A Sacred Universe: Insight, Theophany, Cosmopoesis (Part 4)

In speaking about concepts of the divine, of God, how we might relate to that kind of concept, I think it's important to really say a bit more and emphasize something about how we relate to talking and hearing about these concepts. In other words, how we are holding and conceiving of the whole relationship with concepts, and with these concepts in particular.

Again, my intention here is certainly not to build or outline some kind of rigid, complete, and final explanation of everything to do with the divine; some conceptual framework that's watertight and will last forever. But rather, wanting to offer something in the way of conceptual structures, conceptual frameworks, logoi in the Greek, that can feed in, support, open up our experiences, our meditative experiences, meditative exploration, and then the meditative experiences and explorations of course feed back into the conceptual frameworks, offer something there. So there's this mutual feeding, nourishing, supporting, shaping, in ways that encourage, deepen, open, enrich the soulfulness, etc.

So wanting to offer, build conceptual frameworks, talk about possible conceptual frameworks, ways things might work conceptually, that open up the whole field of exploration, inquiry, and experience -- that do not close it down. So that's important. In that or with that, maybe it all doesn't fit together quite, and it's a bit clunky at the edges. Maybe parts of a conceptual structure or the whole thing or the framework is vague. We'll come back to this later. That's, I think, especially possible and probable, in fact, here in this area, when we're talking about the divine and God and those kind of things, those kind of concepts and words and experiences, partly because of the nature of that material: that the divine, almost by definition, cannot be contained in concepts. Almost as a starting point, we're acknowledging the infinite nature of the divine. Whatever we say will not contain it. Whatever structure of concepts or ideation will not contain it, will not be enough. I'm going to say more about this as we go on. It's in the nature of that material, of this material.

Paul Tillich, a very renowned theologian and philosopher of the twentieth century said, "Every understanding of spiritual things (Geisteswissenschaft) is circular."^[1] There's a lot here to acknowledge, if we're going to bring concepts in, and for the sake of the opening and the soulfulness, the support of inquiry and investigation, the adventure of meditation and practice, the adventure of life, really, in terms of opening the experience. If we're going to bring concepts in, we have to acknowledge something about circularity, about infinity, about the impossibility of containing and arriving at some neat, final, complete structure that explains everything. That is not a problem; it's just something to acknowledge there, because it helps the experience and because it opens the soulfulness, etc. So there's a different relationship here with all this. Also, some of this, if it doesn't fit together, it's just due to my energy levels and situation at present, and time constraints from various angles with all that.

But also, another dimension of this, or a part of what I said just before, is that I feel very much like all this is a work in progress for me. I think I mentioned in another talk, another retreat, a different style of teaching, rather than -- sometimes it's appropriate that I sit at the front and give you or disseminate a sort of complete package: "This is it, and it's finished, and it's all very neat and clear." That has its place. And then there are other styles of teaching, this more what I was calling 'hermetic' in that other retreat, this more open-ended, in a way, collaboration of exploration between so-called teacher and so-called student. So this is work in progress for me. Ideas, concepts feeding into experience, experience shaping concepts, etc. There's no problem in that. There's something, for me, beautiful in that, in the openness of it, the creativity, the creation, the adventure, the discovery of all that.

So there's a kind of dance, if you like, between concepts and experience; between conceiving, conceptual frameworks, and the opening of experience and new experience. They are mutually feeding, shaping, nourishing, deepening, opening each other. That dance evolves. It evolves over time, even for one [person]. There are personality differences here, hugely, in relation to all this: in relation to how okay people are with conceptual structures not being taken seriously; how okay they are with conceptual structures being quite loose, with them evolving; how okay they are with even thinking at all, or entertaining consciously conceptual structures (a conceptual structure is always entertained unconsciously).

So there are personality differences, but even over time for one person, there's evolution, there's ebb and flow. There will be times for some people on this kind of adventure and this kind of exploration where it's really okay that there's very little conceptual framework holding the exploration at a certain time. Other times, we need a structure. It really helps support and guide and direct exploration. And yet, as I've mentioned in several talks elsewhere, there is this, in the Lurianic Kabbalah, what they call the breaking of the vessels, Shevirat ha-Kelim. The structures will break, all kinds of structures in our life, as they are filled, if you like, from that perspective, from the light of God, but really as we grow, as the psyche grows, as things expand and get fertilized. Social structures, ideational structures, relationship structures -- they will break. They will shatter. A shattering of the vessels. So in terms of conceptual structures, yes, we need structures at certain points. We establish them, we build them carefully, and then they break. Then we form or new ones are formed, different ones, and they evolve. There's a whole evolution to this. So to me, there's a beauty in that dance, between conceptual frameworks and experience, and the dynamic of that, the evolution of that. I'll come back to this later.

We could say, "I don't want to dance. I don't want this dance between the evolution of the conceptual framework and the evolution of experience." Or we could say, "I don't want to enter into that, because I don't want to dance. I won't consciously entertain conceptual frameworks. I refuse. I don't want to dance." Or what happens is we cling to one conceptual framework. Sometimes we don't even realize we're clinging; it's operating unconsciously, or consciously we just keep clinging to something. It's static, and we try and hold that as a kind of rigid, literalized explanation of everything that remains static.

Anyway, I think it's really important to know something about the nature of perception and the nature of mind: there is always conceiving. Conceiving and perception, experience, shape and inform and structure each other. They influence each other anyway. We cannot get away from this. Though very popular, the idea of non-conceptual experience, etc., it's a myth in the worst sense of the word. It's an illusion. We have to understand something: at the subtlest levels of perception, consciousness, experience, mind, subtle conceiving and perceiving are totally woven into each other, and inform, shape, structure each other, at all levels -- from the subtlest to the grossest. Just to recognize that.

Now, in exploring imaginal practice, as a person goes deeper into all this, more fully into all this, and in exploring experiences of theophany and cosmopoesis as we've alluded to, one sense that can emerge as a sense but also as a conceptual framework -- the two going together, those aspects of the same gestalt, if you like -- one sense is the sense of, if you like, the multiplicity of dimensions in the nature of an object, of any object (so a person or a thing or imaginal figure). When we see imaginally, there is a sense that we can pick up on, that can emerge for us through practice that we can pick up on, that whatever it is that I'm looking at, this object, this person, this thing, this world, has multiple dimensions to it. Its nature is to have multiple dimensions. So I want to, very tentatively, give the label 'the vertical spectrum of the imaginal.' I'll explain later why that labelling is so tentative; I'm not very good at coining phrases and labels for things. But the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, tentatively, let's call that.

It's this sense of the multiple dimensions that comprise an object, or that pertain to an object. I'm saying something a little more specifically here than just that it's possible to perceive selves, things, others, world, in different ways -- which of course is very much part of the teaching about fabrication and emptiness of perception. This morning, I think, there was an enormous hullabaloo outside the window, a racket, shouting and screaming and yelling and whooping and arguing. I'm pretty sure it was a school hiking tour or something, just stopping for a while outside the door, outside the window. Right there, I can hear it through the lens of a certain social perspective about "kids today," and hear it as a racket, expressing maybe inconsideration and that kind of thing. Obviously wrapped up with that is some aversion, some reactivity. I can hear it in the mode of bare attention: it's just sound. Also possible to hear it, as they say in tantra teachings, "to hear all things as mantra," as holy speech, as the sound of divinity, and to just, in the meditation, as meditation, to just hear it differently -- not a racket, not even just sound; it's an expression of the divine, the sound of the divine, the music of the divine, the speech of the divine, the holy speech. What does that mean? It's vague. Do we need to fill it out? I'll come back to this.

We could say that's just an example of the flexibility, the malleability of perception that's possible, to perceive things in different ways. But I want to say something a little bit more than that here, in relation to this vertical spectrum of the imaginal, what I'm calling that tentatively. I look at my friend, someone I've known for a long time and I love very much, and I can, of course, see her as flesh and blood, aware of the -- as much as I know about the physical processes that make up her body, her mental or biological processes in the brain, all this. I could see her in terms of I know her personal historical background, her upbringing, her woundedness, her trajectories of growth, where she gets hung up, the particular things she's strong at, her characteristics. I could see her in the ordinary sense of self, and as we talked about in the other talk, this kind of modernist sense of self. Of course I can see her that way.

And yet, as I'm looking at her, and meditating imaginally on her in front of me or in my mind's eye, I can also see her, I also get the sense, that she is or that she expresses, if you like, the feminine aspect of God. She is a face. She is a theophany. At a certain level of perception, a level of imaginal perception, she appears to me as one of the feminine aspects of the divine. She appears to me as angel, as ḍākinī or deva, if you prefer the Buddhist words. There is a theophany there.

It might be really quite particular, or a little bit vague. It might even be that at the same time, I am aware of the ordinary sort of modernist way of seeing her; of course I'm aware of that. And I'm aware of this other level. I may be aware of other levels too. I may also be aware of a kind of more universal expression of the divine coming through. But this particular one, of the feminine aspect of the divine, is very particular to her. It's in and through her personhood, her particularity, and it's expressing an aspect of the divine that has to do with the personhood of the divine, or a personhood of the divine.

It might even be that I'm aware of several of these kind of more personal and particular expressions, manifestations, or different levels at the same time as I look at her, as I meditate imaginally on her, eyes open or eyes closed, looking at her. There can be a sense that there's a kind of a spectrum here. It's as if one could tune the attention to different levels here. Maybe one stands out and almost calls the attention to tune into it. Maybe there's a kind of multiplicity, and then one can deliberately tune the attention that way.

But this sense that can emerge for practitioners, it's both a perceptual sense and a conception. They're woven into each other. This conception may emerge quite loosely, and then influence and support the perception, and so the soulfulness and the soulmaking. Perception, experience, appearance will be influenced, supported, and will influence and support the conception. It's mutual. In all of that, there's a deepening, an opening, an enrichening and nourishing of the soulfulness and the soulmaking.

This, what I'm wanting tentatively to call the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, it's hard to define. A spectrum, if you like, of theophanies. A spectrum of faces of the divine. Really, really want to emphasize it's a spectrum of perception. We're placing the perception, the whole way of construing Dharma and imaginal practice and all that -- perception is central, whether it's non-imaginal or imaginal. Placing perception and the fabrication of perception as almost like the core concept, the central concept, the hinge concept, the basis concept on which everything is structured and built.

So really emphasizing, if I talk about this vertical spectrum of the imaginal, we're talking about a spectrum of perception. It's not separate from the citta, from the mind, the heart, the conceiving. But it's a spectrum of, you might say, the faces of the divine, and it comprises in this spectrum all kinds of manifestations or expressions of a sense of utter sacredness all the way down, we could say, to non-sacredness. More specifically, we could say that this sense of this vertical dimension of the imaginal is the sense and the conceiving that selves, things, and world, have in and through their particularity -- that's very important, in and through their particularity -- have their roots in, they originate in, they mirror or reflect, they possess or are comprised of, dimensions other than just the commonly agreed-upon dimension of materiality or self as we tend to view it, conceive it, sense it in the paradigm of modernist culture.

I'll say that again. This vertical dimension, as a concept, is the sense and the concept that selves, things, and world, have, in and through their particularities, through their personhood, if you like, they have their roots in, they originate in, they mirror or reflect, they possess or are comprised of dimensions other than just the commonly agreed-upon dimension of materiality or of, for instance, self as modern culture construes and views it.

How might we recognize that? Well, in a way, it's already there in the word. Just to make one thing clear, it's not a spectrum of solidity versus ethereality, what we were talking about some days ago. It's not a spectrum of the octave or register, so to speak, of the image, like very, very refined and light compared to more 'bassy' and solid. That's not what we're talking about here. It's really that the imaginal sense is imbued with a sense of the sacred, through the sense of comprising or expressing more than the modernist sense of ego, of self, of person, or just matter. This 'more' -- comprising more, expressing more, the multiplicity, the spectrum there of manifestations, of faces, of theophanies -- this 'more' is not horizontal only. We mentioned this earlier.

So for example, we talked about the interconnectedness of physical objects, interconnectedness at a physical level. I can look at my friend and see interconnection between us: we're breathing the same air if we're in the same room; we're built of the same stuff that emerged from the same supernova explosion that formed the earth and built earth and air and fire and water, if you use the Buddhist elements. This interconnectedness at a physical level is also a kind of 'more,' because usually I see her contained, just there; her body stops at the edges of her skin. When I look through the lens of interconnectedness at a physical level, there's 'more,' but it's a horizontal spreading, at the level of physicality. Or if I think in terms of the causes and conditions, when we usually talk in those terms, the causes and conditions that give rise to this self, or this object, or this world or environment, usually, again, that interconnectedness, or the inclusion of the web, the net of causes and conditions, is also a 'more.' It's expanding the view from a tight, bounded object, 'more,' but it's expanding it horizontally. It's talking about interconnectedness and feeding in and expanding the limits of this person or object or thing that I'm looking at, but it's all horizontal. It's all on the same level, what's feeding in there, and what's being acknowledged as being 'more' is on the same level. It's horizontal.

What I really want to emphasize is something that's not horizontal, something of other dimensions, other levels, if you like, of being or existence -- but again, really perception; everything hinges on perception, that that is there, available in the perception.

So the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, in a way, it's a sense, it's a perception. We get that sense. But as I said, it is, by its nature, a conceptual framework. It's a logos. So the sense of it, the perception of this, includes the logos, the conception of it.

This is something I want to stress: I do not have to, you do not have to, believe this as something real. There is no credo here you have to sign up to. I'm going to return to this; it's so important. That's one thing. And it might be that the whole conception of this vertical spectrum is relatively vague. For me, actually, I certainly don't believe it as some kind of literal, concretized, fixed reality that I'm assuming has inherent existence, and it's still quite vague. But it can still be extremely powerful. I really want to emphasize this and come back to this. It can still function so beautifully and potently in terms of soulmaking and nourishing and opening soulfulness. Don't have to subscribe to a belief. And it might be relatively vague. It might not be. We'll return to those points, because it's very, very crucial to emphasize.

It is, to an extent, a sense, a perception. It is also a conceptual framework, a logos. But what's important then is that the conceptual framework, the logos, needs to be loose enough, or big enough, if you like. My conceptual framework needs to be big enough to allow that kind of perception of this vertical spectrum, of this multiplicity, of these other levels shining through. It needs to be big enough to allow theophany and cosmopoesis. So if I view an image only in the sort of typical, self-referential terms -- there are many ways I could do that, but for instance, "This image is arising only because this happened to me when I was a child" or whatever, or something like that. It's not to say it's not arising in part because of that. Or one could view it as that's part of the vertical spectrum. That personal human history is part of the vertical spectrum. But if I only view it self-referentially, in those kind of terms, for instance, then that view is a shrunken, narrowed, and constricted conceptual framework, logos, and it will prevent the sense of theophany.

Mostly this is unconscious. We hold on to views, conceptual frameworks, that are quite narrow, unconsciously. There's not enough room to allow experience to open in different ways, as I've said many times now. So that kind of viewing an image only self-referentially, in that sense, will prevent the sense of theophany, vertical spectrum, almost by definition, because the theophany, by definition, is seeing an expression, a mirroring, an originating in the archetypal or the divine. I'm seeing this thing, this person, or myself, or this image, as originating in, expressing or mirroring the archetypal or the divine. In other words, by definition, it's not just self-referential, because a theophany involves other levels of the vertical spectrum coming through; other levels, so to speak, evident in an image.

What also happens with this, through this, as a person practises imaginal practice -- we've touched on this already, but just to say it again -- is that there is a tendency for the theophanic sense, for the image-sense, to spread. It becomes a sensibility. So this loose conceptual framework that's operating, this seeing of other levels, and the tuning to that, becomes a sensibility and a mode of being. It becomes how we see. And then it spreads in different ways.

One of the ways it spreads is, so to speak, to embrace more objects, rather than just the imaginal figure or this person or thing that I'm looking at. That might be, so to speak, purely internally -- an imaginal world might open up. Or it might be that this world -- the agreed-upon, conventional, physical world that we see -- comes alive in a kind of cosmopoesis, that it becomes a different kind of cosmos. I'm still seeing, perhaps, the same things: the tree's over there, my friend is over here, the sky, the grass, whatever it is, the river, the city. But the theophanic sense, the image-sense that was perhaps focused on one figure -- whether, so to speak, purely internally, purely imaginal, or through/as an object in the world, my friend or whatever -- that spreads to create a kind of world, a cosmopoesis.

What we have there is the image of self and other and world co-created together. And actually there's another factor there: eros. That's a whole other subject. But there's a co-creation in this spreading of self, other, world. The imaginal sense of all are co-created together, mutually dependent, mutually feeding. The important point here is that there's often a spreading, as I talked about in the instructions the other day. There's a spreading of the sense of theophany, and there can be a cosmopoesis. Someone might say (it's a fair enough thing to say), "Isn't that just colouring the perception? You have the sense, and then it's just spreading to colour the perception of the world." Yes. It is a colouring of perception. But again, it's important to realize, to have enough depth of insight to realize, that all perception is coloured all the time. It's fabricated. No perception is independent of the way of looking.

How does this work, if we go into this a bit more, this idea of a vertical spectrum of the imaginal and this spreading? I've talked about this kind of -- 'mechanism' is not quite the right word, but the way that it works before. I felt like I didn't quite explain it very well. So I'm going to try again. When there is eros in relation to an imaginal figure -- remember, that imaginal figure might be just purely in the imagination, with no referent to the world of physical objects, or it could be the way I'm seeing my friend through or as image, as we talked about. But when there is eros with an imaginal figure, that eros, almost by definition, if we can even try and define eros, it wants more. It's this desire for more, and particularly it wants more contact, and it wants more to be in contact with, and it wants to fertilize. So we could say that's what eros is. We could start from that definition of eros.

When that's there with an imaginal figure -- there's this love, this desire for contact, for more contact, more to contact -- because of that desire, it impregnates and gives more life to the image. Not just in terms of vividness and touching the heart, but also it expands the image. It expands and enriches and deepens the fantasy, the mythos that's operating, and so much so that it stretches it. One way it stretches it is by creating other levels, and creating, eventually, this sense of theophany, this sense of certain levels are divine; the divine is speaking through, shining through, in the particular. Eros doesn't lose sight of the particular.

Often in spiritual teachings, the eros wants to just dissolve in the beloved, or union, or melt or whatever. Actually, in doing that, there is the dissolution of the eros too. So eros needs a particular, a particular person. It needs to see this in and love it in and through its particularities and its personhood, their personhood, and fill that out, make it more multidimensional, more complex. It's not just a movement towards this universal dissolution, union, whatever. That's valid, too, but that actually dissolves the eros, and actually also dissolves the psyche, the soulfulness there. I'll come back to this more, this parallelism, if you like, of two movements: the universal and the personal. Two tracks, if you like, very connected. I'll come back to this.

As I said, eros, in wanting more, in wanting to contact more, wanting more contact, more to contact, it wants to fertilize, and it opens up the levels in the particularity and of and through the particularity of this thing, this person, this world. It opens up a sense of theophany, of God shining through in different forms, at different levels, through that particularity, in that personhood.

That perception of theophany and that multiplicity is, or implies, or needs, an increase of the conceptual framework, a stretching of the logos. So as eros does this, and it opens up the soulfulness, or the psyche, if you like, it also stretches the logos. Or that movement itself, the whole gestalt of that movement, the whole dynamic of that movement is a stretching or involves a stretching of the logos to incorporate that.

So it stretches vertically (if we use that word, tentatively), and it also spreads to the world, to the surroundings, in cosmopoesis. So that spreading in cosmopoesis -- to feel like we're inhabiting a different world, or we have a sense of the existence of other (loosely) dimensions of being to this world -- this spreading, that's also part of eros opening psyche, eros opening soulfulness, opening the image and the imaginal sense, fertilizing it, inseminating the image of the beloved, spreading to the world, and also spreading vertically.

So this spreading to the world, this cosmopoesis, is also part of eros desiring more connections, part of it creating or discovering, creating and discovering both, more of the beloved. This is what eros [wants]: "I want to go deeper into you. I want to penetrate deeper. Discover more of you. Move inside you. Know you. Know the worlds that open up through you." This is what eros wants. So this widening, in terms of spilling over to include the world and the cosmos, that's part of the thrust, the movement of eros. All of it is the movement of eros wanting. The 'more' implies, includes, other dimensions very much (this is what I want to emphasize), other dimensions to the object, other levels of beauty, and other levels of being in or through this object, this person, this world, or nature. So what I'm calling a vertical spectrum of the imaginal, a vertical dimension of perception, is opened up, as well as the wider one that begins to include the surroundings, which you will have noticed in meditation already sometimes.

This vertical dimension, this vertical perception and conception, this sense, as I said before, to loosely define it, this sense that selves, things, and world, have -- in and through their particularities, through their personhood, if you like -- have their roots in, originate in, they mirror or reflect, they possess or are comprised of dimensions other than just the commonly agreed-upon dimension of, say, materiality, or self as understood and viewed and sensed in modernist culture.

That sense and conception of the vertical dimension, one way of turning around what we're saying is that is a manifestation or a way in which soulmaking happens. It is psyche opening. That sense itself and that conception reflects and feeds an opening, an increase, a deepening, an enrichening and nourishing of the soulfulness -- if we do not cling either too concretely or literally to the whole idea of it, in some kind of New Age way, or just cling too tightly to the whole thing.

I said in an earlier talk that part of the way I would like to define 'soulmaking' is to include this very light holding of concepts. Not literal, not concretized -- loose. Not believed in. Not regarded as being other than a perception, or something separate from the mind. Not regarded as an ultimate, a truth in a sort of final sense.

This sense of this vertical dimension, the perception of it -- which includes the conception of it -- you could say is ensouling the world. It is a way of seeing and conceiving that very potently opens the sense of soul in the world, and the world being ensouled. We could say that psyche, soul, through eros' fertilization, through the sort of thrust of eros there or the opening of eros, it sees this way, or rather, it wants to see this way. There's something in the soul that, we could say, wants to see this way; that when there's soulmaking, and the increase, the nourishment of soulfulness, psyche will tend, the soul will tend, through eros' fertilization, as I described, it will move towards seeing more this way.

You could say, maybe, the soul needs this kind of multiple, or multiple-levelled, multi-dimensional seeing and knowing and conceiving. William Blake wrote, I'm not sure which poem, "God save us from single vision."^[2] That's a prayer: "God helps us, God save us from single vision." There's something in us that, as the soulfulness and soulmaking increases, it needs this sense of this multiple, multi-levelled nature of things, of perception. Seeing that way actually reflects an opening of soul, an opening of the psyche, a whole movement, dynamic of eros-psyche-logos, as I was trying to describe, feeding and growing and fertilizing each other, creating space, opening, creating wombs for that fertilization, deepening and widening.

So I said earlier that the word 'vertical,' or the whole 'vertical spectrum of the imaginal' -- it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. It doesn't sound that poetic to me, but I can't think of anything right now. But the word 'vertical' is a little problematic for a couple of reasons. One is that it may imply a kind of hierarchy: there's up and down, and up is usually better than down, in the way we tend to think. This idea of a vertical spectrum has a long history, or rather, ideas of vertical spectra have a long history, especially in Western philosophy and spirituality. So there are some parallels with Neoplatonist ideas of the Great Chain of Being and that sort of thing, where actually the verticality does imply a hierarchy -- one end is good. One synonym for the top end of the vertical spectrum in Neoplatonism is 'the Good.' The other end is not so good, is less holy, is furthest from God, and also less real.

So this 'Good' is also sometimes called 'the One' in Neoplatonism, and there's a kind of ontological hierarchy implied, I think, as far as I can tell, so that that's real -- that ultimate Unfabricated is real, and everything else sort of progressively has less existence, less reality. Matter, in some versions of Neoplatonism, if I'm understanding correctly, is actually regarded as illusory, or even unholy.

In a way, some approaches to Buddhadharma might be similar, even in the language: "This is unfabricated. The other is a fabrication. These other perceptions are more and more fabricated. They're fabrications." So there's a kind of reality imputed to the Unfabricated, and less reality to other perceptions. Now, that may be an important stage, as I've outlined briefly here and other places. It might be a very important stage as a kind of way of thinking about things and conceiving of things as one deepens in meditation. It may be actually extremely important as something that unfolds. But to stop there is a problem, because it creates a dualism.

So one thing about this vertical spectrum of the imaginal is, I would say, let's not confound it with the spectrum of fabrication of perception. In the teaching of the spectrum of the fabrication of perception, there is the spectrum from unfabricated to fabricated, a little fabricated, more and more fabricated. Implied in that, and importantly implied in that, is the implication of what's real and what's illusory or empty, unreal. Wrapped up in that is a dualism. In a way, I feel we need to be rescued at some point from that dualism. As I explained earlier, and elsewhere in much more detail, we can actually see, at some point, in exploring this whole teaching of the spectrum of fabrication, that fabrication, too, is empty. It's like a teaching that's a raft, the whole teaching about fabrication, and at a certain point, we realize, "Oh, that's not a real thing." We recognize the emptiness of fabrication at a certain point, and it collapses the duality. It reveals the holiness, if you like, of everything, rather than one transcendent Unfabricated as holy, and the rest of the world, the fabricated, as less holy. Everything appears holy, everything appears magical. It's a collapse of the duality between Unfabricated and fabricated.

We might also point out that in Buddhadharma, when we use the word 'illusory' (this is another way of saying the same thing), usually that word, 'illusory' -- people say, "This or that is illusory" -- it's in comparison, in the back of their minds, with something that is not illusory. But actually, what is it to recognize that if everything is, so to speak, illusory, you're actually saying everything is magical and holy? 'Illusory' is not in contradistinction to anything that's not illusory. All of it is opened up as magical and holy.

Maybe the word 'vertical' could be replaced with the world 'multiple.' I'm not sure. The word 'spectrum,' also, I'm a little unsure of, because a spectrum implies a kind of ordering. Maybe there is, in terms of experience, a kind of ordering here. Again, in terms of perception or the sense we have of divinity, might be stronger at one end of this vertical spectrum of the imaginal than at the other end, progressively. So that might be a way of conceiving of it. But that's different from saying, "It is so," or "This is a truth."

We might reflect just a little bit more on what then is the relationship between the spectrum of fabrication of perception and this (what I'm calling) vertical spectrum of the imaginal. This is, I think, tricky. [laughs] Not to confound them; I don't think that would work. It's temping to, but I don't think that would work. But we could say, or perhaps we could start with -- this is really a half-opening of an idea; I'm putting it out -- perhaps they are in some way parallel, or two threads that perhaps intertwine along a spectrum, along a direction.

So the spectrum of fabrication of perception, we could say, has at one end the Unfabricated -- that, as an aspect of the divine: the transcendent Unfabricated, objectless, beyond time, beyond any appearances, all of that, beyond any sense of consciousness in the usual sense. So there's that aspect of God, the transcendent aspect of the Godhead, if you like.

And as one fabricates a little bit more, coming down, so to speak, from the top end of the vertical spectrum, there are more universal and impersonal shinings through of the sense of the divine, through the world of objects and things. So for example, this universal love, the cosmic love, the one awareness, the one mind, the Big Mind, whatever -- these are, if you like, points on a spectrum of fabrication, coming down, that reflect a certain amount of divinity. And then fabricating more down the spectrum, fabricating more and more, until it becomes just the normal sort of non-sacred perception of self/other/world. At one end of the spectrum, it's completely transcendent, and then there's more oneness and less solidity towards that end. As you move down, there's more solidity, more separation, etc., and less sense of sacredness, more normal perception.

On the other side, or the other thread that's entwined or parallel to that track of the spectrum of fabrication, is what we might call this vertical spectrum of the imaginal. We could say, then, that has its one vertical end in the aspect of God that is more akin to what we were describing with Buddha-nature, that incorporates both the ultimate gnosis of a Buddha, the Buddha-nature, the wisdom awareness, and its objects. So it incorporates both objective and subjective aspects of the divine. Within that, or coming out of that, is a spectrum of the imaginal, and a spectrum of particular theophanies. So my friend as a particular aspect of the feminine aspect of God, a particular face of that, or other ones that are available there. Down, again, down the spectrum, and at the other end, converging with the sort of normal, non-sacred perception of self/other/world. In a way, these two spectra have their bottom end, if you like, converging in normal, non-sacred perception of self/other/world. Their top end, you could say, converges in the divine, but different aspects -- one aspect is the transcendent Unfabricated, and one aspect is the non-transcendent, more Ultimate of the Vajrayāna conception, for example.

That's maybe a start of -- I don't know; just playing with some ideas there. These two threads, then, would be, in a way, parallel, or not be the same but have aspects in common. (1) One is (and really important, again, to realize) they're both spectra of perception. They're both perceptions. They're not separate from the mind. Crucial. (2) They are both empty. That's the second thing they have in common, related to the first: they are both empty. We're not talking about things that have any ultimate reality. (3) Third, what they have in common is that they converge in the normal perception at one end, and at the other end they converge in the divine, but different aspects of the divine: one as utterly transcendent, one as inclusive of appearances. I'm playing with ideas here that are, as you can hear, half-formed.

In terms of practice possibility, this is interesting, because implicit in all this is that we can play with moving up and down each of these spectra. So, for example, we can play with deliberately seeing things as theophany, so deliberately hearing those loud, raucous voices outside as mantra. Or just tuning into that theophany when it appears. So we can play with the perception of theophany, moving up and down the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, just responding to what emerges from that spectrum to us as perception. Then we can also play with the spectrum of fabrication and unfabrication, as I've talked about a lot elsewhere. We can play with moving towards the Unfabricated, and play with not letting it fade so much, then mixing that with theophany. If the whole perception fades too much, the imaginal practice is not possible, because imaginal practice involves form and particularities. All that fades when you get too near, too much towards unfabricating. But there's a play here, either separately or combined, all kinds of possibilities. I don't pretend that's not something that takes, probably, a while to develop, all those possibilities. It takes a lot of skill, art. But it's there for us. There's such a breadth and depth, and richness and infinitude, probably, of possibility for all the ways experience can open, dimensions of experience.

Now, when we say, or when we conceive of an image-sense (if we use a certain language) having its root in the divine, or its root in a god or an archetype, this image, this image-sense is mirroring, reflecting, originating in the divine, or in a face of the divinity or an archetype, and this image in the largest sense is asking me to honour that, or through the image, this root in the divine, the root archetype, is being honoured or replicated or expressed or manifest through the image, or through the image into my life, or whatever -- it's through this, that's one of the ways a sense of sacredness comes, through this sense of another dimension, another level. It's a particular direction or range of sacredness, what I'm calling the vertical spectrum of the imaginal. It's not the only one, as we've talked about and made very clear, I hope. But what I really want to emphasize: it's from there that a sense of meaningfulness for us is born or is supported, in relation to this having its root or origins or mirroring or expressing another level, the divine or archetypal or whatever. This has a lot to do with meaningfulness. I'm going to come back to this. I don't know if that's obvious to you; I'll come back to that.

But when we talk about a root in a face of God or a root in an archetype or daimon or whatever, that root that we're talking about, if we use that language, 'root,' is not a static root. I would like to conceive of it as something much more dynamic. By 'dynamic,' I don't just mean impermanent or changing or whatever. I mean particularly dynamic because of everything that I said earlier, trying to describe about the way this works in terms of eros' fertilization deepening and enriching the image. The image, the root, is not static -- it's not reflecting something static. It's actually transformed, evolved, stretched, opened, made larger, deepened, made more multi-levelled through eros' fertilization.

Corbin talks about "the angel out ahead" -- this figure, this angel, imaginal figure, that I never quite reach. It keeps moving ahead. I might catch up a little bit; he/she moves out further. So the relationship is never one of union. It's one of direction and movement and connection, infusion, but not union. So there's a dynamism here that has to do with the eros-psyche-logos as I talked about.

And again, to emphasize so much: when we talk about 'root in the divine,' or this archetype or that daimon, or this aspect of the divine, we're talking about something that's empty, absolutely empty. Empty of inherent existence. Also in that dynamism is the whole, what we described briefly at several points, this idea from the Jewish mystical book, the Zohar, that we create God as much as God creates us. Radical idea in theological circles. Or in the Lurianic Kabbalah, this repeated dynamic of the shattering, the breaking of the vessels, of the structures. So here the vessel is not only conceptual frameworks; it's also an image itself. It gets stretched or broken, and then it's structured differently again. That breaking of the vessels also applies to God, or a god, or God in a sort of more monotheistic sense, divinity. That, too, our notion and perception of God also breaks, shatters, gets structured differently, grows, etc.

This dynamic itself, the repeated shattering of the vessels, building again, growing, stretching, shattering -- that, too, is part of God. We're actually conceiving that as part of God, rather than there's some kind of fixed entity in some kind of separate way. So again, some of you will know, this is really echoing a kind of post-structuralist, postmodern understanding. Rather than assuming fixed, independently existing structures, actually in all this really incorporating very much, at a very basic level, this idea of not just fluidity but a whole dynamic there, and non-independence of these structures, of whatever root that an image is reflecting, expressing, or a root in the divine, the divine root. We're not talking about fixed, independently existing structures. Again, to point out the shortcomings, inadequacies of most postmodern philosophies, there isn't, with all that, any practice of meditation, and specifically meditation as the practice of a flexibility of perception, a practice of different ways of looking. It's not there. So everything stays at the level of language, word games, texts. It's presupposed that that's the fundamental -- it cannot go more subtly. All it can do is deconstruct, rather than move fluidly and creatively between perceptions, experiences, and therefore worlds, that are recognized not to be ultimately true or fixed or independent.

So this sense or conception (sense/conception) of things, selves, others, world, image having their roots in, echoing, mirroring other levels, divine levels, aspects -- that brings a certain kind of sacredness. There are, as I said, all kinds of possible kinds of sacredness. There's a whole subset of kinds of sacredness that come out of that kind of sense and conception, and that's really what we're emphasizing. That root, you can conceive of it in different ways. One way, if you want kind of Buddhist ways -- some people will, some people won't -- one way is possibly marrying it with the kind of notion of the Ultimate in certain tantric teachings, the notion of Buddha-nature, the gnosis or wisdom awareness of a Buddha, which also includes the objects that appear to it. So the root is in both the subjective aspects and the objective aspects of the divinity. The roots of these images are there in, if you like, the mind of God, the divine, the ultimate mind. But also they are creations of that mind, of the appearances to that mind. So that's one way, perhaps, of moving the conception, if you like that.

I mentioned earlier that the ways of conceiving of divinity, and also of images and that connection there, bear a great deal on our sense of meaningfulness. So I want to flesh that out. It may be obvious to some of you already through practice, or just from what I've said already, but it may not be, so I want to spell it out a little bit. Earlier on the retreat, or actually, I pointed out a number of times that meaningfulness, or a sense of meaningfulness, pertains to images or is characteristic of images, in the sense that I'm using the words image/fantasy/mythos, and that sense of meaningfulness is part of what we were calling soulmaking and soulfulness, the nourishing of soulfulness.

When we conceive of images in the ways that I've been leaning towards on this retreat, granting a certain amount of autonomy to images, or admitting that they have a certain amount of autonomy; conceiving of them as having a certain amount of autonomy; as being, in a way, bigger than the human; knowing still that they are a dependent arising, not separate from my mind, my perception, fabrication, etc. -- when we grant them that greater being, if you like, a certain kind of autonomy, a certain kind of reality, and a sort of origin or mirroring of another level, a higher or more divine level, if you like, or levels of the divine, and then we turn around in our relationship to images and ask, "What is it that this imaginal figure wants? What do you want?" (if you remember, we emphasized this so much), this kind of way of conceiving of images and their divinity, their roots in divinity, this fills out, deepens, brings alive a sense of meaningfulness for us, in particular ways that the soul needs, more powerfully and more particularly than other ways of conceiving.

It nourishes that sense of meaningfulness. It gives us a sense, for instance, of calling in life, of destiny, some road calling me, some pull towards something that I can't quite understand. I'm being pulled by something bigger than me. The soul-events of my life, it gives them a meaningfulness, a movement that's imbued in meaningfulness that has a lot to do with personhood -- my personhood, my life, your personhood, your life, expressing, manifesting, on the track of a certain kind of deep and divine meaningfulness. Its origins are not completely in me, so to speak. So the soul needs this. Recognize again the circularity of some of these statements and arguments, as Paul Tillich pointed out. Never mind. So what? It's part of the territory.

This is a whole big subject, about meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is a whole big subject, and sometimes people -- I've talked about this in other talks elsewhere -- want to assert the fundamental, ultimately true meaninglessness of everything, and say, "That is true." They might shy away from words like 'truth,' and try not to use them, but underneath, or woven into what's being said, is that ultimately we live in a meaningless universe, and any meaning that we might generate is therefore essentially -- how would you say? -- kidding oneself. Not having the courage to face meaninglessness, an existential meaninglessness, and the limits of our existential situation.

There, actually -- I've pointed this out other times -- there is a fantasy right there: the existentialist fantasy. The meaningfulness that comes into that fantasy is exactly in that, in the sort of casting oneself as being brave enough to face that reality of meaninglessness, to cope with it, to articulate it, to uncover it. As a soul-story, a fantasy, there's a kind of dead end there for soulfulness; there's a limit. But limits are part of the attraction of that fantasy, the bravery of limits. It's all resting on an assumption of truth, even if that is not recognized or realized or admitted. There's a fantasy in there about what's true, and then the self and the world are cast in line with that fantasy.

Again, just spelling this out with the different conceptions of divinity or cosmology: if I have a completely one-dimensional view of the cosmos (so this is in contradistinction, in contrast to this sense of a vertical dimension, of many dimensions), if I have just a one-dimensional view of the cosmos, as we said, for example, "Really all there is that's real is matter," this teaching, this philosophy of physicalism, what's called physicalism or materialism in philosophical circles. All there is that's real is matter, and everything emerges out of the interactions of matter. Matter is meaningless, the interactions of matter are meaningless. Consciousness and the complexity of our life, etc., and what looks like tragedy and joy, is just based on or emergent from meaningless interactions of matter according to the laws of physics. That view, that kind of one-dimensional view of the cosmos, you can see how that erases the possibility of any deep sense of meaningfulness, certainly to the cosmos, but also then, by extension, by implication or context, to our personhood and our lives and the images. It's all essentially just the meaningless movement of matter. That's the only real reality.

So as I said, the images that come might be just random neuronal firings. There's that view. And then there are some other views and perceptions of divinity. We talked about, for instance, a universal conception of divinity that's quite popular, a universal perception of divinity that's quite popular and fairly easily accessible for most meditators, the kind of mystical perception of "all is one," and in different ways. Maybe all is this vast, cosmic, universal love or compassion, or all is awareness, etc. Interesting. Here's a conception of divinity, but also that conception of divinity erases or leaves no room for a more personal meaningfulness. In its universality, it has no room for more personal meaningfulness. Maybe that's not so obvious. By 'personal meaningfulness,' I really mean any meaningfulness connected with the particularities of the person, one's personhood, one's life trajectory, the soul-events of one's life, or a sense of a calling or a sense of destiny in one's life.

Even, to take another view, a mystical view or view of divinity, a simple view of the emptiness of all things, or as we outlined, the view that understands everything is fabricated, if we just stop there, that also erases meaningfulness. As we pointed out, without enough depth, if the view does just stop there, those kind of views, those kind of conceptions, "Everything is fabricated. There is the Unfabricated," that view may actually disparage the world, the cosmos, as fabricated, and then orient towards this transcendent Unfabricated, erasing the world of phenomena, of perception, of manifestation.

That fits into the sort of classical Pali Canon trajectory of ending rebirth. All this is fabricated; one does not want to be reborn into this world of fabrication. One wants to -- whatever the word is -- escape, dissolve, end rebirth and dissolve (that's not really the right word) into the Unfabricated. So there's a disparaging of the world of fabrication. That does something quite profound to a sense of meaningfulness.

So either in the universal views of all is love, all is awareness, or cosmic consciousness, or the view of the Unfabricated being divine and the fabricated being the undivine, in those cases, all of those cases, meaningfulness only would lie in the movement towards ending rebirth, or unbinding in the Unfabricated, or realizing universal love, or realizing oneness or whatever. Meaningfulness can only then be, if that's the only conception of the divine, that's the only conception of the cosmology there, then meaningfulness just lies in moving towards, trying to move towards perceiving that continuously, continuously perceiving oneness or cosmic love or whatever it is, and perhaps helping others get there. So the meaningfulness comes, yes, to help others get there.

But the particularities of being, of manifestation, of action, of expression, of love, as well as the particularities of personality or character, they have no particular meaningfulness other than sharing in this universal oneness, or they're one like everything else is one, or this universal reality. It basically is the same as saying they have no particular meaningfulness. The meaningfulness does not reside in the particularities, it resides in the universality.

When we think about different conceptions and practice options that we can explore and talk about, it's only in this kind of conception and viewing and practising the view, as we're talking about, viewing ourselves, our lives, others, things, and the world, as mirroring, echoing, rooted in, some particular aspect or archetype of divinity. It's only in doing that (in other words, in perceiving selves, others, things, acts, speech and all of that as particular theophanies), it's only that one that supports meaningfulness in this particularly deep way that's connected with our personhood and the particularities of things. It supports meaningfulness in the most soulful way, the most fully soulful way. So it's a dimension of the possibility of meaningfulness. That kind of conception and view will support meaningfulness the most, will fertilize and root a sense of meaningfulness in deep soil, because the conception gives it that, and the view gives it that.

Okay, so, we talked a lot now about conceptual frameworks regarding the divine. There's a lot there. I'm conscious of that. I'm conscious that it's complex, some of what was said, a lot of what was said. Difficult to digest, difficult to understand, perhaps. So, very, very conscious of that. Really, again, the encouragement to take it lightly. Take these concepts lightly. Take your relationship with these concepts and with playing with them lightly, around the concepts of the divine and how that works and with images.

The Kotzker Rebbe [was] a Jewish mystic from the late eighteenth century. He died in the mid-nineteenth century. He's the Rabbi from Kotzk, which I think is in modern Poland. He said, "Phooey!", which I'm assuming is a Yiddish exclamation [laughs], "I'm not interested in a God any Tom, Dick, or Harry can understand."^[3]

Take this lightly. It's okay, you know, in a way, to be -- there's something actually beautiful in grasping towards understanding, this movement of shattering conceptions, groping a little bit, putting things together, letting them grow, building them. That's part of the dance.