Transcription
Is that Iona, then? Yeah.
Q1: different uses of the imagination and conceptual frameworks for images
Yogi: So I'm struggling with the lattice. I'm trying to figure out why. [inaudible] And then a phrase came to me today, which I think is from Hillman, but I haven't checked it out -- something about how you don't do justice to the image if you require it to have [meaning?]. I was kind of extrapolating that further: I don't do it justice if I require it to have eternality or [?]. I think my logos, my understanding of imaginal [?], is that image is primary, and you can come to understand the psyche in this wholly different way, that everything in the psyche is imaginal. So that memory that you have of your mother that you thought was a representation of [?] what happened to you when you were a child or something is, in a way, an imaginal memory, and that figure of your mother is an imaginal figure, and you can be in relationship to that, [?] and something can happen, instead of seeing it as this kind of ontological [?], ontological representation of reality.
What came out of that was I realized that actually a lot of my relationship to imaginal is just coming to view my psyche as imaginal. If you take the mother example, when I come into relationship with this imaginal figure -- but in a way, that figure doesn't have eternality. When I work with it, it doesn't love me, necessarily. And I don't feel a duty to it. I'm going between images all the time. [?] But it doesn't have all of these things that we're talking about here. It's like this dichotomy is forming in my mind between all of that and then this other thing, these images that fit into the lattice. And actually most of my images don't seem to fit into the lattice. Does that make sense? And what is the relationship between these two? Are these two different things or two different practices?
Rob: Yeah. So I'm not 100 per cent sure it makes sense to me yet. If I try and summarize what you said, and then maybe we can see where I'm not understanding, or maybe I have understood (I'm not sure). So Iona is sharing that she's having problems with the idea of the lattice and kind of -- as any kind of map of what imaginal might be, and certainly as a demand of what imaginal might be. Rather her sense of imaginal -- which she thinks she's getting from Hillman, James Hillman -- is more that anything that arises in the psyche is image. Yeah? And when she pays attention to her experience, a lot of the images don't seem to have these qualities that we're identifying in the lattice. And to require that of them would feel wrong. Yeah.
I didn't invent the word 'imaginal.' It was actually Henry Corbin. So Hillman got it from Corbin. Hillman meant something very different from Corbin, and quite different from Jung and, in a way, I would say what we're unfolding here is different from Hillman as well. There are overlaps between all that, and I would say that certainly -- well, Corbin really didn't like Jung. [laughter] And probably didn't like Hillman as well. Hillman had huge respect for Corbin. And people would borrow, because you borrow authorities: "So-and-so said this ..." Anyway. So basically there's this word, and what do we do with the fact of two things: that people are using it in different ways, and there are more ways than that (now it's become, as I said right when I introduced the lattice, it's getting quite popular, this word, in certain circles). People mean quite different things by it. And then some people are not quite sure what they mean by it, or it's very, very loose or whatever. So that's just a kind of fact, a social fact, you know, a sociolinguistic fact or whatever. What do we do with that, and then what do we do also with the fact that -- I would say, I would include, let's take those four (Corbin, Jung, Hillman, and what we're doing here): all of them would discern a difference in quality or kind of images. In other words, it's not just you can have an image of your mother or you can have an image of your father as different contents, but different really ontological status, or whole different kinds.
So we somehow have to -- either you just say "everything is image," in the sense of "everything is perception; therefore it's image." Dharma-wise, that's important: can you see everything is a perception? Now, we could just put "everything is an image" in that language. And that kind of view of things is really helpful. But it will unfold a different kind of insight into dependent arising, into fabrication, into fading. Also, just having that view, "everything is perception, everything is image," will already bring a certain kind of liberation and spaciousness in relation to all that. So that's great, but in itself it won't be at least what we're calling 'soulmaking.' It will unfold in a slightly different direction, towards more spaciousness, more equality of things, etc.
I think what I'm trying to communicate with the lattice is not so much a demand as an understanding of the imaginal as dependent arising, and just saying that, in time, maybe these aspects will be noticed. So, you know, a mother image, if I linger with it and bring all my sensitivity and all that, and if it's not squeezed a certain way by a conceptual framework, it will probably unfold these things, is my -- let's just call it a postulate, a thesis, you know, something to be found out, rather than a demand and rather than "it should have this." And even then, in the range -- I don't know anyone who has mapped out the complete territory of the kinds of images human beings can have, and what is a psychic phenomenon, ESP, and what is ... I don't know, maybe there's someone who has done it, but one thing's to be sure: if they've done it, that person, at some point in human history somewhere or other, it will never be to everyone's satisfaction. Someone else would say, "No, no, no, no, no."
If we take a step back and say, what do I want? If I want that kind of expansive, liberative freedom, spaciousness, and equality, then I just say, "Everything is an image," in the sense of "everything is a perception," and I just practise that as a way of looking. And you know that will create space and its own kind of beauty, and its own kind of limited soulmaking, but more it's spaciousness-making, liberation-making, etc. If I want something that we're calling 'soulmaking,' then it's like, a certain conceptual framework, a certain kind of attunement of the being and the sensitivity and the attention will help that to unfold. So what arises in perception, whether it's imagination perception or this, it's always a dependent arising. And partly what it arises dependent on is the conceptual framework. So partly even the idea of what soulmaking is and what it can be, or different ideas, will unfold in different directions. I think the ontological claim isn't kind of, "This is an absolute." It's more like, "This is a possible unfoldment which some people may find deeply valuable." Does this ...? How does this sound? Yeah?
So, you know, at the end of the day, to call on the lattice thing, I retain my autonomy. In other words, it's up to everyone to decide, well, what do you want? And if I decide I want this thing called 'soulmaking,' or at least what we're calling 'soulmaking,' then these kind of ideas, these kind of sensitivities, attunements, this kind of conceptual framework might well serve that in a very long-term way, a way that can kind of keep going. If I decide I want something else, whatever that something else might be, then I need a different kind of [framework]. And as a human being, I think it was yesterday I touched on this, I can actually move between those. So I could, from one minute to the next, go into this "all is image, everything is an image," in that sense of giving an equality and a spacious liberation, to the image of my mother as historical fact and da-da-da, and for kind of more conventional psychotherapeutic reasons, if that's what I want, or imagination as just I think of my mother and I think, "I should call her because I haven't spoken to her for a while," and then to ... It's like, one can move between those, rather than kind of adopting, again, a rigidity of posture, orientation, conceptual framework. So how does that sound? Yeah?
You know, I would encourage everyone to have this kind of autonomy. I'm not interested in imposing anything on anyone at all. So you find your own way and your own kind of what you're drawn to, or your own range of options at different times. That feels really important to me. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Zazie, yeah?
Q2: amplifying soulmaking / soulmaking coming from new experiences
Yogi: [inaudible] It's a state of relative unfabrication. It's very body-based, very visceral. [?] It feels important to my being, but it feels very different from imaginal images -- there's the sense of depth, and resonance, and the mirroring, and the kind of like different levels, that whole complexity of it. So my question is, in the way that you're using the word 'soulmaking,' would you say that that experience in itself is soulmaking ...? I could also see that the way I relate to that, and the way that comes into my life, then that becomes soulmaking or complexifies. Does the soulmaking rely on that kind of complexification?
Rob: Let me see. Okay. So Zazie's asking, there's a certain kind of experience that's quite common that you have that feels relatively unfabricated in a kind of liquefaction of the body, and then there are movements that come out of that that feel very primordial and very important to the soul. And the question, if I understand it, is: is that by itself soulmaking -- inherently, so to speak -- or is it that what then resonates out from that in my life, and how I relate to that, and how I hold it that is soulmaking? Yeah? Okay. Good. So ... um ... both. [laughter] In the sense of ... sometimes I kind of think, I wonder if I think about everything as a spectrum, you know? [laughter] I don't know. It's almost like there's soulmaking, and then there can be just more soulmaking, you know? And so the second thing that you're talking about, how you then relate to it, how you choose to honour it, how you turn towards it, how you listen to that sense of "this is important," and how that then expresses in your life, in your choices and all of that, your conceptions -- all that is kind of further amplifying the soulmaking, further filling it out. But it might be that something just feels, by itself, soulmaking, this thing. And the reason is because it feels like it has, in our language, it would have a lot of those nodes: the grace, the givenness, the sense of I'm discovering something as much as creating it, the meaningfulness. Does this resonate?
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Well, soulmaking is fabrication, yeah. So this state that you're describing is definitely not unfabricated; it's, as you say, a relative lessening of fabrication, which, in itself, is one the nodes -- it's a kind of loosening of things. But I would say, just as you've heard us say and we said one of the concepts, there's always some concept operating. There's always some meaning-making, or often some meaning. It might not be articulated or fleshed out, but it's there kind of implicit, and you sense it, and you're kind of assenting to it, I would say. Part of what makes it soulmaking -- we've just thrown this out occasionally -- is this sense of something expanding, you know? So that might be there. It's almost like this is given, and it's stretching something. I'm not saying it will, but it may come to a time when it in itself doesn't feel soulmaking; it's rather that you've then, in the best possible way, made more of it, so that when it even comes now, it feels like more. Do you understand? It feels richer.
It might be that things that feel soulmaking -- Catherine and I were talking about this over the last months. Imagine someone just coming on their first Insight Meditation retreat, and they've never heard anything about being with your heart, or opening the heart, or working with your emotions. And they discover all kinds of stuff in there, grief and rage and beauty and tenderness and openness and vulnerability. That discovery is opening up the psyche, and it will feel soulmaking. After a while, that in itself becomes just part of one's life. Similar with the jhānas. There's an opening of, like, "Wow!" And it feels like the psyche, the sense of existence, the sense of self and being and what's possible [is stretched]. So for that newness, there's this stretching that's part of soulmaking. And then after a while, if you get really into the jhānas, they just become part of your life. It's like it's just normal. They're not in themselves any more soulmaking.
So it could be that part of what's happening with this is it's still relatively new. But if you keep relating to it the way you are, with this kind of honouring and listening and reverence and sensitivity, it will probably -- the experience itself will actually gain richness, and so that when it comes, even in those times where it's more direct, it will be a slightly different, more expanded, richer, more complexified thing than it was in the first place. Does that make sense? How does that sound? Okay. Good.
Catherine: It would be good to add that not everybody experiences that on the first Insight Meditation retreat. [laughter]
Rob: Okay. First twenty-five. [laughter] Somewhere in there. Absolutely. Yeah. I have a couple of notes if there's nothing ...? Did someone ...? Okay.
Q3: prerequisites for soulmaking, using the basis of the group practices in individual practice
Yogi: In the exercises that you both have given us engaged with one another, it's as if there's a rhythm of mettā, gentle inquiry, checking with the energy body, and so on and so forth. Would that be a model for us to engage with soulmaking ourselves?
Rob: With other people or in yourself?
Yogi: Yeah, ourselves.
Rob: Yeah, in a way, yes. I don't know that it needs to be quite so linear. This retreat that we may be doing in June, I think it's called Foundations of a Soulmaking Dharma. It's a double meaning with 'foundations': it partly means what are the personal prerequisites that I, you, need to have to make this work, without which it's not really going to work, you know. And one is, I would say, awareness, bodily awareness, energy body awareness, emotional awareness, emotional ability to care and to handle well what arises, yeah? Without those two skills, and also without the kindness -- so if I don't, if I'm regarding what happens in myself with judgment and unkindness and dismissal, there's not going to be the capacity for soulmaking. Those are three, right? Energy body, emotional -- let's call it awareness and skill (two or three), and just kindness with one's own psychology and being. Those are three out of more we could enumerate, prerequisites to do this kind of practice. Eventually -- it's a bit like when we did the mettā in those exercises, and I kind of said, "Well, okay, you don't ..." You actually asked. It was you, Bo. You asked, "Do we need to keep doing it when we're listening?" Remember asking that? In a way, I think there's a way, when these things are kind of established as more just almost easily accessible and almost habitual, then you can kind of let them go a little bit, especially the mettā, because it's just there, and if I need it I can bring it as a kind of [conscious intention]. But it's there as a backdrop.
So right now, it's like, I just feel confident that there's mettā here, you know? And I don't have to kind of keep -- I mean, I could, but it's just there as a kind of [backdrop], yeah? And then rather than doing it linearly with the emotional awareness and tracking and the energy, it's more like it's concurrent. We sort of built up to that exercise: can you share -- it's really hard to speak and really be aware, as you're speaking, of what's happening. Did you notice this? So it's one thing to listen. Even that can be quite hard, to listen to another, take them in with the senses as fully, and track your own process. That's already quite a skill to do it yourself. But eventually we want this to be concurrent. So if you're working on your own, yeah, the whole multifaceted process is going together. If we separate them, it's an exercise, so we're practising this foundation, and then that foundation. You isolate something. It's like when you practise in music or something; there's this thing, you isolate it, and then you develop it, and then you put it back into the mix. Does that make sense? Does that cover what you ...? Okay.
Andrea?
Q4: active versus receptive working with images
Yogi: This is kind of what Catherine covered with active versus receptive when we're working with an image.
Rob: Create/discover?
Yogi: Well, no, it was more ...
Catherine: I think I put it in as another kind of spectrum ...
Rob: Okay, yeah.
Yogi: How active you are ...
Rob: Yes, yes, okay.
Yogi: ... versus just kind of receiving it. The examples obviously can't be concrete that you give us -- I mean examples of images, because they're so different, but I sometimes find I'm working with an image, or I'm bringing an image in, and there's a sense of I'm moving this thing, and I'm not giving it autonomy. It's too active. So then I try to pull back into the receptive or discovered thing, and that doesn't quite manifest there. Checking the energy body the whole time to see what's alive there, but I didn't know if there was -- is that the process, just it's almost like playing with paint and not liking exactly what you see when you put it there? I remember you talking one time about John Coltrane and where he appeared in the room, this particular place, and I sometimes think of that when I'm thinking: "Where does this image want to be? Do they want to be behind or in front?" So I don't know if that's something that comes in time, just a dexterity working with images or ...
Rob: So Andrea's asking about, if I understand, this range that we have in relating to any practice, actually, not just imaginal, that can kind of lean all the way to the sort of very active end, and all the way to the very receptive, "just let it happen." Yeah. And so the question is: can we develop more active?
Yogi: The active seems a bit clunky ...
Rob: Yeah, yeah. So this is really, really common. And again, I'm not just talking about imaginal practice. I'm talking about any practice. We try to be active, and it gets really clunky and forced and too pushy, you know? Too much efforting, too tight, and then sometimes even a whole other level of judging oneself, that one "should be able to" this and that. So I think, to me, even outside of the realm of imaginal practice, this is part of the sort of Right Effort, balance thing. And I would say instead of one point on that spectrum, one point where we just kind of reside, and that's where we do our practice -- "I'm always almost entirely receptive" -- I would encourage the whole spectrum, the exploration of the whole spectrum. And to develop skill, I have to know what it is to make too much effort and be too active and know what that feels like. The thing is, every moment is different. So it's like ... I shouldn't give surfing as an analogy, because I've actually never been surfing. [laughter] I think what can happen in time is that the doing -- we learn how to 'do' really, really subtly. So if we relate that then to what we're talking about this week, sensing with soul and the lattice, one of the things is just noticing. I'm not actually making this thing happen, or demanding it; I'm just noticing. What can I notice? And the very, very delicate attuning of the attention to some aspect or other that's maybe just a little bit, I can't quite make it out, and then just that aroma of it, really, really subtle. It's just a noticing. It's just an inclining of the attention to notice something. That noticing something brings it alive.
So when we talk about doing, it can be really, really gross, you know, like when you're nodding and nodding and nodding in meditation, and it's like, can you 'do'? Yeah, go do some walking meditation. Do a brisk walk. Open the eyes. Cold water on the face. Stand up. Breathe deeper. That's a really gross doing, and there are times when there's a real place for that, you know? And it might be that the same experience almost, almost the same degree of sloth and torpor another day needs something so much more subtle: I just realize, "There's this tiny bit of resistance to I'm not even sure what, and I just soften that, something gets clear and emerges maybe in the heart, and I pass through that. I work with that. And then I just hold that, and then the energy comes back." It's like part of the art, I think, again, of all practice, is this kind of willingness to try different things, to develop the different ranges, and not to know in the moment, not to have this formula of "this is what I do, and it's always going to be like this." How does that sound?
Yogi: That's fine.
Rob: Is it missing something?
Yogi: No, no. I mean, I have more ideas about it, but [?].
Rob: What was the thing about John Coltrane then? About putting him in a certain place?
Yogi: There's something about when you say bring an image up, bring up an image ... [inaudible] Where do I want this figure?
Rob: Okay, so two things. One is that "where do I want this figure," it's like, who is the 'I' asking?
Yogi: [inaudible] The autonomy ...
Rob: Well, the autonomy is there, yeah, but maybe it gets ... If we go back to Hillman, he would jump and flinch at any kind of practice of the imaginal or our active ... you know? I would say something slightly different. It doesn't matter how much huffing and puffing and deliberate intention and activeness there is. What matters is the sense of soulmaking. Yeah? So it might be -- and I'm sure many of you have had this -- you think, "I just made that happen, that image." [laughter] And then you think, "Oh, that's the ego. And the ego is bad. And it's bad in Buddhism, and it's bad in other spiritualities, and it's bad in Hillman." What I would look for more is again this just, "I don't know." It's a responsiveness. Maybe it was my ego, whatever that is. Maybe it was coming out of an excessive yanking. But then maybe it suddenly becomes soulmaking, and then we sense when something's soulmaking. And so it doesn't matter how it got there; it doesn't matter at all. It's not this principle of "this is good and that's bad." It's just like if it's soulmaking, you can feel those soulful resonances and trust it at that point.
The thing with John Coltrane -- I've moved. I don't live at Gaia House any more. So he can't be in the same place. [laughter] He's going to have a different room. But he still comes sometimes, and when he comes, actually he and another figure, this kind of -- I don't know exactly who he is, some kind of Sufi teacher or something -- they sit at the end of the bed. They both share the same spot. It doesn't matter; it's not that it has to be or not, but it just might be that I can't even tell -- do I put him there, or do they just like that place? [laughter] It doesn't really matter. It's like, trust the sense of soul, you know. And if something doesn't feel right, you can -- I would use the word 'play.' You can just play very delicately. But sometimes 'play' just means, like, what am I tuning to? And it can be so subtle and so kind of unpressured and unforced, you know. Going back to what I said this morning, it's like, don't force a sense of soul, and don't imagine that it's going to be there every time. There are plenty of times where nothing really worked. That's fine. Yeah? So not too much pressure.
There are two questions. I won't get to these. [shuffles papers] Unless someone else has one live ...? [laughter] No, it's more like, they're long, and it's already ... Well, okay. I'll do these. Is that okay?
Q5: eros and sexuality in soulmaking, working with sexual energy
Rob: So this is from a few days ago, which I didn't get a chance to respond to. "You spoke a little last night" -- this is already some nights ago, I think -- "about what people need for permission to work with the imaginal. When you said 'eros,' that really hit a chord for me, so I was wondering if you could speak or write a little about why it is important, why sexuality is important in soulmaking, why it is necessary."
Like all these things, it's like, once we go into it with soul, it just becomes huge, the involvement of eros and sexuality. The way we're using the word 'eros' is more than to mean sexuality. Sexuality is one manifestation of eros. Actually, you can have sex without eros in our book. But eros is this kind of movement or some kind of movement or desire towards the beloved other, some kind of movement to know them more, to be more intimate, to touch them more, to be touched by them more, to enter or fill out or open. That's what eros is. Okay? So it's a very small definition. And eros has, within it, this other Greek god called Pothos. Pothos is always looking beyond. He always wants more, always more. So that creates a certain dynamic. Eros wants this intimacy, enjoys the intimacy, and wants more, more. So part of that can be sexual, but that whole movement of the psyche, you could say, that movement of eros, is something that drives this whole process with the eros-psyche-logos in the way that we described. On the abstract level, it functions as a concept that really kind of holds everything together, and is the catalyst to unfold, the catalyst for this dough, for the bread to rise.
Does that much make sense? I said it quite abstractly just as sort of bare concepts. Yeah? So we've covered that a lot. But to me, that whole eros-psyche-logos business is really one of the linchpins of all this work. Understanding it, understanding it and getting familiar with it, can itself be soulmaking, and will be part of what really galvanizes the whole process of soulmaking, understanding that eros-psyche-logos, what we call the soulmaking dynamic. So sexuality, sexual longing, sexual desire and sexual energy is one manifestation of eros. It's a kind of eros. And that, within it, has a huge range. And sometimes in the being, or even if we're doing imaginal work, there's so much eros that it kind of has to become sexual -- not necessarily in any act, but in the image itself. It's holding a kind of intensity of eros which is part of the depth and the richness of the psyche. Is this making sense a little bit? But then also, turning it around a little bit, it's like, if we're going to have the fullness of soulmaking, we need to have the fullness of our eros. And our eros will manifest, needs to be able to manifest, how it kind of wants to at any time. So sometimes it's very, very subtle, not at all sexual. And sometimes it's very, very strong, and dramatic, and forceful, and not at all sexual. And sometimes it's subtle and sexual. And sometimes it's intense and sexual in the imaginal realm.
From the other perspective, I said that as the soulmaking dynamic kind of gets more into our life, and our life becomes involved in that, more and more aspects of our being and our existence get drawn into the soulmaking dynamic. One of them will be sexuality. In other words, sexuality gets made soulful. So it might already be quite a lot for many people in our culture for sexuality to be heartful. Let's not underestimate that, you know? But for sexuality to be soulful, what does that mean? And again, this might be the actual physical sexuality, sexual acts, but also just the whole realm of it. Part of that, that will touch on body to be ensouled, to become subsumed, to be given dimensionality, give this sense of sacredness, etc. And it doesn't mean just light; it can be dark as well. Body, sensuality, the senses, sexuality, they become drawn into and ignited in the soulmaking dynamic.
Does this ...? Yeah? So it's necessary in the sense that it's necessary to the fullness of the process of soulmaking. It's necessary that it spreads out that way. And eros is fundamentally necessary to soulmaking. No eros, no soulmaking. Does that sound okay? Okay.
Yogi: You covered a lot of this in Eros Unfettered, but short of forty-four hours ... [laughter] Hypothetically, how does one manage that eros going out when the sexuality [?] is inflamed.
Rob: There's a lot about that, which I think I did cover in those things. I think the clue -- I'll come back to the abstract for now, Laurence. Some of it's energetic, okay? What often happens when there's sexual desire is the desire and the energy get kind of cramped in some place or other in the body. They're not given space, the energy itself. (And this relates to, "Can I bring the whole energy body in?") That in itself makes it hard to tolerate, and I have to act. Does this make sense? Yeah? So there's an energetic of it that it's really, I mean, for all kinds of reasons, really good to experiment with, all kinds of reasons. And then there's a whole other level that, talking about the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, if everything is just flat, flatly material, and just what it seems to be to conventional, agreed perception, then the pothos in the eros that wants more can only go -- if we're talking just about sexuality; we could be talking about anything, food or anything at all where there's craving -- the eros, it wants more, and where can it go? It has to go into material manifestation. And then I'll get bored of this particular material manifestation, this particular partner or whatever it is, and I'll seek another one, because it can only go horizontally. I refuse dimensionality, because I'm not engaging the sensing with soul, and so the eros that wants more can only go [horizontally], and I want another high or another ... Do you understand?
But if I allow the eros, if we use a certain language, to inseminate psyche, to fertilize psyche, then the image I have -- and it could be an image from life -- the dough rises, and it's allowed to become imaginal, and then the 'more' that the pothos in the eros wants, it gets more by virtue of the dimensionality, the complexification, the multi-aspectedness, the divinity, and actually it doesn't need the just endlessly horizontal satisfying my craving. Eros, this wanting more, can either go into craving, and then it just demands more and more, this insatiable -- the Buddha said "this unquenchable thirst," taṇhā. It can only go horizontally, because I just refuse to see or I'm not encouraging a sense of dimensionality. If I do that, [see or encourage dimensionality], then there's this sense: I'm getting what I need in the dimensionality. And then there's more, and it grows more dimensionality, and the pressure is then -- there's the energetic pressure we were talking about just before, and there's also a kind of psychic pressure, but it's got more space to get its needs met, its desires met. Does this make sense?
Yogi: Yeah. [inaudible]
Rob: I lost what you just said.
Yogi: I was kind of thinking big picture. I know it's come up with me, that question, and it would probably come up following the last [?]. [laughter]
Rob: I still don't understand, but it seems okay. Is it? Yeah? Okay.
Yogi: It's not just for my benefit.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We have, you know, we have so much good stuff in our culture, and so much sexual liberation and sexual possibility that perhaps wasn't there in different places in different times in history, and we have so much other stuff that's good in our culture, but we also have a lot of difficulty with that freedom sexually, and we're given different challenges. Like so many other things, it's like, we could say, from a certain perspective, they could use being more ensouled, you know? Does that make sense? It sounds like Laurence understands. But in terms of that dynamic ...
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: And that's not to say it's always easy at all, not at all to imply that, at all. But one can have choices, you know, given by the imaginal amplitude filling out. It gives one more choices. It's not to say you should or shouldn't, within the limits of ethics, but there's space there.
Q6: reality and ontology
Rob: There's a question here about reality and ontology.
Yogi: I've resisted asking a question about ontology because I imagined it would take too long, but if somebody else ... [laughter]
Rob: Let me say something very brief, okay? I'll read this note, and then say something very brief. Because part of what I want to say is: ontology is endless. Does everyone know what 'ontology' means? It's the branch of philosophy that deals with the question of what is real, what reality is. So this comes up because of what we're talking about. We have a typical kind of cultural norm of what's real and what isn't, and imagination is definitely in the 'not real' category in the typical cultural norm. When you start doing these kind of practices, it starts to raise some of those questions. This person wrote, "Sometimes I have the perception that I am autonomously creating/discovering an image, but at others I perceive the image to be autonomously creating/discovering me. This is quite uncanny. Given the equal emptiness of all things, i.e. our equally insubstantial claim to inherent existence, truly mutual perception and co-creating/discovering each other raises some perplexing ontological questions." [laughter] "I would be grateful if you could clarify." [laughter]
I'd be grateful if I could clarify. [laughter] What's kind of important here? A lot. Going back to the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, this is part of exactly this thing happening, that when I start to do this, and when I move this way, and I have repeated experiences, it pushes on the logos, the conceptual framework. Part of that is, what is real? So that's part of it expanding and pushing on the logos. We would expect this kind of process.
When we see that everything is empty, that functions in one sort of very basic way in relation to this work, and then possibly other ways. But one of the basic ways it functions is, for someone who really goes into the emptiness thing and the fabricating or unfabricating, understanding all that and the whole depth of that journey, and you see that absolutely everything is empty, as the note says -- what we can say about everything is that fundamentally they're equally empty. What that does, one of the things that does, one of the most basic things that does, is it relaxes a kind of objection in the consciousness that says, "That's not real," because -- and it came up in another Q & A -- implicit in the "that's not real" of whatever experience I've had is the hidden whole set of assumptions about "something else is real." Once you see everything's empty, then that whole whatever I'm thinking is real gets kind of relaxed. So the whole dichotomy of real and unreal just gets really loosened. Does this make sense?
So what that does is, it's a slightly different thing to say "everything has exactly the same reality status," than to say "everything has the same kind of emptiness status," okay? That's an important point. As I said, going back to -- I think it was Iona's question -- I don't know anyone that's kind of mapped out all this ontology. Or it could never be mapped out to everyone's satisfaction. One of the interesting things I find about ontology -- it's a really important subject to me, fascinating, etc. -- there's a movement in modern Western philosophy of people who say, "Because we can't arrive at any final position about reality and unreality, let's just drop the whole ontological business. It's just a waste of time." I find that not very soulmaking. [laughter] And what you'll notice in the people, in the certain philosophers that do that, is exactly an absence of soulmaking. And also a default fall-back. They might say, "Yes, yes, yes, we can't say what's real," but in their lives, and the way they live, and their commitments, they're falling back to just the conventional modern Western view of what's real. That giving up of ontology, it might be quite fashionable in certain modern philosophical circles, but it's not a deep giving up. It's just a kind of, "Nyeh," shrugging and going back to how one lived before anyway.
I don't think humanity, however long -- I don't know, how long has humanity been around? In all the different cultures, and all the different histories, and all the different thinkings and perceptions, I don't think -- well, we haven't arrived at any conclusive ontology. We have certain ontologies that people favour at different times, and this sense in modern Western philosophy that we can't. I think it's endless. Ontologizing, if that's even -- you know, kind of thinking about these things, and changing our perceptions, and adopting different conceptual frameworks about reality and not reality and what is, that's endless, and it's part of soulmaking. Does this make sense? It's part of the logos getting caught up and activated in the eros-psyche-logos dynamic. Yeah? Now, there's one more thing. Why am I ontologizing? Or why do we do ontology? Oftentimes it's because I want to arrive at the truth. What if I was ontologizing because I want to soulmake? It's a different purpose. It's like, what's the purpose? Do you understand? So that's quite a radical difference of intention. I'm not going after some kind of finally objective truth that humanity will then, "Right, we've done that. Tick." And maybe the nature of reality will remain an endlessly fertile mystery that we can, again, participate in that creation/discovery of the reality of reality, and that's part of the whole soulmaking journey. Yeah?
If we hone down in on this note a little bit, again, I would expect this kind of experience in the very unfolding of the imaginal work, again because of the autonomy. And there's this kind of flipping. It's still create/discover, but it's just flipped around. And then what is it to be able to, like, seriously entertain that conceptual framework -- that I and my life is being created and discovered by some image that, in some sense, you could say, has more reality than me? But I'm not settling on that as something that I'm going to then argue about or convince others of. Do you understand? So there's this malleability of the kind of deepest level of conceptual framework. But again, the question is, what happens -- I didn't know what the word 'uncanny' meant, because what does 'canny' mean? [background talking] Okay, 'weird.' Weird. It's weird, yeah. It is weird! [laughter] It's certainly weird compared to most modern Western ways of looking. There probably are other cultures that may have something like this. I think what I would prefer in terms of practice is someone has arrived -- this complete flip of experience and conceptual framework has emerged out of practice in, I think, the most beautiful way. Is that fair to say? [laughs] And it's startling and opening and radical.
And rather than then look for another culture or philosophy because I think, "Oh, is it all Vishnu's dream or something like that?" Is that ...? So that [idea of Vishnu's dream] exists. I could go and find that. But something might die for me in the aliveness of that very experience and the way it's unfolding in my practice. I'm not demanding anything; it's emerging. And then, what's my own personal ontology, if you like, here? My own conceptual ...? And what does that do to my soul? So there's ontology for the sake of soulmaking, and the experience, inhabiting that experience. What does it do to my sense of existence and life and my journey when I have that sense? And I don't need to make it a gospel truth. But I can have a real kind of entertaining a real seriousness about it in terms of its reality status. Does that ...?
So that's all I'm going to say about ontology for now. Is that okay? Is that all right? Okay. Let's have a bit of quiet.
