Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful and some good trends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. If that house is the Dalai Lama's cultural center in America, All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 279. Hey, no bull wants.
Speaker 4 00:01:16 Hey Noah one at this time. Great to read. Wind of evolution will drive you from behind fiercely unbearably terrifyingly. Don't be afraid of it. It is your own hallucination. A frightening thick darkness draws you from the friend. Irresistibly you're a terrified by harsh cries, such as strike kill. Don't be afraid of them. Heavy sinners will see cannibal ogres, brandishing, many weapons, shouting war cries, kill, kill, and strike strike. Get him, get him. You will see ferocious wild animals. You will be hunted by troops in blizzard, storms and forms. You will hear sounds of avalanches, flood waters, forest fires, and hurricane in panic, you will escape by any means only to stop short on the brink of falling down a yawning triple a, this red, black, and white bottomless and horrifying. Actually this triple abyss means fleeing inside his own subtle nervous system. And that's the central channel with the red and white channels on the right and the left and the dark blue one looks almost black in the center.
Speaker 4 00:02:42 And, uh, he's, he's seeing that from inside, you know, his small, subtle mind, he's still hooked up. That means with his body into to some extent, Hey, Novo one, it is not really an abyss. It is lust hate and delusion, right? And last is the red one. Hate is the right one and delusion is the black man. You should recognize this as the moment of the existence becoming between call upon the Lord. Have great compassion, pray intensely. Oh Lord have great compassion, spiritual teachers, three jewels. I am named as so-and-so please don't abandon me to the hard states. Don't forget me. And they always say call on the envelope contention for this was, this was another little experience that I had. Um, and I think it's when I finally was convinced of the sincerity of his holiness, the Dalai Lama about after knowing him maybe 35 years, because he always says, you know, that, although he thinks Buddhism is best for him, he does not presume he by he critically thinking about it when he was younger, he stopped thinking it would be better for anybody else.
Speaker 4 00:04:01 And he, they have their own karma and whatever their religious thing is, is better for them. He decided. And what it mean over all, all versions of it are all interpretations of different religions. Cause they're very much different among themselves, but he said they have all access to reality themselves in their own way. Even secular is do humanist, secular humanist. So he did that. And then, you know, I always thought, well, yeah, but you know, cause of course I love Buddhism a lot and um, I think it's great, you know, although I would never that religious, but I do. I do like it. I think it's very, very sensible. It makes sense to me. So, so in a way I was thinking, well, he says dad, and it's hard because he doesn't want people converting Buddhists away from Buddhism. And he doesn't want Muslims doing by forcing people to be Muslim and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 4 00:04:52 And I had maybe a little doubt about his sincerity. And then one day I was, uh, I forget what it was, but I guess I, the TTV I saw one of those, you know, fundamentalist, TV, preachers, you know, and people were flipping out Jesus, Jesus. And I realized, how, why would, I want some people who, when they called out to their Lord of great compassion, like Jesus, why would he want them calling out to someone whose name they couldn't pronounce? What would be the point of that? You know, why not call out for Jesus two syllables? What I grew up, no problem. And then I realized how truly sincere he really was. I did, you know, Jesus is such a nice, easy name. He sat in Asia, they see ISA, you know, anyway, nevermind. So, okay. Those who have gathered merit, virtuous and sincere in Dharma practice are entertained with various delights and enjoy various excellent pleasures.
Speaker 4 00:06:07 And those dominated by delusion who have neither a strong virtue nor strong bias have neither happiness nor suffering, but she'll only is to perfection and indifference. So he doesn't really say those dominated by hatred. What happens to them? They fight, but in a way, in a way he's referring to the ones who are feel they're being chased by people and are frightened and to people want to harm them. And our wild animals are attacking them and so on. So in a way, that's why he doesn't deal with it because there are always those three things, you know, greed or lust and hate and delusion. Those are, those are the three told the three poisons, you know, they were the most important department, oh, noble one, whatever happens along those lines, don't crave, don't long for pleasures or joys. Offer them all to the Juul of this spiritual teacher, abandoned attachment to them, even without any visions of pleasure or pain, but only feelings of indifference set the mind on the experience of the great seal, free of both concentration and distraction.
Speaker 4 00:07:14 That is most important. But of course that's like great perfection. That's Zoe Jen type of statement. Great seal is the highest enlightenment experience. And it's where you fall in love with the universe. And you realize that the universe is in love with you. So you see everything as an expression of the love of the universe to you. That's the seal like a seal when you seal in wax with a pattern and everything, the, everything the universe loves you, whatever it is. And you love all of it for us. And therefore there's, it's the most, it's like a complete melting together of you in the universe. It's called the great seal Maha mud job. And that's not easy to do, but set your mind on that. He's just saying, and, um, uh, don't just be indifferent if you're not either, you know, if you're sort of in the middle, but realize that you and the universe are one and that the bit that you both are created by the big energy of the universe, the clear light of the void, which is the clear light of love and compassion of the Bodhicitta, you know, the spirit of enlightenment free of both and you don't have to concentrate on it and you don't be distracted away from it because you let it be there that, but it's not that easy in a way, but it actually, it might be easier in the stress, dangerous moment in the, between where you were completely, if you have a moment of greed or a moment of anger, it just, it just has a really powerful thing.
Speaker 4 00:08:56 Like, um, when, you know, wind is the, the element of win is defined as motion movement. It doesn't, it doesn't mean it's a breeze. That what I say, when I blow on my hand, there's the wind element. Is there the moisture element? Is there the temperature element? Is there the fact that the fire element and the solidity element is there because when part is only motion, the motion part and do you know, you all know the eight stages of dissolving. Did you know, have you, if you want to know, cause since we're doing that, I'm assuming from Andrew that you all have previously studied the earlier parts of the book of the dead or this kind of thing. So you know what the eight states are, where are you progressively lose connection to your different sense fields, you know, sight hearing, touch, smell, taste, actually hearing is almost the last one, but you know, and, and this needs to have to do with your different, um, parts of your sensitivity, right?
Speaker 4 00:10:08 And finally you don't, your whole body goes to sleep like, you know, like, like you don't feel your body, right? I mean, you know that, and that's where you have the earth. They call it earth melting into water, Waldron, water, melting to fire, fire, melting into wind, wind melting it. They people say air, but that's wrong. Cause we think of it as something still let me think of air, but wind means it moves, you know? And then when the melting into space or which is also called consciousness, and this is when you are completely subjectively speaking, you are free of your subtle, your chorus body, but you're not free of your subtle body. So you are still, your energy is still present inside your subtle, nervous central nervous system, but we would call or what they would call the subtle body. Right? You know, all this, do you, and then there are three states of the subtle, subtle body, the three elements of the subtle body and three states of the subtle mind, you know, that there's three elements are the channels, winds and drops.
Speaker 4 00:11:12 And the winds here are more subtle wins. They're not the coarser outer when they're like inner like electricity, almost like kind of movement, just pure movement and um, like a nerve impulse, you know? And, uh, that's when at this stage, you know, and, um, and th that's the body, that's the subtle body. And the subtle mind is the mind of what I call luminence radiance and eminence, which is a moonlit sky, a sunlit sky, terribly bright and dark lit sky. You know, there's this. And then finally, there's, what's called the clear light experience. And people wrongly think when they see a bright sunlight or the right beautiful luminous Moonlight, they think that's the clear light and it isn't it's light, but the clear light is a more subtle kind of light because it's a light that is already there. In other words, it's not shining from one side to one thing on another.
Speaker 4 00:12:17 So it's a light that is beyond the duality of light and dark. And then similarly for it is the pre-dawn Twilight that he's referring to here. You know, everything is like a pre-dawn Twilight. Remember he said, uh, he said, uh, yeah, wherever he said it. But that point is, that's actually clear light is that predawn Twilight. But he, but he don't, I don't think he thinks that you're seeing it there, but he's suggesting it to you, but, but that's a weird light, right? Because everything is that light so that it doesn't shine from one thing on another, because it's when you hit clear, you become aware. If you hit it with awareness, become aware that everything is clear light, so there's nothing to obstruct it. And also, therefore it no longer moves because it's no longer moves because it's everywhere. It's mass has become infinite.
Speaker 4 00:13:18 Like it has the speed of light. You don't know that. I don't know if you know that. I didn't know that. I don't know if any of you are a physicist, in which case we might have a debate about it. But I once heard from, um, Livermore lab at UC Berkeley explanation online, I read it online about photons, right? It photon is supposed to be a particle of light. Right. And when we talk about, well, my optical nerve, the photon bounces off the wall. And then I see the orange wall because light reflects off it. Right. And it goes to my fine nerve. Right? And, and it's a particle. We talk about a particle. Well, to my shock and horror, somebody asked the question when, when, since light always moves at 186,000 miles, a second, that's pretty fast. And when it hits a mirror, it reverses instantaneously and it keeps going in the opposite direction. It reflects off that. What, where does it get the energy to suddenly reverse direction? Since it is all kind of energy itself, but the mirror doesn't have any energy. How come it suddenly goes 106,000 miles the other direction. So this super physicist, he says, well, that question has brought up something we don't normally discuss. What is that? Well, there is no such thing as a photon.
Speaker 4 00:14:50 It said why? Well, because light is not a particle point about light Brian. The speed of light is an absolute for Einstein's special theory is that when anything moves at that speed, it's mass becomes infinite. So it doesn't move any longer because it's everywhere. That means. So how could it be a particle and really be light? It's some precursor to light and to be convenient and to talk about something in the, in the, in the, in the, at the event horizon, before it becomes actual light, we talk about photons because it makes us able to understand how you see things. It gives us a way of talking about it, but it shows that their way of talking, but it's not like there's an objective photon sitting out there, which is some pretending to be a particle. When actually it's everywhere. I'm already. I love it because this is exactly the thing about clear light.
Speaker 4 00:15:53 The clear light is this infinite energy that shapes the oil relativity. And that's what voidness is. It wasn't even basic clear light of the board, like the board and its radius, but void voidness is everything. No matter his voice, what is, is not the space in which everything takes place or arises. There was having everything it caused. The translators are all into, are rising all the time. I dunno what they must not like getting up in the morning. They constantly translate words for production and creation as arising. Everything is all right. So point is nothing arises from clear light. Everything is clear light. You follow me. Everything is emptiness. All his face is emptiness, but also every solid thing is emptiness in space. An emptiness is the fact that none of it all is non-relational it's empty of any non-relational thing. Isn't that simple and easy.
Speaker 4 00:16:52 That's why it's relational. You follow me. So the discovery of emptiness by Buddha is discovery of relativity. You get you get it. So that means what that means is it can't become nothing in a way. One of the important emptiness is damn Dennis of nothing. So I know, but in a way that means that nothing is a concept that we have opposite of something. But this is really important because if you think about this and it's not complicated, it is not. It's simple. If you think about a den, it means you're already in the clear light we are right now. It's so clear light. And so therefore when people say I saw the clear light, you know, they're making a mistake because nobody's see, can see the clear light because you are seeing itself is also clear light. Okay. And you're going, I is cleaner line.
Speaker 4 00:17:52 Okay. But that's all relational. And you see these lights that are in the subtle level below the super subtle, clear light, but they're called super subtle. And then, and that's why it's, that's, it's a little bit mysterious and it's a little bit unexplainable. So all our explainings are kind of giving us victors of getting to the idea that we're already where we want to be. And, but why don't we enjoy guys? Why don't we enjoy being in the great seal or in the great perfection or in the bliss void indivisible? Why? Because we don't know that we're here because we have our, our misnomer or misunderstanding V veils obscures to us, our deeper awareness of being here now, you know, being everywhere now, almost, you know, that we are interconnected with everything and we are in a way, everything we're like each of us. And not only that, but every cell in our body, every cell, every particle, every atom, every cell, every molecule, every subatomic Bartow and every energy that is below particles is us.
Speaker 4 00:19:13 And if we work at it, we can open our awareness into various deeper and deeper levels. And we can disk. We can, we can personally just seek. We can find dark matter and dark energy. And we can find, we might never see clear light, but we can know that we're, we are clear light. And once we know that, then we can shape our existence and we can be really helpful where it begins to become a Buddha. But by knowing it, you don't leave the course or level you don't have to because the coarser levels, aren't also at the same clear light, the tip of your nose is clear, light, clear, light likes to be your nose. That's one of the things he'd done.
Speaker 4 00:19:59 My nose is emptiness. Emptiness is my nose. And then, then in the same show, try and won't say, there's no nose, but that means, that means there's no nose. Like I think I have a nose. That's not anybody else's clarified my nose type thing. Well, there was none of that born. I can't find actually it was where they say no nose, no, I know what you're no nose or this know that, that means that way. I think the way I perceive my nose as a problem, normally, sometimes I like it. But sometimes the problem then, uh, uh, that is, uh, where did I say no nose is to get me to realize that my nose is clear light, actually. In fact, that's what it really is. So, um, everything is really okay and live or die. And even you're in the Bardo, you'll be okay and you don't be afraid and you won't be afraid.
Speaker 4 00:20:54 And you, if you want to be at a nice boot and land, you go in a really bright light. And if you want to go back to Scranton, you know, you can go there. You know, I wear a mask, uh, no, this is really important. So that's why, you know, it was, he did, I didn't do it. He says even without any visions of pleasure or pain with only feelings of indifference set the mind on the experience of the great seal, free of both concentration and distraction, because you see the pleasure and pain really relate to you see the, the luminance state of which some other people wrongly translate in fact widely, but wrongly translate as appearance. If you've read some of those books, they call it appearance. But it's opposite of appearance. It's disappearing because you become the white, you are the white light, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 00:21:54 You don't see it. It doesn't appear to cause you are it. And when you appear, when you, when you are a Moonlight and limitless Moonlight, you feel you don't have a feeling of having a body at all. You're just our state of, of limitless of Moonlight. There's a little irritation in that state. It's a slight irritation and the instincts that are associated with it in a normal person who hasn't trained to their mind to be aware of such subtle places in there is such a Bardot, such gaps in their mind. Uh, there are, there are I think 40 instincts or I was mixed 33, 33 or 40. I forget what was, forget, which is which, but there's all these instincts which are associated with irritation and it will, and negative, negative, a little bit negative anger. You know, it's a male thing. It's like a male level.
Speaker 4 00:22:52 Then the solar level is more feminine. And then there's more, uh, you know, desire in that one. So that's associated with the lost and creating craving and desire. And then the neutral one is the dark state called I call eminence. Cause it's like about something else it's about to happen, about to wake up into clear light. And um, and so they are, he's connecting. That's why he comes up with the grades. He'll hear, okay, nevermind enough on that. Now you all know, and by the way, don't, I don't want to hear people say, oh, him do this. That's so advanced. Oh, I can't understand that. Oh, oh no. That's some people, some scholars, they read dad and Lama. No way you can all understand. Emptiness is very easy to understand. It just means everything is only relative. And then the way we will cling to something, it's like, that's a real thing.
Speaker 4 00:23:46 I really as asked my old Mongolian teacher used to say, people think they're real and they're not wrong. Everybody is real. The problem is they tend to think they're really real. And that's when it becomes a problem. That's the exaggeration, you know, and that's the imposition and the, the investment in position, the projection of an absolute into everything that one thinks one recognizes. So that sort of an anchor is ones Eric ignition. Oh, a human being. Oh yeah. Cause that they absolute human beings. Oh, Bob Germany. I'm absolutely about terming. Oh yeah. So I'm absolutely, you know, that's weird that can pop out in us the way we interact with things. And so that's the thing then religious fanatics it's God becomes absolute and materialist nothingness becomes absolute. So there is this tendency in our insecurity and fear of openness to interrelating to everything. There is this way of wanting to shut down in this year and that as if that will help and good has messages, actually their best way is total openness.
Speaker 4 00:25:02 Because then that way you're totally safe. That's the ultimate security is total openness and you kind of harm come towards you. It goes right through you type of thing. Okay. Hey, no, a little one at that time structures such as bridges, tempos, cathedrals, huts, and stupid will seem to show to you for a moment, but don't claim to them at length. Since your mind likes the body, it cannot settle down. You feel cold, you become angry and distraught and your awareness seems erratic, volatile, and unsteady. Then you will have the thought. Now I have died. What can I do? Your heart will feel cold and weak. You will feel fierce and boundless suffering. The fact is you must travel. You must travel and cannot be attached to anyone place. So don't worry about it and let your mind to come to rest from now on.
Speaker 4 00:26:02 You have no food except for what is dedicated for you. That's what reminded me about the, the Mo the, the, the missionary father, Joseph, maybe I think in Butan, what is dedicated for you? There is no certainty about your friends. These are signs of your mental body wandering in the existence, becoming between your present joys and sorrows are determined by your evolutionary momentum. When you see your lens friends and loved ones and your own corpse, and you are saying, now I have died. What can be done at that time? Your mental body feels greatly stressed.
Speaker 4 00:26:51 Then you think, remember we're in this? How do I find the new body? How nice it would be to have a new body. So you see that sort of thing. We were so attached to being boundaried. We don't understand the true noble truth of suffering that any such mode of being is bound to be suffering. But, but, and then, and when we misunderstand that, we, one of the reasons we misunderstand that is we don't believe that because we think, well, at least sometimes I'm not suffering when everything is around me. It's okay. You know, so that's can be so, and there are so many things I know about that would really make me suffer outside of my boundary. So this is impossible. How would it be that I could be safe if I have all a hundred percent wide open, you know, body, speech, and mind, you know, what would that mean?
Speaker 4 00:27:51 And, um, and so we project the danger outside, right? And, um, and, uh, and, uh, that's why, that's why we're here. That's why he calls the truth. The first noble truth of suffering, he calls it a noble truth. Meaning it is not true for someone who is normally, self-centered not bad. I'm not saying that there nobody seemed as bad. Just sort of the normal programming. Noble means someone who has had a moment of at least the one moment of real empathy, a really feeling they are someone else as well as themselves. And to have that, the key is you don't leave feeling yourself when you, if you've ever been really deeply in low, you know, it could happen with a newborn. It can happen with all kinds of ways. Human beings, sense of identification is not itself. An absolute objective thing that just naturally comes with being a human being.
Speaker 4 00:28:54 It's an earned thing. It's a condition thing. It's a learned the thing that we feel like we're us, that we identify with ourselves, right. You know, they have all this studies of infant childhood that don't distinguish between their mouth and the breasts and so on, you know? Right. And so it's a learning thing that I'm risk me over on this side, you know, that's learned. And then we have these moments of slippage where we identify completely strongly with others. And when we do, we, sometimes, sometimes it's bad. Maybe we get an angry mob or something and we get really angry. Sometimes it's beautiful because there's something loving going on and being in love fully, you don't leave yourself. You embrace other, you identify with the other, right.
Speaker 4 00:29:48 So tho that's so, so then, so that's the thing you see when we first hear that it's supposed to be great to be wide open, then we think, well, the right openness must be a separated state. So that's why you get dualistic Buddhism where they think Nirvana is something apart from the relative world. But the emptiness teaching is that Nirvana is the relative world where someone is both wide open and yet able to manifest separate emanations to be interactive in a skillful way somehow, which is inconceivable. That's paradoxical. That is self-contradictory. So that's why Buddha said, I knew everything I'm enlightened. I'm so sorry. I can't explain it to you. He said, you have to figure it out for yourself, but I can help you do that. But I can't just, just by explaining something, it won't do because it's going to hit a paradox. You're both everything. And you're also still yourself and even multiple selves, but body of emanation, you know, but that's about it.
Speaker 4 00:31:03 Okay. What, let's see if we have question that, is she, so I wonder Kurt says, I wonder if it is true that the opposite of the relative is the absolute, and that is what we are not familiar with. Hence, practice being with the abs for the thoughts. Hell yes. Oh yes and no. Uh, I gain absolute and the relative are defined as being opposite. You could simply say the relative and the non-relative okay. Someone might want to define the absolute is just some sort of relative thing that's particularly intense, but still relative. But that would not be the normal definition of absolute, the normal definition. Absolute is not connected to the relative, like your highly devoted theist. When they talk about the absolute creator, they mean the creator creates mysteriously, but the creator is not trembled by all the mess of the relative is beyond it.
Speaker 4 00:32:26 Right? Yeah. Absolute is transcendent of the relative, et cetera. They, they say such thing. Okay. So when you say practice being with the absolute, then that is, you're making a statement. And in a way you could make that meaningful. You could say, uh, I'm going to be with emptiness, which is a D, which is the other navigational statement, like absolute non-relative ultimate. Sometimes people use that term and I'm going to meditate to emptiness. But then what is emptiness like in a way, one thing that's absolute is in that sense, nothing is a kind of absolute, for example, is there an elephant in your room, a live elephant, not a, a image of an elephant. Is there a live element elephant in your room? Okay. You look around the room. I don't see any of you really looking who's, you know, there's no room for a lion.
Speaker 4 00:33:35 So what that means is there's a non elephant in your room. You could say about D actually luckily a non Elvin. It doesn't take up any space there. So it isn't really meaningful to say that the non elephant is in the room. You can say it though, and you could make a meaning out of it. So you could, you could, you right now, every single one of us is being with the non elephant in the room, right? So you could, we could say the non elephant is the opposite of the elephant. So it's like it isn't, the elephant is a relative B with a trunk and tusks and blah, blah, blah. Then the non elephant doesn't have any of those things. And then actually it doesn't relate to an elephant except in our conceptuality. And it's a way of describing it. We didn't find an elephant, but we didn't find the absolute non elephant.
Speaker 4 00:34:31 You never knew find it because it isn't there. It's just, when you find it, when you don't find the elephant, that's all probably not finding the elephant. You'll find it on elephant. Or you can call that finding. But actually you don't find entity. You're just opening your mind from having considered a possibility of there being an elephant. Your mind is then open and their room. Is there open therefore, so you could be in an empty room in that sense, but on the other hand, the ending it's of the room in one way is just, again, you're getting your concept because the real deep understanding of emptiness, you are also the emptiness. So the non elephant is, is not getting in your way. So in a way, you're not really with it, except in your conceptual reality, you follow me. So that's why you can't explain these things because our dualistic, verbalization things, not adequate to encompass reality, it's adequate to bring us to the brink of it, but it's not adequate to encompass it.
Speaker 4 00:35:48 For example, most important thing you can do in Buddhist practice, really. And well, of course, the most important thing you can just do. Just be nice, be compassionate, be open-minded those that you can put easy, things like that. But the most important practice you can do is try to find yourself, no, not an elephant, but yourself. Try to find it, meaning, look inside yourself with full absolute effort, but we could say absolute effort, meaning the strongest possible effort we can make, but that's of course a related it isn't really absolute because it's relationship, but we can use absolute in that way of as emphasis, someone says, do you want a cup of tea? Absolutely. You can say, you know, I'm thirsty. And uh, so the point is, if you really try to find yourself that the report has come down, but they're, open-minded, there's the report has come down that you won't find anything.
Speaker 4 00:36:56 You're all sorts of things that you will find that you might be candidates for being yourself. You will, you will, they will dissolve under further analysis. And on top of which luckily, and it's interesting like Daniel Dennett, great philosopher. He has a book called consciousness songs, you know, where he suddenly like explained as it comes, explain, and in a way, he does a look quest for Daniel Denon and he doesn't find anything. So then his explanation is it's just a bunch of epi, phenomenal constructions consciousness itself. And therefore what he really discovered, he thinks is nothing. And, and he, he plans to go. There will be no Daniel Denton after he dies. He's confident, right? So, because he's a materialist, he's a very card carrying dogmatic, materialist, no nailers. That is to say about the mind. But the point is, when you don't discover anything, when you're looking for yourself that you don't die, you don't, it doesn't destroy you not to find yourself because the looking process is a relational person who is looking what you can call yourself.
Speaker 4 00:38:18 But then when you fail to find it as something that is objective really in yourself, that changes your whole way of experiencing yourself. If you follow me. So you could say that to being with absolute selflessness, but a way it's just it's it's really is really only being your relative self. You could say is being with absolute water. If you haven't experienced, there's a danger there. When you look for yourself, the report is of experts in altered states, in men, you know, meditational, treatises, and scientific, uh, you know, documents that describe different possible meditative states, which are very, very elaborate and detailed and thorough. And they all described that. What will happen is you will have an experience of yourself or rather they will call it yourself. But you will have an experience of being a vast space. You will be, you'll feel I am this space, but you won't even have an, I am to go in it. You will disappear into this space temporarily.
Speaker 4 00:39:34 And there's a danger then of saying the, okay, this is myself by kind of an inference at the event at the threshold. And that will make you become very attached to that state. And that will make you a blue, become a trap for you. Like a, almost like a neolistic trap where you will be stuck in a kind of unconsciousness for a long time, but it will still end up being temporary because it's still not absolute because if you experience it, even if you experienced it by not being there previous you, that you thought you were, you're still experiencing it. There was a boundary. You entered the experience through this and that meditative technique and concentrated with attainment. And therefore it's a relational state. It is not the absolute, that is a kind of danger about emptiness, but for our deep Yogi who meditates it.
Speaker 4 00:40:36 So even there you are not being with the object when you are being with the absolute is when that space like equipoised samadhi, which is supremely important experience, but it's not an experience for staying in it. It's an experience for Brie it to wear it. And your experience of yourself as a responsible relational interconnected being, and that spaciousness are fused together in your awareness because you have a developed the cognitive dissonance tolerance, enlightenment that is called Buddhahood. Okay. Otherwise, if the absolute, if that was the absolute, and it was something different from the relative, because, and it was more real than the relative, because the is unreal and it is real, then it would destroy the relative. And it would just be a matter of everybody trying to, you know, trying to get to people out of the relative into there, and then they'd be free there forever.
Speaker 4 00:41:48 And that would be great because it would be easy. It might seem easier to do that than being free in place. By bringing that infusion with this, that would be, that would be being with the dead might be being with the obsolete maybe, but going is that's indescribable. You can call anything you want, but in a rational way, and you need that rational. We need that. Okay. Yeah. Constance, as he explained to him and put it up there for the other, when I die, there will no longer be a me isn't necessarily materialized because what I think I am me is only relative. I won't be, I won't be reborn today. I have no clue of is reborn. Well, yes, but you know, there's something you could make that same argument when you were 18 or 10 years old, you were going, I, this and dead and people understood what you were doing.
Speaker 4 00:42:56 And you were considered a responsible person and you were organized at your behavior about, I do nice things. I don't do bad things, or we're not usually et cetera, et cetera. And you had no idea that that same, I would be referring to you. Now, if you're 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old, you heard episodes that I, I, you had one who are 10, has no idea it's going to be I the 80 year old, no way. Does it have that idea or does it have the idea that it will be? I, the Buddha, I I'm what? Something, occasionally he says, I'm a Buddha. What about you? Like when the first person, one of the first people he met, who wanted to know what was, what was his trip? You know, who was another religious seeker? He said, well, what are you? Who's your teacher? And he said, I'm self I'm the original.
Speaker 4 00:43:54 He says, I'm my own teacher. He said, so I am, I'm a, I'm my own teacher. Oh, that's nice. I'm a Jane. That particular guy said, and he was the old name for Jane. And he went off to see his teacher. He said, he didn't quite get the same and put it, didn't say he had a teacher. He said, I'm a swam. I'm a S I'm original. I'm my own teacher. He didn't really realize what he meant by that. So their Buddha was using our high. And I got to think, actually he used the pronoun, but he used it. But he, he knew that he was referring to himself and he he's answering your question. So implicitly, there was an either, or you can make that same argument. So if you're a reborn as a being that doesn't have language, then you won't have a pronoun to refer to yourself.
Speaker 4 00:44:49 If you were born as a Chinese, you will learn to say, whoa, eventually you will never say, I actually, I means love in Chinese. I love you means, well, I ne I ne I mean, I love you. So I means love there. It doesn't mean either, even in English, I can mean I, as well as the pronoun and the business with language is very tricky and interesting. Okay. So I'm sorry that, that, uh, that argument would also hold within a single lifetime. So should we, Bob, you mentioned the three parts of the subtle body and the five states of something. Forgive me. I cannot keep up. Could you please restate those? Yeah, sure. Um, the three parts of the subtle body are channels, nerve channels, energies in the nerves, you know, moving around in the channels and drops. Actually, I didn't mention all three. I got distracted drops like hormones.
Speaker 4 00:45:59 You know, Bindu subtle chemicals, what they call drops and, uh, you know, fluent fluids and a sentence. And, uh, and those are the three parts of the subtle body. And the subtle mind are just those three lights. And because the solid body is a, it's just a nerve in a way. It's just the nervous system and the being who has withdrawn from their course, five senses, and they don't feel touch. They don't hear, they don't smell. They don't taste. They don't see. And they have still their mental consciousness. But when the mental consciousness is inside the subtle nervous system, and it is not connected to the, um, Stefan external sentences, then it is in a medic. Then it's mind is only these three meditative states. You could say of the moonlit sunlit and dark state. And, and those tree states, however, are not noticed by an UN trained person and person who hasn't found the more subtle aspects of their own awareness.
Speaker 4 00:47:09 And so what will happen to the person when they are sort of swirling around inside their, their consciousnesses in the central nervous system is they will be battered around by, uh, the 80 instincts, what they call the 80 instinctually things, which are like little PAC men. They're like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They're a weird list. One of them is called biting, chewing, sucking, kissing, embracing. Then another one is greed, hatred irritation. So there's sort of mental things and even physical things. So you have to think the physical things, since there's no mouth to abide with, it's like a kind of whatever, sort of a sense of being something wants to swallow something else, you know, and like a search, like a package where I talk to things like Pac-Man, you know, and, and one of those video games and these instincts are very distressing and disturbing.
Speaker 4 00:48:10 And then when, when finally, when we're hitting the clear light for this untrained person is, is, well in other words, cause you're not dead yet when you're inside that. So you're not in the Bardo yet. You only hit the Bardo when you hit the clear line and where'd, you hit the clear line. What that means is you go into that deepest, super subtle, where mind and body duality doesn't bear, and the body is just a kind of really subtle energy. It's not atomic. So it's really super set. And subarticular, I like to call it nowadays. And that's some particulate, energy is embedded with the clear light, which is an infinite mind, but the being that is untrained, like that just feels can't distinguish between that and being unconscious because they can't expand everywhere and they're frightened of it. And then bam, they leave the course body and they will hit the Bardo.
Speaker 4 00:49:10 And sometimes they're you remember? They say, sometimes you say a few days in a state, like a coma, like, but it's an outer body coma. Right. And that's where you are there. And you can't bear the consciousness of being everything with the things being there. So you were sort of in a consciousness of as if it's just about space and, uh, and then you can be cold resting in the clear light, but in a way you're not really able to open that much to get into the clear line. So you're just pretty much unconscious. You're not doing that. You're not consciously unconscious put that way. Okay. And then the minute you leave that that's the between, because you don't in the, between to be born in the, between. You don't have to come back up to eight states where you come back, like you drove up here in a chorus body, you might shoot up through the 80 instincts, but they might still be pushing you around.
Speaker 4 00:50:10 And then the body you have is very unstable. So you don't feel secure in it. And then these 80 instincts are there. So, but you know, notice the, the dark light, sunlight and Moonlight, you don't notice those, maybe some flash it. Okay. So that at least that's it. Now. Now in, in my translation, there are other people who have things. I have some tables in the introductory study. Cause I think that's very, very useful, uh, for people who want to develop this, how to deal with these things you see, they have here and here on page, uh, uh, on pages 42 and 43, the stages of death, just solution and experiences at figure eight, and then figure nine aggregates and wisdoms corresponding to the early stages of death. You know, about how you lose your eyes since first your ears. And second, your nose sends third, your tongue sense and body sense together, forth, and they all go.
Speaker 4 00:51:25 And then all you have left is the mind sense. Like when you, like, when you're in a dream, you don't have any of those other senses, the mind sense, reproduces them immediately to make you feel you're in a familiar place in the dream and so rising and the thing. And then on this side, you have earth to water, water to firefighter, to win earth to water is Miraj order to fire. You have an inner visionary sign, like in your mind's eye with your mental consciousness, print earth goes to order you have a Mirage like experience or hallucinatory experience or to fire. You feel you're suffused with smoke and you're having trouble breathing at that point. So you feel all smoked out fire to win. You have any spirits like swarm of fireflies, flashing fireflies, and then wind to consciousness or space. It's like a last clear candle.
Speaker 4 00:52:16 Flame seems to be objective only there. And that's in your mind's eye. Then you have clear than gross conscience. It's voluminous. The fifth test solution clear moonlit sky limit is to radians clear sunlit sky gradients to eminence clear pitch darkness eminence, two translucency clear light of the clear pre-dawn gray sky. So gray is, would think combination of light and dark, but gray is not translucent. So like a translucent gray transmit, a great glass or something. Is it more like what it is, but who knows? Right. It's a disgrace. It's indescribable, but that's the men. That's a simile. Okay. And don't, and if you, there are other people, but plenty of other people have these patterns and they're very standard and they're very useful. And actually, you know, for example, if one wants to, if we're just preparing to die or preparing someone else to die, or just being a Yogi of this type, like all of, uh, of, um, of Andrew's shootings are, um, both for oneself and to help others then knowing these eight things is really, really important.
Speaker 4 00:53:32 I didn't start out with them though, because, because Andrew wanted to focus on this third level where you are going to thinking about getting reborn. We already, you know, in earlier sessions too, we did, we worked on that, but it's really, really important in case you haven't worked on it. And then when you fall asleep at night, you can rehearse it once you memorize it. And you can say, well, now I'm seeing a Mirage and now I'm seeing you all go NIST or a smoking room and place. Now I see swarms of little sparkles going and now I see it's like a single candle for him. And then that goes into a moonlit space, sunlit space, dark space. And now I'm going to rest in clear light. And that's very good to do because I think then you are programming yourself, using your inference, your reasoning, you're programming yourself.
Speaker 4 00:54:29 When you're, when you go on unconscious into sleep, you consider that to be the state of eminence, the state of near attainment or imminence, the third state of the subtle mind. And it's all dark. And you go unconscious in that state at some part of that stage that are part of the seed you are unconscious. And when you're unconscious, then you kind of open at the subpar particulate level. You're no longer your subpar, particulate energy, mind, pure energy. Mine is like a light mind really? And it wide open to be refreshed by the infinite power of the clear light. So it's like you're plugged into it that you're not just lying in a dark space of nothing, which would not give you any refreshment, but it, now, if it was nothing, you would not feel more rested when you wake up. Then when you fell asleep, but actually you do feel renewed and rested when you wake up, if you have a good sleep and that's because you are so much into cleaning through your boundary, because you're so scared of the world, because you're so sensitive and actually send off to be scared of like knives and Mack trucks running at you and nasty people.
Speaker 4 00:55:48 Sure. But your shows to over-schedule the whole thing that you can't just open your being, unless you're unconscious. So maybe it was counter actually why we have to sleep because it's too tiring to be boundaried against a universe that actually is completely flowing in and out of us all the time. It's too strenuous. It's like, you know, it's like Atlas, but instead of holding a globe on top of your head, like at Rockefeller center in New York, an empty globe, you're holding off the universe all day along and keeping it at the assistant in proper distance. What you think of as proper distance, which means not invading yours. You're a bit you're being okay. So that's really interesting. Even when we're alive has really interesting.
Speaker 2 00:57:01 This episode of the Bob Thurman podcast was brought to you in part Tibet, house, us men online, and to enjoy the full recording and video retreat of this podcast, please visit menlo.org and their online sections are Bob thurman.com. The online retreat is now available to enjoy from anywhere, anytime via teachable.com. Thanks for tuning in and Tashi.
