Matter, Bodies, Worlds (Part 2)

Wrapped up in the sort of typical modernist view of the world, of the cosmos, and wrapped up as a basis of classical mechanistic science, is what we might call reductionist views of different kinds. We've touched on this before in different areas, in psychological theories and stuff, but right now what I want to emphasize is what I would call bottom-up assumptions -- assumptions that reality and the things of the world are sort of created, if you like, from the bottom up. In other words, subatomic particles come together, and they make atoms, which come together to make molecules, which come together to make larger structures, which make the perceivable things of our world. There's a bottom-up causality, and a bottom-up -- if you like, more philosophically -- kind of notion of reality; in other words, the 'real' things there are these little billiard ball subatomic particles, and then they build up. So it's a kind of reductionism to the smaller and the more elemental, if you like.

One of the things I think it's really important to realize, in terms of maturity of insight, is that to a certain extent, both in our personal experience and also in science and in the wider culture, the views and conceptions we have (or with which we approach whatever it is -- a scientific problem, or experience, existence) actually in a way generate, or give us, fabricate the experiences that it feels like we then discover, if we're not aware of it. This has very much to do with the whole idea of ways of looking and conceptions fabricating perception. The same is also true about science. To a certain extent, materialistic/mechanistic science, well, that's what it will find -- through certain assumptions, what we seem to then discover objectively and independently is just reflecting back our paradigm, our point of view, our assumptions. These reductionist views that I talked about, this bottom-up kind of conception, that is part of scientific materialism, which is part of the secularism that is the dominant view nowadays.

Why am I mentioning this? What I want to point out is that there's an alternative view, which is the more, if you like, Neoplatonic view. Or what used to be more popular historically in the West and also in the East is a kind of top-down metaphysics. Top-down -- there's this idea that things, objects, whatever it is, have their origins higher, their roots higher, in the divine, and then that, if you like, emanates down to create a lower stage. But the lower stage is kind of included in the upper stage somehow. So it's a kind of top-down metaphysics, a top-down philosophy, if this makes sense. The top being God or the divine, and then there are levels of World Soul and all this. There are lots of versions of that, but there's a top-down metaphysics, and we can compare and contrast that with this bottom-up metaphysics that we have nowadays as the dominant view.

What I want to say is we're not then, at least I'm not interested in just replacing or substituting the bottom-up metaphysics with a top-down metaphysics. I'm not just wanting to switch the belief 180 degrees. Rather than just substituting one for the other, I'm interested in what happens: is it possible to, in practice, suspend the habitual indoctrinated beliefs and assumptions that are basically reductionistic? Can I actually just suspend that in my view, as a practice? Just not buy into that, right now, in terms of my experience. Within that, what I want to say is both these views may have a certain validity to them, top-down, bottom-up. And both of them might be views to experiment with. I mean in practice. Practice, again, as experiment, as research, as flexibility of ways of looking. What happens when I view through a lens that is informed by the conception of a top-down metaphysics? We're not used to that in this culture. And what happens when I view things through this bottom-up metaphysics? We can do this as an exercise. Maybe on a retreat we will do this as an exercise.

Within that experimenting, there's a curiosity: how then, through this lens, informed by this conception, how then does my experience arise or differ when there's this lens or that lens? Perception, the fabrication of perception. What are the effects on the soulfulness or the soulmaking? What, if you like, are the relative strengths and weaknesses -- not just as intellectual arguments, but also in experience of these two views, top-down and bottom-up metaphysics? For example, recognizing that with the bottom-up metaphysics, as it's usually conceived in a modernist version, there is this kind of flattening that goes there. Scientific materialism: "Everything is just this mechanical, meaningless matter. That's all that really exists. Everything is just that, therefore it's flat." When that is the perception, it's very hard to feel or have a basis for meaningfulness. So recognizing what the effects of different conceptions are and ways of looking.

[7:08] In the Pali Canon -- and certainly in Mahāyāna Buddhism it's emphasized even more, and in Vajrayāna Buddhism even more than that -- in the Pali Canon, in Buddhadharma, and in Islam, and in Kabbalistic teachings in Judaism, and other traditions, there are actually many worlds. There's not just one world, and that world is just like this. There are many worlds. Oftentimes there's a hierarchy involved in a lot of these cosmological systems, if you like, cosmologies. But the idea is that there are many worlds, and what matter is in these worlds and what the bodies are is different from world to world. Each world has its own kind of matter, or appearance of matter, or appearance of body, put it that way. And different laws, different physical laws, even psychological and spiritual laws.

Chaim Vital was a Jewish Kabbalist. I think he was one of the students of Isaac Luria. He writes of an infinity of co-existing worlds. He also writes -- I may come back to this -- that every soul has a root in each world. In a way, all these co-existing worlds and, if you like, levels of world and existence, and every one of us, every being, every soul, has a root in each of those worlds; therefore, has infinite roots. Again, here, this interplay, this co-dependent arising, this co-involvement of self and the world.

Just as a sort of footnote here, to clarify, and particularly for those of you who have a little familiarity with some of the ideas and trends in modern physics over the last fifty years or so, I want to distinguish this idea of many worlds, of infinite worlds that Chaim Vital and many others in many spiritual traditions have written and talked about over the centuries, distinguish that idea from an idea, a theory that is still around and still somewhat popular in modern physics, which is sometimes called the many-worlds interpretation or the multiple universes theory, according to which there are uncountable, innumerable, separate parallel universes just like our own, some of which are microscopically close to this universe that we're in, and some of which are a little bit different, and some really quite divergent.

So in many of these universes, uncountably many, I am giving this same talk, but there's something very slightly different, microscopically different in the delivery, and you are listening. There's something perhaps in one of these universes, or many of the universes, something very slightly different in your listening, or the processes that go on in your mind, or something else as you're listening. Some will be more dissimilar, quite divergent. In some, you may have listened to a certain point and then got a little fed up [laughs], and decided to switch on the TV, and now are happily watching The Simpsons or whatever. In many of these universes, I never made it to give the talk, for whatever reason. Maybe I died a long time ago. Or you never made it to listen, for whatever reason.

But right now, and in parallel to this universe that we find ourselves in, are innumerable, countless other universes that differ either very, very slightly, infinitesimally slightly, or quite widely from this one. That's a different idea, this idea of what's called the many-worlds interpretation in modern physics. It's a different idea than what Chaim Vital and others were talking about. That more spiritual version, the mystical kind of cosmopoesis of Chaim Vital and the other traditions, the Islamic traditions, and Christian, lots of traditions, that differs in two ways. It involves (1) a kind of verticality, if you like. There's a verticality implicit in the idea of the cosmos and the arrangement of these worlds. There's a dimensionality, a hierarchy, we might say. Oftentimes, it is presented and structured as a hierarchy. There's a hierarchy of these worlds, often, in the presentations of this mystical idea. That's a word -- I personally feel okay with it, but I think teaching now in our culture, in these kind of situations, I want to be quite cautious with that idea, because it often brings a lot of assumptions, and baggage, and dualisms, etc.

But in this idea of Chaim Vital's, and in the Kabbalistic tradition and other traditions, there's a verticality, a hierarchy of the cosmos, a hierarchy of these worlds. So that's one difference. (2) The second is these other worlds that Chaim Vital and others allude to or describe or point to are not separate -- from each other, or from this here [taps on something], from this world and this moment, at least as I would conceive that idea. This dimensionality, this verticality, is not the same as separate universes sort of trundling on and unfolding in parallel on their divergent paths. There are a couple of differences there.

[14:13] But it's worth just dwelling here a little bit in this sort of extended footnote, if you like. I wonder if this idea in modern physics of what's called the many-worlds interpretation actually really qualifies as a theory at all, or more of a conjecture, in terms of scientific paradigm. I don't know. As far as I understand, I don't think it's possible to ever devise an experiment to discover if it's true or not. And because you can't ever find out if it's true, this idea, I'm not sure whether that constitutes what could be called a theory. This conjecture, as I said, is different anyway, and as I said, no notion of verticality and the separateness of these worlds are two major differences. But about the fact of this conjecture and where that idea came from in modern physics, I think historically it arose as one attempt to avoid possible consequences or explanation of results that were happening and results that were discovered in subatomic physics experiments, which seemed to show, or rather, the plain reading, the obvious reading, rather radical reading, and I would say the simplest reading, would show the dependence of the observed on the observation.

So what is observed, the nature of what is observed, is dependent on the observation, on the way of looking. I look in one way, I see a wave; the scientist looks in another way, sees a particle. The kind of observation will determine what is observed. In quantum theory, prior to observation, all we can talk about is what's called a probability function or a waveform. There isn't a distinct thing with distinct properties; an electron or a proton or whatever it is exists more as a kind of probability wave, a probability of being here or there or way over there, of velocity, this or that occurring at this or that time with so much energy. All of this is not, so to speak, discrete, defined, determined, but exists as a kind of smudge or wave of probabilities of having this position, being here or there, etc. So in that, the very thing-ness of this thing and its most basic properties -- what it is, wave or particle; when it is and when it occurs; and where it is -- the most basic properties depend on the way of looking. This isn't because of a disturbance or inaccuracy due to the observational apparatus or the process of observation. There's a fundamental indeterminacy of things at a very basic level in the universe. In other words, there is no objective reality to things independent of observation and the way of looking and the approach of observation.

That conclusion, to conclude that somehow the way of looking, the perception, or even consciousness on the one hand, and the world, matter, etc., are interdependent -- the way of looking and the world, consciousness and matter, perception and matter, are interdependent and not separate; that matter, its appearance, its behaviour and its properties, depend on the way of looking, the approach, the conception, the consciousness, the perception (these are slightly different, but), that dependency, that idea of the interdependence of world and observation of matter and way of looking, that is so outside of the very ideas that formed the basis of the Scientific Revolution centuries ago.

For instance, the ideal and the possibility of observation free of bias -- that's a fundamental scientific sort of ideal, that we can observe things objectively, free of bias, and that we can discover there is an objective, independent existence of things, which we can discover if we are able to observe free of bias, which we can. Those are two notions. And the third notion, the whole separation and independence of mind and matter, stemming or championed by Descartes, who divided existence into res cogitans and res extensa. Res cogitans means the mind, the cognitive thing, the cognitive function, and res extensa is matter extended in space. So these ideas, the ideal and the possibility of observation free of bias; the objective, independent existence of things which can be discovered in that way; and the separation and duality of mind and matter -- fundamental ideas that underpinned classical science and allowed its progress. Wonderful, amazing progress.

But somewhere along the line, they became -- for many, if not most -- dogmas, beliefs about the nature of reality. With that, there's fear for many still that without these kind of assumptions there can be no science. Without the idea of an objective, independent existence of things that can be discovered, and the distinction between mind and matter, there can be no science. Without them, the whole edifice of science will crumble. So how to save science and save those beliefs, different postulations, if you like, different conjectures, rather than the idea of the way of looking of the observer, if you like, determining whether we see a particle or a wave, whether it's here or there, etc. There's the conjecture that both the particle and the wave exist, or in one universe it's a particle and in another universe it's a wave. In one, it's over here, and in another, it's over there, or in a third place, or very far out in another place. Anything that's even remotely probable according to this smudge of probability in the mathematical waveform, anything that's even remotely possible, each possibility will exist in one of these parallel, separate universes in the modern physics idea of the many-worlds interpretation.

It's only one idea, by the way, among others. As I said, you can't really prove it, and it's certainly not popular with everyone. I'm not sure whether it's the observation that actually causes the universe to fork or split in some versions, or just that these universes already exist, and in each one we have a particular version of reality, if you like, a particular outcome of what might be seen in our universe as a probability prior to observation.

[23:26] So there are these multiple universes in this many-worlds interpretation of modern physics, innumerable universes running, if you like, in parallel, separate, without any interaction between these universes. But all of them, each of these innumerable universes, has objective, independent existence. Each thing -- whether it's a large thing or the smallest subatomic particle -- has objective, independent existence. As I said, that idea is not popular with all modern physicists at all, and some would regard it as kind of a baroque idea, really. One physicist whose name I can't remember said, "This is very heavy baggage," this idea of multiple universes, multiple parallel, separate universes. "This is very heavy baggage," he wrote, for not entertaining the idea of the interdependence of the way of looking or consciousness on things, if you like; refusing to entertain that idea that seems so dangerous to the fundaments of scientific paradigm. When we refuse to entertain that conclusion from the quantum experiments, etc., then we have to carry this very heavy baggage of this many-worlds interpretation of modern physics. We might say, in Dharma language, the cost of not entertaining or not opening to a view of the emptiness of an objective, independent reality, is this kind of very heavy baggage of this idea. Again, it seems to me it's a conjecture, so therefore, I'm not even sure if it comes in the realm of science.

But there are other possibilities, one of which is entertaining something more akin to the idea of emptiness in Dharma teachings. It's not necessary, this idea that is still kicking around fifty, sixty years after it was first proposed in 1957 in the modern physics world. But again, just to make clear, Chaim Vital, and others in different spiritual traditions through the centuries, were talking about something very different here than this modern physics notion. There's verticality, dimensionality, possibly hierarchy, and there is not the separation of these worlds from each other or from this one here. If you just let these ideas -- fantasies, really, images -- these two (the one is the more spiritual, cosmopoesis, and the other is the more flat conjecture that abounds with some modern physicists), if you just go back and forth between them and let them resonate, echo, reverberate, and have their effects in the soul, I would say one notices quite different effects on the soul, in the soul, of entertaining each of these ideas about the cosmos. One, because of the dimensionality and the verticality and the non-separateness, seems to me to be an idea that is soulmaking -- an image, a fantasy, a cosmopoesis that is soulmaking. The other, because of its flatness, its separateness, etc., the separateness of these multiple parallel universes, does not give rise to the same soulmaking, or any soulmaking, really. It may give rise to a lot of science fiction and that kind of thing, or other strange sort of existential notions or feelings, but not so much to soulmaking. Anyway, that was in some senses a footnote, but worth, I think, making the distinction.

Many of the main religious traditions of the world, the spiritual traditions and practices, have this idea in the cosmology and the cosmopoesis of many worlds, and also, if you like, many levels of body. You get this in Tantrism, whether it's Buddhist or Hindu, in Sufism, etc. -- levels of the body. So yes, there's this physical body, and then there's the ethereal body, or the body of light, or the subtle body or whatever, and these different levels of the body, if you like, conform to the different worlds that we were just talking about. So, if you like, each level of body or each kind of body has its own world or its own earth that it inhabits. That's sometimes implicit in the kind of metaphysics that runs, and the cosmology that runs through a lot of these ideas.

Now, sometimes historically, especially for the people who practised in these traditions, and really what I want to emphasize, what we want to emphasize on this retreat, is that ideas, for instance, of the Pure Land in Buddhism that you may have heard about, or Buddha-realms, or the world as maṇḍala or whatever, that is here, now. We're not talking about something separate. It's here, now. We're talking about perception. We're talking about experience. This is possible to experience, to see this, right now, the room that you are sitting in right now, this around me right now and my self, can be experienced as a Buddha-realm. There's not a separation somehow in space or time, or somehow these levels are separate -- they're here, now. What we're talking about, the whole thing, the whole basis I want to put all this on, is what we could call phenomenological, experiential. It's to do with practice.

We're not just talking about what's derogatorily often called 'speculative metaphysics,' just like fantasy ideas about cosmology that bear no relationship with anything that can actually be experienced. Sometimes phenomenologically -- in other words, in our experience -- we experience a kind of hierarchy, if you like. It can feel like that. It doesn't have to. But it can feel like certainly there are levels. There are levels of perception that are available to us as human beings. This, Pure Lands, Buddha-realms, whatever language you want to call it, different worlds can be experienced, and different bodies. Different bodies, a whole different sense of the body. The Buddha talks about, in the Pali Canon -- I'm not sure if this is in the long version of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta; I can't remember, but it's in the Samaññaphala Sutta, the Fruits of the Homeless Life -- the Buddha talks about the skilled meditator creating a mind-made body. That body is a kind of etheric body, if you like. There's an awareness of that. And that can, if the meditator wants, be sort of separated in location, and fly off and have all kinds of adventures, and a whole sensorium, a whole experience it can have separate from the location of the physical body.

So the Buddha talks about that. Some of you listening to this will know that as an experience, in lots of different forms. It can happen lots of different ways. I remember someone on retreat talking about she was sitting in the lounge, having a cup of tea, and then a blue light body kind of unsheathed itself (that's also a word the Buddha used), unsheathed itself from her physical body. She was sitting there quietly in the library, and she watched this body, this blue light body, walk to the other side of the room. With practice, I don't want to emphasize this as a necessarily important possibility, but this kind of thing can arise very spontaneously. There's no sense of like it was some kind of schizoid break or some kind of breakdown in her mental -- she was just calmly watching this experience. It did arouse her interest, let's say. But there was nothing freaky. It was a very peaceful, beautiful experience. And it's something that can be trained with certain states of meditation. It becomes something that's very available and very enjoyable, and a whole other dimension of body.

Phenomenologically speaking, it's a phenomenological fact. It's a fact of our experience or of what appears to us, our perception, that there are levels (if you want to think hierarchically), or a multiplicity of perception and experiences are available to us. That is a fact. We can argue about metaphysics and dismiss something as metaphysics, but as human beings, there is that fact, that range or multiplicity or (if you're okay with that word) levels of perception, of experience, are available to us. And we can train in opening to those different levels, and extending the range, inhabiting all that, perceiving more clearly, feeling more fully. Part of the training and the flexibility of ways of looking, why I harp on about that, part of the training of what meditation is, when you see it that way, is opening up, recognizing this phenomenological fact. This, I cannot argue with.

[34:50] Now, someone might be listening and say, "Well, that's not my experience." I'm sorry, but I would just say, "You need to practise a little more before you go extending that claim that it's not real." Practise a little more. Open up your experience through practice. Now, of course, probably that person needs to be taught to practise in certain ways, to open up their practice and also their view of practice. That's what I harped on about earlier in the retreat. It's not just about "meditate more." It's that I need to meditate in certain ways, and I need to frame and conceive of what meditation is in terms of fabrication, ways of looking, dependent arising, and without presuming (as often is the case when people talk about fabrication), "Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing is fabricated, when I'm really in papañca, when I'm really believing this crazy thought that I'm having of self-hate or whatever. I realize that's a fabrication. But other stuff is real." What happens when I don't make that [assumption], and I'm just open in my exploration of fabrication? Who knows what's fabricated and what's not? Let's find out. Let's find out by playing with viewing meditation a certain way, and exploring, developing the ways of looking, and then see what's fabricated in terms of experience.

Someone might hear all this about phenomenological fact, experiential fact, availability to experience of different worlds and different levels, and actually experience that (this is probably much rarer), and experience even the dependent arising, that "When I look this way, I see that; this is the perception," experience all these levels of perception and still -- I think if it's a one-off, they might question it, but as it becomes more and more just, "Oh, I really see this over and over again in lots of different ways, this dependent arising, this dependency on the ways of looking, and how perception is fabricated." But let's say, theoretically, that still, after all that, through exploration in meditation, one still holds to, clings to this idea that reality is one-dimensional in this kind of modernist way. Then what? Then I would say -- I don't want to dwell on this now, but I would just put this out as a question -- then what happens is one needs to expose and question the epistemological assumptions of that person clinging to that position. What's happening, and what are they assuming about what constitutes valid knowledge? What are they assuming about what knowledge can be trusted? They're not trusting their own experience as a person who has hypothetically been through all this and seen this in meditation. What are you trusting as valid knowledge, and why?

You can see these philosophical questions, they can sound so abstract, but you see how it's absolutely -- not at the core, but at the basis of all that we're talking about. It's inevitable, these questions, and reaching these walls, and actually starting to question these walls there or these grounds, these assumptions. It's inevitable for someone who questions their existence deeply, wants to look deeply into their existence. They're inevitable if we want to really open up or even question whether or not there's a basis for re-enchantment, for cosmopoesis, for all that.

So what are the assumptions, epistemologically, about knowing, etc.? If I'm not trusting my own experience in this case of this hypothetical person, what then am I trusting, and why? Am I just trusting the view that happens to be most popular in the cultures that I move in at the time that I happen to be alive, the common view? A little reflection will show that most people hold that view without, as I said in another talk, without having thought about the whole thing much at all, or explored the whole thing either intellectually or experientially. Or again, am I trusting so-called science, but actually what I mean by that or what's assumed in that is really quite an outmoded version of science and the scientific approach? Or am I just trusting my inclinations, because I have a certain predisposition to a certain view? Why should I trust my predispositions? Why do I assume that they're right? Or is it fear -- I'm actually afraid of opening up the world-view? Perhaps because I feel safe in the little container that I've constructed for myself without realizing it. Perhaps I'm afraid of the implications of a widening of the view.

But at any rate, either it's a question of developing the meditation, thinking about the meditation, framing it, conceiving of what on earth is meditation, and opening up that framework, framing it in a certain way that allows this whole thing, allows space and air and actual movement in terms of these openings of perception and these questions -- either it's a matter of that, or it's a question of questioning my assumptions about knowledge and what's called epistemology, how I can know anything and what is valid knowledge.

What I really want to emphasize here, over and above all this, is the phenomenology. In other words, all these ideas and cosmologies, many worlds or a flat world or whatever it is, bodies, can we bring it back to practice and experimenting, so the whole thing is a phenomenological exploration? It's an exploration of our experience, of our perception of what appears to us and how. In other words, bring it back to practice.

So for example, with regard to the body, I can experience, I can look at the body in a way that sees it as a field of sensation. In terms of insight meditation, that's the most normal way. I can see and experience it, approach it, through a way of looking that reveals the energy body. That becomes the appearance, as we've been emphasizing on this retreat. I can see, experience, feel, and perceive the body as imaginal, imbued with image, or the imaginal body as theophany as well. The body as theophany. My body, your body, as theophany, as a face of God, a face of the divine. I can approach and have a way of looking at the body that has actually different kinds of conception of organic matter. It could be through the molecular, or genetic, or evolutionary; all kinds of conceptions of what organic matter is, and there are others, too, that are not quite so reductionist, etc.

Phenomenology, as a philosophical enterprise, phenomenology always includes conceptions. Some philosophers, I think, don't quite realize this. They believe in the possibility of just having a view without any conceptuality involved. It's a sort of pre-conceptual view of things, and it's quite common, again, in spiritual traditions -- 'just being,' 'don't think,' as if we can have this naked phenomenology, naked view, or naked experience of things. I've harped on about this in other talks, other retreats, but always appearance, phenomena, perception, experience, involves conceptions. Perception involves conception -- most of the time very subtle, not even fully conscious.

[43:31] If we just stay with that range or that example of some of the range of ways we can practise with ways of looking at our body and sensing our body, maybe there's a hierarchy there for you in those. You can organize them into some kind of hierarchy, or you feel there's a hierarchy. But not necessarily. There doesn't need to be. Again, there's a flexibility of conception that I would favour. Just reading recently about Plotinus and Neoplatonism, how there was in his way of teaching, too, this flexibility of conceptualization. Sometimes he talked about matter as if it was a kind of illusion, far from God, the furthest emanation of the divine. Other times it's like matter is equally divine, everything is equally divine; they're just different transformations of divinity, if you like, or the substance of divinity. So, complex, and for me, amenable to a flexibility of conception.

Most of you will know what 'pantheism' means. It means everything is God, equally. God is, if you like, nothing else but what exists. So matter is God, and that's kind of it. Actually, there are probably different versions. But then there's something called 'panentheism,' which includes the idea that there's a level of God, a level of perception, which transcends appearance. So yes, all matter is divine, all matter is imbued with divinity, everything in the world is imbued with divinity, and there's also a dimension, if you like, to the divine that's the Unfabricated, the transcendent, beyond matter, but actually beyond all appearance, all object and thing-ness.

But in relation to mindfulness of the body and what we were just touching on, when people often think about mindfulness of the body, the first foundation of mindfulness, they tend to think, in our world, of physical sensations. Wrapped up with that is usually either the rhetoric or the implicit assumptions that when I'm with my physical sensations, I'm with the immediate reality -- 'immediate' meaning there's nothing getting in the way, no concepts, nothing; this is just the immediate reality of things. One's not seeing that mode of approaching things as a way of looking. It's taken as the immediate reality, and not as a way of looking. If I assume that, and if I see that kind of mindfulness of the body as immediate reality and not as just another way of looking, the whole talk about the energy body is like, "That's just something you're imagining, or dreaming, or believing. It's a fabrication," whereas the other one is not a fabrication -- the sensations are not a fabrication. Actually, they're both modes of approaching practice. They're both ways of looking. Both of these are ways of looking. They're both modes of mindfulness of the body. A deeper exploration of emptiness and fabrication of perception also sees the fabrication of sensation, through clinging, through conception.

So in regards just about the energy body, in relation to these different kinds of body we're talking about, with energy body, we've been emphasizing it because -- going back to the opening morning -- it provides us with a multiplicity of resources, for lots of different kinds of practices and in lots of different ways. I'm not going to repeat that here. That's why we've been emphasizing it. But also it provides us with one strand, one possibility among others, of a way in which the body and the sense of the body can be re-enchanted. The energy body provides us one strand, among others, of ways there can be a re-enchantment of the body -- meaning it's not essentially, truly, the nature of the body is not just matter, just molecules and genes and all that, but there's depth, dimensionality. There is this availability to perception of a subtle body, a body of light, a body of energy. That dimensionality, that more subtle body, if you like, or the energy body, is connected to and integrated with the cosmos, but not only in the sort of modern materialist ways of conceiving: "Of course I'm integrated into the cosmos, because I exchange atoms with it through eating and going to the toilet, and through breathing in and out. I'm connected with the cosmos that way." That's fine, and that's great, and that's important. But the ways that the subtle body or the energy body might be perceived to be connected with and integrated into the cosmos are different than that. There are dimensions and depths of that -- I'm not going to go into that -- to be explored in practice, to be discovered in practice.

All of this, this question of matter, bodies, worlds -- all of it, we could say we're in the business of alchemy. All this has very much to do with a way of conceiving what alchemy is. I hope I don't need to say that alchemy is not a sort of pre-chemistry. It was not a pre-chemistry with people trying to convert lead to gold so that they could get rich. That's a certain view of alchemy. I'm not talking about that at all. I doubt that for most serious alchemists that was at all what was involved. Alchemy, as I've touched on before, as rather, if you like, a transubstantiation of matter, of world, of body, etc. But this transubstantiation, this transformation of the substance of things, is something that happens in and through perception. When we talk about alchemy, we're talking about the realm of perception, of our sense of things.

And this transubstantiation is available to us in all of the six senses. Yes, through sight. Yes, through sound. Yes, through touch, through the footfall and the touch of the foot on the floor or on the ground, on the earth, say, as we walk, or in the walking meditation or whatever. There can be an alchemy available that's arrived at through any of the six senses. And again, it might spread to the other senses. For example, in touch, what's characteristic of this transubstantiation is that the one touched -- the person touched, or the object touched, whether that's the earth, or some other object, or a person -- the one touched, or the object touched, and the one touching are or feel to be transubstantiated together. Again, we're back to the self/world thing, because subject and object are never separate as they appear to be. The nature of the fabrication of perception means subject and object are fabricated together. There's a mutual co-dependency of their arising.

[52:04] Someone, I can't remember where it's from, defined alchemy or summed it up as "the spiritualization of matter, and the materialization of spirit." They said that's what alchemy is. But when we talk about this transubstantiation, this making divine of matter, or this realization of the divinity of the substance of matter, of world, of body, etc. (there are different images and metaphors for that in alchemy, which we don't need to go into), but this transubstantiation (this is really, really important now), this transubstantiation doesn't necessarily involve or mean or imply a making ethereal in the perception, a making less solid, or making translucent or luminous or any of that the perception.

In other words, there can be this transubstantiation, and yes, of course, one option is that I'm looking and the world feels, seems to me luminous, ethereal, less solid. That's actually very common, but it's only one option. Because also there's the possibility that the very density and, if you like, what people used to call the 'darkness' of matter, or the 'sleep' of matter, that is spiritualized. The materialization of spirit, right there in that density, in that non-translucence, in that solidity. That solidity itself is not transformed, is not changed to something more ethereal. The solidity, the density, the darkness, whatever you want to call it, is itself infused with a sense of divinity, without the object -- whether it's body, or matter, or world, or this object or that -- without that becoming lighter and brighter. So there's this transubstantiation in the very sense of density and solidity. That very density and solidity is rendered divine. Again, going back to what we're trying to do here in the broader picture, we're opening and extending the sense of sacredness. Sacredness doesn't always look like white light, or light, or translucence, or ethereality, or whatever. We're opening and extending the sense of sacredness to everything, eventually, all forms and all perceptions.

As we emphasized before, all this -- this transubstantiation, this alchemy of perception -- we're regarding it as art. It's an art. For example, when we talk about seeing the world, seeing the surroundings, seeing the environment now as a deva realm, or a Buddha-realm, as the palace of a Buddha, or a holy maṇḍala, a sacred maṇḍala, and practising that, or that arising spontaneously through practice. Yes, there's a way of approaching that, very valid and lovely, where, for example, in the maṇḍala, each location, there's an exact symbology, and the detail of all that is important to the way of practising. That's great and that's fine. On this retreat, we're emphasizing in the art of it a much looser approach, much more poetic, if you like, more creative, more open. So it's less formulaic -- not necessarily less precise, but less formulaic, let's say. It may be precise, or it may be vague.

But involved in that, in that art of feeling the world as deva realm, as the palace of a Buddha, as the maṇḍala, or whatever language you want to use, what's involved in that art is the sense of all of it being sacred. It's, again, more than the typical modernist view of matter. Something is transubstantiated, in and through the perception. But that includes -- if we're talking now about maṇḍalas and all that -- it includes a sense of the geometry, a sense of the space, and the actual configuration of the space is not something that's kind of dissolved or transcendent. I'm not just talking about being in a field of white light, kind of homogenous, everything dissolves in that. Objects are not faded. That's a valid meditative experience and direction, of course. But in this kind of perception of the world around me as maṇḍala, it's not that the objects are faded, or I'm replacing one perception of an object with a very different one. But things have their space. The space is set up in the same way, the geometry of the space is set up as we perceive it usually, but the matter and the space itself is given this or felt to have this dimensionality, verticality.

So that's part of the art of this inhabiting a maṇḍala, this cosmopoesis. Or again, when we were doing the exercise of hearing all sounds as mantra, to quote a tantric instruction, again, we can do it in a very precise way, with some set of very precisely defined symbology wrapped up with the syllables of the mantra, or we can do it in a much looser way, a much more personally creative way. On this retreat, that's more what we're favouring in this art of alchemy.

Okay, so just a couple more things. I mentioned time before. Wrapped up in this whole notion of cosmopoesis, the whole notion of worlds, and what the world is, or how we perceive the world or different worlds, is the whole notion of time. Through practice, either through going deeply into emptiness practices (that's one avenue), or another avenue is through going deeply into this art of cosmopoesis and the imaginal. So two avenues there. Both of them will eventually (and in the case of the cosmopoesis, probably sooner rather than later, but it's variable), both of these avenues will open up our conceptions and our perceptions of time.

Going the direction of deep insight meditation practice via emptiness and this exploration of unfabricating, the fabrication and the unfabrication of perception dependent on the way of looking, that way, eventually one will have experiences of timelessness. They can happen all kinds of different ways. I'm not going to dwell on it here, but just to say that. Eventually there's the possibility of not fabricating. There is the cessation of the fabrication of perception: no perception, no thing, no self, no other, no object, no space, no time, no event. This is a realm or sphere, āyatana as the Buddha called it, completely transcendent to all conventional experiences, beyond time. There's no continuity of time there. There's nothing like that.

That's possible, this completely transcendent experience beyond time, of timelessness beyond any perception. There's also possible, through this deep emptiness practice, perceptions of that kind of level, that kind of timelessness, but in and through the perceptions we have of things happening in this world in time. So the timelessness sort of shines through, and we have this multidimensionality available to consciousness. Yes, of course, this thing is happening in time, and in the very same perception, if you like, there's a sense of the timelessness of this moment, of this perception, of this thing, of all of that. This is what's available to us through deepening in what I would call insight meditation, as the way of exploring fabrication and unfabricating will issue in this. And it can happen spontaneously in meditation -- some of that can happen spontaneously.

[1:01:52] So that's one avenue. The second avenue is what we're emphasizing more on this retreat, the avenue of the imaginal and the cosmopoesis, etc., and that practice. I've talked about this in other talks, other retreats. It's like, how there can be a sense then of the timelessness of an image, because the image is kind of iconic, and there's a sense of eternity, of the eternality of what one perceives -- whether that is the world that one perceives in cosmopoesis, or this particular image, or this dimension of a being, or a relationship. There's a sense of it happening, if you like, in a different time. Corbin has the phrase 'hierophanic time,' meaning 'the appearance of the sacred,' literally (two Greek words: hiero, 'sacred,' phanic, 'appearance,' 'face'). So he talks about the imaginal realm, events in hierophanic time. This image that touches me so deeply, that seems so soulmaking, it has a sense that it's happening in another time and eternally.

Alex Wayman, a Buddhist writer -- I'm not sure if he's still alive -- wrote a lot about tantra and translated some tantras. He talks about fruitional time, or great time, in contrast to basic time. Our usual sense of time, linear, unfolding, time passing, etc., impermanence and all that, I think he uses the word 'basic time' for that, in contrast to what he calls 'fruitional time' or 'great time.' This is the sense of time, or the time of the imaginal realm -- the time of the saṃbhogakāya, to mention that word from Vajrayāna Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhism. The world of the imaginal having its own kind of time, which is, if you like, an eternal time, a timeless time, an iconic presentation of the events and the images that take place in the saṃbhogakāya, in the imaginal realm.

I think why Alex Wayman calls it 'fruitional' is because that is, on the one hand, a fruit of awakening. In other words, this is part of the perception of an awakened one, a Buddha or a bodhisattva who has had certain levels of insight, of realization, into emptiness, etc. It opens up both the sense of timelessness in the first sense that I was using it, but also this sense of the eternity and the sense of timelessness that imbues images and events, etc., in the imaginal realm, in the saṃbhogakāya. It opens up the saṃbhogakāya, in fact, which is characterized by a sense of eternality, of timelessness, to the images, appearances, and events there. But it will also happen as a fruit just of practising imaginally, eventually. Sometimes it needs to be pointed out to us, but we recognize that the images, the perceptions, have a kind of timelessness to them. So, if you like, multiple levels of our sense of time become available to us and accessible to us, and regularly accessible and easily available as perceptions. Different kinds of timelessness just become part of how we see the world -- not only when we're in a state of transcendence, but actually in and through the very appearance of things. Yes, of course, there's time. Of course there's the perception of time, and one deals with that and one relates to that. But in the very same appearance is this dimension of timelessness, or dimensions, different kinds of timelessness.

This is all, as I said, wrapped up in this whole notion or whole possibility of experiencing worlds and imaginal realms. Going back to the theologian I mentioned, Walter Wink -- the ascension of Christ or the resurrection of Christ, these are happening in another realm, if you like, in the imaginal realm, and that's always available, always accessible, as I pointed out. Why? Because there's a kind of eternality there. It's always happening.

So sometimes a sense of timelessness, either through an exploration of, maybe through certain explorations or certain ways of approaching insight meditation, there will be an experience of a timeless realm as something separate, as I said, and dualistic with this world, the world of appearances. That can happen. In a way, what needs to happen then is a deeper understanding of emptiness. Or there can be this kind of separation and dualism between, let's say, the imaginal realm and this realm, this world. So that might happen experientially, but eventually, or sooner or later, these worlds -- this multiplicity of worlds that's available to us in cosmopoesis, and these multiple dimensions in our perception of time, time and timelessness -- again, they are here, now, so to speak; available in the appearance of this world, this moment, all this existence. Not separate, not dualistic, not only transcendent. Back to the panentheism thing, yes, there is the capacity for transcendence beyond all experience, beyond matter, form, and all that, and there's the possibility of the perception, the experience, here, now, in and through -- and in and through also all the particulars, not just dissolving things. So that non-duality, non-separation of these worlds, of these levels of perception, these realities, dimensions, and non-separation of time and the timeless, all of that can be here, now, available, not separate, not dualistic.

Last thing. Regarding the way our practice evolves or, let's say, the way we evolve towards that realization of non-duality of all this, or the availability, or the inclusion of all these different levels and dimensions and worlds, levels of time, etc., levels of experience of time, the way we move towards that more integrated -- yes, the experience of that as integrated into this very appearance now, inherent in, available in, present in, present to perception, to experience, in and through this very appearance; not as separate. The evolution to that availability in practice, in our sense of existence, to that non-separation, to that non-duality, the evolution of that, it might be that duality or a separating out of what is sacred from what is profane is actually maybe for some people a necessary stage. So it's interesting. Everyone would like to go and oftentimes to jump to a view of "everything is sacred." Maybe that's a more mature view. It is, I would say, a more mature view, and that's what we're interested in, that spreading of the sense of the sacred, the senses of the sacred. So that's great, "everything is sacred" as an idea.

But oftentimes, if that as an idea is just words, or it's not deeply based and a fruit of deep and consistent exploration in practice, if it's just an idea -- and sometimes even a secular kind of idea -- what happens is that actually "everything's sacred" experientially really drifts or slips or becomes "nowhere, nothing is sacred." Sometimes, many of us, or some, are actually helped by kind of, if you like, deliberately circumscribing "this is sacred," or "this place is sacred." So this temple, there are the precincts of the temple, and within those borders, it's sacred space, or we create sacred space somehow or other -- perhaps through ritual, perhaps something or other. We conjure, we enchant this space, and it becomes sacred. We're in it, and there's an out of it. There's a duality there. Or people making a pilgrimage, you know, the classical way of thinking about a pilgrimage is that place that I'm making a pilgrimage to is sacred, and that's why I'm making the pilgrimage there. It's special, it's different. In a way, it's other.

So what I want to say is we have to be practical with all this. I'm really interested in practice, in development, in the evolution, if you like, of perception, of experience, and what's available, and what makes a difference in our existence, in our life. Sometimes for us, or for some of us, many of us perhaps, a separating out of the sacred deliberately, caringly, and giving that more sanctity or approaching it with more sanctity is actually a stage on the way to perceiving everything as sacred. So I just want to acknowledge that, and actually leave room for that. Because always, when we talk about practice -- whether it's these kinds of practices, or other kinds of practices, or simple mindfulness -- always the question that should be imbuing practice and kind of in the background or at the foreground of practice at all times is, "What is helpful here? What is helpful?"

If I'm interested, deeply interested, in moving towards a vastly deepened and enriched and opened up sense of existence, that really one has expanded the sense of the sacred, the senses of the sacred, then I need to be practical about that. What actually helps me move towards that? I don't care about dogma or nice-sounding formulas. What I'm interested in is making a difference in the life, in the existence, and then indirectly in the culture. Not dogmatism, but pragmatism. What is actually helpful here? What are the, if you like, temporary stages, provisional stages, that move me towards deeper and deeper insight? Often, certain kinds of duality need to be respected and seen and entered into as stages of perception, stages of realization and insight, because they're on their way to non-duality. People want to jump at the non-dual perspective, and actually -- not always, but oftentimes -- it ends up having really not much power at all, not much transformative power. It sounds good, and there's a kind of attraction to it, but the question always, always, always, whatever the practice, whatever the direction, "What's helpful here? What is helpful?"