Four Applications Of Mindfulness Retreat 2013 with B. Alan Wallace (part 23)

0:02 So, what were your observations? First of all, when you, to the best of your ability, just penetrated right into, kind of scaled away as much as you can, all the conceptual elaborations and so forth, and just go right into, as if you're doing kind of a, how do you say, just like putting a needle in, a needle of concentration. Report an error in the passage at 0:02 Highlight the passage at 0:02

0:22 When you look right into the nature of the sensations themselves, did the feeling associated with them, did that accentuate, decrease or stay the same? What happened? Yes, please. Report an error in the passage at 0:22 Highlight the passage at 0:22

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1:04 Sure, sure, sure. It's Report an error in the passage at 1:04 Highlight the passage at 1:04

1:20 very true. Pain is not a tactile sensation. And pain is not earth, water, fire, air. Absolutely right. And moreover, pain, to say it's not in the body is just silly. Of course it's in the body. A mere headache, you feel it in the head. If I had a motorcycle accident years ago and smashed one of my knees, I knew where the pain was. Report an error in the passage at 1:20 Highlight the passage at 1:20

1:43 It's right down there. And so it's in the body, but it's quite right. Pain is not a tactile sensation of earth, water, fire, air. But then we can ask, and this is really the crux of this practice or a central feature of the practice is, while earth, water, fire, air, they really appear to you. I mean, you put your finger in water and it gives you moisture. I mean, it comes to you, you know, and you have no choice in the matter. You might put your finger and say, I'd like it to be solid. Well, think solid, think solid, but I'm sorry, it's still fluid, you know, and if it's hot, well, it's hot. Report an error in the passage at 1:43 Highlight the passage at 1:43

2:14 And so earth, water, fire, air, they're presented to you just like yellow or red or the sound of finger snap. But the feelings, the feelings, the Buddhist understanding here is that feelings are not objectively given. Even though the feelings have a location in space, they're not there, they don't appear in the same way, simply objectively presented to your tactile perception like the four elements. Report an error in the passage at 2:14 Highlight the passage at 2:14

2:38 There's something different. So then as we try to isolate, it's like kind of going with surgery and trying to, Isolate this from that. If this is true, then it should be possible. If it's true that the sensations themselves are not intrinsically unpleasant, that is, earth is somehow unpleasant or water, fire, air. Report an error in the passage at 2:38 Highlight the passage at 2:38

2:57 If the unpleasantness, the discomfort is something other, then it should be possible with kind of like really razor sharp concentration to be focusing on the sensations themselves and see that's not what the feeling is and then go a bit wide angle and see, aha, the feeling is the way I'm apprehending them. Report an error in the passage at 2:57 Highlight the passage at 2:57

3:16 So, do you need any help for your headache? Because they are very unpleasant. Do you have any medication you need? You're all set? I'm glad, I'm glad, yeah. We certainly don't want meditation to aggravate that. We don't want that to be a habit at all. So, headaches happen regardless of meditation. But the meditation shouldn't aggravate. Report an error in the passage at 3:16 Highlight the passage at 3:16

3:35 Meditation, shamatha, for example, will catalyze a lot of anomalous sensations in the body, somatic experiences. And that's not a problem in and of itself. But when it's just part of the process and not a result of the wrong kind of meditation or wrong application of meditation, then the anomalous somatic sensations that arise, they come and go. Report an error in the passage at 3:35 Highlight the passage at 3:35

3:56 They tend to be quite fleeting. But you don't need any help for the headache. Okay, good, I'm glad. So for anybody else, in terms of just more mild stuff, yes, just like pain in the knee, pain in the back, discomfort here or there, what did you find? Report an error in the passage at 3:56 Highlight the passage at 3:56

4:11 Please do. Report an error in the passage at 4:11 Highlight the passage at 4:11

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4:57 Yeah, Report an error in the passage at 4:57 Highlight the passage at 4:57

5:06 sure. Well, first of all, it's very often we're experiencing in a particular location within the body, not just one element. So if somebody, if you put your finger on a hot iron, you know, for ironing clothes, you get solidity. It's iron, so it's made of steel. So you're getting solidity and you're getting heat at the same time. And if it's wet, you can pick up some moisture as well, you know. And so we can pick up simultaneously in the same location. Report an error in the passage at 5:06 Highlight the passage at 5:06

5:30 And then there's more or less intensity. When it comes to heat, we have this bandwidth of comfort. So I'm cool but not cold, and I'm warm but not hot. But as soon as it starts getting extreme, and this is what I think we share with all animals. All animals know what it's like to be too hot or too cold. I think that's very basic, and it's correlated with feeling. So when it gets too cold, then we're experiencing that coldness, which is just more coldness or less fire element. Report an error in the passage at 5:30 Highlight the passage at 5:30

5:57 Now we're experiencing it as discomfort. And of course, likewise, this is pleasantly warm, this is no longer pleasant, this is too hot, you know, make it cooler. So, I'll just pause there, that these are complex, they are intermingled, but the fundamental hypothesis is, once again, that the feelings are not there in the nature of the elements, but in the mode that we apprehend them. Report an error in the passage at 5:57 Highlight the passage at 5:57

6:21 I'll now give an obvious example, just to highlight this point, but knowing full well, nobody's being naive here, is that if somebody, like in the cases of torture, I mean, it's very deliberate. It's kind of something of a science. There are people who are professional at that, and they know how much pain to give so you don't pass out. You know, that's part of the skill. Report an error in the passage at 6:21 Highlight the passage at 6:21

6:40 You don't want people to pass out. You don't want them to die prematurely. And so this is a very calculated pain. And what they're doing is delivering up earth, water, fire, air, or some selection of those, like with sharp instruments, like with heat, electronic shock, and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 6:40 Highlight the passage at 6:40

6:58 so... It certainly feels when it's intense, it's deliberate like that, or you have a motorcycle accident, your knee is smashed up. It really feels like, well, the feelings are absolutely there. I don't have any choice in this. I can think it's happy, I can think it's sad, but whatever. It's overwhelming. And that, of course, is true. Of course it's true. But this is why we started in an area where we had a short session. Report an error in the passage at 6:58 Highlight the passage at 6:58

7:19 I would really sincerely hope nobody was in agony. If you are, then change positions. So we're dealing with something much more manageable, where we can study it, where there's more malleability. And see, then we can ask these questions and really come up with some interesting answers. But now I'll give the obvious example, or just something that just makes it obvious, and that is, let's imagine you're a woman sitting on a bus, on a bench on a bus, and a stranger comes, like an old man, and he comes over and sits next to you, and then he takes his hand and goes like this on your face. Report an error in the passage at 7:19 Highlight the passage at 7:19

7:57 How does that feel? You know, how does that feel? Good, huh? Creepy, right? Everybody agrees. That's creepy. You dirty old man. Get your hands off of me. What's wrong with you? Pervert. Call the police. 9-1-1. This guy's like pervert. That just felt so yucky. And then you go home to your spouse or loved one or your child. Let's say just your child. And your child says, Oh, Mama, good to see you home. Report an error in the passage at 7:57 Highlight the passage at 7:57

8:21 Exactly the tactile sensation. Earth, water, fire, air, the smoothness and so forth. Exactly the same. Tactical sensation, right? And you just give the child a hug. Oh, it's so good to be with you. I love you too. And you give each other a hug. So that's just an obvious example. The tactile sensation is exactly the same. The feeling is totally different. Report an error in the passage at 8:21 Highlight the passage at 8:21

8:38 And in other cases, it could be completely indifferent. So it's a feeling, maybe you're doing it to yourself. Well, not pleasant, not unpleasant. It's just neutral. I'm experiencing it neutrally. So that's an obvious example, but the point is that there are many others. So let's just come back to you. We'll put this in a little bit of limbo and see other people's responses. Report an error in the passage at 8:38 Highlight the passage at 8:38

8:59 was anyone for whom... Oh, go ahead, just jump in. Please. An itch, yeah, they catch your attention. Report an error in the passage at 8:59 Highlight the passage at 8:59

9:30 Right, right, right. anybody find that by, and of course this takes some skill, it's not something you develop in a day or two, but intention is a skill that can be refined to a very high degree, it's called samādhi. Did anyone find that as you really bored into the sensations themselves that the feeling tone with which you were experiencing them dissipated? Report an error in the passage at 9:30 Highlight the passage at 9:30

9:50 Anybody find that? Quite a few people. Yeah, a lot of people. And then did some of you, when you bored right into it, and I think this already did happen, because in other words, you can say I'm not fishing for the right answer. This is really quite open, and I'm just assuming, okay, that was a lot of people that found, interestingly enough, that when you bored right into the sensations, that displeasure or that discomfort kind of vanished, which would clearly indicate, as a scientific experiment, then that would strongly imply That the feelings aren't right in the nature of sensations themselves, because you're attending to them very closely. And if they're the same, as the feeling becomes more, the sensation becomes more and more evident, because you're attending, like staring, beaming, gazing at them very intently, that if they're the same, then you should be getting just an accentuation of the feeling, if they're identical. Report an error in the passage at 9:50 Highlight the passage at 9:50

10:38 But the fact that in many cases, it seems like at least half, the feeling faded out as the sensation faded in, or then it drew in, got highlighted. That'd be pretty strong evidence of not the same thing. But now, I think it did happen for some people. You really focused in, whether it's a headache or some other sensation. Report an error in the passage at 10:38 Highlight the passage at 10:38

10:57 Did some of you find that the feeling itself just intensified as you gazed, you peered with strong concentration right on the sensations themselves? Did somebody find that the feelings also accentuated? In one case at least, yes. Okay, yeah. And you see, I'm not refuting, I don't refute people's experience. Report an error in the passage at 10:57 Highlight the passage at 10:57

11:16 I kind of make a point I'm not doing that. It's silly. But that was four or five people, whereas maybe four or five times that found the opposite. That doesn't invalidate your experience. What's that? Report an error in the passage at 11:16 Highlight the passage at 11:16

11:29 You experienced both. Okay, cool. Yeah. So it starts to get quite interesting. And did anybody find that the magnitude of the feeling was simply unchanged as you really probed into the feeling itself, into the sensation itself? So now just a couple, yeah. It's also interesting. It's grist for the mill. Report an error in the passage at 11:29 Highlight the passage at 11:29

11:49 Go ahead, please. Report an error in the passage at 11:49 Highlight the passage at 11:49

12:00 Very Report an error in the passage at 12:00 Highlight the passage at 12:00

12:05 good. Report an error in the passage at 12:05 Highlight the passage at 12:05

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12:42 In one week, in America we have sometimes restaurants do, no, a whole community, like San Francisco is a very cool community. We'll have a bunch of restaurants get together and hold like on a Saturday night, Taste of the Town. So apparently not here. Taste of the Town is ketchup. San Francisco is where the action is. Report an error in the passage at 12:42 Highlight the passage at 12:42

13:03 They'll do Taste of the Town and the Taste of the Town is people will drop in on these restaurants and they have these little miniature portions and quite modest cost. So you get kind of take, well, what kind of food do they serve here? Might I want to come back? So you just get a taste but you don't want to get filled up and then you go to this place and then you maybe hit five or six, seven, eight restaurants in one evening, just a little morsel and then you get a sense, well, how's the grub there, you know? Report an error in the passage at 13:03 Highlight the passage at 13:03

13:26 And that's what this week is. It's a Taste of the Town. We're not going deeply into any one method. We could easily just focus on mindfulness of breathing for a week and that would be very meaningful. Then you'd have a full meal, at least one week, full meal. And here we are, often I'm not even giving the same instruction. We're moving from one session to the next. We're already moving from session, right? So you're getting a taste of the town, but then that gives you a sense, as you pointed out. Report an error in the passage at 13:26 Highlight the passage at 13:26

13:50 And your name again, please? Yorise. Yorise, it's hard for me to remember. Not that great with names, you might have noticed by now. But then you see, ah, I might want to come back for a second serving here. There could be something here. It was interesting. Tears coming. There are portions of the body, sensations in the body, feelings in the body that are very clearly associated with sometimes trauma, memories, emotions, desires and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 13:50 Highlight the passage at 13:50

14:12 And they have spatial location. They're not the same, but strong correlation. So they can be very interesting. As we say, I felt gut-wrenching fear. My heart broke. My heart was so filled with joy. And so forth. So a lot of mental emotions. Find there's strong correlations in somatic experiences and somatic feelings. But now when we did the opposite, when you laid it on, obviously I was being pretty thick, okay, I'm going to rupture my knee, I'm going to have arthritis, I'll probably be in a wheelchair, you know, whatever it is. Report an error in the passage at 14:12 Highlight the passage at 14:12

14:43 But I gave you the idea, okay, what's to not do here? Something we do naturally, it happens quite, but probably not so exaggeratedly. As I suggested, you know, throbbing knee and all of that. But when you laid it on, the conceptual projections and so forth and so on, did that influence the feeling, leave it neutral? Report an error in the passage at 14:43 Highlight the passage at 14:43

15:01 Or what was your experience? In the green, I think you were nodding. If you wish, yeah, I don't mean to pick on you. I'm just picking on you, that's all. Report an error in the passage at 15:01 Highlight the passage at 15:01

15:14 No real surprise there. But it is interesting that merely thinking and visualizing, oh, it's not real, it's only in your mind. Yeah, it's in your mind. And look, it made the sensation stronger, the feeling stronger. Other people have that same experience, that it accentuated the pain, just by thinking or visualizing in a certain way? Yeah. Report an error in the passage at 15:14 Highlight the passage at 15:14

15:46 So there's... Go ahead, please. Yes. Report an error in the passage at 15:46 Highlight the passage at 15:46

16:00 Yeah. Report an error in the passage at 16:00 Highlight the passage at 16:00

16:04 Okay, good. Yeah, we'll give somebody else a chance. Yes, please. Report an error in the passage at 16:04 Highlight the passage at 16:04

16:19 Sure. It's a big topic. Prāṇa is in the Hindu and the Buddhist tradition, and I don't really know East Asian thought, spiritual... spiritual, you know, Taoism and Chinese Buddhism, I just don't know it that well. It's just not something I've had time or basically time to study. But certainly the role of chi runs through all of East Asia, China, Korea, Japan, all of it. Report an error in the passage at 16:19 Highlight the passage at 16:19

16:45 You can't avoid it. And likewise for all of the Indian subcontinent and everything influenced by that, the role of prāṇa. It's just everywhere. And wherever it's in Africa, it's in South America and everywhere. Every culture apart from scientific materialism, they can't measure it physically. Then everybody else, though, everybody else gets it. Report an error in the passage at 16:45 Highlight the passage at 16:45

17:02 But now I'll focus on something I know something about and that is in Buddhism. And specifically Mahāyāna Buddhism, the notion of prāṇa doesn't come up in the Pāli Canon or Theravāda Buddhism. They're not refuting it, it just doesn't come up. They'll speak of the four elements, that's all, earth, water, fire, air, but not prāṇa as such. Whereas in Mahāyāna Buddhism and then Vajrayana Buddhism, big time, it's everywhere. Report an error in the passage at 17:02 Highlight the passage at 17:02

17:21 Traditional Tibetan medicine, absolutely central, really incredibly important. And how it's understood is that, as I mentioned earlier, very brief reiteration, that prāṇa is physical. It has direct impact on matter, on tendons and ligaments and blood and things like that, which are matter-matter. So it directly causally interfaces with matter. Report an error in the passage at 17:21 Highlight the passage at 17:21

17:43 But prāṇa is not matter. It's not composed of particles of matter. So there's a Tibetan term when they look at different classifications of phenomena. There are mental processes and these are subjective states of consciousness. There's visual, there's auditory, there's mental. These are modes of apprehension, modes of consciousness. There's angry consciousness, clear consciousness, disturbed and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 17:43 Highlight the passage at 17:43

18:08 So that's one whole category of natural phenomena. And there are modes of awareness, flavored in many different ways. Emotions are, intentions are, memories are. These are all modes of apprehension. So there's, okay, let's call that mind. And then there's matter. And matter, in the Buddhist definition of matter, it's called in Tibetan duldu dupa, that which is composed of elementary particles, little tiny bits of chunks of stuff, and that's matter. Report an error in the passage at 18:08 Highlight the passage at 18:08

18:34 Well, that sounds pretty good. And prāṇa is not mind, it's not a state of consciousness, it's not matter, it's not composed of little particles of prāṇa, it's not composed of matter, not in a Buddhist view, nor is it in terms of electrons, protons and other particles, basic elementary particles, or atoms, not made of atoms, but it is physical. Report an error in the passage at 18:34 Highlight the passage at 18:34

18:53 And it's prāṇa that is the mediator. It's physical but not material. It's physical in the sense that it has location. It moves. It directly impacts. It has a direct causal impact on matter. And matter has a direct impact on it. So again, get drunk. That's physical. You're just taking in some chemicals. Does that influence your prāṇa? Absolutely. Big time. Big time. But of course you get drunk. Does that influence your mind? Of course. How? Report an error in the passage at 18:53 Highlight the passage at 18:53

19:20 Prāṇa. Prāṇa is the mediator. It's physical but not material, but it's strong, especially some forms of prāṇa, and this gets into a whole subtle nuance of classifications of prāṇa. There are a particular type of prāṇa that is very strongly correlated with the mind, others with digestion, evacuation, movement. Report an error in the passage at 19:20 Highlight the passage at 19:20

19:37 So this gets into the whole subtleties of Indian Ayurvedic and traditional Tibetan medicine, of five major types of prāṇa, five minor types of prāṇa, but what's relevant here is that type of prāṇa is strongly associated with mind. In fact, they even call it Lung Sem, energy mind, energy mind, on a coarse level, which right now, so we have thoughts, emotions, our psyche operating, so there it is something that's non-physical and non-material. Report an error in the passage at 19:37 Highlight the passage at 19:37

20:04 Your emotions, your desires, intentions, your faith, confidence, the things that, the engine behind the placebo effect, not physical and not mental, and not material, immaterial, totally, and not physical. Your desires have no location, brain correlates, of course, but brain correlates are not desires. Report an error in the passage at 20:04 Highlight the passage at 20:04

20:22 And so mental processes are not physical and they're not mental, but they do interface directly, causally, with prāṇa, which is physical but not material. And moreover, it's said, I guess the plot thickens, is that it is said that this, that's why they hyphenate it practically. Lungsem, energy mind. That energy mind actually is one composite. It's not two things. Report an error in the passage at 20:22 Highlight the passage at 20:22

20:48 Bumping into each other. Like here's the prāṇa over here. Here's the prāṇa associated with mind. Oh, and they just bumped into some mind. Doesn't happen. The energy mind is a continuum. It's a conglomerate. It's an alloy. And it has a physical aspect to it and it has a cognitive aspect to it. Right? That's prāṇa. And it's on the coarse level. Report an error in the passage at 20:48 Highlight the passage at 20:48

21:06 So right now I'm operating in my coarse mind, my thoughts, emotions, desires and attentions. And correlated with these mental states of my coarse mind, there are coarse flows of energy within the body. And that's why when I alter, when I start thinking or in visualizing, my knee is throbbing. I think it's probably turning red. Maybe it's purple. Maybe it's going to burst. Report an error in the passage at 21:06 Highlight the passage at 21:06

21:26 Maybe I'll have a rupture. Maybe I'll have arthritis in my right knee for the rest of my life. And I'm laying it on cognitively and with visualization and thoughts and trying to drum up some anxiety, trying to contrive some anxiety. Those thoughts, which are immaterial and non-physical, they are influencing the prāṇa. Report an error in the passage at 21:26 Highlight the passage at 21:26

21:45 They can't help it because they're one composite, one alloy. And it's prāṇa now, the mind prāṇa, that composite conditioned with these thoughts of anxiety, dread and so forth and so on. And that prāṇa is targeting right there to the target area. The prāṇa is going there. The mind is going there. And this is influencing tissue, influencing nerve endings. Report an error in the passage at 21:45 Highlight the passage at 21:45

22:08 The physical is now influencing the material. Nerve endings are made of matter. And they're going to start sending a different signal. And so the mediator is that energy mind, energy hyphen mind. Now, that's why we're still alive, fully embodied, the body's functioning, the mind, frontal cortex, all of that fully activated. Report an error in the passage at 22:08 Highlight the passage at 22:08

22:28 The Buddha's understanding is that in the dying process, the elaborations, these derivative forms of energy, which are permeating all parts of the body and have these specific functions, again, evacuation, digestion, extending and retracting limbs and so forth, There are various forms of derivative energy, a prāṇa within the body. And in the dying process, there's an implosion, the opposite of differentiation, a simplification, a withdrawal into the core. Report an error in the passage at 22:28 Highlight the passage at 22:28

22:57 And so this is where we start feeling cold and we can no longer move because those pranas are pulling in, they're withdrawing, imploding. And likewise, in the dying process, if it's nice and natural, sequential, not only natural, but slow, If you have a nice, slow, painless death, that's the best kind. So you can really monitor, you can actually really bring introspection to the dying process and see what's going on. Report an error in the passage at 22:57 Highlight the passage at 22:57

23:24 Die lucidly is a really cool thing to be able to do. So one tries to prepare for that. But if you're dying from a disease, which lets you die gradually and with not much pain, or maybe none, then you monitor this flow and you find that as the prāṇa is becoming undifferentiated, Withdrawing into its core, into kind of the prime prāṇa. Likewise, the mind, which is so differentiated with expectation, memory, attention, intellect, language and all of that, that's also imploding. Report an error in the passage at 23:24 Highlight the passage at 23:24

23:55 So the mind is simplifying, it's withdrawing into its core. And these two are taking place. That is, those pranas associated with the mind, as the mind is simplifying, going down to its core. Likewise, those pranas associated with attention, happy, sad, anticipation, recollection and so forth, they're also withdrawing into the core. And of course, since it's an alloy, that core is simply withdrawing into its dual-faceted core of energy mind. Report an error in the passage at 23:55 Highlight the passage at 23:55

24:22 Until when the dying process is complete, then all of your cognitive functions, that is emotions and recognizing this and that and so forth, all the activities of the psyche, the core's mind, they've now vanished. They've vanished. But they haven't vanished into thin air, contrary to the belief of the materialists, because the materialists don't know anything about the next dimension, because they have no way of measuring it, so it's quite innocent ignorance. Report an error in the passage at 24:22 Highlight the passage at 24:22

24:49 But subjectively speaking, for people who really have a science of the mind from the first-person perspective, your coarse mind is dissolved, and the energies associated with the coarse mind, they also dissolve, but again, they don't vanish. There is a conservation principle here at stake. Nothing that exists becomes nothing. Report an error in the passage at 24:49 Highlight the passage at 24:49

25:06 The energies don't become nothing and mental phenomena, consciousness, can't become nothing. It's impossible. All it can do is transmute. It can only shift, just like everything else in the universe. Report an error in the passage at 25:06 Highlight the passage at 25:06

25:18 Matter, you can't make matter become nothing. You can't make energy become nothing. You can't make space become nothing. And you can't make time become nothing. If it's there, all it can do is shift. And so why one should think that consciousness is somehow an anomaly in the whole universe, that it alone can become nothing, is quite a bizarre notion, actually. Report an error in the passage at 25:18 Highlight the passage at 25:18

25:36 There's a principle of conservation of prāṇa, principle of conservation of consciousness. We just can't make it become nothing. It's not possible. Nature doesn't work that way. But what it can do is it goes from an elaborated version into a simplified version. Coarse mind dissolves into subtle mind. And we'll get to this day after tomorrow especially. Report an error in the passage at 25:36 Highlight the passage at 25:36

25:55 And these differentiated prāṇa dissolve into subtle prāṇa. And it's that subtle continuum, subtle continuum of consciousness, which is now no longer human. Report an error in the passage at 25:55 Highlight the passage at 25:55

26:07 In other words, it's not you as a human being goes from this life to the next one and you're still a woman, you're still Australian or what have you. It's not a person that carries on from one life to the next with, you know, gender and all of that. That's up in the psyche area. Just like the body. I'm a man. Well, I've got a man's body. That's why. That's pretty much it. But it's denuded now from a particular type of body and therefore species. Report an error in the passage at 26:07 Highlight the passage at 26:07

26:30 And it's denuded from a particular type of psyche, namely human intelligence. You have human intelligence only as long as you have a human brain. And so the brain is now brain dead. Your body is on the point of decomposing. But the energy and the mind, that energy mind, dissolved into subtle level, which is no longer species specific. It's no longer human. And that's what carries on. Report an error in the passage at 26:30 Highlight the passage at 26:30

26:55 That's what carries on to the next. And so in the bardo then, it's not a human being that went into the bardo. The human being got left behind. But it's a continuum of that subtle, subtle energy mind that carries on. But what's most fascinating, I mean, I think that's pretty fascinating, and it's empirically testable. Unlike all of the hypotheses from materialism, not one of them is testable. Report an error in the passage at 26:55 Highlight the passage at 26:55

27:15 They simply assume them. I find that really quite funny. They think it's scientific, and yet nobody's ever even proposed a test. They just say, well, look, they're dead. They must have vanished. It's very gullible. But this one can be tested. And I won't elaborate right now. We're almost out of time. But in short, it is because on this course level, That it's energy mind, that shift your attitude, shift your attitude to your way of thinking, your visualization. And you're shifting, therefore, your mode of apprehending the object. Report an error in the passage at 27:15 Highlight the passage at 27:15

27:44 But that means you can shift your feeling. Because it's not just a given. And you can shift it positively, negatively, or you can leave it the same. When you bore right into it, generally speaking, the sharper you get, the cleaner your investigation gets. I'll say this is a hypothesis. You will find that if you're just shucking off like dead skin, More and more of the conceptual noise, the associations, the memories and imaginations, and just piercing in like just with a needle, overall the tendency will be what most people found. Report an error in the passage at 27:44 Highlight the passage at 27:44

28:15 And that is the feeling that was there on the course level. It's like a bullet going through a cloud. Then you just don't find any cloud. You just went right through it. And that particular feeling tone vanishes. So that would be in short the reason. Now bring that... That bullet with a great big bulky chunk of something and that's going to influence what you're experiencing. But now there was that other test we did as our time runs out. Report an error in the passage at 28:15 Highlight the passage at 28:15

28:43 And that is if your pain is in the head, for example, and you direct your attention down to your feet. A single point, if we're still new to this practice, we're not very good at it. We're not completely incompetent either. So we're someplace in between. And here is a trainable skill. If the pain is up here and you direct your attention to the feet, What happens to pain in the head? Well, one would expect, and the expectation turns out to be quite realistic, that since you're not giving attention to it, it fades out. Report an error in the passage at 28:43 Highlight the passage at 28:43

29:15 And the more focused you are, it can fade out completely. Some scientific studies were done quite recently on mindfulness of breathing and with respect to physical pain. And they found in some cases, we can't make a great generalization here, but it was a rigorous scientific study, that in some cases mindfulness of breathing was more effective than morphine. Report an error in the passage at 29:15 Highlight the passage at 29:15

29:37 For alleviating the experience of pain. And that can be as simple as if you're focusing on the tip of the nostrils, the aperture is right there and you're getting pretty good at it. It's like on a stage where the spotlight focuses on one actor and the rest of the stage is in the dark. Whatever is happening, you don't see it. Report an error in the passage at 29:37 Highlight the passage at 29:37

29:56 Because our quantity of attention is finite. Psychologists know this extremely well when it comes to visual perception. If I really focus on your face, So if I'm full, and everybody, it's Report an error in the passage at 29:56 Highlight the passage at 29:56

30:06 You're very clear, but everybody else's face is not. Report an error in the passage at 30:06 Highlight the passage at 30:06

30:13 And so, selective attention within the visual field is, I think we've just lost the battery, or we're losing it. Report an error in the passage at 30:13 Highlight the passage at 30:13