A Sacred Universe: Insight, Theophany, Cosmopoesis (Part 2)

Again, the whole question of assumptions, views about reality and what is real and what isn't real -- ontology, if you like, is the fancy word for that -- is very much part of the context of imaginal practice, the conceptual framework, how we'll hear some of these teachings, and the confidence with which we'll be able to play and experiment. I mentioned this much earlier, but it's worth saying again: people are very different with this, in regard to imaginal practice. Some people don't seem to need much of an exploration of philosophy and questions of reality, or opening that up. They can just plunge into imaginal practice and play to their heart's content without needing any of that. Some people are even aversive to any discussion, any philosophical discussion or exploration or opening up or questioning. They don't like the conceptuality of that. Other people need a certain amount, which varies very much from person to person, to kind of legitimize, or give a basis, or a supporting framework for a practice of the imaginal. Some people just need a little bit.

A friend was telling me the other day, she was in a conversation with someone she had at a party. And this person just needed a little something that legitimized certain explorations with the imagination for them. Oftentimes that is the case. Other people need quite a lot. There will be some people who -- many people, probably -- who are so, if you like, entrenched or indoctrinated with the dominant cultural modernist paradigms and views and assumptions, that it really either takes an awful lot of pondering of the conceptual frameworks and the philosophy underpinning the assumptions to liberate enough space and justification for imaginal practice and views, or it's actually impossible.

So that's just interesting, especially as a teacher, to note that. And I'll just share, for me, I'm actually really interested in these questions of ontology -- not that I think that one can ever figure out the truth, but I'm still interested in conceptual frameworks and possible conceptual frameworks. In other words, conceptual frameworks can be things of beauty, and they are structures, avenues, that open poetic possibilities and beautiful possibilities for the heart, the soul, and experience. So I'm very interested in that, and a dimension or aspect of the soul loves ideas and loves concepts. It's just that I don't, personally, for all the reasons that I've said, I don't believe that one will come to a conceptual system or framework that is the truth or the answer. That frees up the whole investigation, to actually enter into it, playing with it the way one might play with images or any other practice.

So there's a lot of range here, too, around the whole ways of relating to these questions of reality and ontology in regard to the imaginal and imaginal figures, imaginal worlds, etc., and all that. Oftentimes, as I said, some people, many people, will object -- they're attracted, perhaps, or not attracted, and something objects. Those objections, philosophically, are usually fairly predictable -- understandably so, given the culture. They say, "Well, that's fabrication. Aren't you fabricating that image or that perception of the world, that kind of perception of the cosmos or experience of the cosmos? It's fabricated."

Now, of course, the other, unspoken side of that sentence or that objection is the assumption that there is something that is not fabricated; there is a perception that we can have of the world or of self or something that is real, objectively real, and not fabricated. So the person voicing that objection has not understood, has not seen, through practice, through deep insight into emptiness, the extent of fabrication. All perception is fabricated. All experience, all appearance, is fabricated. Without saying, "All fabrication is the same" -- so to fabricate an image is the same as fabricating a perception of this chair that I'm sitting on -- without saying that, there is something that the insight, the deep, thorough, total insight into the fabrication of perception, and then the emptiness of fabrication, too, something that that level and that thoroughness of insight does that opens up and dissolves this objection, "Isn't that a fabrication?", about that image or that way of fantasying something in one's life, self, other, world, etc.

So that objection, "It's a fabrication. Isn't that a fabrication?", that almost always betrays an assumption of something, some kind of reality that we can experience, where the thing, or this or that object or self or experience, perception, is not fabricated. Not enough exploration of emptiness there.

Or one might say, "Well, these images, imaginal figures, they're not real, because they're not material. I cannot touch it or kick it or whatever it is." But again, a little more probing into this shows a lot of problems. One thing that occurs to me right now is that we've talked a lot about how images can affect the energy body. So there is, if you like, a kind of sensation in regard to images. The more you go into imaginal practice, the more you notice how strong this can be at times, how vivid, and how precise and particular some of this can be.

But perhaps even more significantly, we might just ask this person who's objecting this way, we might ask them in response, "What is matter? What do you think matter is?" This may be something we'll come back to. Because if you take the root of modern physics, and you go deeper and deeper into this question, "What is matter?", well, it's made of atoms. What are atoms? They're made of protons and electrons and neutrons. Well, what's an electron? And you go deeper and deeper into it. It's actually very hard to say what matter is, and whether matter exists or doesn't exist in the way that we tend to think of what it means to exist, to be as some thing independently, in a certain place, at a certain time, and everything that I said before. We go into an electron, and a lot of physicists will say, what's an electron? Well, it's an equation, really. That equation is an equation of probability of manifesting in certain ways depending on how one is looking at it. What is matter? If I say the real is material, you respond, "What is matter? What do you mean by matter?" Those equations exist in other dimensions than three dimensions; they exist in thirteen dimensions or something more. They exist in a number of dimensions depending on how many electrons we're talking about.

Philosophically, if one takes what's called a phenomenological view -- this attempt to sort of approach philosophy through just what we experience, what I experience -- say, "Well, I experience what? I experience resistance or coolness or heat or hardness or softness. That's what I'm calling 'matter.'" Well, that's actually a different thing. We're back to the realm of perception and the fabrication of perception, etc. So this thing, this idea that only the real is what's material -- very understandable, but probe a little deeper. What do we mean by 'material'? What is material? What is matter? We can approach that in different ways -- physics, philosophy, Dharma practice. It dissolves our hardened notions, our ossified notions of what matter is, when we explore, when we question deeply through one of those avenues.

A person might say, "Well, what's real is what's shared." So if I get a hundred people in a room and, let's say, I don't know, at least ninety-seven of them agree on what is there, what they experience, what they see, that everyone sees the table or whatever it is, then we can say the table is real. So reality is given by what is shared, and the other two or three people are just a bit bonkers or weird or whatever. Again, so saturated and habituated are we to that kind of assumption that we don't often really question it.

There are a few things to say here. One is just to point out that many images are shared, of course. I mean, culturally, for example, one just needs to think of the image of Jesus, or the Buddha in Buddhist cultures or our culture nowadays. Many images are shared. Of course, there are many secular images; it doesn't have to be spiritual or religious. Many secular images are shared, secular fantasies of existence, of the world, of society, of self, of other, as we've touched on briefly. That's one thing. There's also, to allude to -- this is not the subject of this retreat; we'll really have to wait until another retreat, but it's very interesting (that's an understatement): a whole direction opens up when two or more people engage in imaginal practice together. So as a kind of relational meditation in the field together, including lots of aspects and dimensions of their experience, meditating together, talking with each other, experiencing and communicating together, in the realm of the imaginal. Then there are ways that images are shared in that way -- actually, in all kinds of ways -- through that. That's a whole other retreat.

But in a way, more importantly to this objection that "the real is what's shared," is just posing a counter question, which is, "Can something have a kind of reality?" Because a lot of the problem here is in that word, 'reality.' Can it have a kind of reality, or a kind of validity, if you like, when it is not shared? Can something not be shared and have a kind of reality, a kind of validity, etc.? Why not?

This is very important. When Corbin and Walter Wink and William Blake and people say the imaginal is more real, in whatever words they use to say that, more real than the physical -- when they say that, they're not implying that if you do imaginal practice right, if ten people do imaginal practice right, they'll all experience the same thing, that there's a kind of non-individual, shared reality that exists in the object, is objective, independent of the individual. I don't think that that's being implied at all, or if it is, I'd like to question that.

I don't know who used the term, "the discipline of the imagination" or "disciplined imagination," again, in contrast to the imaginary or just what we'd call being lost in papañca or just daydreaming and that sort of thing. Again, it's not that if one practices with the imaginal, different people will see the same image and experience the same thing. I think, or I would like to, I would hope that the phrase, whoever coined it -- I don't know if it was Hillman or Corbin or someone -- "disciplined imagination" really refers to what we were talking about earlier on the retreat, with the kind of delicacy and nuance of mindfulness that one is bringing to the imaginal practice: the sensitivity to the resonances, the tuning of the attention and the energy, the noticing and inclination and tuning and encouraging of what nourishes and deepens and opens and ignites and broadens the sense of soulfulness. All of that is the disciplined imagination. It does not mean that it will result in experience or an image that is not individual. This is very important.

There's a writer called Roberts Avens, and he's quoting Henry Corbin, who said a theophanic vision -- meaning a vision in the sense of another, or could be oneself, or some thing, or the world, that something else is shining through that image, that figure, that imaginal seeing. There's a sense of the divine showing through that, coming through that; that that thing is a particular face of the divine, of what is divine; seeing this or that as angel, if you like. A theophanic vision, he wrote, "is essentially an event of the soul, taking place in the soul and for the soul."^[1]

So just to comment here, this is Corbin's words, "taking place in the soul and for the soul." Notice Corbin's language and conception tends towards the use of the word 'soul' as a kind of entity. We touched on this in the talks about soulmaking. It's fine, and that's his style of language. I would, for myself, tend towards more the language of 'soulmaking,' taking it away from entities. But entities are fine, as long as we know they don't have inherent existence.

Anyway, a theophanic vision "is essentially an event of the soul, taking place in the soul and for the soul. As such its reality is individuated for and with each soul; what the soul really sees, it is in each case alone in seeing." So, in other words, the reality of the soul is not consensual. It is not shared. It is not socially agreed upon. It's individual. He continues, "The field of its vision, its horizon, is in every case defined by the capacity, the dimension, of its own being." So the field of the soul's vision, its horizon, is in every case defined by the capacity, the dimension, of its own being.

I want to read another very short passage, but I have to preface it by saying that Corbin's system, if you like, for this, and his conceptual framework, and his vocabulary, is different than the one we've used. He's from a different background, so he's talking about monotheistic, Islamic, actually Abrahamic, but primarily certain strands of Islamic mysticism, and drawing on Platonic philosophy. So it's quite a different system, different vocabulary, different conceptual framework. But beautiful, quite elaborate and difficult to explain. So I'm not going to try and outline all that right now; rather just taking the liberty of sort of translating it a little bit for our purposes here. Translating the vocabulary, translating some of the concepts, into ones that we've talked about more.

And again, a passage from Avens: "Soulmaking" -- okay, that's our word -- "Soulmaking creates imaginal figures, but their reality is neither hallucinatory nor illusory; they are neither objectively nor subjectively real, but belong to the intermediary and mediating realm of the mundus imaginalis," which is Latin for the world of the imagination, or the imaginal world. "They are God" -- or gods, we could say -- "seen in such a form as an individual person is able to grasp."^[2] They are God or gods, these imaginal figures, created by the soul. They're God or gods seen in such a form as an individual person is able to grasp, i.e. they are perceptions that are real, or a reality for the soul, despite the fact that they are individual. And note here, in both those quotes, and what I really want to emphasize, is they are individual but dependent on the soul. We've emphasized this so much. I'm repeating. They're dependent on the soul or the citta, the mind/heart, way of looking, the mind state, the inclination, the assumption -- all of that, in the moment. Dependent on all that arises the image. We're never parting from that understanding of dependent arising there.

I think it was Swedenborg who wrote that in Heaven -- we could say in this imaginal world, this mundus imaginalis in Latin -- in Heaven, in the world of the imagination, the form of your world is what you are. William Blake had a beautiful phrase, "As a man is, so he sees."^[3] As a woman is, so she sees. As a man is, so he sees. I'd like to add three words to the end of that, because we can very easily -- a person can think, "Well, I don't see angels. I don't see beauty. Therefore I am not so spiritual or not pure" or this or that. I would like to add, "As a man is, so he sees at that moment." At this moment, when the citta is coloured this way, has this conception subtly operating, or more consciously operating, etc., as a man is, so he sees. Again, we're understanding: it's fabricated, it's dependent arising, it's empty. Like all perceptions, it's a dependent arising. So this, "As a man is, so he sees," we can take that as a statement for being in the world and seeing the world. I see the world, I see the self, I see others, in a way, dependent on how I am in that moment. Dependent on the state of mind, the inclination, the conception, the way of looking, I see that way, I sense that way, I perceive that way.

This is a fundamental Dharma concept. It applies, too, to the realm of the image. So the reality of that, we have to acknowledge that with conventional reality, material things, that that is part of the fabrication, the dependent arising, and the perception of everything. All perception is dependent arising that way. But we're emphasizing it as well in terms of it's part of the reality of the imaginal world. So again, it's not an objective reality. It's not individual, and it's not objective, independent of the individual, the consciousness, the mind and heart that are seeing that way. Yes, there are differences in what's purely a figure that appears to the imagination versus something that's perceived that is material and a shared perception with others, so-called conventional perception. Sometimes that's imbued with mythos and fantasy, and sometimes much less so, when we're practising bare attention, as we said before. There are differences in the kinds of fabrication that are operating there, and as I said, I'm not sure how to fit all that together into a sort of grand, overarching conceptual framework. So acknowledging those differences. But there's something fundamental to all reality, which is, "As a man is, so he sees." As the consciousness is, as the mind is, so we see at any moment. All perception: dependent arising, fabricated, empty.

As I mentioned briefly before, it's this exploration and understanding of fabrication, part of which is the exploration of unfabricating, of learning to fabricate less and less perception through different practices, and eventually, hopefully, to open to the Unfabricated. One is not fabricating any perception at all. The exploration and the deep insight, in reflecting on that and understanding that, what that does is it opens possibilities and opens doors, in terms of experience, in terms of the range of perception, and in terms of understanding and what's possible in terms of conceptual frameworks. Massive. So putting that as the sort of basis and central axis, if you like, for what the whole of the Dharma is. That liberates a lot of possibility for imaginal work, for many people.

Listen to this, in relation to this whole avenue and basis of understanding fabrication, understanding fabrication through learning to unfabricate, and then realizing, "Oh, that thing," either that perception or sense of self, "was not fabricated then, when I looked in this way. Therefore, I realize it's a fabrication," going deeper and deeper into that until one reaches the Unfabricated. In a very different tradition, Avicenna was a very renowned Islamic philosopher and mystic, also a doctor, very important pioneer of medical understanding, and just sort of a general polymath genius person, who lived in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. In relation to this, and the imaginal, this exploration of unfabricating and learning about fabrication, in relation to that and the imaginal, listen: "[She] who confronts [the Darkness that reigns forever] ..." This Darkness that reigns forever has nothing to do with moral darkness or evil or anything like that. The Darkness that reigns forever is, in Dharma language, the Unfabricated, the Unconditioned, what the Buddha sometimes referred to as the Deathless, or the asaṅkhata dhamma, the Unfabricated, this transcending of any perception; darkness because there is no perceiving there, that reigns forever because it's beyond time.

[She] who confronts [this Unfabricated, the Darkness that reigns forever] and does not hesitate to plunge into it for fear of difficulties will come to a vast space, boundless and filled with light. The first thing [she] sees is a living spring whose waters spread like a river over [this interworld, the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal]. Whoever bathes in that spring becomes so light that [she] can walk on water, can climb the highest peaks without weariness.^[4]

Corbin writes about this passage from Avicenna: "Once the soul has emerged from Darkness, once it has risen from the abyss of unconsciousness ..." Again, by 'the abyss of unconsciousness,' he means exactly -- he doesn't mean unconsciousness like being under anaesthetic, or the unconscious in the Jungian sense. He means this, this what the Buddha would call cessation of consciousness, cessation of perception and feeling, if you know the Dharma lingo from the wheel of dependent origination. So this opening, if you like, to the Unfabricated, this non-fabricating of perception.

Once the soul has emerged from Darkness ... from the abyss of unconsciousness ... [this] changing the appearances of things, walking on water, climbing Mount Qāf [which is a mythic mountain in that Islamic spirituality, all these] are psychic events whose scene and action are set in neither the sensible nor the intelligible worlds.

That's kind of jargon for some Platonic philosophy; I don't need to go into that, but let's just say the world of the material senses or of abstract ideas. Not set there, but in the intermediate world of the imaginal, the 'ālam al-mithāl in Arabic, I think it's called. Or, he says, the world of symbol, if we translate that, the world of image, and typification, he writes. This is the "place of all [spiritual] recitals." There's a lot of jargon here; by spiritual recitals he means spiritual or imaginal encounters with imaginal figures, etc. This world, he continues, intermediary between the intelligible and the sensible, "It is the world in which spirits are corporealized" -- given body; spirits are given body -- "and bodies spiritualized."

So there's a lot of stuff in there about his system that's different, and vocabulary. I don't want to go into that. The real point is the interesting parallel between what Avicenna describes and the siddhis -- the 'supernormal powers' in English -- described by the Buddha and in the Pali Canon and other Buddhist traditions. That someone who is able either to enter very deep samādhi, very deep jhānas, or more commonly, very deep experience of emptiness or the Unfabricated, this darkness that reigns forever that's plunged into -- then, for them, the world of perception becomes malleable. I don't know the answer to how much -- I've heard Tibetan teachers, actually live, been sitting in the room when they talk about people walking through walls, etc. Or is it just imaginal? An imaginal world opens up with great malleability there, and great possibility for walking on water and the rest of it. So I just want to make that parallel. Really the central thing is this exploration of fabrication, through learning to fabricate less and less, which exposes the fabricated nature of all perception, the emptiness of all perception. Going deeper into that opens up the malleability of perception and the world of the imaginal.

Again, the parallels between that phrase from alchemy which we've mentioned several times, "Do not proceed until all has become liquid." So there's, in Avicenna's thing, this spring, the immersion in the spring, in the liquid, and through that, everything becomes light, as in not heavy, not solid. The malleability of perception there. So just pointing out some parallels across what, on the face of it, seem like very different traditions -- the Buddhist and the Islamic mysticism. But this is, for many people, a real key to imaginal -- not for everyone, but for many people, it's a real key to opening up the possibilities in imaginal practice.

Most emptiness practices are practices of unfabricating. I've said this quite a few times now. We're learning to fabricate less, and in doing so, in engaging emptiness practices, the sense of the solidity or fixedness or givenness of things is lightened. It's this whole "things become liquid." Perception becomes malleable. Now, it also does that (I'm repeating now from the beginning of the retreat) as samādhi deepens. There's a sense, too, of the body and the world of perception becoming less solid, more malleable. Also through mettā practice too. A lot of Dharma practices will share this liquefying aspect, this making less solid of the world of perception, this unfabricating aspect. That's what they do. Imaginal practice also has this effect. So someone might not have done any emptiness practice, or any of those other Dharma practices, and actually just engaging imaginal practice renders the sense of the self and the world less solid, more malleable. So it actually gives rise to an understanding of emptiness, and an experience of emptiness of this fabricated nature of perception, through imaginal practice.

Then both through deep emptiness practice or through mettā practice or through imaginal practice, very common for, organically, a sense of perceiving the world as divine, perceiving other or this or that as angel, as theophany, a sense of cosmopoesis to open organically by itself as one practices imaginal practice or emptiness practice deeper and deeper. I wrote about this in the book that I wrote, that as the emptiness practice gets really, really deep, and starts even spinning back on itself, so to speak, to question even the reality of the notion of fabrication, and seeing that even fabrication is empty, one can start, organically, naturally, many people, to start perceiving the world as Buddha-realm, if you like, to use a certain language from Tibetan tantra. The world is opened to cosmopoesis. A divine world can be perceived. Or we can deliberately incline the perception that way through all these practices.

All these practices, in fact, are mutually contingent. Imaginal practice and emptiness practice, samatha and mettā, they all feed each other. Emptiness practices will lead to samatha, to mettā, and to the opening of the imaginal and the perception of a divine world. The deliberate perception of a divine world will bring mettā effortlessly, and samādhi, and will help us see emptiness and open the imaginal for us. Mettā practice, that's why we did many years ago at Gaia House this retreat, I think we did it three years in a row, a long retreat, Lovingkindness and Compassion as a Path to Awakening -- meaning, very specifically, that as one deepens into mettā and compassion, one can actually start directing that mettā and compassion towards phenomena, and beginning to see, then, how phenomena fade and how, thus, they are fabricated, and using the mettā and compassion practice to understand the deep emptiness of perception, the fabricated nature of perception. But when we practise mettā, it will give rise to samādhi. It will give rise to mettā, obviously. It will give rise to samādhi. It will give rise to an understanding of emptiness. The world, for people who do long mettā retreats, the world begins to be perceived more and more, at times, in and out, as divine, in all kinds of different ways. Cosmopoesis is functioning there, just through dedicated mettā practice over time. So all these practices are actually mutually feeding. They feed each other, they nourish each other, they open each other and deepen each other.

So all this talk of the imaginal and the malleability of the perception of self/other/world, as I've mentioned briefly and as many of you will realize, is all very much related to the teachings of tantra, Buddhist tantra, which essentially is a whole realm of teachings based on the understanding of emptiness, absolutely having as a basis the understanding of emptiness. Then, based on that understanding of the emptiness of all things, practising the perception, the seeing, the sensing, of everything as divine -- self/other/world as divine. And incorporating into that, including into that, the practice, the use of the imaginal. Obviously there's a lot of link here.

The word 'tantra' is quite interesting. I just want to open something up a little bit here. That word, 'tantra,' is a Sanskrit word. The suffix, the last part, tra, when you have that as a suffix in Sanskrit it indicates the root -- the first part of the word, the tan -- as the means of the action, or the instrument of the action that the root means. For another example, the root in Sanskrit pat is 'to fly.' So when you put tra on the end, you get pattra -- it's the means of flying, which becomes 'wings.' Pattra is 'wing' in Sanskrit. So when we get to 'tantra,' it means the tra of tan, the means of tan. So what does the word tan mean in Sanskrit? It means a whole bunch of things.

I'm not going to spell all of this out. You might have to really listen here. Listen carefully and ponder these different meanings of the word tan. So 'tantra' as the means of all this, in relation to everything that we've talked about on this retreat, about archetypes and soulmaking and imaginal, and everything that we've covered. I'm not going to spell it all out; I'm just going to go through a list, but see if you can hear each one related to, in the field of, or kind of brought alive by everything that we've talked about. So 'tantra' as a practice, imaginal practice, this seeing, this perceiving of all things as divine, through the imaginal and through the malleability of perception.

'Tantra' means the means of, the practice of -- tan means: to extend, to spread, to weave, to accomplish. What's being accomplished? Who, or for the sake of what, is something being accomplished? It means to perform, as well, like to perform a ceremony, for instance. It also means to compose, for instance like a literary work or a work of art. To assist. Going back to when we were talking about daimons and what wants to come through, who or what is being assisted? It means also to resound, which we could also say to re-sound. So something that has an existence at another level is being re-sounded through my perception, my seeing it, my experiencing it as image here. To resound, to roar, to emboss. To emboss means to engrave a pattern of something in or on something else. So again, there's a pattern of something, which is coming to me as image. I might see another as image, as angel.

Again, I'm not going to spell all these out, but tan also means to prepare a way for, to prepare a path for, an opening for. For what? For me? For gods? For archetypes? For the daimon? For what wants to come through? Tan also means to direct towards. It also means to manifest. Can you hear the resonances of everything that we've been talking about in some of these translations of what 'tantra' might mean? To display. To sacrifice is another meaning. Sacrifice is from the Latin root, sacra + facere, to make holy. Can you hear the resonances of all this?

In Tibetan usage, and the late Indian Buddhism, Mahāyāna, one usage of the word 'mantra' was actually synonymous with the word 'tantra.' So you talk about the path of tantra, and one might just say the path of mantra. They used them completely interchangeably. So same deal, man-tra in Sanskrit: tra is the means or the instrument, the practice of, man. And man as a root in Sanskrit -- again, listen, allowing everything that we've talked about to resonate, to echo, in these root meanings, the meanings of the root of what tantra/mantra can mean: to believe. Man can mean to believe, to imagine, to suppose, to conjecture. There's that idea of the flexibility of conceptual frameworks. 'To regard anyone or anything as.' So this idea of the fantasies, the mythoi that pervade our perception and our being in the world. Man can mean to think oneself or be thought to be, to appear as, to be of an opinion, to be of a certain opinion. Again, this flexibility of conceptual frameworks, of views, of perspectives. But also the views, the perspectives, the ideas of different archetypes. We talked about this at some point. Each archetype has its own sort of ideational inclination or structures or perspectives.

Man can also be 'to set the heart and mind on something.' It can also mean, very beautifully, to honour or esteem. Again, to enter into a view that honours or esteems -- but what? What is being honoured or esteemed, and through what? It can also mean, simply, to perceive. And that has everything to do with what we're talking about. It can mean to offer or present. What is being presented in this world, to the world of perception? What is being offered through my life, or through the life of another as I see it, or through the perception of this thing or the world, world as offering? Those root words translate; I'm not just playing a language game here. It's pregnant with so much beauty and so much richness of meaning and possibility to explore.

Some of you will know when we talk about tantra, or the path of tantra, path of mantra, that includes Dzogchen. Some of you will be a little bit or very familiar with Dzogchen teachings. It's interesting, Dzogchen is quite popular now in the West, but it is a tantric path. So it's actually in the context, Dzogchen teaching -- it doesn't get emphasized that much, because there's so much emphasis on the nature of mind, the instructions and teachings about nature of mind -- but Dzogchen is within a context. Teachings on the nature of mind are only a part of Dzogchen, and that's within a context of this perception or seeing of appearances as divine. That's the context for those narrower teachings about nature of mind and the cutting through instructions and all that. They're in a much bigger context that has to do with basically what tantra is, which is this practice of the perception of all things as divine, or seeing all appearances as divine. That's the context. That's the context of the teaching of the nature of mind, and also the purpose of the teachings of the nature of mind are because they bring a very deep freedom, of course, but also because they liberate (tying back to what we were saying much earlier) ways of looking, perceptions of that divinity of all things. Again, 'divinity' here is not just a universal divinity, because everything shares in the nature of mind or everything is awareness or whatever, so everything is divine in the same way. It's quite personal, if you like. There is personhood in this or that divinity, that, if you like, the universe expresses the different persons of divinity.

Now, I'm aware that I'm using this word quite a lot, 'divine,' and 'God,' and this or that. I know it makes many people very nervous, and other people just put up walls to it. All kinds of reactions can go on. So I want to explore that a little bit in the next talk, and what do we mean, how can we conceive of this word that to some is very comfortable and to others is very alien and very off-putting. I want to explore that in the next talk.