Transcription
Somewhere in the last couple of parts of this talk, and certainly in a lot more detail before that, elsewhere, in other talks and writings and courses, I've explained how a practitioner might sort of cotton on, at some point, hear about, or realize a little bit, cotton on to this idea of fabrication, the fabrication of dukkha, the fabrication of the self-sense, or of some perception of issue, whatever. And they might get interested in seeing -- having seen that things are fabricated through the way of relating, through the way of looking, might get interested in these two concepts, two related concepts: fabrication and ways of looking. And might decide to keep open that question: "Well, I can see this is fabricated (for instance, like papañca). What else is fabricated? Or what is not fabricated?" And might just pursue that question with the tool of ways of looking, and developing the skills and arts involved in different ways of looking, with different degrees, depths, subtleties, and kinds of clinging involved, and pursue this double question of fabrication and ways of looking in practice -- in practice, not just as some kind of abstract intellectual idea. A practitioner might get hold of this and kind of run with it in practice.
And that's what I have referred to elsewhere as what I call the 'phenomenological approach' -- in other words, dealing, meeting one's experience, and just bringing these concepts to bear (fabrication and ways of looking), and seeing what we can learn about experience, about fabrication of experience and ways of looking through exploring them, through playing and experimenting with that. And again, elsewhere, in quite a lot of detail, and just briefly somewhere in the last couple of parts of this talk, we said that if a person does that, if a practitioner does that in practice, explores fabrication and ways of looking -- this question, this probing of fabrication with ways of looking -- then a possible trajectory will kind of almost inevitably arise out of that: a trajectory of, we could say, developing insights that we could conceive of as forming a kind of central strand for a notion of awakening, or one of the notions of awakening, or part of a notion of awakening I'm sort of offering as a possibility, part of a notion, a direction that unfolds.
And so there'll be this deepening, if you like, developing of insights, so including the insights into the fabrication of the personality, and the perspectives of not identifying with one's personality at times. And then we ran through a brief list. For example, one would experience and understand the perspective that the self is just a process of the psychophysical aggregates. And one would move beyond that, in time, eventually, with the ripening of things, into experiences and views of universal oneness, and the self being part of that oneness, and all things being part of different onenesses at different levels, if you like -- of love, of awareness, of nothingness, of all kinds of things. And pursuing this kind of non-fabricating direction even more, one would eventually open to the Unfabricated, the Deathless, and understand with that the thorough and complete and radical emptiness of all dharmas, all phenomena, without exception. And then realizing, based on that, that any and all self-views should not be clung to, cannot really be clung to as any kind of final position, at least, because one knows the emptiness of all phenomena, all the elements that might possibly make up or be a foundation for any self.
And then eventually, one sees that fabrication itself is empty, as I said, and that kind of relativizes, if you like, the whole sense of the Unfabricated, so that there's a non-duality, a non-elevation of the Unfabricated over the fabricated (the 'beyond' over 'this world,' so to speak), and the holiness is then everywhere. And pursuing it even more, one begins to open up to the realization that all conceptions and conceptual frameworks are, in a sense, empty, and they're not finally true. They don't reflect or summarize or articulate a final truth, an ultimate viewpoint on how a thing is, how the things are, etc. And through that, actually, an even deeper sense of participation in the cosmos, participation in perception, participation also in truth, and even in the notion of what awakening is. So we kind of roughly outlined all that.
And we also said that that kind of possible trajectory perhaps is a pretty good solution, or one pretty good solution, to the kind of pieces of the jigsaw that we find in the Pali Canon -- fitting the Buddha saying this and the Buddha saying that, and how does it all fit together -- together with some elaborations of what the Buddha said that are found in Mahāyāna texts, that go back to the Pali Canon, but that the Buddha didn't really pick up on and elaborate there (for instance, in the Kaccāyana Sutta and stuff like that). Now, I said that, and I've kind of outlined it again. It may or may not be attractive to you. Is it? Don't know what you hear there. I tried to say it quite neutrally. But is that attractive -- that sort of journey, that sort of unfolding, all that's involved in that?
And again, this question: well, why, if it's not attractive? Why? What's going on for you? If it is attractive, what's going on for you? And again, what is it that you want? What do you want? So all those questions I threw out in the first part of this talk are very much connected. They interweave all the way through this question, "What is awakening?", and this discussion of awakening.
Now actually, 'trajectory' -- it's the word I've been using -- is not quite the right word there, because it implies, or it seems to imply a kind of linearity and movement from here to there, along a certain line. And my experience as a teacher is that things are not always linear, even with that group of insights that I just kind of enumerated there very briefly. The movement of realization, the movement of the opening up of experience and understanding there is not always linear. Yes, the sort of latter end of that list that I just ran through, we could say that those are deeper insights. They're, generally speaking, harder to understand, to open to, to realize, to experience. They're more comprehensive. They take in more. They're more inclusive. For example, the experience of the Unfabricated in a way that's dualistic with the fabricated, and not yet moved to a level of non-duality, doesn't take in the holiness of the fabricated, doesn't include that. So the latter end of that list, as I said, is more inclusive, more comprehensive, more fundamental in some kind of sense. Yet, my experience (both for myself, and working as a teacher) is that the intuition, the intuitive wisdom can make all kinds of leaps that, at any point in practice, or in one's life of practice, that kind of make a bit of a mockery out of any linear map there, so that 'trajectory' isn't quite the right word. [9:55]
Now, add in, if you like, or at some point, whether it's right near the beginning of someone's practice along this trajectory of exploring fabrication and ways of looking, or whether they've gone through that whole trajectory, and then they start hearing about soulmaking and the erotic-imaginal. But add in, at some point, or weave in -- perhaps better -- weave into that trajectory or set of insights that I described there, weave in, add in the whole paradigm and whole exploration of what we're calling the soulmaking paradigm or the erotic-imaginal, exploration of the erotic-imaginal, which, in itself, is not linear at all. There's no real linearity. Well, perhaps there's a little bit of linearity. But generally speaking, it moves in a lot of possible different directions there, and it's not really so much of a linear movement, as I alluded to earlier. But start to weave that in with the other trajectory regarding fabrication and ways of looking and emptiness and all that, and the whole thing becomes really not so linear. So the trajectory is not necessarily ... or at least a 'universal,' 'universally common trajectory,' perhaps is not really adequate as a label.
But this question, what you want. I don't know. With the soulmaking side of things, and the erotic-imaginal side of things, perhaps that 'what you want,' or the desire operating, must be authentic, because the eros and the desire is integral to the movement of soulmaking. It's indispensable. It's fundamentally wrapped up in the movement of soulmaking, in the erotic-imaginal. No eros or desire, or very little eros and desire, means very little soulmaking. So the question of "What do you really want?", the authenticity there, oftentimes, when we can speak kind of more purely of soulmaking, it's kind of inevitable there.
Remember, too (just as a sort of footnote here), that the paradigm of soulmaking includes eros with images, or in relation to images, and also eros without images, without the imaginal. I've elaborated this in -- I think it was the Eros Unfettered talks. So eros without the imaginal, or without images, means that eros for the Unfabricated, or for the realization and the opening to those realms that are less fabricated, that have less to do with image and perception in general, and that whole spectrum. But eventually, that movement -- that eros for the Unfabricated, or eros in the direction of unfabricating along all that spectrum of onenesses, etc., jhānas, and all that -- eventually, with its maturity, as we mentioned, there's the realization of the emptiness of all things, and the non-duality there between what is fabricated and what isn't, and different degrees of fabrication. And then this opens up the legitimization and the kind of possibility to fabricate skilfully and fabricate in a way that includes images. So there is eros that doesn't include images, but if I go deeply enough into that, it kind of delivers me a legitimization and a platform from which to explore fabrication with images, and the eros with that. And then there's also eros with images, the erotic-imaginal, and that directly involves itself in the participation of fabricating images, and participates in the fabrication of images with the erotic-imaginal, with eros that is in relation to images.
But when we include the soulmaking, when we include the erotic-imaginal, I should say, when we include sensing with soul, this will open up the whole sense of awakening, and the whole sense of path, much wider than that trajectory that I outlined in the last couple of parts of the talk and briefly at the beginning. Sensing with soul opens out the whole sense of what awakening is, and can be, and the whole sense of the path opens much wider. And in so doing, if you like, in this opening, it will push on the influences of however we have conceived of or imagined the tradition, and what the tradition says about awakening, or what we have conceived of or imagined the tradition says about awakening. This soulmaking movement, this expansion of the soulmaking dynamic, will push on the unquestioned images that we have of awakening, the fixated images, the rigid images. The sensing with soul, the erotic-imaginal, that aspect of the soulmaking dynamic will really push on that.
So some of the way this happens is -- what should we say? -- it happens in small ways and in large ways. For example, we might have -- and it would be very understandable, and I think a lot of people do have a kind of fixated fantasy or idea (by 'fixated' fantasy, I mean not one that's rich in soulfulness and eros, and has got that kind of rigidity to it, and clinging to it) -- the fixated fantasy or image or idea regarding awakening, that it kind of happens in a sudden moment. So one of the places we get that is from the myth of the Buddha, who sat up all night, made strong vows, sat up all night in meditation. And just as the morning star was appearing, that was the moment, and everything permanently changed in that moment, at that moment. "Done is what had to be done." Done was what had to be done. And there was, in this assumption, this idea, in this image, happens very suddenly: all done, everything is permanently changed. And there is also the freedom and the liberation that ensue, that open up, are pervasive. They're total, and they reach to every part of the practitioner's life.
Now, that makes a good story, doesn't it? The suddenness of it, and the kind of black-and-whiteness of it. It's sudden. It's very dramatic. But again, I'd just like to question that. Is it a true fact, or is it a kind of myth (in the poor sense of the word)? Oftentimes, there are many people you can meet who will share similar accounts -- not necessarily with that degree of effort involved, and oftentimes, they emphasize the exact absence of effort. But for myself -- you'll have to find out for yourself, but sometimes I meet these people, or listen to them, or read their accounts, look at, hang out with, hear about the resultant awakenings, and sometimes it's really not that impressive. Oftentimes it's not that impressive, what happens when there's that kind of story of sudden and then assumed pervasive liberation, and deep, etc. The awakening often doesn't seem that deep. It's not also that pervasive. The insights are not so deep, nor are they pervasive, and nor the freedom.
So I would call that a small way. It's a small point. But there are bigger and, I think, more important ways in which the opening up to the sensing with soul, the imaginal perception, will push on the whole notion and the whole image and fantasy of awakening, and what's involved in it. So this is very interesting to me, but I have observed that certain areas or kinds of freedom, if you like, areas or kinds of freedom, of liberation, may open at different times for a practitioner, and not by, for example, realization of the Unfabricated, or emptiness, or the so-called eradication of greed, aversion, and delusion. Certain areas, certain kinds are not going to be opened by those traditional means or those traditional ideas. So for example, can we even talk about sexual freedom? What is that? What does that mean? What even happens? What do you notice inside when you just hear that? What does it mean? What is that?
So I want to say very clearly right now that I do not mean, by the notion of 'sexual freedom,' I do not mean acting in any way that is not respectful of another human being, or in any way that is unkind. That's not sexual freedom. Whatever that might mean -- 'sexual freedom,' or 'freeing' might be a better way of putting it -- it doesn't mean that lack of kindness, lack of respect in sexual relations, lack of attunement; you know, grossly misattuned to what's going on there, what the other person wants or needs, or what you want or need. So for both oneself and whoever one is being sexual with, there needs to be kindness, respect, attunement, and it needs to be consensual. These are just like -- there's no question about this. Whatever sexual freedom or freeing means, it doesn't go against that. It doesn't cross those lines. And whatever you hear me say, or have heard me say, or perhaps another teacher, around exploring eros, and sexual images, and sexual eros, and all that, it never contravenes that in practice. [22:16]
And also, sexual freedom -- again, whatever it might mean -- to me, it doesn't mean that we necessarily have to open to what someone else or some sub-group considers 'more free,' or 'better,' or what we are feeling pressured by some 'should' or some fashion around sexuality, or orientation, or self-identification, or whatever. Or, "Morality is like this." "No, it's like this," or whatever. You decide if something's not okay for you. You decide if it's okay, and if it's interested, not pushed around by sub-cultures and the kind of rhetoric that can happen there. So that's just an aside, but I consider it so, so important, and just in case there's even the slightest misunderstanding in what we're saying here.
But the main point here that I was trying to convey is, certain areas and kinds of freedom may not be opened up through realizing the Unfabricated, realizing emptiness, eradicating greed, aversion, delusion. What's that going to do in regard to my sexual freedom? Again, whatever that means. I mean, do you really think, is there any evidence, does it seem that the spiritual teachers who claim awakening, that their liberation really extends fully to their sexuality? Fully? I mean, they might just choose celibacy and keep to that, but that's not quite the same thing as sexual freedom, in the sense of a more open possibility of what that might mean.
Or, not just sexuality: what about the area of intellect and ideas? You think that's going to open just because one has realized the Unfabricated or the 'eradication' (so-called) of greed, aversion, delusion? What does it mean to be 'free'? What is a freeing in relationship to the intellect and ideas? What is a freeing in relationship to creative expression? What is the liberation of personae, as masks of God? So what kinds and what areas and directions of liberation, of opening, of freeing are possible to us? And how do they arise? And if I'm locked into too narrow a view of what liberation delivers, and also what is the path to what liberation -- "I expect this kind of path to bring that kind of liberation" -- is that realistic?
But it may be, though, that imaginal practice, and practice with particular images, leads to all kinds of very specific liberations with regard to whatever that image or imaginal figure -- what they embody in a certain area. I sometimes meet people, and they're practising, you know, fairly diligently and kind of steadily over some years, and maybe have done some therapy, and found that useful, and it's an important part of their process. And they're practising, trying to deepen their emptiness and their inquiry into fabrication, etc. But there are areas that none of that has reached -- not the psychotherapy, in whatever traditional forms and attitudes, and not the emptiness practice. So a person -- very sort of balanced, sane person -- the courage to stand up publicly, and stand behind one's deepest convictions and passions, has not been liberated. The courage to do so even at the risk of upsetting someone, of being disadvantaged, perhaps, in terms of one's career, or maybe "People want to see me as a nice guy," or "I'll piss someone off," or "I won't be a good boy," or whatever it is.
More than the emptiness, more than even many kinds of therapy, more than all that, it might be that working imaginally, in the full way that we've been talking about it, images that involve such courage, such expressions, etc., that are really not being opened up through years of this kind of steady practice in certain directions -- it may be that images involving those kinds of things (and they have to be arrived at in all the ways we talked about, and emerge in all the ways we talked about), but it may be that that might open up areas and directions of freedom, prisons that don't even feel like a prison. One's not even really realizing the lack of liberation there. But the imaginal practice may open up those, where the other practices won't.
So it's easy to find a spiritual or certainly a Buddhist basis to simply ignore those areas that I alluded to, and those kinds of freedoms -- not to be free in those areas, with ideas, with sexuality, with creative expression, with the liberation of personae -- but to be free, rather, from sexuality, from desire, from, let's say, active engagement, from intellectual questioning and expansion, because we can always find a teaching that says, "Sexuality is just greed. Activism is not equanimous and peaceful. It's not undisturbed." It doesn't fit the image, the archetype. I've been into this in different talks previously.
And intellectuality. We can always find a kind of rationale that says, "Intellectuality is just conceptualizing. That's just conceptualizing, and we want non-conceptuality. Or we want something called 'just being' or 'being simple,'" or whatever it is. So there's the possibility, through the erotic-imaginal, of opening up wider areas and different kinds of liberation, awakening, freedom, and awakening and liberating different, a whole other range, or greater range, of images and archetypes, of breaking the lock of certain fixated images, or a narrow range of archetypes that we might be unwittingly operating under.
So that's part of what's involved in this larger and, I think, richer and more multidimensional kind of possibility of path and vision of awakening, that the very images of awakening, and the areas of awakening open up, can be opened up. Now, again, I've been into it in a lot of detail on other retreats, but we said, when the soulmaking process gets going, the soulmaking dynamic, it involves the mutual feeding, inseminating, widening, deepening, complicating, enriching, stretching of eros, psyche, and logos. They feed into each other, and kind of create and discover more of each other. The whole thing expands. We've explained that many times over the last few years. The soulmaking dynamic is liberated. In other words, rather than being stuck in one particular circumference or range or way of relating, the soulmaking dynamic, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic is liberated. Eros, psyche, and logos are liberated to some extent in that soulmaking dynamic. That's kind of another way of saying what's going on in soulmaking. Eros, psyche, and logos. And as well as images getting pushed on, as we talked about just now, the logos, ideas, will also get pushed on.
And more than just get pushed on. Ideas, logos, as one of the elements of soulmaking, is exactly that: it's an element of soulmaking. It's involved. It's worked. It's stretched. It's relied on. A vision of soulmaking, awakening, and path must involve logos, must involve concept, must involve idea as something creative, fertile, active, experimental, so that the exploration of and the experimenting with ideas, and with conceptual frameworks, different ideas, different conceptual frameworks, exploring them, experimenting with them in practice, so that they inform ways of looking, and thus open up different perceptions and experiences. And that feeds the whole process. But that whole involvement and inclusion of ideas deliberately, and conceptual exploration, and conceptual flexibility is, in our definition, part of the very soulmaking dynamic, part of what is liberated, and part of what moves in the direction of awakening.
We borrow, discover, create ideas and conceptual frameworks. And then in the practice, in the soulmaking that happens in practice, those ideas get stretched, or they break. And then we forge, discover, borrow, create new ideas -- perhaps built on those old ones, perhaps different, whatever -- ideas and conceptual frameworks, and all of that, and that whole process is included in awakening. And 'awakening' -- notice this -- is a verb form. Well, it can be used as a verbal noun, but it's actually also a present participle: awakening. It's something that is happening, ongoing: awakening, this open-endedness that I referred to.
So sometimes, for different reasons (and I've talked about this before), there's a real kind of shunning of the conceptual, and not really an inclusion, or an embracing, or a willingness to play with and experiment with ideas and conceptual frameworks. And that hesitation, or a suspicion or refusal, comes from a lot of different directions. Some of it, you know, basically, kind of teachings of non-conceptuality, as we mentioned just a few moments ago, as being kind of a 'more spiritual' direction of spirituality or whatever. Other hesitations come more from modernist Western philosophy, which is really suspicious of any kind of metaphysical systems, metaphysics in general, or conceptual frameworks in particular. [35:32] Even just, you know, building an edifice of concepts, or a system, or whatever. Quite popular in the last, I don't know, let's say hundred years, is this suspicion of systems and conceptual frameworks.
And it goes with postmodernism, I think, at its less well-considered sort of depth, oftentimes because people think that if you have a conceptual framework, if you have a system, you must be claiming that as an ultimate truth. You must be claiming that as a kind of all-encompassing, final take on what reality is. And that's not the way we're using that. That's not the way that this soulmaking dynamic engages. It's not the relationship it has with concepts, conceptual frameworks, and ideas.
So a philosopher called Richard Bernstein was writing, and he talked about several other philosophers, and one guy called Jürgen Habermas, twentieth century philosopher. I think he's still alive. And he's talking about some other guys, like Heidegger, and Adorno, and Derrida, and pointing at these guys, and saying, "They [all these people] defend themselves as if they were living in the shadow of the 'last' philosopher." This is Habermas talking about Derrida and Heidegger and Adorno, who were kind of, well, adopted by postmodern thinkers; let's put it that way. Habermas continues, "They are still battling against the 'strong' concepts of theory, truth, and system," by which he means what I just said, as if "This is the truth." So to say X or Y, "This is my theory," or "This is the conceptual framework," or "This is the system," a 'strong' concept of that means that one pushes it forward as all-encompassing, ultimate, reflection of reality.
They are still battling against the 'strong' concepts of theory, truth, and system that have actually belonged to the past for over a century and a half.... They believe they have to tear philosophy away from the madness of expounding a theory that has the last word.[1]
And this guy, Bernstein, continues:
Their failure, according to Habermas, is not to realize and fully appreciate that the "fallibilist consciousness of the sciences caught up with philosophy too, a long time ago."[2]
What he means by the 'fallibilist consciousness,' 'fallibilist' means 'fallible,' 'to make a mistake.' According to Habermas, we realize, science has this idea that you sort of tentatively put forward a theory, and if it matches the experimental results, great. But you never claim it as a final truth in that philosophy of science, and you realize that it's fallible. Someone might do an experiment, or some experimental result might show up at any point, and that proves your theory is not quite right. So that's the "fallibilist consciousness of the sciences," and according to Habermas, that caught up with philosophy a long time ago. So what you get in some strands of philosophy is this idea of, all they want to do is tear things down, tear down systems, tear down ideas, tear down truth claims, tear down theories, tear down conceptual frameworks. Deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct. And Bernstein's making the point, and this is where I would have made the point, and really agree:
Deconstruction [he writes] is not sufficient; it must be complemented by reconstruction.
I'll come back to that in a second. Just a word more about this business of "fallibilist consciousness of the sciences." That reflects another philosopher called Karl Popper. That was his theory of philosophy of science, is that it tentatively puts forward a theory which approaches the truth. Theories approach the truth incrementally, and they get proved wrong, and then another theory replaces that. But you're approaching something called 'the truth.' So it's quite a realist philosophy. It says something: "Well, we may not know whether this theory that we have now is completely true, because it can always be proven wrong by some as-yet-undiscovered experimental result. But there is something called 'truth,' and we can approach it." And so there's a kind of realism there, and Habermas is kind of a realist. And that's a different idea, a different notion than, say, a participatory notion of truth, more based on the deep notion of emptiness and ways of looking, as I've talked about.
That's just a side point. Let's come back to this thing, this business about "deconstruction is not sufficient." Any deconstruction we do must be eventually followed by reconstruction, reconstructions. So that's what's happening, both in the trajectory of emptiness, exploration of fabrication, and ways of looking that I outlined: one deconstructs, less and less fabrication. One learns how to do that. And eventually, having reached the Unfabricated, then seeing the emptiness of fabrication, because time is empty, and what is fabricated is empty, and the elements of fabrication. Then that opens up this non-duality, as I mentioned, between the Unfabricated and the fabricated. And it legitimizes and sacralizes fabrication itself. There's no duality. The Unfabricated is not better than the fabricated in any way. It's not more holy, etc. It's not even more real. And so that legitimizes, opens the door, opens the gate to the possibility of skilful fabrication, and part of that can be soulmaking fabrication.
So on the trajectory of the deepening exploration of emptiness, fabrication, ways of looking, and also in the practices of sensing with soul, which include the kind of, as I said, flexible, temporary adoption, entertainment, trying out, playing with, experimenting with, constructing, and then brushing aside or adopting of conceptual frameworks, then brushing them aside, adopting another one, deconstructing them, reconstructing something different -- logoi, ideas, conceptual frameworks. So both in the kind of emptiness trajectory, and in the sensing with soul practices, there's this indispensable element that involves deconstruction and reconstruction, many times, and endlessly variable, the possibility of endless variations there. [43:31]
I'll just linger with this business about conceptuality, because I think it's so important, and so subtle, in fact, as well. Sometimes, occasionally, what happens, I have encountered a student occasionally who is practising with emptiness, and practising quite creatively with emptiness, and deeply, and sees, glimpses the non-truth of all concepts, as I said earlier, in different ways, but then after that, picks up on teachers -- for instance, translations of ancient Zen teachers from centuries ago -- who seem to be saying, "Drop concepts," or "Just sit quietly and do nothing," or "Just be simple," or that kind of thing. And this person, who has actually glimpsed the non-truth of concepts through practising with fabrication and ways of looking, and really contemplating conceptuality and perceptuality, doesn't realize, then tries to adopt this, or believes that it issues -- this kind of realization of the non-truth of all concepts realizes in or issues in this teaching of "Drop concepts. Just be simple. Just sit quietly," and doesn't realize that is a concept. It's not just a concept; it's also a psychological style. It's one style of soul, one kind of archetype. It's the archetype of 'the simple man,' if you like, or 'the natural man' or whatever.
So to settle or fall back into that without realizing that conceptuality is actually operating and supporting such a stance, and without recognizing the pull, that there's a pull there of an archetypal image or a fantasy -- that's not liberation. There's not a liberation. One's still caught. One's seen something deeply. One's still caught (A) in subtle conceptuality that's operating there, and (B) in a kind of predilection, or a singularity of a certain archetypal image. So it's like walking into a prison cell, and just because it's got, you know, perhaps centuries ago, an old, now long-dead inmate hung a sign over the door a long time ago, and it says, "Liberation, nirvāṇa, and freedom," and you walk into that cell and sit there, shut the door, and just because of the sign, one believes it. And actually, one's in a prison, both in terms of soul, because of the limited archetype, but also in terms of not realizing the subtle conceptuality that's involved.
So when we talk about the sense of what awakening might be in a soulmaking paradigm, it includes, as I said, this deconstruction, reconstruction, involvement, experimentation, fracturing, breaking open, stretching, forging ideas and conceptual frameworks. So there isn't this stasis to it, and it doesn't get stuck with a certain conceptual range or conceptual idea. Or if it does, that's only temporary, because the soulmaking will keep, at some point, pushing and breaking whatever vessels, pushing on and breaking whatever vessels. So do you remember -- and I can't now remember which talk it was in this series, but I quoted Carl Jung, and he was talking about the Scientific Revolution, around the time of the Renaissance and the Western Enlightenment. And he pointed out this "newly-won rational and intellectual stability of the human mind" that came with the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, it managed to hold on against the kind of older ways of thinking of the Middle Ages and medieval thought. And it managed to hold on and "penetrate further into the depths of nature," further than earlier ages had even considered possible.
And then he writes, if you remember:
The more successful the penetration and advance of the new scientific spirit proved to be, the more the latter [the more that scientific spirit] -- as is usually the case with the victor -- became the prisoner of the world it had conquered.[3]
In other words, that whole brilliant opening that happened around the time of the Scientific Revolution and the Western Enlightenment in Europe -- that whole brilliant opening, the conceptual framework that crystallized with that, over time, over some hundreds of years, developed, and also became a prison, became hardened. And as Jung put it, "the victor" -- that conceptual framework, it won out over the medieval ways of thinking, it was a victor, but then it became the prisoner of the world it conquered. It became the prisoner of its own system.
And the soulmaking paradigm of awakening would, in a way, if it's working, soulmaking would not allow that. Inevitably, in the vortex and the movement and the expansion, the widening and deepening of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic (which is what soulmaking involves), that cannot happen. As I said, it would break out of any conceptual framework, break out of any rigidified structure of conceptuality, and also of image. [50:38]
So very easily for us, awakening or liberation, nirvāṇa, enlightenment, whatever, can become what Henry Corbin calls an 'idol,' in distinction to an 'icon.' An idol is something that is taken to be real and has a kind of limit to it. I'm trying to explain what I mean. Sometimes, a couple of people in the past have said, "You're such an iconoclast, Rob." I'm not sure that I am. But I think what I'm interested in here is more smashing idols, or kind of exposing what we might call idols and idolatry. And along with that kind of deconstruction, creating icons. So the difference between icon and idol -- I'm borrowing this distinction from Henry Corbin, I'm pretty sure, and also from another French theologian/philosopher called Jean-Luc Marion. The icon possesses infinite depth, because it's imaginal. So, might be a form there, but remember the elastic, soft edges being one aspect of the imaginal? The imaginal form might be really vivid as a sensible form, as an aesthetic form, really vivid and sharply defined, but the being of it has soft and elastic edges.
And it has this capacity: through the soulmaking, through the erotic relationship with it, it will be perceived with more and more depth. More and more dimensionality will be perceived as a part of it, as an aspect of it. It will open up a sense of itself having more dimensionality, more depth, more possibility, more divinity. Soulmaking is possible in relation to an icon, but when soulmaking gets hold of an idol (something rigidly, solidly defined, and believed in as real, with tight, rigid boundaries, not soft, not elastic), then the soulmaking will make those boundaries of the idol elastic and soft, or smash it, and expand it, or replace it, or whatever, until we have an icon. Soulmaking needs icon, not idol. And there won't be an end to that. So an icon is something with this kind of potentially endless possibility of dimensionality, and divinity, and depth, soulmaking potential.
So in questioning kind of typical ideas of awakening that have actually become what we could call, in that language, 'idols' -- solid, unmoving, rigidly and tightly boundaried, fixed and limited forms and depths -- in questioning in that way, and opening up instead new possible visions or ideas of awakening, where awakening is not limited either by an endpoint or in terms of direction, that whole process converts idol into icon. Soulmaking has gotten hold of the notion of awakening, and creates/discovers its own meanings of what awakening is and involves. It stretches whatever original concept, image, idol we might have started with.
So with an icon, as I said, it's not limited. Its being isn't limited in that way, because of these soft, elastic edges. Eros in relation, soul in relation to an icon, discovers/creates more and more dimensions and depths. And in that way, eros doesn't collapse then. It doesn't run out of space, of 'beyond' to long for, to move into, to create/discover. Eros in relationship to awakening doesn't collapse, because it has an infinity of possibility in which to move, infinity of possibility for the expansion of psyche and logos.
So the title of the talk is "What is Awakening?" And we could hear in "What is Awakening?", "What is awakening?", as in "What awakens or who awakens?" If we answer, "What awakens? What is awakening? Who awakens?", if we answer, "It's soul. It's soulmaking that awakens. That is what is awakening. That is, if you like, the subject of awakening. That is who is awakening. It's the soul and soulmaking," then that implies, in our very definition, that there are these infinite possibilities that come with the soulmaking dynamic, with the involvement, fertilization, insemination, widening, deepening, expansion, all that, of the eros-psyche-logos, of eros, psyche, and logos. And that means, that implies this open-endedness. Same thing.
Important note in relation that: when we say 'infinite,' there can be an infinity of possibilities, an infinity of potential, and even an infinity of actualizations. But 'infinite' doesn't mean 'all possibilities' or 'every possibility.' So this doesn't mean that awakening means 'everything,' means every possibility gets actualized, or is even a potential direction. For example -- I mean, if you imagine, if that's a hard concept, imagine, let's say, a circle which is like the face of a clock or a watch. And you could say these directions -- the twelve o'clock, the three o'clock, the six o'clock, and the nine o'clock directions on the face of the clock -- they are not directions that soulmaking, awakening will pursue. It just won't pursue those directions. That won't happen in the possibility of soulmaking. That still leaves an infinity of other directions, just on that circle, because you can divide up the areas that remain, say, between the twelve o'clock and the three o'clock, or the three and the six, and the six and the nine, the nine and the twelve. You can divide up those areas infinitely. Yeah? So 'infinite possibilities of direction' doesn't mean all and every direction will be viable or is open as a direction of soulmaking.
Sometimes, when this question is put, "What is awakening?", one can hear that in two ways. So as I just kind of alluded to: "What is awakening?" The question can be heard in two ways: "What is awakening? What does that concept mean?" And we've talked about that a lot, and the possibilities there. But as I said, it can be heard in a second way: "What is awakening?" Or "What awakens?" Or "Who awakens? Who is awakening?" Regarding the question when it's heard that way, one could give, or there are certain answers to the question that way that are quite popular in kind of -- I don't know -- neo-Advaita circles or whatever. And the answer given is, "Who awakens, or what awakens? No one." The answer is, "No one awakens," or "Awakening is awakening," or "The universe is awakening." So answering that question, "What is awakening?", or "What awakens?", answering it in that kind of way helps take some of the restriction, imprisonment, weight, or burden out of a desire for awakening when it's coming out of ego, when it's for the sake of ego or self-measurement, or in reaction to the inner critic, or this desire for awakening is trying to 'prove myself' to myself, or to the inner critic, or to my parent or parents, or my teacher or teachers, or to the world. We touched on this. So this notion, "No one awakens," it does have a certain unburdening effect, so it can be useful.
But there's something about such an answer that, in insisting on a kind of non-definition, or a nebulous, vague kind of openness, that kind of answer, those kind of attitudes or conceptions -- and there is a conception involved there, or conceptions involved -- those kind of stances, they might be forming their own strange kinds of prison in that very non-definition or vagueness. Why? Because there's not much fertility or movement possible within that view. There's something about the vagueness that doesn't allow me to actually posit and work with different concepts within that, or answers to that question, and work with different conceptual delineations, etc., perspectives, concepts, ideas.
So if you contrast this, "What awakens? Who awakens? No one. No one awakens," if you contrast that with, for example, the conceptual framework we're trying to encourage, that is a conceptual framework that itself allows, encourages, and actually expects soul, in the process, to notice, to discover and create ever more delineations, concepts, and perspectives, create and discover all that, in time, regarding what awakening is, and regarding who or what is awakening.
Do you understand the difference? In this paradigm, none of those delineations, concepts, perspectives regarding "what awakening is" or "who or what is awakening, who or what awakens," none of them are clung to as truths or reflections of reality. But nevertheless, they can be entertained and lived and practised with, and they can bring, therefore, all kinds of fruits and results and openings, none of them being regarded as final. So like we said when we talked about "What is soul?", if I say "sensing with soul," okay, well, that begs the question, "What is soul?" Remember that? We said, we can say something about what soul is, but we want it, again, we want the concept of soul to have these soft, elastic edges. It's not a rigidly fixed and limited concept. So it can stretch. "What awakens? Soul awakens. Soulmaking awakens." What does that mean? [1:04:59]
So there's not the shunning of concepts: "No one awakens." There's the using of concepts, and then those concepts get enlarged, broken. New concepts get forged. So sometimes the answers that we give to these questions -- "What is awakening? What awakens? Who awakens?" -- they help in certain ways, but they also limit the possible fertility for the being, for the consciousness, for the sense of existence, for the soul. They don't stimulate and support the creation and discovery of further delineations, further discernments, more and more aspects, facets of self, soul, being, others, objects, world, awakening. So again, in this soulmaking paradigm, we're really not shunning or disregarding discriminations, discernments, delineations, and concepts. We're using them for the sake of soulmaking. And the soulmaking process will actually stimulate more of that, as part of its kind of endless possibility of riches.
So again, this question: what do you want? What do you want? And is that what soul wants? Or is what comes through and seems to be my desire, is it driven by something else -- ego, or measuring up? Or is it that what I want is culturally influenced or indoctrinated, or I've taken a certain idea, or a fixated image of what the tradition is, or I've believed "The tradition is this"? Or is it that "what I want," in the 'I' there, is actually quite a limited self-image -- I'm not imaginally open; the self is not imaginally sensed in the "what I want"? What is the relationship of "who desires or has eros for awakening" -- what is the relationship of "who desires awakening" to "who awakens"? Again, what is the relationship of "who desires awakening" to "who awakens"?
And you may have heard answers to that kind of question, for instance, in certain so-called 'non-dual' teachings, or according to sort of classical Buddhist Abhidhamma psychology, or whatever. What does soulmaking answer, say, to that? What is the relationship of "that which desires awakening" or "the one who desires awakening," the relationship of that to "the one who awakens" -- the relationship of "the desire of awakening" to "the awakened"? What awakens is what has wanted awakening. What awakens is what has the eros for awakening.
So fantasies, images, and ideas come in. All kinds of fantasies, images, and ideas come in and influence the fantasies, images, and ideas we have of awakening. Some of those fantasies, images, and ideas can be what we call 'fixations,' or not, or more or less so. And some of them are fantasies and images and ideas of self, and also of the world. So the fantasies, images, and ideas of self and of the world condition the fantasies, images, ideas we adopt of awakening.
So I don't know if this has occurred to you, but do you realize that when you, when I choose or accept a notion or a vision of awakening, or enlightenment, or whatever, that you are, or I am, in doing so, kind of signing up for or plumping for or choosing a world-view, a cosmology? It's not just a view of awakening. In choosing a view of awakening, in adopting a certain view of awakening, I'm also choosing and adopting a certain cosmology, too, at the same time. They go inevitably together.
So for example, if I have the cosmology of endless rebirth -- or the vision of awakening as ending rebirth brings with it, goes with a cosmology of rebirth. And the vision of awakening as somehow bearing up to, putting up with our existential predicament as sort of tragically impermanent and frail in a kind of essentially meaningless cosmos -- the image of the liberated one, the awakened one, as one who actually just is willing to confront that and be with the tragedy of that, open to it, and still live their life creatively, etc. -- the image of awakening, the idea of awakening brings with it, goes together with a certain cosmology. And in the soulmaking paradigm, it's exactly the same. The soulmaking awakening vision that we're perhaps opening up, or possibilities that we're opening up, goes with a certain cosmology, which includes possibilities of cosmopoesis, and participation, and all that, and divinities, and dimensions.
So when we choose or adopt an idea or an image of awakening, we're actually also choosing and adopting ideas of world, self and world. And the causality -- who knows what's going on there? So again, the question is, "Why?" Is it really the cosmology that I'm attracted to, and I'm just set on that cosmology, and I insist on that cosmology, and it's working that way round, from the world-view to the view of awakening? Or how much is self-view wrapped up in that? So the choice of cosmology may in fact be the primary reason for you or I choosing or accepting a certain notion or vision of awakening. That may be, actually, what I long for more, is a certain cosmology, a certain world-view. It's all wrapped up together. And the self-view, or the ego-view -- if it's with regarding measurement, or proving myself, or achieving, or failing, that can come into it, like we've talked about before. Or it might be that there's a certain soulmaking or self-image in relation to the world-view, cosmos-view, cosmology that's coming in here, that's being chosen. We're choosing a package.
So for example, "bravely and honestly facing up to the tragic existential predicament" is one self-image, and it may be soulmaking for some people, to a certain extent. Or the self-image of what a human being is, "The human being opens to all kinds of dimensions. Human beings participate in the cosmos, in the divine, in the creation and discovery of all this." It's a very different sense of self, and image of self, and idea of self. But again, back to this, it's like, why? This question: why am I choosing or adopting a certain idea or image of awakening? What's involved there? One of the things that's involved is cosmology, and self-sense, or, you could say, anthropology.
And I've pointed out, in this connection, I've pointed out several times before that dukkha in the contemporary times may well involve -- there may be kinds of dukkha that are prominent in what we deal with or have to face that weren't there at other times. So for example, our modernist notion of self brings with it, as much as a lot of possibility, it brings with it a certain kind of dukkha. By a 'modern self,' I'm not talking about how busy we all are, and how we're harangued by mobile phones and emails and text messages and all that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just the modern notion of individuality, and the culture of individuality, and the pressures and expectations that brings, alongside the possibilities. And I'm talking also about our very sense of our own psychological complexity and interiority, and also responsibility.
So Michel Foucault, one of the things he did was trace, in regard to sexuality, how, through the tradition of the Catholic confessional, and then later through the very similar and connected tradition of the psychoanalytic confessional, which became the psychotherapeutic confessional, that actually, there was a broadening, a stretching of what the individual was then deemed responsible for. At first, with regard to sexuality in the Catholic confessional, it was just around the ethics of that, and you're responsible for good or bad behaviour sexually, and thoughts, and all that. But through that, and through the kind of pressure of that, and the kind of minutiae of that that got expanded in that process, and then through psychoanalysis, and then through the kind of sexual revolution, and then the responsibility of sexuality was not just ethical, because now we're supposed to -- there's a kind of responsibility to be interesting sexually, or like this or like that around our sexuality. Sexuality has become (not for everyone, but a lot of people) in some ways, part of the identity, and it's part of my responsibility for my individuality, and what I kind of am, or have achieved, or am okay with, or have liberated, or whatever. Someone in the time of the Buddha's India, the time of the Buddha in India, didn't have this kind of complexity, didn't have that culture of individuality, didn't have that kind of responsibility in regard to their sexuality, of being interesting, or this or that, or individual in that sense.
So there are certain dukkhas around self that go with contemporary cultures, contemporary society, and also certain dukkhas around the world (and again, I've mentioned this as well): the disenchantment of the cosmos, the meaninglessness of the cosmos that is the kind of pervasive backdrop, if not foreground, of our world-view. [1:19:26] And I don't know if this is -- it's certainly characteristic of our modern culture in differentiation to earlier cultures, in some ways. But if you also think about the whole notion of rebirth that's in the Pali Canon, etc., in some ways it's an enchanted cosmos, with devas and all that. In some other ways, it's a scary cosmos. It's, again, an essentially meaningless cosmos. It's a meaningless predicament that one has to find one's way out of. One is essentially just flotsam and jetsam on the endlessly infinite ocean of cosmic rebirths and deaths, and just tossed this way and that by waves and tides and all that. And it's a kind of scary cosmic picture. Nevertheless, there are certain kinds of disenchantment and meaninglessness, I think, that plague and pervade contemporary society. And along with this, the kind of problematic of the complexity in individuality of the modern self, that also serves up to us a more difficult or a different kind of dukkha in relation to self and in relation to cosmos.
Now, as I mentioned the other day, we're conscious, or we're beginning -- some people are beginning to be conscious of the moral and environmental implications of perceiving and conceiving the cosmos in a disenchanted way, in a flat way, especially the implications, the consequences in a globalized world. And there is a sense, for some people now, that we need a different view. We need a different world-view. We need different world-views offered to us, different picture, different concept of what existence is, both for the self, and the self in the cosmos, and what the cosmos is.
So in this possible idea of what awakening might be, in a way that includes the soulmaking process and dynamic and movement, such a view, to me, will include more and more facets of our being, just because of the way the soulmaking dynamic works. And I've talked about this a lot elsewhere. It will draw in, it will involve, it will start to relate to all these different aspects of our lives, and dimensions and facets of our being. It will create and discover such facets of our existence, and make them objects of eros, imaginal objects. And they get drawn into the whole soulmaking process, and in so doing, they get drawn into the awakening process, the movement of awakening. They get included as directions and expansions and unfoldings of awakening.
And that process, it will just keep creating and discovering -- not always, just at some kind of uniform rate. There'll be stops and starts and stuck places, of course. But potentially, at least, that's the movement. It's open-ended, and multiple, and multidirectional in that way. Some ideas we get of awakening, or even what's communicated to us sometimes by people who claim awakening in some traditions or some communities (certainly that I've come across), the awakening can be more stagnant, really, than the kind of dynamic, and endless, and endlessly enriching, and dividing, like branches growing off a kind of live organism, as I've tried to sort of describe. It can be a little more stagnant, the whole idea, in some traditions and Saṅghas.
And again, in some traditions, some communities, it's relatively common for people to consider themselves awakened. But as I said, often there's a kind of stagnation with that awakening. And we can look at that stagnation from the paradigm of the soulmaking logos, and we can say, either there is not enough eros -- so a person says, "I'm awakened." And yeah, there's definitely a certain amount of happiness, certain amount of freedom and ease of movement, liberation from the inner critic, certain amount of peace, even-keeled-ness, etc. But it's just kind of stagnated there. "I've been awakened for X years. And now what?" And so one begins to teach, or write a blog, or to hold darshan, or whatever it is. But something's actually just stagnant. There's perhaps not enough eros there to open up further territories and possibilities for consciousness, for questioning, further liberations, explorations.
So either not enough eros to stimulate and push that whole soulmaking dynamic in a way that does open up further territories, and/or the logos is blocked or stuck in some conception of, for example, that "awakening means this. This is what awakening is, and I now seem to have achieved that." Or "awakening means X," or "awakening is this," or "I am awakened." And here, it's not so much the 'I' that is the problem. Some, again, kind of non-dual people will be quick to say, "That's the problem. It's the 'I am awakened.' That's the view that's the problem view. There is no one, there is no 'I' who awakens or is awakened. There is just awakening." But that's not the problem I want to pinpoint right now. The problem is in the reification and limitation of the vision and idea of awakening, of what it is, and what it involves, and where it goes. So either there's not enough eros, or the logos is blocked and stuck in a conception of awakening, in some particular narrow conception of awakening, despite the relative ease and happiness and kind of spacious existence. Or logos is stuck in the sense that we're stuck with the conception that "conceiving is bad, and a bad idea, and not spiritual, etc."
But either way, whether it's the eros that's kind of -- there just isn't enough eros. There's no more fire. There's no more fire or flow of eros to the extent that really pushes things, that continues to push things, continues to expand. Or the logos is blocked in some way or other with regard to awakening. But either way, the soulmaking dynamic, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic is arrested, or at least limited. And because of that, no more, or no further, or no greater or wider awakening can open.
I'll just share one more thing, to finish. In the Book of Genesis, some of you will know, God said to Abraham -- this is a passage from Genesis:
God said to Abraham: "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you."[4]
"Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you." Actually, I prefer the old-fashioned translation. I don't know if this is King James or something similar, but:
And the Lord said unto Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee."
So for those of you who know the Old Testament, this is a very sort of crucial passage there. And the Hebrew is lech-lecha: 'leave, go from here.' Lech-lecha: 'go from here.' Actually, it can also mean 'go to you' -- *lecha, '*go to you' or 'go for you.' But let's just say 'go from here.' And we could hear that -- 'go from here' -- I mean, obviously, you can hear all this in a very kind of historical, literal sense, but if we look, what's perhaps the more poetic meaning here, the soul-meaning? Lech-lecha: 'go from here.' Go from what? From bondage to liberation? Go from non-awakening to awakening?
And again, certain teachings, perhaps certain kind of so-called non-dual teachings might say, "You're always here," or "You're always there. You're always in perfection. There's nowhere to go. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Awakening is just realizing that: there's nowhere to go." And there in the Genesis, it says lech-lecha: 'go from here.' Beautiful. I love that.
Let me read it again: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee." A soulmaking logos might interpret that passage differently, in a soulmaking way. Go from what? "Get thee out of thy country," away from here, away from thy kindred, away from thy father's house. Go from whatever is not soulmaking any more, into new, expanded, expanding, deepened, deepening soul-lands, "to the land that I will show you," the landscapes that open up with soul, "the land that I will show thee": pastures, new pastures, new fields of eros-psyche-logos, for soulmaking.
And this is always a possibility, this leaving the stagnation of structures that we know, of beliefs, the limited, fixated images, the rigid concepts, beliefs, assumptions. It's always a possibility, since the possibilities for soulmaking are infinite. So wherever we are, there's the possibility of more, at some point. And so, it's hearing that passage -- God's commandment there, in Genesis there -- it's God's calling, the call to Abraham, God's call to us. So we can read it in this very historic, literal, kind of flattened way, and then it becomes all about territory and land, and all this business, and kind of literalized nationalism there, coming out of that. Or you can hear it as something speaking to you, God's calling, and it's eternal. It's always now, always now. Lech-lecha, go from here. Be ready. Or if we say, not 'eternal,' 'perennial.' Perennial may be a better word.
Again and again, the soulmaking dynamic -- as I've said, soulmaking is not always on the move; it has times of consolidation, of getting used to new structures, new landscapes, new visions, new images, new sensings. But perennially, again and again, there's this movement, this expansion of the soulmaking dynamic, and with that, the whole territory, the whole land that we perceive ourselves in. So again and again, forever, whenever, God calls, the divine calls, the Buddha-nature, soul issues a calling to soul. "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house." "Thy father's house" -- the way tradition has rigidified -- "unto the land that I will show thee" -- the land that soul opens up, the land that eros-psyche-logos open up as the soulmaking dynamic calls.
I'll just finish now. You know, I said that sometimes people ask me what my position is on what awakening is, and what stream-entry is, and all that, and what do I think about X or Y, in terms of some idea of awakening or whatever. And I've shared a good deal in this talk. But actually (and it kind of follows from what I've said), my position, or what I think, is that I actually adopt and move between different conceptual frameworks. And that feels, to me, right now, as the most beautiful and viable and, if you like, 'true' way of orienting and relating to this whole question, this whole notion of awakening. And it is possible to do that, to pick up and put down and move between different conceptual frameworks, and do that relatively freely, or dependent on who I'm actually talking to, and what they want or need at a certain time.
So you could say there's a kind of, or there's the possibility of a kind of -- you could say -- freedom from awakening, but I think (better) a freedom in relationship to the whole notion of awakening. A freedom in relationship to the whole notion of awakening. It's a freedom in relationship, not throwing it away. Freedom in relationship to the whole notion of awakening, freedom in relationship to the whole notion of freedom. So one can actually know the emptiness of it all, and know and play with the poetry and the possibility of it all. The notion, idea, sense of awakening can be opened up.
