Transcription
I do hope these talks are somehow helpful. As I think I already mentioned, some percentage of what's in the content of these talks and how they're shaped is really in response to what it seems so far may have been difficult to understand, or easily misunderstood, or frequently misunderstood, or a wish to rebalance a kind of emphasis if something has, in however many talks over the last few years, got emphasized, or a certain aspect, or a certain approach, or a certain leaning has got emphasized at the expense of another aspect, approach, leaning, where I didn't really intend that emphasis. So an attempt to rebalance that, if that's necessary, if that is the case. I hope all this is helpful.
In previous talks over the last few years, I described a process, an evolution of practising with the imaginal, where one might be practising with an image, and there's the eros there, and that image becomes imaginal, or is imaginal, so there is the soulmaking, and eros is involved. There's the soulmaking dynamic that gets going, and involves, catalyses, ignites the whole eros-psyche-logos dynamic and their mutual insemination, mutual complication, enriching, deepening, widening. We talked about all that as being one way of regarding what the essence of the soulmaking dynamic is as it happens.
In that, in that sort of vortex of eros-psyche-logos and their mutual interrelations, there can be, at times or sometimes, a kind of spilling over of the image. If one's working with an imaginal figure, so to speak 'intrapsychically,' it begins to spill over into the 'extrapsychic,' into the world. The soulmaking perceptions, the imaginal perceptions, begin to spread and begin to involve and include not just this imaginal figure that one might be working with intrapsychically, but also the self, and the world, and even one's eros, and all the elements of being, so-called intrapsychic, so-called extrapsychic. But particularly in the extrapsychic and the world, we use the word 'cosmopoesis,' which is, in our day and time, an unusual word: 'cosmo' from 'cosmos,' meaning the world, and also the organizing principles of the world, the structure of the universe, and 'poiesis,' meaning a kind of poetic creativity. 'Cosmopoesis' means what happens through the depth and the vitality and the beauty, really, of the imaginal practice: there's this spreading of that soulmaking perception to include and to involve the world around us, so that when one opens one's eyes, or as one is sitting there, walking, walking around, whatever it is, standing around, the world is imbued or becomes an imaginal perception influenced by the original intrapsychic imaginal perception.
The word 'poiesis' there is quite carefully chosen. 'Cosmology' implies a kind of truth, usually, a scientific truth. 'Cosmopoesis' implies this kind of -- it's got a poetic truth to it. It's got a degree or a kind of truth that one would not feel, in one's integrity and one's completeness and the fullness of one's being and one's soul, one would not feel really okay with just dismissing it as illusion, this perception. I went through a lot of examples at the end of the last few talks of Path of the Imaginal, and also the Re-enchanting the Cosmos retreat. It's a creative process and a discovery -- 'discovery' in the sense there is some kind of truth to these many, many possible perceptions of the world, the cosmos, the universe. What happens there, there's a spilling over to spread to include the world -- self, other, world, etc. -- in this cosmopoesis. And then all perceptions of the world are, we could say, shaped or coloured by or in relationship to the particular image that one, say, started with. It's not that, if one is imagining an imaginal figure, and there's a god or goddess, or a divinity, a deity, whatever, it's not then necessarily only that the whole world then is perceived as that deity. One might then perceive oneself and elements of the world in relation to, in reference to, that deity -- so as the lover of that deity, or the consort, or the food of that deity, or whatever.
But all perceptions then, in this cosmopoesis, are shaped, coloured by, or coloured and shaped in relation to the particular image that one started with. There are infinite possibilities here of cosmopoesis. It's really endless because of the infinite fertility and possibility of the soul and the imaginal faculty, the imaginal realm. So in that perception, all those elements and aspects we listed pertaining to the imaginal in the last talk are elements of that cosmopoetic perception. In other words, it is soulmaking. Some of those elements seem more obviously to refer to the subjective pole, and some more to the objective pole of that imaginal constellation of that cosmopoetic perception, the constellation of the cosmopoetic perception of the soulmaking perception.
Now, actually, that kind of cosmopoesis, we could say, is the larger part or the larger subset of all possible cosmopoeses, if we include, too, the perceptions that we can have of the world when the perception is influenced, imbued with perceptions of universal oneness that can come out of certain deep meditative states, or out of formal meditation as well. So perceptions of the oneness of love: everything is of the nature of, of the substance of love. Love permeates and is the essence of all things, or compassion is, or joy is, or peace. These are different kinds of perceptions of oneness that then become different kinds of cosmopoeses.
And again, one wouldn't be happy or feel okay with just dismissing: "Oh, this is just a fabrication, a delusion, this perception of oneness." One intuits there is some kind of (let's call it) 'mystical truth' here. Everything is awareness. The nature of all being is awareness, or is nothingness, etc. There are, in this camp of what we could call perceptions of universal oneness (so cosmopoeses that are inflected by, where the predominant feature is some kind of universal oneness), there are actually a finite number of possibilities. I mentioned this in, I think, the Eros Unfettered series. There are certain variations. For instance, around the sixth jhāna, or practices of resting in awareness, either one, this can give rise to quite a few states where the essence of things that permeates is consciousness or awareness. They're not exactly the same, and it's interesting, if this is the kind of thing whose beauty you are moved by and that you're interested in. It can be really fascinating to kind of sail on those seas, navigate that territory, make those discernments. But that set of perceptions of cosmopoeses that involve a perception of universal oneness of some kind, of a kind of universal essential essence, they're more limited. Those are finite possibilities. But together with the ones that come through more imaginal practice, they form the whole set of all possible cosmopoeses, which is actually infinite, because, although, as I said, the perceptions of universal oneness, those kinds of cosmopoeses are a finite set, the others are infinite. It's open-ended. There's no limit to what the soul can conjure, weave, create, discover.
[10:57] So one may be working primarily with a so-called intrapsychic imaginal figure, and then there's this spreading out into a cosmopoesis that's shaped, coloured by, or in relationship to that particular image that one was working with, and so that cosmopoesis is very particular. And there are infinite possibilities. Or one can actually not start with an intrapsychic image, but rather one starts with some or other object of the five senses, some thing that one is seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, some sounds, sights, smell, taste, touches. Or a person that one is seeing, listening to, whatever. One basically starts with the world and the things of the world, and the initial starting point in practice is with that sense contact rather than with the so-called intrapsychic imaginal. One's starting with the extrapsychic. And there, too, in some instances, when we practise, eros and psyche and logos get involved in that sensing, in that perceiving, and we say, perceiving my beloved, my friend, my teacher, my whatever it is, lover, 'imaginally,' or we use this phrase, 'sensing with soul.' We're sensing this or that thing, we're sensing this or that object, we're sensing the world, with soul.
Sensing with soul: I introduced this phrase, and I'd like to dwell on it a little bit today and over the next few days. The cosmopoesis, the movement from an intrapsychic imaginal figure to that cosmopoesis, is also a sensing with soul. There, too, the world is sensed with soul. The order of practices in which we arrived at that -- in other words, whether we started intrapsychically or extrapsychically, so to speak -- that's irrelevant. At that point of cosmopoesis, we are sensing with soul. So those kind of cosmopoeses are subsets of a larger mode of being that we call sensing with soul.
As a kind of side point for right now, the more traditional kind of oneness perceptions of the world, and those kind of cosmopoeses that I mentioned just earlier, they may be soulmaking, as I've said before in other talks, and they may be a kind of sensing with soul, if they are newer to the consciousness and so they present a kind of beyond: "I haven't quite got my head round this. I haven't quite plumbed the depths of this perception." They present to the psyche a kind of beyond which is more than I know, more than I'm familiar with, more than I can quite grasp or sense right now, and so they have the allure, and there's the eros there, because of the beyond, because of the pothos in the eros. And they can also be, those kind of oneness perceptions can also be soulmaking if there's a fantasy of the self in relationship to that experience, or in relation to the tradition that kind of teaches and lays out and shows the way to those kind of experiences. So they could be soulmaking. We could then also call them sensing with soul. So when all that is there with a certain image, a certain sense of universal oneness, we could still call it sensing with soul.
Again, perhaps I'm too sloppy sometimes, or not caring enough about really drawing rigid definitions of words. But another way to kind of carve all this up is to say also: we could say that soul has two directions of desire, two directions of eros. One is the whole direction towards unfabricating, towards the Unfabricated. And those different states of perceiving universal oneness (love, peace, joy, awareness, nothingness, etc.), they are, if you like, along that line or in that direction. They're points on the spectrum towards unfabricating, towards the Unfabricated. They're states and perceptions of less and less fabricating. We could order them and delineate them along that spectrum. We could say something in the soul -- it might not be alive for all people; in other words, this might not have come alive for a person yet, but I would say that the soul has some desire, some eros in that direction, some pull and magnetic attraction to the beauty, and the mystery, and the wonder, and the deliverance, in the Buddha's words, of all of those states along that spectrum, all the way to the Unfabricated. This is a hunger, a desire, an erotic pull of, an impetus of the soul.
And the soul has a second direction, if you like, of its desire or eros, the way its desire and eros points and wants to open, explore, expand, unfold, and that is towards not so much the Unfabricated but towards, we could say, poetic or soulful fabrications that include the imaginative faculty, the imaginal faculty. So there's a movement towards unfabricating, and everything that's on that spectrum, all those onenesses. And there's a pull, a movement, a longing, a love, an erotic movement and desire for poetic, soulful fabrications that include the imaginal faculty. It's really, I think, at the moment, as I said, I'm sometimes a little ... I feel like I don't really care about the language too much. But let's just say for now, this last one, this poetic, soulful fabrication, soulmaking fabrications that include the imaginal faculty, that we're going to be calling, or I want to introduce the word 'sensing with soul.' In other words, sensing that is soulmaking. Therefore, sensing that opens up. Sensing this world, sensing this thing that I'm in touch with, this material thing, this person, this object, this element of existence, sensing that in a way that gives rise to some sense (and concept, wrapped up) of divinity, of sacredness, of meaningfulness, of beauties opening up. So sensing that opens all that up.
This, to me, and I've said this before, this opening up of the sensing of the world in ways that are soulmaking -- in other words, opening up the possibilities of the sensing of divinity and sacredness and holiness in and through and not just beyond the world, and opening that up widely and infinitely and in ways that really make a difference to the soul and to one's existence, and opening up the meaningfulness, and opening up the beauties -- this, to me, is the main point of imaginal practice. It's not so much getting fascinating images, or this or that, but this transformation of the whole sense of existence, this redeeming and healing of the whole sense of existence, this open-ended creation and discovery of what existence is and can be for us -- all of existence.
This, to me, is really the main point. That can be very subtle at times, and very undramatic. But to me, the main point of even intrapsychic imaginal practice is not so much the intrapsychic images for their own sake. Yes, healing comes in all this practice, imaginal practice, soulmaking practice. Personal healing comes. Yes, dukkha is healed, attenuated in all kinds of ways. I'll dwell on that in, I think, the next talk. Yes, all this imaginal practice (the way we're teaching it), and the sensing with soul, and all of that, catalyses, fertilizes, works, and brings to -- I was going to say 'fruition,' but it's also an open-ended process -- what we could call self-growth, or my psychospiritual process, your psychospiritual process; what a Jungian would call 'individuation*.'*
So yes, personal meaningfulness and relevance are involved. Or actually, somewhat akin to what a Jungian would call 'individuation'; there are significant differences, and we haven't used that word so much. In other words, yes, all this imaginal practice brings personal healing, brings the resolution of my dukkha, and actually also the dukkha in the world, because we live, we see the world differently, and we care for the world differently because we see it with soul, we sense it with soul. Our relationship with matter, with nature, with other human beings, and other sentient beings, is also deepened, enriched, made more beautiful, made more meaningful, made more importantly woven into our very sense of existence and value. So all this has a huge implication for the reduction of dukkha.
[22:35] So all that's involved: personal healing; reduction of dukkha, mine and other beings'; individuation, or something akin to it, if we want to use that word. All this does involve personal meaningfulness, personal relevance. My personal process gets worked. The soil gets tilled there. But we could also just refer to that as the self is sensed with soul. Not just objects and the world, but the self also is sensed with soul. That would be another term that we could use, and in that way, just include the whole of what's happening there in one term: sensed with soul.
So that with regards to one's own person, one's own existence, one's own self, the self becomes an object of soulmaking. The self becomes an erotic other. The elements of the self become erotic beloveds to our own soul. The self, and my existence, and my journey, and my struggles, become pregnant with meaningfulness, amplified with different meanings and meaningfulness. I start to see the beauty of my self, the beauty of my journey, of my struggles, of my aspirations, of my efforts. I start to see the divinity of my self. That has nothing to do with ego. We talked about that. I think it was on the Re-enchanting the Cosmos retreat. As we talked about also on that retreat, there's a re-enchanting of dukkha, of my suffering, of my travails, my tragedies, what life has given me to work, to deal with, to face. The whole sense of self is opened when it's sensed with soul.
And all that self-process and soul-fertilizing of the self, soulmaking of the sense of self, is happening in a context where the world, and others, and objects, and the things of the world, are also re-enchanted. So all that is happening: something akin to individuation and personal healing, and personal reduction of dukkha, and all that. But the main point is this sensing with soul, sensing existence with soul, existence and the things, the elements of existence with soul. To me, that's the main point. That's where all this is going.
I just want to quote a little bit from a philosopher that I've been getting acquainted with in the last -- I don't know, really -- six months or a year, named J. N. Findlay. He's dead now. He was very unfashionable when he lived. I think he died in the eighties. He was born in the early twentieth century. He would be interested in certain philosophers and branches of philosophy and directions in philosophy that were really not fashionable during the period of his life, so he spent a long time really in the provincial outskirts, sort of banished because people thought he was a bit of a fuddy-duddy, etc. But I find a lot of what he says and writes, and what he's trying to get at, and trying to open up, and trying to emphasize the importance of, I find it very beautiful, very touching. I just want to quote from an essay that's slightly autobiographical. He says of himself,
I myself have always been constitutionally mystical, feeling that certain kinds of rapture, concerned with work, beauty, love, and a few other things, are the only things absolutely worth having.[1]
Listen to that: "the only things absolutely worth having."
I dropped my mysticism for a long period, partly on account of certain disillusioning experiences in my twenties [with certain spiritual groups that he was involved with], and partly out of deference to the dry methods and doctrine that prevailed in British philosophy.
Then he says, "Latterly, however, increasing age" (he was only 62 when he wrote this) has brought him back to his openness to mysticism and his seeing of just how important that is, and these aspects of work, beauty, love, and a few other things are the only things absolutely worth having.
He also says, "Also, seeing the completely nugatory accomplishments" -- that means the completely trivial accomplishments -- "of purely unmystical analysis." So he was a mainstream philosopher in that sort of very dry, Anglo-American tradition that prevailed for so many years and still is quite popular. You know, he knew all that. He worked with all that. He was respected as a proponent of all that in academic institutions. But then, as he approaches the end of his life,
Seeing the completely nugatory [trivial] accomplishments of purely unmystical [philosophical] analysis, I have found myself reverting increasingly to my original mysticism.
Sometimes ... maybe it's certain teachings, or maybe it's certain kinds of philosophy, and we just think, "Well, so what? So what?" One could even say, even with working with the imagination, it's like, it can be so fascinating, and so kind of sexy-sounding or whatever, but the main point to me is this sensing existence with soul. For me. Of course, you're free to make whatever is your main point and whatever is most important to you. But for me, and my intention in even starting with these teachings was always that. It's the re-enchanting of existence, the opening up of the possibilities, and the legitimizing of, and the making accessible of the possibilities of genuine, vital, and meaningful, and deeply transformative senses of sacredness -- in the plural, senses of sacredness. That's my sense of what's most important here.
[29:49] In all this kind of practice, in time, there's a kind of process or journey of opening to make more accessible and more refined this soul-dynamic, soul-process, of the creation-slash-discovery, or the creation and discovery (in very individual ways, as well as collectively or socially, together), this creation and discovery of senses of sacredness, sensing the world with soul, and the possibilities there. Life and death, existence, self, others, objects, world, matter: all the elements of being become image, can become image. That doesn't mean all the time, twenty-four hours a day, every day. But the access to that, the refinement with that, the flexibility, the depth and breadth of that, it gets worked, gets opened over time. All of that, all the elements of being (matter, self, other, world, life, death, existence) can be perceived imaginally in the infinite different ways that that is possible, and the infinitely rich and bountiful ways and helpful ways that that's possible. All of that can get sensed with soul. And that, to me, as I said, is the primary thrust, or where this is going, the intention of what is being opened.
Now, just a little bit again -- I mentioned it already in the first talk at some point -- about vocabulary here. So we've been using this word, 'imaginal,' and we're still using it, and I personally don't intend to necessarily give it up. But I am aware, of course, as I said, that it can be confusing for some people, or it has been confusing for some people, whether they're aware of it or not, or limiting for some people. I just want to say a bit about these different vocabularies, 'imaginal' and 'sensing with soul,' and really kind of introduce or wave the flag for this new phrase, 'sensing with soul,' alongside the word 'imaginal,' as a complement or an alternative. I'd actually say they can be used almost interchangeably, I think. For some people, it seems that the word 'imaginal' seems to imply a necessary involvement or centring around an intrapsychic visual image. Just the word 'image,' in our common usage in the wider culture, seems to imply something visual, and seems to, for meditators, imply something intrapsychic, as opposed to an image in an advert or something.
And then (we've been through this as well), some people say, "Well, I don't get any of those. I don't get any images." So there's still this idea of intrapsychic visual images. So I thought about it, and it occurred to me that maybe the phrase 'sensing with soul' would be a helpful complement to the word imaginal, perhaps, for some people. Why? Because sensing with soul would imply, or it seems to me to imply that it includes seeing, hearing, touching, being touched, and the use of the kinaesthetic sense, tasting, smelling, thinking, and imagining. Any and all of those seven senses, if we count thinking and imagining as the sixth and seventh. And you'll know that classical Buddhadharma counts the mind, whether it's thinking or imagining or all that, as a sixth sense. But any of those senses -- seeing, hearing, touching, being touched by, tasting, smelling, thinking, and imagining -- with soulfulness or in ways that are soulmaking. So 'sensing with soul' means using any of the senses in ways that are soulmaking, using them with soulfulness.
Now, of course, then that just begs the question, "Well, what do the terms 'soul,' 'soulfulness,' and 'soulmaking' mean?" And that needs explaining, which I've done elsewhere, but I will go into it again. There's a kind of circularity of definition, but all the most -- well, I was going to say "all the most important things in life have circular definitions," but let's just say this does. And that's fine, because hopefully you should really get a sense and a taste of what we're talking about here. But this phrase, then, 'sensing with soul,' to me, implies an involvement or inclusion of both intrapsychic phenomena, images, and perceptions of this world and material objects and others in this world.
In other words, sensing with soul embraces both the so-called intrapsychic and the extrapsychic. It may be the tendency, then, with the phrase 'sensing with soul,' because of the emphasis on sensing and our usual association of sensing with the five senses, and hence the link to the extrapsychic and the material world, it may be that the tendency with the phrase 'sensing with soul' then kind of drifts the other way, for some people, away from the intrapsychic. But no phrase or term is going to be perfect and is going to totally eliminate all incompleteness of understanding, or misemphasis, or unfair emphasis of direction and all that. So I want to introduce it as a kind of complement, or for some it will be an alternative to the word 'imaginal,' as I said, embracing both the intrapsychic and the extrapsychic.
But also, the phrase 'sensing with soul' hopefully makes it clear that images are not necessarily visual. We have and we could give so many examples here, but I think it was in the talk "Image, Mythos, Dharma," in the first part of that talk. I don't know -- some of you may be really dedicated musicians, and really into that art of music and that whole life of that. In the way that a musician who is really into it, and in the moments when they are playing with soul their instrument, the way they touch the instrument, the way they move their fingers or their lips, the contact, the manner, and all the extreme subtleties that you would be really hard-pressed to even analyse into their components or sum up -- that way of touching and playing an instrument is part, of course, of their technique. It's part of how they are accomplished in the way that they do, and get the instrument to make the sounds that they want it to make. But it's also imbued with soul. Again, if you're a musician, you'll recognize this, that when you're playing with soul, then the way you're touching the instrument, the movements and the contact, and the kinds of contact with the instrument, the actual physical impact, is being perceived with soul, perceived soulfully, sensed with soul, and also made, moved by soul.
The whole thing, all that touch and contact, is imbued with soul, and actually it involves a perception of the self, some kind of other, which may be the instrument, and the music, and the sound, and maybe other musicians in the present moment that one might be playing with, and also other musicians in history that are alive as images somehow imbuing your music-making and creative process in the moment, and also the world, and the audience, and the sense or the imaginal perception of the audience's participation, and listening, and involvement, and enjoyment, and openness, and appreciation of the music. There's nothing necessarily visual there. The imaginal element or the sensing with soul is really happening in the touch and in the listening. And if we're talking about the way of touching the instrument, it's very, very subtle, and the way it's woven in to touch there is very, very subtle. Maybe a more accessible example for a lot of people would have just been the way lovers touch when they're in love. Of course it's sensually pleasant. Of course there is goodwill communicated. But there's another element there of the erotic-imaginal in and through the touch, even if one has one's eyes closed.
Sensing with soul, or sensing and acting with soul, involves all kinds of perceptions of self, other, object (could be in any of the senses), and world. All seven senses. Actually, in that musician example, some of you know B.B. King, the blues singer who died not too long ago, a great blues singer and guitarist. You may know this if you know him: he called his guitar Lucille. His guitar was, for him, a feminine person that he had a real intimate relationship with. There's an imaginal relationship there, and maybe a sensing with soul. But that's relatively gross. If you just say, "Oh, his guitar becomes a person," just that much is a relatively gross sort of sensing with soul, a relatively gross imaginal perception, when someone might not personify their instrument that way, for example, and the whole sensing with soul is happening through the touch, or through the sense of the audience, or through the sound, or through the kind of historical connection that's happening so subtly with previous musicians who are images for us.
[42:51] The main point here was that it doesn't have to be visual. It can be extremely subtle and can happen through any and all of the senses. Again, notice that when I made kind of seven senses there, the thinking is included in sensing with soul. So again, in the thinking, in the conceiving mind, there can be a soulmaking fantasy of thinking, of my thinking, of the thinking happening itself. It becomes imaginal. The thinking itself, our sense of our own thinking, becomes imaginal. We perceive it imaginally. We sense our own thinking with soul. Then the thinking itself becomes an image, becomes an erotic: our thinking, the thought, the thinker, ourselves as thinker. And also, a distinction we've already made: there can be a soulful conceptualizing, or a soulmaking with respect to or in relationship to one's conceiving. So all of the senses can be arenas, 'spheres,' to borrow the Buddha's word, āyatana, for soulmaking. Soulmaking can happen through and with and in all the senses.
In some respects, it's useful to make a distinction between intrapsychic images and extrapsychic sensing with soul, intrapsychic sensing with soul and extrapsychic sensing with soul, or the imaginal perception of this material world. But let's say sensing with soul includes the intrapsychic imaginal, and let's say that we can just about use the words interchangeably, imaginal and sensing with soul.
If we explore a little bit just the nature of sensing, and the phenomenology of sensing, and this notion of sensing with soul, and just highlight a few things: one could say -- there are good, justifiable reasons for saying, from a certain point of view or a certain way of thinking about things, analysing things -- you could say that any and all perception (which means any and all experience, or any and all appearances; I use those words, perception, experience, and appearance, pretty much interchangeably), any and all perception, appearance, experience, is fabricated in a way that involves, or mixes, or relies on the cooperation of, or is infused by four dimensions of our being, or aspects or elements or factors.
(1) One is conception. I've emphasized this before. That includes everything from the most gross conception to really, really subtle conceptions and assumptions about what is real and what knowledge is. Any kind of delineation of perception involves the delineation of conception, whether we're conscious of what's going on conceptually or not -- and for the most part we're not, in fact.
(2) Secondly, intentionality or desire is also a factor involved in, mixed in with, cooperating in, and infusing any fabrication of any perception, any perception at all. That means, what is actually the intention in perceiving? What is the desire? What kind of desire is it? Is it clinging? There needs to be some kind of clinging, if you know the way I would explain the phenomenology of perception and the whole ways of looking and fabricating. There's some kind of clinging. Is it craving, though, or is it eros? Also aspiration, which might be very developed, the aspiration to see along some kind of Dharmic lines, to see impermanence, or the aspiration for liberation, or the aspiration to sense with soul. It might be quite a developed and conscious aspiration or sophisticated aspiration, or it may be very, very subtle. It may be conscious. It may not be conscious. But some kind of intentionality or desire or aspiration is involved as a second factor, if you like.
(3) The third we could say is just sense data. These factors, these four factors, (4) the fourth being the imaginal faculty, as I said, they're all involved and mixed together, or they cooperate, or they infuse each other. We could say they're in dialogue with each other: sense data, the imaginative faculty, conception, and desire or intentionality, aspiration, are in dialogue with each other to inform, shape, influence our perceptions of anything -- of life, things, and existence, in any moment.
'Dialogue,' though, is not really a good word, because it implies a kind of separability: "This is in dialogue with that. The imaginative faculty is in dialogue with the sense data," as if the sense data was something raw and pristine, and we could arrive at it and separate it on its own. We can't. That's not possible, despite the sort of teachings of bare attention that used to be quite common in the Dharma world at least. These four factors are inseparable. They mix together. In a way, we're kind of artificially separating something, just as a conceptual structure right now, that's not actually separable. So sense data is always mixed with conception. It's always mixed with intentionality and some degree of imaginal faculty. Each of these four -- conception, intentionality or desire, what we might call 'sense data,' in inverted commas, and the imaginal faculty -- they are all involved to some degree or other.
In other words, you can have a really rich involvement of the imaginal faculty, and it can be shaped this way or that way, towards more papañca or towards more soulmaking, or coloured this way or that way. And as I said, there can be a really sophisticated, conscious involvement of the conceptuality, or just a very unconscious and not very sophisticated involvement of the conceptuality. They all can kind of be more or less, each individually and relative to each other, and they're inseparable, and there's a confluence, or they all influence. They're all mixed together.
[51:00] We can say that with some justification, as a sort of way of conceiving what's happening with any and all perception, any and all experience, or any and all sense of an appearance. When we talk about sensing with soul, one way of understanding what we really mean is that those four factors are working in a way that brings soulmaking, that opens soulmaking. So the conception operating, the kind of desire or intention or aspiration operating, and the imaginative faculty, are operating in a way that supports and opens and nourishes soulmaking in the moment, so that the imaginative faculty is not towards papañca, nor is it so reified (that would be a good distinction to make), but it's more imaginal, with all those elements. So sensing with soul is just those four factors mixing and cooperating and being in certain states, each of them, and the way they mix, that soulmaking is the result. That's another way of thinking about what's going on.
When there is the extrapsychic sensing with soul -- in other words, material objects or persons who are present to us in material actuality are perceived imaginally -- when there's this extrapsychic sensing with soul, there's a kind of obviously direct meeting or mixing or infusing or involvement of the imaginal faculty. When I am seeing my beloved, and perceiving her/him/them imaginally, when I'm sensing them with soul, or sensing this tree, or this mountain, or whatever it is, sensing it with soul, perceiving it imaginally, the involvement of the imaginative faculty -- and actually the imaginal faculty -- is very obvious and direct in that imaginal perception of things, of life, of matter, of world, of objects. When the sensing with soul is more intrapsychic, the intrapsychic imaginal, then the involvement of the imaginative faculty with life and events and material objects is there, but it seems less direct. We talked about this kind of mirroring and echoing. Sometimes it's not so obvious. But in both cases, intrapsychic sensing with soul and extrapsychic sensing with soul, the imaginal faculty is involved in both the ways that it meets the world. But the intrapsychic one, the meeting of the imaginal faculty with the world, is sometimes not so directly obvious.
Whether we talk about intrapsychic sensing with soul or extrapsychic sensing with soul -- so-called; you can tell I don't really even like those terms, intrapsychic and extrapsychic -- but all sensing with soul implies that reverence is there. All sensing with soul involves reverence, involves humility, involves love, involves the perception, and the being touched by beauty and beauties, the opening up of the perception of beauty in ways that are deeply meaningful. It involves a sense of duty or duties. It involves a sense of unfathomability, something that is beyond my perception and my conception, something that the pothos in the eros wants to reach out into, connect with, know, become intimate with, open to. All sensing with soul includes dimensionality, a sense of dimensionality, and eventually a sense of divinity; soft, elastic edges; involves some attenuation of grasping, and some eros as well; will preserve the twoness that we talked about, even if, at the same time, we're aware of an underlying oneness. All sensing with soul eventually will, if we stay with it, reveal a sense of participation, and a conception (even if it's vague) of participation, etc. Basically, all the list that we went through before, all those elements, twenty-three, and there are probably more that we didn't include, all of that will be present when there is sensing with soul. All of those elements, all of those aspects, are important elements and aspects of sensing with soul.
[57:11] If we put this, also, in a slightly different context, and think about sense contact, to borrow a phrase of the Buddha's, or sense experience, and we think about what are the possible, if you like, skilful modes of sense contact? What are the possible skilful modes of sense contact? Just to outline a few. Actually, before we do, to point out that that word 'skilful,' kusala, is a word the Buddha used, but the word -- what's a 'skilful' mode of sense contact? Well, a couple of things. One is that what is skilful is contextually determined by at least two things. One is the tradition. The tradition we're in determines, or kind of decides for us, or holds up some kind of sense contact as skilful. It determines what skilful means. If opening to seeing Christ in everyone and everything is the goal of the path, or a part of, an element, something one wants to open to on the path, then that's going to determine, obviously, what 'skilful' means. If one interprets Theravāda Buddhism along certain lines, 'skilful' has quite a different meaning. And then within Buddhadharma, you can also see how the word means really quite different things to just different interpretations of the Pali Canon, for instance. What does it mean, skilful sense contact? So to be aware, as always, that all this is contextualized by tradition. We're informed, persuaded by, sometimes indoctrinated by, the tradition that we're in. Whenever we use 'skilful,' it's relative to a certain tradition, or according to a certain tradition.
And actually, related to that point, the word 'skilful' or the label 'skilful,' for any kind of sense contact or thought or conception, or whatever it is, is also contextualized or contextually determined by what one's long-term and short-term aims are. So for instance, my long-term aim might be to really explore all this imaginal stuff and open up the eros, but it might be that right now that's not the right thing to do, and I need to move into another mode. So right now the skilful sense contact is not to open up more eros. The fire is already raging, and actually it's raging in a way that's not that helpful, and I need to relate to sense contact in a different way. If the long-term goal is knowing the Unfabricated, and eventually not being reborn, again, that forms a long-term aim, and that informs what 'skilful' means. But the short-term aim might be to make it to the teacher's talk on time, and so I can't be unfabricating too much because I won't be able to get there. I won't be able to find the place. I won't be able to function in the world if I'm all the time unfabricating like that. We can make lots of delineations like that. But just the point is, when we say 'skilful' modes of sense contact, really to understand that that's a contextualized word, dependent on different factors.
We could, just for now, delineate four possible, in quotes, 'skilful' modes of sense contact, of sensing. (1) One is just the normal way we engage sense contact when we're moving through the busyness of life, the busyness of our life, encountering objects and stuff that we need to get done. There's a kind of perfunctory, if you like, mode of sense contact. Of course this is okay at times. You know, stuff like that happens. We just get through the world. It's like, get in the car, drive it, get on the bike, ride it, whatever, to this place. Sense contact is delineated. We're just trying to accomplish something for some other end that is hopefully a good end. This is, of course, fine. We're in a certain mode of sense contact then, and it's fine, according to Buddhadharma, if there's a certain level of mindfulness -- just a basic level of mindfulness, a basic level of what the Buddha calls sampajañña, [which] translates usually as 'clear comprehension': I know where I am, and what I'm doing, and how my body is, and where I'm going, and what my intention is. Basic, certain level of mindfulness, and what we could call a normal mode of sense contact in a busy life, moving through the world, getting things done. Fine and completely appropriate at times.
(2) A second possible 'skilful' mode of sense contact would be what we might say is a slightly more intense mindfulness, and specifically a slightly more, let's say, narrowly focused mindfulness, and a mindfulness that's focused through some or other lens of a Dharma concept. For example, a sense contact looking through the lens of the second foundation of mindfulness, or the first foundation, or whatever it is, or some aspects of the fourth foundation of mindfulness, when the Buddha delineates certain lists, for example. Sense contact looked at through the Dharma lens of the six sense spheres or fields, or the eighteen sense constituents, and that sort of way of organizing one's experience, or a way of looking, basically, at experience, with this kind of more intense and more narrowly focused mindfulness. In other words, focused narrowly according to this Dharma lens. That's a second way.
And the skill in that is that it simplifies things, but through a certain reductionism. So by virtue of this kind of lens, or sometimes kind of grid that we're looking at things [through] -- three kinds of vedanā, three kinds of reaction to three kinds of vedanā, etc. -- that's simplifying through reductionism, through a certain kind of helpful reductionism. Even the idea of bare attention as a Dharma concept, it becomes a Dharma lens. It's simplifying and it's helpful. Or the four elements: earth, air, fire, water. Or just the idea of contact, or the twelve links of dependent origination, or whatever. This is extremely valuable at times, and you know that if you've practised this way -- at times. With that, because of the simplifying and other factors, there's a relative degree of lessening of clinging and craving at that point. So there's a relative degree of less fabricating. Things simplify and they are fabricated less, to a certain degree. At times, that set of modes of sense contact, or ways of looking -- extremely valuable. Really, really helpful. Really good things to know and have developed the skills of.
(3) A third kind of possibly skilful mode of sense contact is one that, in the sense contact, senses or sees or knows oneness. We've gone through: there are different kinds of oneness, in love, or awareness, or this or that, or peace, or even the emptiness of phenomena. So the sensing, then, it's a different kind of reductionism. It's not so atomistic. But in a way, when that's really deep, there's almost a mode of sense contact which, if you like, doesn't buy into the whole idea of contact. It's not so much this touching that, this sense sphere touching that. There is a sense of "all is one essence." It's not "this sense base touches that sense object." There is more a sense of both so-called sense base and so-called sense object are really just waves, foam, in the same sea, in the same ocean. Not so much this touching that.
That, too, is extremely valuable at times, extremely beautiful. And also, with that, there's probably an even greater degree of lessening of clinging and craving and fabrication at that moment. And actually, as we've said before, one can unfabricate so much that even the perception of sense contact fades, so that one doesn't actually have bodily sensations, and sometimes even the vision, etc., or the hearing. There's actually a fading. So in this third mode, in what we could call the direction of unfabricating, or the seeing of different kinds of oneness, the whole kind of structure of sense contact begins to melt into oneness and actually into a kind of fading and disappearing.
[1:08:26] (4) Then we could say there's a fourth possibly skilful mode of sense contact, which is what we're calling sensing with soul, imaginal sense contact, imaginal sensing. We're calling it 'sensing with soul.' In that mode, my personhood, and the personhood and particularity of what is sensed, is preserved. So there is not a kind of reduction to just seeing some kind of process with different constituents as in the second mode, nor a kind of atomization, nor is there a dissolution into some kind of true nature of love, or true nature of being or awareness, or some other kind of oneness. Preservation of my and the object's personhoods -- souls, really.
And also liberated and made present: different kinds of senses of beauty. Again, I've talked about this before: beauty means much more than just pleasant vedanā or pleasant sensations arranged. It liberates and brings to presence a sense of meaningfulness, much more so than the kind of 'getting things done' of the first skilful mode of sense contact. It liberates a sense of mystery, unfathomability, holiness, value -- all these elements that we're talking about, the elements of soulmaking.
And this fourth, this sensing with soul, this sensing in a way that is soulmaking, and the filling out of that dimensionality, the amplification, the expanding of all that's involved there -- this, too, decreases craving and increases equanimity. We talk a lot about eros and fire and all this, but don't overlook the fact that this sensing with soul generally also brings equanimity, in a different way, but at a very deep level. It also involves a reduction, in the moment we're sensing with soul, it involves a reduction of craving, and I would also say more long-term. When we sense food with soul, and that becomes more a common and frequently accessible perception of our food, for example, then the whole kind of craving for "I need to eat X or Y, or this tasty food," or "It has to be like this," it gets attenuated. It dies down. We are fed by something much more important than pleasant vedanā, much more nourishing than pleasant vedanā. The body is nourished by the food, and the soul is nourished by the soulmaking perception of the food by sensing with soul.
As I said, this kind of sensing with soul, and sensing one's existence with soul, and the elements, it brings, I feel, a really profound and widespread equanimity. I'll talk about this in the next talk, some of how this happens, perceiving imaginally, sensing with soul. If I speak personally, a very immediately accessible and personal example is just in relation to my cancer, and the possibility, and being given such a dire prognosis, the possibility of dying very soon. When I sense my existence, and my self, and my illness, and my life, and my death with soul, and confronting, including, embracing with soul the very real possibility of a death soon, and all the disability, and the impediment, and the restriction, and the unpleasantness, and the difficulty, and the incapacity that being ill long-term involves -- when I sense that with soul, in all kinds of different possible ways, I honestly say, and I'll share about this, what a deep equanimity comes.
It comes in a very different way than just seeing, "It's empty. Oh, yeah, it's impermanent. Life is impermanent. Health is impermanent." Very different way than just applying mindfulness to unpleasant sensations. Different way than oneness. There's a whole different realm of possibilities for the letting go of craving, and for the deepening and strengthening and widening of equanimity in one's life, in relation to the most difficult elements that can be faced or experienced. I'll maybe say some more about that, but just the point right now is: this fourth possibly skilful mode of sense contact, we can move in and out of. We can move between, and we do. A developed, mature practitioner will move between these skilful modes of sense contact. But this fourth one, this sensing with soul, different than the others. And it, too, involves some degree less fabrication, but still preserves fabrication. It involves less clinging, craving, but more eros. And it brings equanimity, as should the second and the third.
A second point, perhaps -- again, if we're kind of contextualizing this idea of sensing with soul -- is to point out that sensing with soul, sensing with soulfulness, must include, at least implicitly, sensing with mindfulness. Now, people use the word 'mindfulness' in quite broad ways, and emphasize different aspects of it, or tend to -- different kind of schools and ways that it's taught. But sensing with soul must include, at least implicitly, sensing with mindfulness -- which includes, then, to me, the qualities of presence, wakefulness, careful attention. These are central to what we mean by 'mindfulness,' of course. And there's no sensing with soul without presence, wakefulness, and careful attention. Sensing with soul includes, because it also includes sensing with mindfulness, it includes, similarly, the qualities of sensitivity and responsiveness. So sensitivity and also the capacity to modulate our kind of mindfulness, or where we direct the attention, or how we basically respond. That's part of mindfulness, at least in the way some people would teach it. It's not just a blanket, one gear, passive mode of attention, mindfulness.
Mindfulness also includes 'appropriate attention' (that's a translation of the Pali yoniso manasikāra), which is a funny phrase that sometimes people emphasize, and sometimes people don't at all, but it's linked with mindfulness, and the Buddha placed a lot of emphasis on it. It's a very important concept for him. I would translate it as something like 'minding or knowing or even thinking by way of the matrix, or by way of the womb' (*yoni, 'womb,' '*matrix,' something like that), which implies that involved in the whole way we're paying mindfulness, and involved in the intention of mindfulness, is an interest in exploring and investigating and an attention to the dependent origination of what arises and what passes.
In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, when he says, "Attending to the arising factors, attending to the dissolution factors,"[2] some people just translate that meaning "noticing arising and passing" -- in other words, noticing impermanence. But the Pali word that goes with it is samudaya, which is the same word used in the arising of suffering, and the arising in 'dependent arising.' So in its broader sense, I would tend to emphasize that that's what 'appropriate attention' means or includes, is this kind of awareness of the dependent origination of what is arising and what is passing.
Similarly, when we're sensing with soul, we're attuning to, interested in, the dependent origination of what is happening. As I pointed out, sensing with soul is not just a kind of passive receiving in a fixed mode. It's agile, responsive, flexible, and aware of and interested in the dependent arising, like if I trust a bit more, then the image opens up more. If I dwell with my sense of humility or whatever it is, then the thing becomes more imaginal. As it becomes more imaginal, I see that the self becomes image. All this is the dependent arising of the imaginal perception, the dependent arising of what is sensed with soul. For some people, that is an important part. That 'appropriate attention,' as it's sometimes translated, yoniso manasikāra, is an important part of what mindfulness means, and likewise, an important part of what sensing with soul involves.
The third of the qualities of mindfulness that we can just highlight right now of sensing with mindfulness, that is also implicit in sensing with soulfulness, is reverence, which we've touched on before. Again, to point out: mindfulness is nowadays taught in different settings, with different intentions, with different slants, with different contexts of the cosmology and all kinds of business. But many people, in teaching mindfulness, very beautifully emphasize that mindfulness involves a kind of reverence. It's included either explicitly -- maybe not that word, exactly -- or just implied as an aspect of mindfulness in many contemporary mindfulness teachings.
Reverence for what, though? So sometimes -- again, it might be implicit or explicit -- reverence for this moment. Sometimes that's what's communicated. Reverence for Life, with a big 'L.' Reverence for 'what is.' These are all either explicit or implicit communications that go along with the different ways mindfulness is presented. Still, that's different. Those kind of reverences, or objects of reverence, if you like, are still different than a reverence for soul, with all the open-ended creation and discovery that is implied and involved in the word 'soul,' and a reverence, implicitly then in the reverence for soul, implicitly the possibility for the possibility that this experience, this experience of the self, me, this object experienced -- e.g. this matter -- that is also soul. When there's a reverence for soul, there's an implicit possibility that all that, too, can be included as soul. It is soul, or can be ensouled, if you like, can come to be sensed as soul.
So in the sensing with soul, the reverence is really for soul, which may be quite a different -- that may not be in the circumscription of certain mindfulness teachings, or it may be more the reverence is sometimes for nature, or this moment, or Life, or 'what is,' or whatever it is. Reverence for soul that's included in sensing with soul is broader, more far-reaching, more multidimensional, as we've explained. But anyway, reverence as an aspect of mindfulness, and because sensing with soul includes, at least implicitly, sensing with mindfulness, reverence is there. There are overlaps.
Mindfulness, again, depending on how it's taught, etc., basically mindfulness includes -- implicitly, at least, and usually explicitly -- discernment regarding what leads to suffering and what leads to a decrease in suffering, because mindfulness, the teaching of mindfulness, is actually embedded in Buddhadharma and the centrality of the Four Noble Truths, which concern themselves absolutely fundamentally with what leads to suffering, what leads to locking suffering into place, what leads to increasing suffering, and what leads to freeing from suffering, decreasing suffering. Sensing with soul also involves a discernment along these lines. It involves discernment generally, as we were talking -- all kinds of discernments. But also discernment between eros and craving. Here, again, it's like the kinds of movements of desire that not just lead to more suffering or less suffering, but also soulmaking or not soulmaking, and discerning between imaginal perceptions that are more going in the direction of papañca, and ones that are more along the spectrum towards the imaginal, and discerning between concepts and logoi that nourish and open and support soulmaking, and those that imprison soulmaking, and also imprison the being, and those that don't. So discernment is actually a factor of mindfulness, and likewise, it's present in sensing with soul. I would say the range of discernment is broader in the sensing with soul as well.
Last, just to point out, to repeat -- I've already said it, but -- sensing with soul involves play. Play is an element in the sense of the permission and the capacity for flexibility, fluidity, experimenting, trying things out, curious responsiveness and experimentation. So play, as I would understand it, needs to be part of the image and the idea, the logos, of practice, of my path, and of my goal. Actually, liberation, awakening, enlightenment, one of the things that means is a liberation, a freeing up of the flexibility of ways of looking, ways of relating, ways of being. That's what's liberated. That's what's opened. It's one of the most significant features, for me, of what liberation might mean, awakening might mean. So the image of playfulness, and the idea, the notion, the logos of playfulness, needs to be part of the image and idea I have of practice, of path, of goal. Sensing with soul needs that, too, as we've pointed out before.
All right, let's stop there.
