The more you have the energy and view of non-duality within you and through you, the more capable you are destroying the demonic duality manifesting within duality.
The more access you have to the non-dual dimension of experience, the more capable you are of destroying the demonic forces manifesting within phenomena as phenomena. The more subtly the non-dual connection is experienced, the more power manifests to deconstruct the problematic demonic energy -- both within self and within circumstances. This deconstruction can take place at the level of appearance and at the apparitional level arising from within pure awareness of prajna.
The skillfull means arising through the doorway of non-duality gives access to appearance as nirmanakaya, apparitions as sambogakaya and to vast non-dual dharmakaya. The dimensions of appearances, apparitionalness and pure potentiality become apparent through discernment. Discernment becomes the basis of discrimination.
If a person forecloses duality and has or is within only non-duality, then discriminations about specific phenomena become a mind-alone action, a mental action. The signification of dualistic life and dualistic experience as the path of liberation is foreclosed. The path of appearance and awareness is foreclosed, and the path of liberation becomes the archetypical path of apparitions and deities alone.
If a person forecloses non-duality and the view is only duality, the person cannot perceive the purity of phenomena and the essence of phenomena. The person cannot access the power of non-duality. If a person forecloses non-duality, then the person does not experience discernment. There is only signification and a vast absence of the non-conceptual, vast field of direct, timeless knowningness. Mind within awareness bring forth discrimination and discernment.
Dualistic experience is highly deterministic. Reality is determined by unceasing causes, known and unknown . . . infinite causes manifesting one event . . . infinite events arising causing one event. Reality is determined by personal historical fields, contextual cultural fields, ageless generational fields and physical actualities. Fantasy is determined by cultural context, familial context, generational context and physical events. Opportunistic events and no events whatsoever are the web of causality. Events are not only determined by what happens, but also by what does not happen.
Historical past is determined and fixed forever, as is the present that arises out of the past, and the future that arises out of the present. Within duality there is not much spaciousness or openness for liberation -- just locked-in potentiality. As non-duality is accessed, the non-duality of dharmarkaya, the non-duality of prajna -- the vast spaciousness and light of awareness -- enters into the present, it enters into the space between reality and fantasy, between thought and action; it enters into the historically determined mind, it enters into the bound sequence of causality and it opens the space between events and the sequencing of events; it opens the space of the present, it opens the space of the past and it opens the space of the future. That is why within the great compassion, the person extends to the present, extends to the past and extends to the future. And so, spaciousness opens, prajna cuts through and the light illuminates and invigorates.
Timeless awareness alone liberates us in time. Prajna is timeless awareness in time.
Written by Rudolph Bauer,Ph.D A.B. P. P.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies

WELCOME TO WHOVILLE

Self Liberation Through Phenomenology and Dzogchen, Essays

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Wed, Oct 23, 2013 Rudolph Bauer Ph.D., Author

Our .personal innermost awareness is our very own subjectivity . Our subjectivity is our awareness and awareness is our subjectivity. Aham ah! I am becoming who I am!. This subjectivity is not the subjectivity of the mind. Such mind based subjectivity is of mind alone. Such subjectivity is bound like I am my mind or I am my thinking function or I am my feeling function or I am my sensation function, I am memory function. This subjectivity of mind is limited and contained and is often called the ego and is locked into duality. Western phenomenology undersands that person must know the difference between their mind and their awareness. In the upadesha instructions of dzogchen there is the admonition that it is necessary to experience the difference between your awareness and your mind. In this way you can directly and easily know that your very own innermost awareness is the manifestation of primordial awareness itself. The primordial ground manfiest within us as our own awareness. Primordial awareness manifest within us as us. This self recognition can and does take place easily. This awareness is not the mind or the functions of the mind . Nonetheless the mind can be an expression of this awareness field. The essential method of dzogchen is by becoming aware of awareness we experience directly the manifestation of ground awareness, pure awareness. To know awareness as awareness is to know primordial awareness what ever the context,whatever the dimension.
In experiencing awareness we soon discover that awareness is a field whose qualities are spaceousness or emptyness, energy, light and the resonance of compassion.. The vajrajana tradition describe this field quality as dbying. Western phenomenology as expessed by later Husserl, later Heidegger and Merleau Ponty all converge on the profound field qualities of awareness. And although this awareness is not simply our body or mind, this pervasive field of awareness manifest completely within our body and mind.
This primordial awareness is not a thing, and neither is our own personal awareness a thing. Our innermost awareness is not a thing. Awareness is no thingness from which everything and anything arises. Our own personal awareness is not a thing , and from within our no thingness everything and anything can arise.No thingness is the potential space within our own awareness. Since this awareness is not a thing does not mean it does not exist. Awareness exist as who. A human being is a who, who is no thing. The who is not an entity although the
who is contained within a thing of mind and the thing of body and thingness of circumstances .Being a human being is paradoxical we are no thingness within thingness. We are not an entity within the entity of mind an body
You are a who. In knowning the who of your own awareness you can know the who in the awareness of another person. And in knowing the who in the other person you can know the who in yourself. You can love the who in the other.This recognition of whoness is the great compassion. In knowing the who whether in your self or in the other you are actually meeting and knowning and recognizing primordial awareness manifestation as who, as pure potentiality
of this singular whoness who is no thingness.. This is natural knowning of whoness in sensient beings is more often then not a prereflective knowing, a knowing that is direct without reflection and without the understanding of representational mind. We can naturally know the experience of whoness without all kinds of linguistic signifiers. The who of the mother experiences so directly and profoundly the who of the baby, and the who of the baby is brought forth by the moms experiencing the whoness within the baby as the baby. This is the process of natural realization of divinity with and as human beings.
This recognition and experience of whoness in ones self and whoness in the other is actually the experience of primordial awareness within us and within the other. As the great master of awareness Swami Muktananda so often said god dwells within you and you and see god in each other. This is divinity as primordial awareness manifesting as the world and as us.
Sometimes .we experience whoness which is no thingness as thingness..In experiencing the person as a thing whoness disappears. The structure of mind that fosters this unhappy change we will call and use the metaphor of the superego . The superego has something to do with this unhappy turn of events. There is often the transition from whoness to thingness in human experience.when we loose our sense of being in our awareness ..We can relocate our sense of being a subject within mind alone. When we are in mind alone we can be organized by the minds conscious and unconscious structure which contemporary psychology calls the superego.
When we are subsumed into structure of our mind of the superego we become a thing and all otherness becomes things. The superego is a developmental structure of judgementalness. This judgmentalness is often primitive and pervasive. The superego is preoccupied with Right and Wrong, Good and Evil , Better and Best, and Truth and Falsity.This judgmentalness splits all phenomena into the polarities just described. This judgmentalness judges everything and every person. The superego is preoccupied with security and survival and is an attempt to contain the primitive terrors of deprivation and annihilation.
The superego creates whoness into thingness.This judgmentalness permeates clericalism and fundamentalism in so many forms of human experience. The life of marriage, the life of parenting, the life of families, the life of so many human organizations such as religion, corporations, tribal life on and on. God becomes a thing, and awareness becomes a thing and all whos become things. For instance in corporations there are no whos but economic signifiers as things. In this way corporations and religions are very similar in there allegiance to superego constructions and cruelty based ethics..
THE WHO OF GNOSIS AND THE MIND OF THE JUDGEMENTALNESS
The who is the qualities of awareness...spaceousness, luminousity or clarity , compassion and energy. To know the who is to naturally bring forth compassionate perception. To know the mind of the who is not the same as knowning the who. The mind of the who can often become a thing, both the judge and judge become thingness.
Judgement can make a who into a thing. Both the who who judges the who and the who who is being judged becomes things. Groups of whos are easily be made into things. Groups of whos can easily make us into things. Some historical epochs are completely thingfields. Parents easily treat the little whos as little things.
When a person is no longer a who and everyone is a thing, then absolutely everything and anything can be done to the who things.Genocide is the killing of thingness, entire fields of whos are very bad things. So too children can become bad things in light of manical minds of judgementalness.
Psychopathicness is not simply the lack of superego as some naïve people think. In fact psychopathicness is the lack of the experience of whoness in ones self and the other. If you do not know whoness in yourself you can not know who ness in the other. Many if not most people know whoness within themselves in a particular context and then outside that context whoness disappears. Judgementalness destroys the perception of whoness in ones own self..
Whoness is space. The space of the who is the space of awareness.The greater the spaceousness the more the knowner can experience and embrace experience, all experience. Space is the great inclusiveness. The field of awareness is space,vast unbound space. If there is no space or only a tiny bit of space in the who, then the limited space of who can only experience so much, embrace so much experience. A tiny whoness is easily disturbed. The less
there is space of awareness then the more the who will depend on judgement and separates experience into good and bad, right and wrong, better and best and truth or falsity compulsively and relentlessly, and unendingly. So many whos who do not cultivate the space of their awareness and located in mind alone distance themselves from experience of everything and anything including the whoness in themselves and in others. Such whos are ambilvalent and often distance or dissociate themselves from the range of manifestation of the presencing of primordial awareness.They use the method of dissociation and divinize this dissociative approach to human experience as the virtue of detachment. This detachment reflects their ambilvalence to the range of human experience and engagement. This detachment allows the who to be neither here nor there. The who is especially afraid of the power of love and the consuming presence of love. The presence of love is the presence of the primordial ground.
The whoness is a field and the more vast the field and unbound the field then the who can directly enter the whoness of the other and experience the natural indivisibllity between the me who and the you who. The capacity of the who to extend its self is actually beyond the physical boundaries of the body. And so the whoness is in a certain way non local and can extend through space and beyond the boundaries. The place of the who can be extended and inclusive.
Sometimes whos hid themselves in solipsism and in doing so become contained and locked in whoness. And their indivisibility with all whos become only a thought or a good idea. The who has depth and breath and vast range..The range of awareness of the who is ultimately the unbound range of primordial awareness, the dharmakaya.
The superego of psychoanalysis is the languaging of a mental structure of mind that can contain the who and creates the base of who as the mind of judgementalness. The who may thinks discernment and wisdom discrimination is actually a judgement which is an act of the mind and not awareness not whoness. Actually judgment takes the person outside of whonesss ever so briefly and subtly. To be in whoness is actually to see rather directly and translucently. Whoness and gnosis are naturally in oneness. Clearly. Whoness can enter a whoness and know without distance.
The who can experience non duality. Knowning non duality is so direct that secrets and situation are unveiled directly. The whoness can experience non duality within duality. When whoness enters whoness the non duality of whoness is manifest. This non duality of whoness takes place within the duality of circumstances and differentiated personality of mind and body within which is whoness. Ultimately realization is experience the completeness and vast of whoness.
To be a who is to be both in duality and non duality. Often a who does not know that it is in non duality. Baby whos know this easily if there is good enough circumstances. Since primoridial awareness itself is a vast who the more one becomes aware of awareness the more the whoness of universe becomes evident. All of the infinite and singular events who reflect the vast singular actuality of whoness which is primordial awareness.
The primitive affective states that are often contained and manifested within the super ego are deprivation and annihilation. And of course you can be on either side or both sides . You can be both deprived and depriving and having the terror of annihilation and imposing the terror of annihilation on another. Guilt is a sense of both. O lord I am not worthy,say but the word and my soul shall be healed. Unworthiness is actually deprivation..i am not enough and will suffer annihilation or should be annilated. The superego is not love but judgment and cruelty.The preedipal stage which is non conceptual and preverbal is deprivation and annihilation anxiety. The aedipal is at first glance achievement and accomplismnet and being in the world but i the back ground is failure ,deprivation and annihilatiion .
Religion is rather strange in that it recognizes the vast who which is great and then religion combines the knowningness of whoness with the great institutionalized superego of right and wrong. The human superego confabulates the very whoness of the big who as a big judgmental thing and makes all the little whos become things . Of course other whos become bad things who do not believe in the big who of one group of who’s .Of course religion treats awareness like a thing and so everything has to be counted...and accounted..and judged.
Religion likes and preoccupied with the death of the who.. Religion tells whos that if you mess up at death then you are in for it..A lot of escatalogical narratives are metaphors of cruely and the rage of judgementalness on the cosmological level. The realms of judgementalness of right and wrong, good and evil, better and best, truth and falsity with cruel and everlasting consequences.
Much of religion is the cultural formation of the superego...within religious tradtions There is a relentless judgmentalness.with eastern as well as western traditions. There is intrinsic tension between clericalism and shamanism, a tension between historical dogmatism and mysticism....a tension between truth as judgment and truth as revelation of Being within all beings.
THE WHONESS OF PRIMORDIAL AWARENESS AS WHO
We will use transliterations of the dzogchen trantric text The All Creating Sovereign. The text declares When the rupakaya(forms as archetypical(SAMBOGAKAY) and the dimension of flesh(NIRMANAKAYA) appears objectively ,that is the manifestation of my Being.
I am the all creating sovereign , and you self liberate yourself through me and you will be seen by my eyes. I gaze both into them and through them. When the experiences of the mind are articulated through language ,then this is the elaboration of my Being. All language indicate Being. Whether you pursue me or not this is the sound of who I am.
if you are able to sustain your experience of wisdom awareness which is remaining in awareness of awareness then original ground is experienced as presencing all the infinitely different experiences of form, sight ,sound and the sensory stimuli. And even if you are not in aware of awareness then you are still experiencing the original ground manifesting all the infiintie and different experiences. To know directly the all creating monarch is to sustain wisdom awareness . And even if wisdom awareness is not sustained you are still knowning me directly even if you do not know that.
By staying in luminous spaceous knowningness with whatever phenomena is presenting itself is to know me directly and easily. Yes you can know me through all phenomena as well as through innermost awareness. There is the manifestation of innermost awareness as you and the manifestation of innermost awareness as everyone else, all who’s.
When all kinds of thoughts occur within the who , this is the sublime nonconceptual samdhi of who I am. All thoughts are manifestations of the whoness of me. I am not a thing I am not thingness although I manifest everything and within every who as a who. Primordial awareness manfiest both mind and body and circumstances and the who who is embodied in time and space and circumstance. The who is a place. The place of the who is a you or I.
The mind grasping and fixated can hide and lose the sense of the who. Nonetheless the who I am will still be present, I am always present wheither I am known or not. Even the grasping and fixation is none the less who I am. I am the who of all the whos. Wherever a who is, I am.
Written by Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. A.B.P.P.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies .

EMPTY MIND, TRANSITIONAL SPACE AND THE DISSOLVING OF SELF OBJECT FUNCTION

Self Liberation through Phenomenology and Dzochen, Essays

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Wed, Oct 23, 2013 Rudolph Bauer Ph.D., Author

We have focused on the transmission of the field of awareness and on the extension of the field into the present, the past and the future. We have focused on cutting through methods which are forms of the methodology of the ancient Vajrakilaya. We used cutting through methods as ways of dissolving mental structures. We especially focused on the primitive superego's structuring of unhappy experience. We use various methods of awareness cutting through configurations of awareness. This is why these actions are so direct, immediate and powerful. We are using awareness to cut through the configurations of awareness.
We focused on the apparitional dimension of the Dakini. We experienced how the apparition may seem to go beyond our body boundaries and seem extrinsic to us. And yet, at the very same moment, that Dakini is the nature of your own awareness. The Dakini is not a projection of your mind, but the manifestation of primordial awareness in you, as you and your circumstances. Remembering the difference between mind and awareness is important. The Dakini is both completely within you as you, and beyond you as the world. This is the nature of the archetypical realm. The Dakini is not a function of your psychology, but is the very nature of the ontology of subjectivity and the nature of the ontology of the world. To experience this apparition is to be open or privy to the anima, the anima mundi. Psyche! You and I live in psyche. And, if you are open experientially to that dimension of actuality you are very, very lucky. The task is becoming what you are, Aham Ah. And so, you become the apparitional. This is a path of completion for you, but not necessarily for the person next to you. In time, you see through the eyes and feel through the hands of the Dakini.
Tat tvam asi. You are that. The symbolic realm of the great compassion is available for you, for your protection and actually the protection of others. This apparitional dimension will help you to go beyond your mind and the superego structuring of experience which enslaves you and those around you.
I have spoken about not having teachers in your mind, nor having father and mother in your mind. This is important in your liberation from being in the mental drama of the eternal family and freeing yourself from childhood states of mind. This does not mean you do not love your father and your mother. It does not mean you do not love your teachers. It simply means you do not always locate them in the representational sphere of mind. This mentalization encloses the relational experience within the representational mind alone. Relational experience can be situated in the vast field of awareness.
I will make a commentary from the point of view of the self object function. The self objects are actually those others who help us sustain self. This self object function, this very personal function of having another help us by holding and resonating to our sense of self, is so important. The self object begins in the beginnings of life and manifests through various developmental periods. The self object function appears and reappears over time and throughout time. In the beginning and for some time , the self object is external and gross, and can be both in the real or in the symbolic realm. By gross I mean physical, such as real person or real animal, or real apparitional being. Then, slowly but surely, the self object function of that person or situation is becoming internalized. In the deepening and in the owning of the self object function, the self object and the function become more subtle and more internal. Eventually, the self object function becomes the self, itself. The self object becomes immanent to and within the self, itself. The self object function is the nature of awareness itself. You release the configurations of the self object function. Your awareness is the self and that which holds and sustains self. Timing is completely important in this endeavor. And so, I have no mother and father in my mind; I have no teachers in my mind. I have gratitude. Gratitude sustains the self object function within your self as your self. Idealization is useful to a point and then becomes containing, and keeps you a child. Lama Tharchin Rinpoche spoke so beautifully on the death of his guru and about what his developmental task was at that moment. Dissolving the self object function results in empty mind and fullness of awareness.
I will now speak about the same and similar function through the language of Winnicott. Winnicott spoke about the function of the personal mother and how necessary this function is for a child to become a person. He also described how the personal mother dissolves and becomes the environmental mother. The experience transforms from the experience of the personal mother to the experience of the environmental mother, meaning the world or aspects of the world as mother. You can see this confidence in persons who have made this transition from good enough mother to the environmental mother, from object focus to being in the world within its infinite horizons. By world, I do not mean physical earth, but the world as the being of Being itself. Winnicott describes the capacity to enter transitional space and to live within the transitional space and transitional relatedness with its freedom and generosity of spirit. Transitional space, the intermediate area of experience, is free of superego domination. The transitional space transforms and is no longer simply within me and my body. This intermediate state, this place of potential space, becomes the space I live in and dwell within. The transitional space unfolds from interiority within me to the very space of my life. From dwelling within the transitional arena within my self and transforming into wherever I am, I live in the transitional dimension. Transitional is not simply within me but becomes the mode of the being of the world. This, of course, gives freedom to be present and to keep moving within the freedom of transitional relatedness.
To free your self from the objects within in your mind allows the very objects, in actuality, to become the field of awareness. In death, the objects of your mind become the field of awareness. In death, the object of your relatedness become the field of awareness, the sea of awareness.
The object or person in your mind dissolves into the sea of awareness. The teachers in your mind dissolve into the sea of awareness, the field of awareness. They are no longer objects of your mind, interiorized pictures or memory, but the actuality of the field of awareness. When
you feel the awareness field you are feeling within the awareness field their traces unfolding their wonderful support. But, they are not in your mind unless you bring them forth. Where are they? They are the very field of awareness itself.
Within your awareness they are of the nature of awareness itself.
And so you live in awareness and live in the humanness of awareness, which is the Buddha. You are free within the spaciousness of your mind. In doing so you are more free of psychology and live within the cosmological view. Sometimes people do not live in the field of awareness, which is infinite in its horizons, and confuse the generational field with the field of awareness. And so they are forever limited within the generational field.
Ultimately, representational becomes the non conceptual. The mind becomes the field. You want to live in the field and not the mind. In dissolving the mirrors of your mind, the field of awareness becomes the mirror of its own self. Immanence mirroring immanence.
Written by Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. A.B.P.P.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies