Transcription
Okey-doke. So again I'll try to repeat and summarize a person's question, and if you have a question you want to ask, and you're not comfortable with it being made public, then let me know, and I'll press pause on the recording. Anyone? Yeah, Jill.
Q1: mystical perceptions through emptiness practice and soulmaking; how emptiness practice can lead into soulmaking; practising the jhānas not necessary to know the Unfabricated
Yogi: Before I came on this retreat, I was an emptiness bore; I love it so much, thanks to you. So this has been a new set of experiences for me. I was reflecting, and I was thinking: sometimes when I sit in my kitchen, and I open my eyes, or even during a sit, things become insubstantial, in the sense that the kitchen cabinets now look completely new, and fresh, and still, and almost vibrating at the same time. The other thing is, I'm not quite sure sometimes whether I'm in samādhi or emptiness; it sort of blends. So sometimes when I open my eyes at the end of a sit, I've felt something which I could now identify perhaps as the divine -- something not just one-dimensional; it's not just that those things have faded. There's some sense of mystery, majesty I'm knowing. Thinking about it and reflecting on it, there are other times when I've had, as it were, what I would describe as definitely mystical experiences, and they have a similar flavour. So I'm just wondering whether in fact emptiness practices could lead, whether that could actually lead to the divine.
Rob: Let me see if I can summarize that adequately. Jill's saying she used to be what she calls an emptiness bore. [laughter] And really interested in that. So this whole area of imaginal practice is relatively new. And we're talking a lot about divinity and mystical experiences and things, and she recognizes from the past that, whether at home or here on retreat, opening the eyes after there's some stillness, and then perceiving the world as shiny, radiant, etc., but also recognizing in hindsight that in that perception there's also some majesty and some mystical depth.
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: With a sense of insubstantiality to perception, and not sure: am I in a state of samādhi or emptiness, and what's the relationship, and is it possible to experience the mystical opening and the divinity through emptiness? Is that right? Yeah. So, thank you. This business about emptiness -- well, actually the whole path, the whole way Buddhism is construed, and who the Buddha was, and what he tried to communicate, and where the teachings go, etc., even here at Gaia House, if you were here for a while, and you went to every retreat, you would get very different, completely almost opposite pictures of what that is. So you will get people who say the Buddha was categorically not a mystic; he was trying to go away from all mysticism and anything like that. And then you'll get people who would say the Buddha was a mystic, and he was opening that door. So everything within the Dharma -- things like emptiness and samādhi, etc. -- they all get interpreted according to this vision or fantasy of the package of where the whole path is going.
In a vision or fantasy of the path that categorically refuses any mystical sense, then emptiness has to be interpreted accordingly. So sometimes what you get -- and I may talk about this tonight, I don't know; I may have talked about it tonight [laughter] -- is emptiness has this kind of what I call a 'deflationary' quality, like it's a deflationary teaching: emptiness is saying don't get excited about anything. Why? Because there's nothing behind anything or mystical. Nothing has any depth. Everything is interconnected. So nothing is worth getting excited about, and the path is essentially letting go of any kind of possibility of that. It's just, "Meet this existence. Face up to it. It's what it seems to be," versus -- and the way I would construe the whole path of emptiness -- it's an opening to divinity. That's where it goes, absolutely. Or that's where it can go, put it that way. That's where it can go. It may not be obvious at first, at least the way I would present the way emptiness opens up. It may be that the first thing is just a bit more cooling, a bit more spacious, a bit more ease with things, etc. But as you go deeper -- and this would, again, be in the almost plural of it, divinities -- perceptions of divinities, different kinds of mystical experiences open up. Emptiness can provide certain almost like predictable experiences that open up for people. And then, at a certain level, it provides a kind of -- I don't know how to say this -- like a platform that allows all kinds of other experiences to open up of divinity, so divinities or experiences of divinity, different kinds of mystical experiences.
And then what we're adding on this retreat is that actually those possibilities are amplified, magnified even more in any possible direction. It's not just, "Everything is divine because it's empty," or "Everything is divine because it's universal love," or "Everything is divine because its nature is awareness." What starts happening with the soulmaking process is the kinds of divinity, and where you find them, and the faces of divinity, it just multiplies in the opening, in the perception.
Am I in samādhi, am I in emptiness? The two are related. They're related by virtue of the fact that states of samādhi are states of progressively less fabrication of perception of self, other, and world. Emptiness practices are also practices that fabricate less. So there's a convergence of direction. In that movement of less and less fabrication, there are mystical experiences along a certain avenue. Does this make sense? What we're doing is saying, "Hey, not just that avenue, but that avenue, that avenue, that avenue, that avenue, that avenue ..." It's infinite, and it kind of proliferates in the best sense, in every possible direction, rather than just a sort of classical direction that you tend to get in most spiritual teachings that offer a more universal perspective on things as opposed to a personal deity.
Yogi: So that tells me a lot. [inaudible]
Rob: That's one of the places where I see the emptiness path opening out most valuably, is to that creating a platform or -- I don't know what the best word is -- legitimization, freedom to see in all kinds of different ways, and not get hung up on this idea that something needs to have some kind of objective reality. You've lost all that, and what you've got is just a freedom to play with perception in all kinds of ways. Yeah? Good.
About this, because someone asked this in an interview today, it's like, when I say this about the jhānas being states of progressively less fabrication, I'm not suggesting that that's the way that one needs to go, that everyone needs to practice the jhānas if they want to know the Unfabricated. It's more just, it's a way of understanding what is happening in classical Buddhist practices. Everything in the Dharma -- mettā, generosity, samādhi, insight, you name it -- all the stuff in those classical lists moves in the direction of less fabrication. So I don't mean to suggest that it's a practice everyone needs to do: "Do the jhānas, otherwise forget about it." It's more like there's a way of understanding what that whole movement in the Dharma is. Does this make sense? It's conceptual. I apologize if that wasn't clear. Does that make sense? Yeah? So the ways are manifold but, for me, there's a way of understanding things -- this business about fabrication, and then what gives you the freedom to fabricate in beautiful ways. But it's not necessary that everyone needs to tread that practice path, that particular practice path.
Q2: how images spread to the world in cosmopoesis
Yogi: So eros and cosmopoesis ... my understanding of what you said is that, when there's a certain quality or force of eros, that you get a sort of spilling over from the image. I feel like a couple of times you sort of suggested that the quality of the image goes to sort of the whole world. I feel like I've experienced things in a small way, but I just wonder how much that relates to what you're talking about, and whether there are any more examples that you could give of the sort of spilling to the whole cosmos, the whole experience, rather than little flares of something from an image coming up.
Rob: Could you give an example? Do you want to?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Can I just repeat your question, and then you can ...? So Dave's asking, we've talked about the force of eros being able to open up cosmopoesis. By cosmopoesis -- 'poiesis' means 'to create,' like one writes poetry, like one creates poetry. So in the perception of the cosmos, through the perception, through the ways of looking, we're actually, so to speak, discovering/creating the cosmos in that beautiful way. One way it can happen is through an image. An imaginal image has eros in it, and that whole galvanization of the soulmaking process and perception and movement and involvement and relationship happens with that image, and then one way that things can happen is that begins to spill over into the world. One looks around oneself -- let's say after the meditation, if you're doing it in that kind of linear way -- and you notice, oh, the world looks different now. And how does it look different? How do I feel it different? What is the world? So the idea and the perception and the sense of the world is transformed, transubstantiated in connection and with the flavour of the image. So that's one way that things work. Do you want to give an example?
Yogi: [inaudible] Just there's something, a certain sort of patience, a certain sturdiness that I started to notice. But it wasn't the whole cosmos -- it was just individual objects or relationships had a sort of sacred tree-ness in their patience, whereas what you're describing sounds a bit more like it's happening in a different way or on a different level, this idea of it's almost everything.
Rob: So with the example of a tree, the sort of sturdiness and patience of the tree was then perceived in a few other objects or things in nature, but not in this kind of pervasive way that may have been alluded to. Like all these things, including jhānas, the cut-off points are not -- it's like, don't get too hung up there. I would just keep practising, and see what happens, you know? It can also happen the other way round. So you're walking or sitting, whatever, and suddenly everything is a certain way. It doesn't only happen that way. What do you feel like you need now with that, with the whole question that you're asking?
Yogi: It's interesting, it's just it was a little detail that has just stuck in my mind.
Rob: I think with these things, not to force and pressure. It's like, we work hard. We work hard in meditation. We say, "What can I do and balance, and what are the skills and elements of the art?" and all that. And that's good. That's important. And we bring our heart and soul and our dedication to it and our intelligence to it. And you can also conceive the thing the other way round, that the soul is driving this, and what perceptions arise for different people at different times are what need to arise. So it's a whole other way of conceiving it. Do you need more examples or ...? I seem to remember it was the end of the Path of the Imaginal retreat, and I just rattled off -- they were all musical, I seem to remember for some reason. But there are loads one could give. Sometimes it's really dramatic. Sometimes it's very, very dramatic.
Like I said this morning with that image about the mother who lost the child, it's like, sometimes images move in series, so you don't necessarily jump from one to this big thing. And yeah, sometimes the whole thing is very dramatic, and other times this is really, really subtle. So this is the thing -- it's like, not to put too much pressure on, "I want a dramatic thing that I've heard about," yeah? How does that sound? Yeah? If we turn it around -- I'm not hearing a lot of frustration or anything in your question; it sounds more like curiosity. Beautiful things are happening, right? Would you say? Yeah? Trust that. Stay with the beauty. Something really beautiful is happening. A lot of the thing about imaginal is it's almost like we notice things. You start to notice more and more. Some of that's familiarity, some of it's just attuning more, rather than making different things happen.
So this whole thing about self/other/world/eros -- that's not a tripod. What's a quadri ... quadripod? [laughter] Quadripod. This thing ... [background] Stool? Yeah. [laughter] It's like, it's not obvious at first. The world is the cosmopoesis part in that. Usually with images it's the object, and we don't realize -- like I said, do you realize that the self is also ignited and infused in the imaginal constellation? Not realizing that, sometimes it's fine; other times, whoa, things get really out of balance. It's like this quadripod has lost a leg, and part of the balancing means looking around, you know? But that was something I just noticed. A lot of this stuff, and the cosmopoesis, too, is noticing, "Oh, that's interesting." I can't remember the first time I noticed it, whether it was dramatic or subtle. It doesn't matter. But it's stuff to notice gradually, rather than to make happen. This goes for a lot of imaginal. Even the divinity, it's like, "Oh, yeah, it does have that quality." I might not like that word, 'divinity,' but it's what we notice. We say, "This is characteristic of the imaginal," and then you start to notice, "Oh, yes, it is. Oh, yes, that," rather than making it happen. Yeah? Okay.
Q3: the language of penetrating or opening, going towards the other or being known by them
Yogi: I'm wondering -- it's probably got some similar sort of answer, but about the way you're using the word 'eros.' When you talk about it, sort of in defining it, you were saying it's this contact [inaudible] and wanting to penetrate or open to. I notice you don't make a distinction between those two ways. I wondered, is there a reason for that? What's behind my question is that in my imaginal practice, I feel a lot of eros in my direction and path, but in practice, it's like, what my being wants to express is much more -- I know you don't use words like 'masculine' and 'feminine,' but it's more in that feminine mode. It's not so much about going towards knowing the other, but to be known by the other. I know that's okay, but wonder if that is included in -- how that fits in with the conception of eros.
Rob: Whether what's included? The being known by?
Yogi: Yeah. When you talk about eros it's quite often with that sort of [inaudible].
Rob: Yeah, thank you. So Zazie is saying when we were defining eros, we were saying it's more penetrating and opening to the beloved other, the erotic object, or wanting more penetration, and not really making a distinction between penetrating and opening, and is there a reason for not making a distinction? And what's the end of the question?
Yogi: I guess when you talk about eros it seems ...
Rob: Yeah, and when I talk about eros, it seems to be more penetrating. I'm a guy! [laughter] In the sense I am -- I'm -- I mean ... [laughter] If we use the words 'masculine' and 'feminine,' it's like, I'm very masculine, you know? I have a lot of that. So apologies if that ... But if you go back to this principle of how eros will want to move in every way, go with what seems to be alive, if the directionality is that way, if it's back towards that opening the self to -- in a way, what I was talking about this morning, if it's the anteros first, which is similar to what you're saying. But you're fine. Just go with where it's alive. It's like a flame. Wherever it's alive is where you trust, and then it will start. So eventually you get the penetrating and opening, and even some -- I think I mentioned it in the guided meditation: you can have, let's say, purely sexual erotic-imaginal going on, and you could be the penetrator. I could turn into the one who is [penetrated]. It doesn't even make sense anatomically, but it doesn't matter. You just trust. Again, going back to Dave's question, there's a soul-movement here that will just unfold how it unfolds in the order that it unfolds for you. And the order that unfolds for Elaine or whoever, it's going to be different. It's a bit like Bo's question yesterday about conceptually starting in different places, and experientially starting -- some people are more with the body, some people more with ... It doesn't matter; it's like, trust the eros, and then let it do its thing. So apologies if my language tends to tip that way. How does that sound?
Yogi: Yeah. I think it's partly [inaudible]. A lot of the images, it's the sort of merging with the image. It's like a merging rather than an other, but in that, whether there's an image which I've merged with or the image is just myself, there is a sense of other being known in the image. So the experience is that I am the image; there isn't so much an obvious sense of other, but it feels like that's just the [inaudible] mode.
Rob: Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know how to sum that up, what you just said. Zazie's saying it doesn't seem like there's so much of an other, that the self or that pole of the self/other has become the principal image, and there's not so much of a duality because there's quite a lot of merging going on. Again, I would just trust it. When there's eros, it creates otherness -- othernesses, actually. So what happens is it just proliferates more and more othernesses. You become multiple. The folds of your being start proliferating. It's not just Zazie; it's like, this element or this dimension of my being becomes a pole. So there will be an other, a beloved other, and then there will be just more and more. So again, I would just say trust it. What we're not doing is only diving into a kind of complete melting jhānic thing. That's fine, and probably that's happened for different people. That's quite normal. You can let that happen, and you can enjoy it. But always there's a coming out of that. We don't want to get lost in that. We want to know it, and then otherness re-establishes itself in a beautiful way. Or there are degrees of melting or whatever, but there will be this proliferation of othernesses. You can basically just trust, I think. Am I answering ...? Okay.
Yogi: Do you think that otherness is actually inherent in image if something is really imaginal? My experience of it is mostly that the multitude is within the image itself.
Rob: Yeah, that's fine. There will be othernesses within that, yeah. So it's like self almost becomes like an other, like a beloved other, or beloved others, plural.
Yogi: Yeah. But it's more like it feels like the other is the [inaudible].
Rob: Oh, yes, yes. Exactly. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Thank you.
Jamie had one. Yeah?
Q4: differences between tantra and soulmaking paradigm
Yogi: You mentioned in one of the talks that there is a tantra analogy with the soulmaking paradigm. I'm just wondering whether there are any critical ways in which it's definitely different.
Rob: There are probably lots of different ways that tantra gets disseminated, classical tantra. First of all, there's Buddhist tantra, and there's Hindu tantra, and then there's modern Western sexual tantra. So it's like, what are we talking about? But even in Buddhist tantra, there are a lot of different schools and traditions and things. One of the things that comes immediately to mind is often what you get in tantric teachings is prescribed deities, with prescribed forms, and prescribed colours, and prescribed meanings, and all kinds of things. That's all great and fine. I think we're leaning more towards this kind of trusting of the soul, and what comes up individually, and what images come to you. So that's one. Jamie's asking what are the ways in which what we're doing is definitely different from sort of classical Buddhist tantra. So that's one. There are others. I'm just not sure whether I want to say what they are now. I think I won't, if that's okay. Is that enough?
Yogi: [inaudible] I've found the practices so revelatory, and like, "Why has no one found this before and talked about it in a considered way? Well, what's in tantra? Should I go to tantra and see what else is there?"
Rob: Well, you may and find all kinds of stuff, I imagine. But I'm not an expert on tantra; I don't consider myself at all an expert. I suppose one of the ways it's opened up for me was from the emptiness practice. It almost, to me, just suggests tantra. It suggests the ability to do that. You reach a certain point when it becomes kind of, to me, the obvious next step and the obvious sort of unfolding. So I went to the library next door, and rummaged through books, and tried to apply myself to the practices that were taught. It 'worked' to a certain extent, but it actually felt like it wasn't the right thing. For me, what was really a big thing was reading James Hillman, moving through that, and taking that, and then just experimenting. Your question --"why isn't" -- this is why I try and talk a lot and think a lot about conceptual frameworks, conceptual ideas that actually block it, that prevent. Why isn't it [talked about]? There's actually a reason why. It's because we believe X or we believe Y, or we believe that X or Z is wrong, or this and that. There are actually ideas and psychological reasons. There are lots of reasons why not, why it doesn't. So that's quite an interesting question.
Tom, yeah?
Yogi 2: Do you think it's because in the history of tantra, up until the way the Western mind developed, there was potentially fewer blocks? I mean, it seems to me that the practice -- I've practised a little bit myself in that tradition, and it seems like the soulmaking aspects are more implicit within that. There's an expectation that the prescribed image will then become image in the way you mean it.
Rob: Yeah, I'm just a little --
Yogi 2: It's dodgy territory.
Rob: Well, it's dodgy for a reason that I don't even want to say why. [laughter] Let me just see what to say now.
Yogi: You can pause the recording! [laughter]
Rob: I think tantra is effectively infinite. I might have said that in a talk the other day. It's not taught as infinite. Also, the direction is prescribed. There are more directions than, say, in classic Theravāda, but the directions are prescribed. I think what I'm just kind of letting the cats out of the bag a little bit here and in other talks and places, it's like, let's really open up that infinite thing. Let's really admit that that's implicit in the whole soulmaking, and the directionality is infinite. What happens if we just really open to that realization, and then create a path or find a path out of that? So tantra is an odd animal, or religions are odd animals, because there's this religious fantasy which goes backward, so I have to tie something to this authority and this logos and this image of what awakening looks like. Then some things expand; there is a soulmaking. But I still have to tie it to -- do you see what I mean? There's a tension there, and there was in tantra right from the beginning. Historically, probably, a lot of the tantra [?] came from shamanism and village shamans meeting orthodox Buddhism and stuff. So to me, it's interesting, but there's a kind of -- still a kind of reined-in-ness. It's a big step to do that, but. That's a bit of an answer. Is that okay? Okay.
Someone who hasn't maybe asked? Anyone? Bo had her hand up first.
Q5: seeding questions
Yogi: This is one that could be answered or not answered, but it feels like one of the eros practices that both of you have been seeding in us is maybe the art of asking beautiful questions. I've been reflecting on how we can ask questions that elicit -- you could call it images in their own likeness, that just ... Because we have literally Eros and Psyche or [inaudible] -- are sitting in front of us ... [laughter]
Rob: Did I hear the tea bell? [laughter]
Yogi: With the knowledge you have now, and sensing us the way that you do, and having that heart-connection, is there a question that you would craft for us together that we haven't seemed to ask?
Rob: For everyone?
Yogi: Yeah. You've been doing that all along in some ways, but. It doesn't have to be answered now, but what would be a beautiful question seed? I'm also aware of that part of myself that wants to ask all these things, "Is this right? Is that right?" So just an open invitation.
Rob: What was the thing about doing it right? I didn't get that.
Yogi: Well, as we prepare to leave, having some sense of the questions that elicit answers in their own likeness tend to be -- I mean, we could probably map together all the ones that, "Am I doing this well enough to be able to go home?" Because you've been teaching us things like, "Is this soulmaking? Does this feel alive?", and to recognize the quickening that happens inside us when we ask something beautiful or there is an image of beauty ...
Rob: We can think about it. [laughter] Is that okay? Yeah. Maybe we'll ponder it and see what comes, if that's okay. Unless anyone has something burning, shall we ...? Okay. Shall we have a bit of quiet to end?
