Transcription
We're looking into the whole area of eros for the path, eros on the path, and eros for awakening, and how that ties into, or what are the implications there, how it's connected to what's then allowed or supported in terms of our eros with regard to the world, to the senses, to sense experience, to what we might call 'life.' So we said all this: when we come to talk about eros, we must be talking about soulmaking, and that involves images and ideas. The ideas, the vision, the concept, the fantasies and images of path are involved in this, and we're looking at that, wanting to open that investigation up a little bit. And we've already said that implicit in that will be ideas and images, fantasies about awakening, of course -- a path leads to awakening, or in that direction -- and implicit in that is, again, ideas and, if you like, a range, what range of images in relation to the world, the senses, and life. So those three, we said, are connected.
Let's go a little bit more into this specifically with regard to eros for the path, an erotic relationship with the path, with the path of practice, with that movement towards awakening. And of course, most people (if you ask them) who have been practising a few decades will say, "Oh, yes, I'm still very passionate," etc. But when we say 'eros,' you know, we're talking about fire -- fire on the path, fire for the path, fire for awakening. In comparing how that fire is now, how that eros is now in one's practice compared with ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, is it honestly still the same intensity, depth, beauty? Are we still opening? Is there still the penetration, still the inquiry, the heat of that, the flame of that, the passion? And that includes, you know, sometimes it will include the hassle of that. Fire can be aggravating. There's this possibility of the breaking of the vessels, the shattering of what we once knew and how we once oriented, and the radicality that's involved with questioning and opening at a very deep level in terms of what's fundamental.
It's interesting. Some of you have been practising for many, many years, and just really to ask yourself about how the eros is now compared to twenty or thirty years ago. This is what, for right now, I'm interested in. So eros on the path, eros for the path, and how that involves logos and psyche, and the sense of ideas and concepts and images and fantasies of path, of awakening, of world, senses, life.
If the Four Noble Truths are central to our conception of the Dharma -- and most Insight Meditation practitioners would place that there, even whether they were conscious of it or not -- that means that we're approaching the path, we're approaching practice, and approaching the movement towards awakening or what awakening is, with a vision and a concept that has to do with ending or at least reducing suffering. Because that's what the Four Noble Truths are referring to, right? There's suffering, there's a cause for suffering, there is the possibility of ending suffering, and there's a way to that.
So that the whole of practice really is oriented towards lessening suffering -- 'freedom' meaning 'freedom from suffering.' And even if we put aside for now what those words mean, 'suffering' and 'freedom' and all that, we can say that this is a very common approach. (1) Let's call it for now the medical model. The approach to practice and to the path that centralizes the reduction of suffering, we call that the medical model. In the Buddha's time, the Buddha modelled his Four Noble Truths on a physician's way of stating diagnosis, prognosis, etc., cure -- the Four Noble Truths. So we'll call that the medical model, in that it's trying to alleviate suffering. It's centralizing the alleviation of suffering.
Notice that with this approach, what we're calling the medical model, it's very happy to use so-called scientific data to shore up its claims, etc., and to perhaps give faith, etc. So if a neuroscientist does CT scans of brains of long-term meditators or people in meditation, versus non-meditators, etc., and finds that a certain membrane is thickened which is associated with happiness, or certain secretions increase or decrease or whatever in the neurochemistry, then this adds conviction to that medical model. But it's different than the individual practitioner regarding the practice as a scientific enterprise. We use the scientific data happily, or we do measurements, questionnaires of well-being and that sort of thing, and we ascertain that, "Yes. Medically, this is working. Meditation is good for you. It increases well-being, etc. Really good for depression, etc."
(2) That's different to a second kind of fantasy, if you like, of the path and of practice, which I might call 'scientistic,' by which I mean that the practitioner, the individual practitioner, is actually motivated primarily by a sort of interest in consciousness, or an interest in experience, and so sees themselves, has a kind of fantasy of themselves, as a kind of researcher: I'm a researcher into consciousness. I'm a researcher into experience, and the range of experience, and what's involved there. I'm going to give four generic models, and of course they can overlap. And it's really a matter of emphasis between the two, but you can see that the medical model is different than what I'm calling the science fantasy, the researcher fantasy.
(3) And then a third model might be what we might call the religious fantasy, in which what practice is and what the path is and what the movement towards awakening is is essentially a replication. It's an attempt to replicate the experiences, insights, awakening, path and practices of the sages of the past (and perhaps the present); replicate the Buddha's awakening, the Buddha's enlightenment, to the best of one's ability; to discover or rediscover their truth, the truth that they discovered, the truth that the Buddha discovered. So it has this replicative kind of agenda to it, replicative fantasy -- wrapped up completely, of course, with the fantasy of the Buddha, fantasy of the past, fantasy of the tradition, etc. It's religious in that sense, that it's tied to the past and puts the authority in the past, in the text. When people say, "Well, the Pali Canon this, and da-da-da-da," or some other text or whatever it is, the authority is in the past, which is very typical of the religious fantasy. Someone might even do that when they consider themselves a secularist; there's still something religious about doing that. That's the third model.
(4) And a fourth model might be what we might call the artistic. If you think about an artist, someone who is really deeply involved in their art, that has a kind of open-endedness to it, to my mind, to my sense of that fantasy. It may involve the replication of the works of past masters, and imitating them to learn how they did things and kind of, if you like, absorb, digest their styles, their artistry, their conceptions. Certainly that's part of developing as a deep artist and a powerful artist. But it also goes beyond the merely replicative into the support for and the interest in new directions, originality -- whether that's in terms of practice and path; whether that's new and original kinds of practices, or kinds of concepts, etc. So again, all this is a matter of emphasis, but I mean much more by the newness and the originality of practices and concepts of what the path is, and where it can go, and how it can open, and what its range is, etc. I mean much more, for instance, than just teaching mindfulness to some new demographic, whether it's people in prison or people with a certain mental health issue, or this or that -- all of which is really, really valuable and really important, but it's really just extending the reach of the medical model, if you like. In the artistic fantasy, I'm talking really about the way art breaks and goes in very new conceptions and directions of what it's even trying to do. Yes?
So four kinds of fantasy there (it's really a matter of emphasis). But you'll notice, for instance, in the last one -- actually, in a lot of them to different degrees, but certainly the last one, the artistic one, the dedication and even obsession may be completely okay, whereas from another perspective, we would say someone's completely obsessed with whatever they're trying to do, or with practice or their art, and developing, and that kind of interest. [We'd] say, "Well, maybe they're a bit out of balance," or this or that. But certain of these models, for instance the religious one or the artistic one, actually allow a kind of obsession.
It's different than, let's say, the medical model, where there can be a kind of like, "Let's find an easy medication for everyone," and if we can find that easy medication for everyone, it's a goal that one might be interested in developing in the medical model. But really what I'm talking about here is how one sees one's individual practice, so whether one is regarding it as a kind of medicine, reduction of suffering; whether one's fantasizing oneself as a kind of researcher; or in the stream of the tradition, religiously replicating the past; or as an artist, with that possibility of open-endedness. You never reach the end of the path, either with the scientistic or the -- well, actually, scientism might say, "You've reached the end in terms of you know everything now." Some scientists have that fantasy. But certainly with the artistic, unlike the religious or the medical, there's no end there. It's open-ended. And although there can be an interest in replication, there's also this interest in a possibility of new directions, new conceptions, very different movements and ranges there.
Most people in regard to their practice seem to kind of have a mix of the first and the third, the kind of medical model and the religious model. So in other words, one really thinks in terms of reducing suffering, freedom from suffering. That's the language. That's the intention. That's what makes sense, and that's what's talked about and kind of taken in. And at the same time, we're in the stream of the Buddha, and kind of replicating, discovering for ourselves a truth that they discovered, and the authority is in the texts there, as well as is in the scientific data that support the medical model. The other two, the researcher fantasy and the artistic fantasy, can you hear how they need quite a lot of confidence? It takes quite a lot of, well, boldness and balls, even, to kind of see oneself or fantasize oneself that way, and quite a sense of independence.
This, to me, is very interesting, and it has all kinds of implications. It makes a huge difference for how our practice unfolds, how much eros is allowed in relation to the path, and what possibilities open up for our path, and the directions and the ranges that can be made available to us. So a lot depends on the fantasies operating. But where there is devotion and deep love for the path -- a lot of you listening to this will be devoted and have a deep love for the path -- there is always some conception and some fantasy or image of the path, of awakening, and of the self on the path. Always where there's devotedness and deep love, there is always some conception and some fantasy or image of the path, of awakening, and of the self on the path. And the fantasies and images we have, or each practitioner has, or are operating for a practitioner, the fantasies and images need to be authentic to that practitioner, for that practitioner. If they're not authentic, they won't be fertile. There'll be a dryness, and a certain amount of fertility, but actually a level of barrenness in what the path can be.
For example, if the ideas and the images of path and of awakening are just kind of inheritances from the sub-cultures that we move in, and maybe from books and talks, kind of indoctrinations, if you like, on whose rungs of measurement and attainment the ego fastens itself -- somehow I've just absorbed this way of thinking about the path, and there's some kind of sense of attaining or measuring or "where am I at?" in this conception, this vision of the path. And if it's not authentic, what happens is the soul doesn't get hold of it so much as the ego gets hold of it in its habit of self-measurement. Here it's got something called awakening, something called reaching this insight and that jhāna, or being such-and-such, mindful for so much of the time or whatever it is, and what's got hold of it is just the ego with its propensity, its addiction to measuring, measuring things and measuring itself, and it's not really the fertile soil for the soul. This ego measurement and the lack of soul-soil there will smother and kill the soulmaking that, if you like, we need, the path needs, the soul needs the whole path to have.
So whether it's mindfulness or insight into emptiness that is regarded in this vision, in this conception, as the essential aim of the path, whatever it is -- mindfulness, insight into emptiness, whatever, whatever is regarded as the essential aim -- soon, if it's not authentic to me, the fantasy I have, the vision I have, soon a kind of frustrating stagnation will kick in at some level in relation to the path. And then a person says, "When am I going to get it together?", or they feel, "Maybe I'm just not good enough. Maybe I just can't hack this." And then sometimes what happens is either they just kind of tolerate those thoughts and images and senses and feelings, sometimes for decades, or what's very attractive is the teaching of, "Don't try. Don't do. There's nothing to do. There's nowhere to go," etc. And that becomes the only option between this kind of frustrating stagnation or "just try harder" and then it being painful and contracted, and then giving up again, feeling one fails, doesn't measure up, or this, "Hey, don't try. Don't do. There's nothing to do. Doing is an illusion," all that. Is that the only option? Or is it, again, that it's a question of soulmaking here? It's a question of soulmaking.
And I wonder if the path -- in other words, our vision of the path, our concept of the path -- is primarily characterized by open-endedness more than attainment. In other words, the path is open-ended. The idea of attaining this or that stage or this or that finality of awakening or whatever, if it's characterized more by open-endedness than attainment. For example, what we've been trying to develop over the last few years with this path of the imaginal, to me the path of the imaginal is open-ended. When will I reach the end of the path of the imaginal? At first, when you're getting used to it, "What are they taking about? What does it mean? Is this an image, or is that not an image?" or whatever. At first, yeah, okay, maybe there's a little frustration and confusion, and perhaps self-judgment kicks in. But once one has got a kind of handle, a way into those sort of basic concepts and modes of practice and experience, it's then open-ended. And I wonder -- the idea of attainment, I'm not really sure it belongs, so much as there's an open-endedness, an unfolding of richer and richer and more and more diverse range and depth of experience. And then is that kind of frustration and self-judgment possible, that belongs to a path that has notions of attainment? "I am awakened. I'm not awakened. So-and-so is awakened, but I'm not awakened," etc.
If the path is primarily characterized by open-endedness more than ideas and fantasies of attainment, is that kind of frustration or self-judgment possible, I wonder? The fantasies, images, the view that we have of whatever the goals are of the path, a goal, the aspirations, the directions we're moving in, and the fantasies, images, and view of the self on the path, they need to be beautiful for us. They need to be beautiful. But if we take them as images, if we take them too literally, or if the image of the self is too bound in them, they will be neither beautiful, nor fertile, nor freeing. Can we enter into this kind of poetry of the image, this poetic sense, poetic understanding, if you like -- the language and the texture and the relationship that's implicit in the imaginal? But related to all this, or implicit in all this, in this question or in this need to be beautiful, is the question -- totally tied in with that -- what do you deeply want? What do you deeply want? Is it a reduction in suffering? Is it the end of suffering, so-called 'freedom,' if we just leave those words for now? Because, you know, it doesn't need to be.
If it is freedom from suffering, if it is that that's what you most deeply want when you really look and really just open yourself to that question, let me ask another question: what kind of freedom? If we're talking about freedom, what kind of freedom? And in what domains? So freedom, if we take just that word, 'freedom,' you know, there are many kinds of freedom, and there are many domains of freedom. What do you deeply want? Maybe a more essential question is, you know, what does your soul need right now? What does my soul, what does your soul need right now? Can we, in asking these questions, release the assumption, let go of the assumption, that we are most fundamentally concerned with freedom, with liberation, with an ending or a decreasing of suffering? So easily we assume that, and then all the language, all the discourse, all the movement and explanation and thinking about the path and vision of the path is kind of wrapped up in this.
Now, it may well be that that's actually the most important thing for you, the ending of suffering or the reduction of suffering. Or there are times, certainly, when that's going to be really important. But what if we just let a little more space into this, what has become a quite entrenched and pervasive way of thinking about the path and practice? Most Dharma and most other spiritualities cast their paths and make their sales pitches, if you like, in that direction -- freedom from suffering -- with that assumption, that this is most fundamentally what we want, most deeply what we want. But it seems to me, listening to people, watching people, for myself, etc., what we might call liberative efficacy (like how well this path or this practice or this teaching actually liberates me from some kind of suffering), it's not always liberative efficacy or a kind of utilitarian ease that moves us or attracts us most deeply. And who is to say it should be? Why should it be? On whose authority? On what authority?
Someone was telling me about a Saṅgha in another country, where they have different teachers come, and retreats, and they were debating whether certain teachers should come. And someone was advocating for these two or three teachers to come who would teach together, and they taught a kind of neo-Advaita style. The message that they reported was that they came in to the retreat and they sort of said to the group, "We've all tried technique. You've all tried technique, and you've all tried striving. And we have, all of us in this room, we and you, all of us have found that technique and striving doesn't work. Now we are going to open you to the highest teaching. This is the teaching of no effort, no technique." And so there's this argument, sort of, that ensues very easily then of, "Is what they're saying actually liberating? And is it true that the people who teach technique and some degree of striving are actually teaching something that's less liberating or not liberating?" And so the argument, they kind of lock horns on that level, deciding who should come to teach, and whether it's okay for them to say that, etc.
But to me, there's a whole other level to engage that kind of claim or any kind of claim about any kind of path, which is maybe this path that you're painting -- whoever it is; could be these people or some other people -- maybe this path is boring to me. It just bores me! It's not about whether it frees or not, or this or that, or works, or even whether the Pali Canon says this or that text says that; actually, it's boring. What does that mean? It means it's not interesting enough for my soul. It's not sexy enough. (And I don't mean sexual enough.) It's not captivating, it's not full and juicy enough, and doesn't have a wide enough range for my soul. It's boring. And you might think, well, what kind of argument is that? But actually, in terms of soulmaking, it's very relevant. Instead of getting into this argument that's confined and constrained along certain lines of what is it that frees, and does it work or doesn't it work to bring freedom, etc. -- sure, that's a part of what's important, but there's a whole other thing which is just to do with, like, "What is boring or interesting or fertilizing for my soul or your soul right now?" Or sometimes people say, you know, nowadays we say, "We need a Buddhism for our times. We have to rethink Buddhism for our times." And I would say, you know, I don't care about my times. I care about my soul, and a path that allows and supports this soulmaking dynamic, which means the eros, the psyche, the logos -- the whole engagement of all that.
And as I said, maybe neither for instance that neo-Advaita path that's so attractive and so popular to so many people (or seems to be), or yeah, if it's a secularist path, it's not about what's more authentic or what the texts say or this or that. What's going on there? I've talked about this before in terms of soulmaking. It's actually what engages my or your eros, my intellect, the soul of my intellect, my imagination and the whole imaginal dimensions of my being, my creativity, the range and diversity of my longing and my devotion, my heart in its depths, the subtlety of my attention, my particularities. I don't care if that fits modern times, or if it's archaic, or if it belongs to something in the future that modernism hasn't yet caught up with. All of that's -- who cares? What the soul cares about is what's fertile ground for the soul.
In my vision and in my sense, concept, and fantasy of path and awakening, something there has to be fertile enough, provide fertile enough ground, to birth, to galvanize, and to support all this in me: the eros, the intellect, the imaginal, the creativity, the devotion, the longing in all its range and diversity, the heart's depths and subtleties, the subtlety of attention, the sensitivity, all of that, and all my particularities. And to galvanize and support and give birth to and suggest a whole wide range of practices, because practising, and practising in different ways and different directions, is beautiful, is creative; it's part of the love of practice. And again, to birth and support and open up all kinds of insights, all kinds of experiences and perceptions and openings, widenings of perceptions, and all kinds of creative endeavours and arts, etc. What the soul needs is something that's fertile and commensurate with where the soul is at. That may be bigger than the question of liberative efficacy in terms of reducing suffering.
Of course, there's another kind of liberation there. Can you hear that as well? There's a liberation of the intellect. There's a liberation of the eros. There's a liberation of the imaginal. There's a liberation of the creativity. There's liberation of the longing, all that. The point is, the conversation gets constrained because we tend to keep thinking in certain ways and imagining in certain ways, and it's too small for the soul -- or at least at a certain point it will be too small for the soul, and for many people it will already be too small for the soul. We don't realize what's going on, and why are we feeling constrained here, why do we keep going back into the same way of thinking. So we need something, each soul needs something authentic to that soul, for that soul. But because of the soulmaking dynamic and what we talked about -- this expansion, deepening, widening, complicating that happens with the eros-psyche-logos interaction, mutual insemination -- even if a vision, a fantasy, a concept of the path and of awakening is authentic for a while, because of the soulmaking dynamic and the expansion of eros-psyche-logos, at some point we may well outgrow that vision, that concept, that fantasy. So this is quite common. It happens in all kinds of ways. Something is pushing against the walls and the edges of what the vision/fantasy/logos is of the path and of awakening.
For example, I know a young man. For many years, actually, quite a few years -- I don't know how many years, but for some years -- there was really quite fairly strong eros with regard to the path. But the conception, the vision, and the fantasy of the path only really allowed that eros to flow sort of in the direction of a certain image of kind of a monk. He was actually living as a lay person, but living in a very simple way; I think he didn't even have a bank account, and he was doing service work and living in a retreat centre. But there was this ethos and this mythos of the sort of free-flowing monk. That was the fantasy/image. So within that, the ideals and images of letting go, let everything come, let it go, easygoingness, fluidity, non-preference, "Whatever life gave me, I'll just go with that. I won't intrude into that process with my preferences, and insist on this or that." And the whole thing had a lot of spaciousness with all this. Very, very beautiful, very potent, and a lot of freedom, a lot of ease, etc., a lot of simplicity. There was this eros to know the transcendent, too, to know the Unfabricated, but it wasn't that that dominated a relationship with the experiences of life. That was there, but not at the expense of a relationship with this around him. But there was a certain fantasy of that relationship of the easygoingness, fluidity, spaciousness, non-preferences.
Very, very potent, very lovely, very freeing, very spacious, all that. But at some point there arose an overwhelming attraction -- almost to the point of a kind of imprisonment of the psyche -- to someone, a woman, that kind of was, if you like, whose soulfulness extended and was more obvious in relationship to the world and the things of the world. Her soulfulness involved a much more involved relationship with things, instead of this simplicity of one fantasy/image and not even seeing it as an image. That was the thing: he was in this image. It was very helpful, freeing, spacious, all that, peaceful, but [he] didn't realize that it was, in fact, a soul-image that he was caught in the mythos of, caught in the fantasy. She, on the other hand, had all kinds of images about her self, about nature, about relationship, and all kinds of things, complex -- an enchantment of the things of the world that his fantasy kind of didn't allow because it was a lot about letting things go, and everything's just kind of the same. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly, it's all, in a way, just beautiful, just one. There were less erotic objects in his world. In the space of that kind of fantasy and that kind of logos, the world was not full of erotic objects. The world was just all a kind of ground for letting go.
James Hillman (I've mentioned this before) makes the distinction between what he calls 'spirit' and 'soul.' And 'spirit' is this movement towards spaciousness, transcendence, letting go, disentangling, etc. And 'soul' in his language has more of this quality of entanglement and complication. And so spirit is the space of the hermit on the mountaintop, in the clean, clear, crisp air, with long views, and the soul is more in the valley, in the undergrowth, in the complication, in the messiness of relationships and images and all that. I'm less keen on that division there, and would prefer to just talk about these as both those directions, both the attitude of letting go in that monk image and the spaciousness and the sense of oneness as one movement of soul, and other kinds of movements of soul.
But here was someone caught in this fantasy of the monk and the spaciousness, the fluidity, the non-preference, the easygoingness, etc. And was then overwhelmingly hooked, almost to the point of a kind of imprisonment, I think he would have said, by an attraction to this young woman who embodied and expressed and represented a much wider and richer kind of soulfulness -- psyche, if you like. It wasn't just that in his monastic endeavour, if you like, that he wanted sex. It wasn't just that that he was dealing with: "Ah, yes, the sexual drive will get them in the end. That's the one that's really hard to overcome." It wasn't just that he was lonely and wanted romance. That wasn't really what was going on, I don't think, or one way of understanding. He could let go of everything else to quite a remarkable degree, and people were very impressed by his ability to let go almost in relation to everything, but not in relation to this woman, not in relation to wanting her. It's one thing. Can let go of everything, but what's going on here?
Could it be that what was happening was there was an unconscious attraction to psyche, if you like, to soulmaking? You know, in the myth, Eros and Psyche are lovers. Eros wants Psyche, yes? We don't need to kind of inquire into his relationship with his mother and put the cause in the past. There's something in the present, in the kind of natural wish of the soul to expand the eros-psyche-logos dynamic in all directions, and something -- a rigidity of fantasy that isn't realized, that hasn't been seen; image as image has not been recognized there -- is preventing this expansion. And so it knocks, and it insists, and eventually, possibly, it will cause an expansion or a rupture. If, however -- which I think is actually what happened after we talked -- he develops and allows the sensibilities and the dynamism of soulmaking in his life more widely, he starts opening and tuning to and allowing and supporting and investing in and exploring soulmaking in his life more widely -- that means in relation to everything: what's around him, money, body, relationships, whatever, everything, nature -- then what can happen and what did happen was that he was no longer so imprisoned in his desire for this woman. There might still be attraction, of course, but in a way, what was most deeply wanted there was soul. Soulfulness and soulmaking wasn't being allowed. Something in him wanted it to go in these other directions. But with a little time, the soul, the soulmaking can be everywhere. It permeates life, and then it's not solely and inexplicably in her, and she becomes inexplicably this attractive object that he couldn't let go of his desire there.
So the question is, what allows and supports the fantasy, image, logos of practice to be soulmaking? What kinds of images, or what would support the discovery or the shaping of fantasies, images, logoi of practice, so that they can be soulmaking? What allows the kind of infusion or pervasion of whatever soulmaking fantasy and image works for us, allows that to pervade and infuse the whole of the path for us, the whole of that movement and that engagement?
In a previous talk (I can't remember when it was, on this retreat) I gave the example of someone for whom there is no real image in the meditation. There's no eros really alive, an aliveness, arousal of the imaginal, etc., with respect to meditation practice. And very easily there's not this fantasy of the nobility of struggle and putting up with what's difficult, etc. One response is, very easily, [to] just stop meditating and give up, or periods go and they don't practise, etc. It's not alive with fantasy, with the range of fantasy that's needed. One response would be, a very common response is, "You need to make more effort. If you want to suffer less, you need to make more effort."
So this person is suffering, and yet they can't seem to really get a relationship with meditation that really works. We might think, "Oh, it's a matter of this or that," or someone might say, "You just need to try more. Stick it out when it's tough, if you want to suffer less." Is it that, or is it (as we suggested the other day) actually what needs to happen there [is that] there needs to be a widening of the image and of the fantasy of meditation itself, in meditation, of meditation? We have to approach the whole thing, perhaps, in quite a different way -- in a way, in a soulmaking way. Not so much what's the easiest: "Oh, this is too hard, the meditation. I'll just go and have some cookies, or have a little rest, or be cosy or whatever." Not so much that, what's easiest. Not so much, "Get it together. Try harder." But rather the question: what is soulmaking? Where is the sense of soulfulness for me right now? Is there a way of visioning this, imagining this, finding a fantasy and a logos that actually the practice itself becomes soulmaking and soulful, even if it's difficult?
When I use the word 'authentic,' and say it has to be authentic for a practitioner, it means authentic for the soulmaking right now of my soul, for my soulmaking right now, for your soulmaking right now. That's what I mean by 'authentic.' When there's deep love for the path, when there's eros for the path, that includes and implies, involved in that is a love for soulmaking in regard to the path -- or rather, what we love is the soulmaking; we love the soulmaking that is involved in the walking of the path. It's not just that it releases us from suffering, or we feel a bit better and there's less suffering. That's all good and important. For some people, that's all their meditation is, or their mindfulness exercise, or whatever it is. But when there's really eros there, when we love it, we love the soulmaking that is involved in the path. That means we love the image, we love the images that are involved in the path. We love the ideas. The ideas themselves are beautiful and attractive to us, interesting to us. We love the eros. We love the actual sense of eros there. We love the expansion of the psyche, logos, and eros. And as I said, the image of the self on the path.
And wrapped up in all of that love of soulmaking is a love of beauty. Beauty is always a part of soulmaking. And so part of what we love, when we love a path, when there's eros for the path and for the practice, there's some love of beauty there. It's not just a purely functional kind of utilitarian exercise in reducing suffering, in providing a bit more ease. Something in us finds beauty there, and that's part of soulmaking, always. Beauty, what is beautiful to us, we draw close to, we want intimacy with, there's the eros, we want connection with. And we love the intimacy and connection. You can see how all this starts feeding on itself, fertilizing itself. And we love sensitivity, we love the sensitivity. When you speak to someone who's really gotten into insight meditation, part of what they love is the sensitivity -- part of what they love. Yes, the opening of the heart and all that, but part of what people love is the sensitivity that comes with it, that it develops. We love the tuning, the sensitizing, the differentiations and nuances that go with rich practice. This is part of the eros of the path. Where there's beauty, there's sensitivity. When it's soulmaking, beauty is part of the soulmaking.
And as I've said in the past, the soul needs some sense of beyondness, some sense of a beyond that it can intuit or feel or dimly perceive or sense, or that it's heard about, beyond what it already knows and what it already experiences. In order for there to be eros and soulmaking, there needs to be some kind of sense of beyond -- perhaps, hopefully, a kind of infinities into which to expand, infinities to expand into. The soul needs that to stimulate the eros there, needs beauty, mystery, dimensionality, a sense of sacredness and divinity, needs eros, needs the expansion of the logos, the enrichment of the ideas, needs fantasy and the imaginal, as we've said, needs a sense of meaningfulness and embodiment.
So all these things: beauty, mystery, dimensionality, sacredness, divinity, eros, expansion of the logos, fantasy and image, meaningfulness, embodiment, a sense of infinities to expand into. This is needed. This is what the soul needs. This is part of the beyondness that the soul needs. There's more there of these things, of these qualities, if you like, these perceptions. So all these, you'll notice, are kind of implicit and organically and obviously involved when we're talking about practice with images, and imaginal perceptions, and theophanies, and cosmopoesis. There is the beauty, naturally, to that. There is the mystery, the dimensionality, the sacredness, divinity, the eros, the expansion of the logos that comes with that, the image naturally, the meaningfulness, somehow the embodiment. There's a sense of the infinity of dimensionality to expand into, always, with regard when we're talking about practising with images, with theophanies, with cosmopoesis.
When the practice and the eros is in this other direction, towards oneness, towards the transcendent or a decrease in fabrication or the Unfabricated (when it involves, in other words, not so much image, an imaginal perception, as a quietening of a degree of perception, including imaginal perception, so a quietening of images), actually, we can, in terms of those elements that I just said that the soul wants as part of the sense of beyondness (the beauty, the mystery, the dimensionality, sacredness, divinity, eros, increase of the logos, the image, the meaningfulness, the embodiment), they're all there in the relationship, in the fantasy of treading on that path towards this sense of 'beyond.' It's around the actual experience, or in relationship to the path to the Unfabricated, or to this insight into oneness or this perception of oneness or whatever.
So the soulmaking comes most obviously in the relationship. But it's actually also there, so to speak, directly. These elements that the soul wants and needs are there, are available, directly in relationship to the experience of transcendence or the Unfabricated or oneness, a lot of them -- beauty, mystery, dimensionality, sacredness, divinity -- to a certain extent. I mean, we could go into this more. For instance, the Unfabricated itself, if we don't speak in terms of the journey to it but the experience itself, we could say, well, that transcends meaning. I mean, it's beyond anything we could call 'meaning.' But I would say somehow the experience of it is deeply meaningful. And it's hard to actually say: what does that mean? There's something about participation there, something about what it says about the whole of existence, potentially. And there's also an expansion of logos. We think, "But there's no thought there." But actually, in the movement towards non-conceptuality, the very fact of it being non-conceptual is, in a way, an expansion of the logos. Somehow I have to have a conceptual movement that expands into non-conceptuality.
But if in that movement to unfabricating, to the Unfabricated, or to certain levels on the way of that, to certain kinds of perceptions of oneness, if the eros-psyche-logos, if any of them are limited, then the sense of these elements of beauty, mystery, dimensionality, and a kind of infinity to expand into, the sacredness, the divinity, the eros, the ideation, the image, the meaningfulness, the embodiment -- the sense of those elements, the perception of those elements with regard to the world will be limited. Even if one already has an experience of the Unfabricated, if the eros-psyche-logos is limited, if the soulmaking dynamic is limited, then the sense of these elements with regard to the world, the sense of these elements that the soul wants, that will be limited. So, for example, in a talk a little while ago, I gave the example of the senior nun talking about the birds and seeing them in this very sort of narrow way in terms of biological evolution: why they're colourful, and what they're actually doing when they're singing or flying around, these are all just the strategic movements of evolution or the effects of natural selection, etc.
And someone asked me after that, "But this nun was a mystic, surely?" And yes, she was a mystic. Yes. But the mysticism there was only allowed in the direction of less fabrication, in the direction of formlessness, in the direction of oneness or the Unfabricated or the movements towards that in terms of the jhānas (which are states of less fabrication). So even after attaining or opening to a direct experience of the Unfabricated -- which one assumes based on what she shared and wrote that she had -- the mysticism, the mystical perception, was limited in terms of the world. And so the mysticism was all in the direction of oneness, of states of less fabrication and of the Unfabricated, etc. There was, then, in relation to the world a kind of renunciation and a denigration of sorts of the world of things and sense experience. And the images, the fantasies that were attractive were only, for example, forms of the Buddha or of the Buddhadharma. Only they were regarded as worthy of veneration or holy. Other forms, for example the birds and the other particulars of being and of life and of others and of things and of nature, were not available to her as theophanies, the perception of them as theophanies. Other forms that were outside of the range of classical Buddhist forms, etc., were not available to her perception as theophanies, except in the sense of being just equally, like everything else, manifestations of universal oneness, universal emptiness or whatever.
What I want to say is: if the eros is strong in a person, and if the psyche and the logos, the range of images and the ideation, is not blocked either by dogma or rigid adherence to some or other image or ideation or tradition or teaching, or politically blocked, if the eros is strong and the psyche and the logos are not blocked, then even after an experience of the Unfabricated, after one has got used to that and kind of digested that, I would say, I would predict, that there will be then a return to the world of sense experience, to the world and to particulars, and beginning to see them as theophanies, beginning to see them imaginally, beginning to see and open to the holiness in them.
In other words, there is a movement from transcendence -- not throwing away the transcendence, but a movement to then extend; the soulmaking wants to extend into what we called, at the beginning of this long talk, the immanence. And not just in the sense of oneness everywhere: it's all one love, it's all one awareness, it's all one whatever. The soul is hungry. The soul wants more. So we go back to that Gregory of Nyssa quote, "For the thirst of human souls requires some infinite water; how could this limited world suffice?" The emphasis there I would put on that word, 'limited.' So if the world is seen in a limited way, yes, the soul is going to want more, and move into transcendence, what is beyond this world. Really beautiful, important, profound opening of the understanding and the vision, the experience, the consciousness, the citta. And it won't stop there. Back to the world, back to the world of sense experience and particulars, but not the limited world -- the unlimited world, unlimited because liberated through the imaginal and through the eros and through the soulmaking dynamic.
So there's a return to that. Even after one has had this transcendent experience and, as I said, digested that, and been liberated by that in certain directions to a deep extent, there is a return to the world and the imaginal and the logos and the eros, engaging, infusing, filling out there in relationship to the world and the experience of the world. There's an expansion of the soulmaking, eventually in all directions. In terms of the sort of theory we're suggesting, if you like, we're suggesting that that is what the soulmaking will do, eventually: all directions. So if I start with a flat world-view, a flatland, one dimensional, but I don't insist on that rigidly so that it blocks the logos, and I don't refuse the imaginal, and I allow the eros to flow, then even if I start with the flat-world conventional view of modernism, that eros and the soulmaking dynamic will liberate the perceptions and the ways of looking that reveal dimensionality. And eventually one of the directions of dimensionality will deepen to a perception of the transcendent, the Unfabricated, etc. -- one of the directions of the dimensionality deepening.
But even if I start with a transcendent inclination and path, and that's what I've been taught, and that's what I grew up with, and I do my practices, and I discover that for myself, and I experience that, and the citta opens to that Unfabricated, unfabricating, marvellous, staggering -- even then, if I don't stop the soulmaking dynamic there, if I allow it its natural, organic wish to grow, to open, to fertilize, then I come back to what we're calling immanence, come back to the world, filling it out, giving it depth, or rather allowing its depths to open, in the immanence, through the imaginal, through the soulmaking, in relationship to the senses, to the world. The beauty is there, divinity is there, meaningfulness is there, all these other pieces that we talked about -- mystery, sacredness. So eventually the transcendent and the immanent, the immanent and the transcendent, just because of what the eros-psyche-logos dynamic will naturally want, the ways it will naturally want to grow, multidirectional, unstoppable, infinite.
We could go even beyond this, even more than just the inclusion of the transcendent and the immanent. In the last few years, several people have either said to me or written to me that -- I don't think they're meaning it as a criticism, but maybe some people are, and maybe some people mean it as a compliment, I don't know; probably a mixture -- but they've labelled me or called me an iconoclast. And I really don't think of myself that way at all for a number of reasons. But if you're going think in those terms, maybe a better way of saying what I'm interested in is, I'm more interested in smashing idols. An idol is different than an icon. Better to say, I think, that I would maybe -- again, if you're going to speak in these terms -- say that I'm a seeker of icons, or even a creator of icons, as we all can be. So an icon is something with infinite depth, infinite capacity to open itself -- to open us, but itself. It's in relationship with us, and it opens us, opens our psyche, but it itself opens infinitely, potentially, more and more. It's, if you like, a gate to infinity, a gate of infinity, a portal to the infinite. But it's also a portal from the infinite. And I don't just mean infinite space. I mean the infinite riches of the soul, the infinite diversity of perceptions and holinesses and all that. So an icon keeps opening out to more depth, more dimensions, more possibility, more divinity, more soulmaking, without end. There's no end to that.
So therefore, this process that we're engaged in, or part of the process of what we're engaged in, that involves questioning more typical or rigidified ideas of the path or awakening, which have actually become idols, in the sense of an idol being something solid, unmoving, fixed, of a fixed and limited form and depth. Questioning those idols of the path and of awakening, what have become for me or for you idols regarding the path and awakening, idols of a vision, an idea of the path or awakening. Opening up instead new possible visions and ideas of awakening, where awakening is not limited either by an end point or by a direction. Awakening is not limited either by an end point or in its direction. Then we're converting idol to icon. What was stuck and rigid and anything but infinite, what was quite limited in form and depth and range, can actually be liberated and opened up into an icon.
And then with an icon, an icon of awakening, the eros never collapses, because there's always an infinity of possibility, beyond, an infinity of possibility of what is not yet known, into which the eros can move, which it can penetrate into, which it can open to, and into which the soulmaking dynamic can expand. The soulmaking dynamic actually creates this infinity, because of all we've explained before. So, if you like, the eros never collapses. It never kind of dies down. There's always the possibility, because there's always more, there's always beyond, there's always the unknown. I don't even know, I can't even construe, what might open. I can't even yet imagine the directions and possibilities, ranges, particularities of what might open as awakening opens more and more and infinitely. So awakening is not something we reach and then we tick it off.
Again, with all this, to say something we've already said, but to draw it out a bit more as well: eros for the path, eros for awakening, needs us to see the beauty of our selves on the path, yes? Just like we talked about in relationship with any erotic object, for eros to really be allowed and supported, for the path, for awakening, eros for the path and for awakening, we need to see the beauty of the self on the path. The image of the self on the path needs to beautiful to us. And the beauty of our longing, our yearning, our desire, our passion, for the path and for awakening, this also needs to be beautiful to us, needs to be seen as beautiful to us, as well as the images of the path, of awakening, including the image that we have of the tradition, the idea of the tradition, the image, the fantasy, the idea of what a Buddha is and what the Dharma is and all that. Eros needs psyche. Eros needs images and fantasies and ideas that are soulmaking.
Ideally, we really see and understand images as images. Those images of path, of the self on the path, of our passion, of the tradition, of the Buddha, of the Dharma, all as images. We see image as image. And because of that, we can actually allow this inflation, this expansion, this deepening of the fantasy and the image. So we're allowing eros but not craving, because there's not this rigidification, and realizing that eros is stoked, ignited, supported, fed, the craving is released. So that expansion of the fantasy and image of path, of awakening, etc., and of what the Dharma is, might involve -- as we've been talking about -- a fantasy of the path, of awakening, and of the self on it, that allows an endlessness or an open-endedness. So what fantasies of the path, of awakening, of me on the path to awakening, allow that kind of open-endedness? Such an expansion and deepening of the very image and fantasy of path and awakening that actually it's expanded, in some senses, infinitely.
So if we go back to our generic sort of models, the model of the researcher, the scientist, the research scientist, or the model of the artist, these allow -- as we mentioned, I think, back then -- they allow an endlessness, an open-endedness, assuming you regard that we never get to the end of science (although some people do, but for me, it will be open-ended). But also, you know, other fantasies and ideas of the path -- for example, the Mahāyāna presentation of path and what awakening is, and the Vajrayāna presentation of path and awakening, they involve such a vastly extended and deepened and complicated image, an idea of where the path is going, what it involves, what awakening is, what a Buddha is, that they're effectively impossible to reach. They're goals that are impossible to reach. We'll never reach such an awakening, realistically. It will always be further. There will always be a beyond, which is what the soul needs. They're effectively infinite.
And what does that mean? It might mean, with these kind of fantasies of the path and of awakening -- there could be others -- that something in us can kind of relax, and give ourselves fully and passionately and dedicatedly, with fire and aliveness, to the path, but enjoy it, enjoy its fruits without getting constrained and hung up and cramped in self-measuring. There can be momentum, practice, dedication, devotion. The eros-psyche-logos can be active and mutually inseminating, but without judgment, self-judgment, without pressure even, without the pain of the kind of constriction of self-measurement that can happen when the ego is involved and grasping at it in its measuring tendency, but not so much the soul. So there are other possibilities. But just to give you a sense of what might be needed if we really take soulmaking seriously.
So can you get a sense with all this? I hope you can get a sense. I hope not just conceptually, but striking a chord in your soul, something deep in the psyche. Can you hear how this is opening, opening something, if you like, at a whole other level? The very ways we think of, construe, and imagine path and awakening, are part of what path and awakening means. The very ways we think of, construe, and imagine path and awakening are actually themselves part of what the path involves and what awakening involves. There's some infinity here. There's some potential involvement of the totality of our being in all this, and that totality itself is acknowledged.
What we mean by 'totality,' and what we recognize to be the totality itself, will expand because of eros-psyche-logos dynamic expanding. Something, even if I can't quite articulate what kind of -- it's like a gong resounding deep in the soul; something is asking to be opened here. And it has very much to do with participation. So the whole soul is participating in the creation/discovery of what the path is and what awakening is. The whole soul is participating in that and is participating in what even the meaning of 'soul' is, and what it is to be fully involved. All this is being created/discovered, expanded and involved. There's a sort of profound sense of participation in all this. This is available to us, this kind of level of involvement, level of beauty, soulmaking, eros. It's there. It's asking a lot, for sure. And we'll come back to that. But it's possible, and for some people will be probably profoundly attractive.
