Four Applications Of Mindfulness Retreat 2013 with B. Alan Wallace (part 46)

0:04 So we've looked briefly at the Theravāda presentation of the Bhavaṅga, and now we'll go to a parallel track, which, as I said before, I think is referring to the same thing, but it has a certain richness and elaboration that I find very helpful, and this is from the Dzogchen, or Great Perfection Tradition, of Tibetan Buddhism, again rooted in Indian Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 0:04 Highlight the passage at 0:04

0:27 And here this theme of this substrate consciousness, the Alaya Vishnana, comes up quite prominently, if you know where to look. In the popularization of Dzogchen, it's often overlooked and that can give rise to a lot of confusion. But I want to elaborate on that. We'll just go right to the discussions of the substrate consciousness as in a body of literature that I've become quite familiar with. Report an error in the passage at 0:27 Highlight the passage at 0:27

0:50 These are, I'll make this very brief reference, but they're the mind treasures of Dujum Lingba, who's an extraordinary 19th century Dzogchen master. And just leave it at that. But they're classics, highly regarded, it's very representative, crystal clear. And in a strange kind of way, oddly, very contemporary. So the one I'm citing in particular is called the Vatra Essence. I've translated all five of them in two commentaries, and they'll all be published within the next year or two by wisdom publications. Report an error in the passage at 0:50 Highlight the passage at 0:50

1:17 They're really quite extraordinary. And so in this teaching, which again is representative of the whole Dzogchen tradition, it gives a sequence, an etiology, kind of a genesis of how we wind up in this present mode of consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 1:17 Highlight the passage at 1:17

1:33 And I think it's illuminating in many ways. So in the beginning there was. Now in Buddhism there are no ultimate beginnings, but there are many relative beginnings. Beginning of the day, beginning of meditation session, beginning of being asleep, and so on. And so here's an arbitrary beginning, and that is when we're in deep dreamless sleep, totally out for the count, not even aware of anything, not even the fact that we're asleep. Report an error in the passage at 1:33 Highlight the passage at 1:33

1:56 And on that occasion it said, That even the substrate consciousness, this kind of bare-bones, naked, nuclear kind of flow of awareness, subtle, continual of mental consciousness, even this is shrouded, because it's of the nature of knowing, but when we're in deep, dreamless sleep, we don't know anything. Report an error in the passage at 1:56 Highlight the passage at 1:56

2:15 So it's been veiled, obscured. And I think of it metaphorically, of course, just in terms of an image, and that is like a sword that's put into its sheath. So the sword may be, maybe it's even a glowing sword, a radiant sword. Like a light, what's it called, a lightsaber. But it may be very sharp, very luminous, but when it's in its sheath, then of course you can't see it at all. Report an error in the passage at 2:15 Highlight the passage at 2:15

2:40 And it can't cut anything. And so the substrate consciousness actually becomes immersed in, enveloped in the substrate. And the substrate is just sheer blank vacuity. It's not emptiness like Shunyata, ultimate reality. It's not that at all. It's simply a sheer blank vacuity. Report an error in the passage at 2:40 Highlight the passage at 2:40

3:03 Empty space of the mind with no appearances. And it's of the nature, the substrate or alaya, it's called in Sanskrit, gunji in Tibetan, is of the nature of unknowing or unawareness or avidya, not knowing, unawareness. It's of the very nature of that. It's of the very nature of obscuring the nature of reality and obscuring the nature of consciousness itself. So you can imagine if you're in that like Rumpelstiltskin, didn't he fall asleep for a hundred years or something? Report an error in the passage at 3:03 Highlight the passage at 3:03

3:30 So when you're in deep sleep, you don't know how long you've been asleep at all. You kind of guess afterwards, but... You don't really know, because you don't even know that you're asleep or how long you've been asleep in that deep stage 4 non-REM sleep. But in normal sleep, when people do wake up, then there's a stirring. Report an error in the passage at 3:30 Highlight the passage at 3:30

3:50 It's a subconscious stirring, and how it's phrased in the Dzogchen tradition is a stirring of karmic energies. And that is this consciousness, this substrate consciousness, together with the substrate, even though manifestly or overtly, There's just nothing there. There's not an awareness of anything. Nevertheless, it's not simply empty-empty. That substrate consciousness comes configured on a subtle level with karma, with propensities. Report an error in the passage at 3:50 Highlight the passage at 3:50

4:18 And something catalyzes these karmic propensities or energies. There's a stirring. There's a nice word from physics called symmetry. Symmetry. It has a lot to do with cosmogony, the emergence of the universe from the Big Bang, and the multiple breakings of symmetry. In the beginning just kind of this void and then there's a breaking of symmetry of mass, energy and so forth and then different types of matter and different types of energy and then we have this world here with a lot of broken symmetries, a lot of unevenness. Report an error in the passage at 4:18 Highlight the passage at 4:18

4:49 And likewise when you're just resting in the substrate, that's symmetry. There's no this or that, up or down, there's no differentiation of anything explicitly but there are these implicit karmic energies, they stir. That's what they do, they stir. And stirring, they break the symmetry, and like that sword coming out of its sheath, the substrate consciousness emerges. Report an error in the passage at 4:49 Highlight the passage at 4:49

5:14 And it's by nature luminous. It can't help it. That's just its nature. Just like fire is hot. Well, substrate consciousness is luminous. It illuminates. It knows. Bare bones. Very naked. Very raw. Primitive. And as that emerges, then there's this whole sequence. Now, there's no mechanism. Mechanism is a very 19th century notion. It's pretty antiquated in cutting-edge physics. Report an error in the passage at 5:14 Highlight the passage at 5:14

5:36 And it doesn't play much of any role in Buddhism. It's simply a phenomenological, this triggers this, this triggers that. And so there's a triggering, and as that substrate consciousness emerges, then this triggers another type of a mental process. Report an error in the passage at 5:36 Highlight the passage at 5:36

5:54 And that mental process is called Thistamana, or afflictive mentation. Afflictive mentation. In Tibetan. Does anybody here read Tibetan? I don't want to just give redundant words. Do you have some? Tibetan? So, okay, then it's worthwhile. So, nyu as in afflictive, yi is mentation. And so it's, but that's just the word, afflictive mentation. Report an error in the passage at 5:54 Highlight the passage at 5:54

6:16 What is it? It's something we can really sense. And that is, it's a very raw, primitive, primal sense. You can say it's ego, but it occurs for every sentient being. So no matter how primitive the sentient being, like an aphid, I don't know, or a hydra, I don't know. And scientists don't know. What's the most primitive organism that actually is conscious? They don't know. They don't have any way of measuring it. So, okay, we're ignorant. Big deal. So that there are very primitive conscious organisms. Report an error in the passage at 6:16 Highlight the passage at 6:16

6:49 I would suggest aphids are probably in that category. Almost certainly there are more primitive ones. Or you see two flies coming to a little speck of honey. And clearly there's competition there. One might try to scare away the other. Even on a very primitive level, there's a sense, you're not me. And if there's something I want, buzz off. I want it. So very, very primitive. It's raw. And so it's this kind of coalescence, again a breaking of symmetry, a coalescence, a congealing, an arousal of a sense of being over here and the space of the mind, the substrate being over there. Report an error in the passage at 6:49 Highlight the passage at 6:49

7:25 It's pre-articulate, pre-language, pre-conceptual, pre-any kind of conceptualization. As I said, it's very raw, very primitive. But that's activated and so again a breaking of symmetry, a sense of being over here versus space over there. And out of that arises mentation or manas in Tibetan, mentation. Report an error in the passage at 7:25 Highlight the passage at 7:25

7:46 This is a further elaboration, it's triggered by that kind of really primal ego grasping or sense of I am. And with the arising of mentation, that also comes in a couple of levels. Non-conceptual, again it's not talking, there's no discursiveness. But still a mentation entails a sense of differentiation, an ability to distinguish this from that. This from that. Report an error in the passage at 7:46 Highlight the passage at 7:46

8:12 And so that can occur before the conceptual grid comes in, before there's thought as such. There's still a raw differentiation between this thing and that thing, between appearances and awareness, between this type of appearance and that type of appearance. And as that elaborates, then it becomes conceptual. It becomes conceptual. So now a conceptual grid's coming up. Report an error in the passage at 8:12 Highlight the passage at 8:12

8:36 And independence upon that manifest the five types of consciousness, sensory consciousness, because mental consciousness is already there, arise the five types of sensory consciousness, Report an error in the passage at 8:36 Highlight the passage at 8:36

8:49 differentiation by the power of mentation, differentiation, this is vision, this is sound, this is smell and so forth, and then independence upon that, differentiation of subject and object, differentiation of different types of appearances, visual, auditory and so on, then independence upon that, Comes the full catastrophe, to use a nice word from John Kabat-Zinn, the full catastrophe, and that is simply the experience as we know it, in which the conceptualization is fully active, and as we're attending to all this array of appearances, overlapping or non-overlapping as they may be, as we attend to appearances, there are colors and shapes, there are sounds, there are smells and so forth, the conceptual mind comes out. Report an error in the passage at 8:49 Highlight the passage at 8:49

9:36 And it looks over there, I'll use Jen's pullover again. The conceptual mind comes out and what I'm getting, what's being presented to me is blue. As I look at the pullover, blue. And the conceptual mind becomes activated here and says, I can make sense of that. That blue belongs to her sweater, her pullover. Report an error in the passage at 9:36 Highlight the passage at 9:36

9:57 That's an attribute of her sweater. And then if I touch it, I know what it's going to feel like. I've seen sweaters like that before and a softish. So that's the texture of it. the sweater. And maybe there's some little bit of scent in it, maybe a human scent whatever, maybe a scent of cotton ah, but that's the scent of the sweater right? Report an error in the passage at 9:57 Highlight the passage at 9:57

10:15 And then, oh that's the temperature it's warm, it's cool, that's the temperature of the sweater. So now we have a placeholder, we have something we used to have a lot of appearances like, oh, there's tackle sensations. That's the sound of her sweater when it's being rubbed. Report an error in the passage at 10:15 Highlight the passage at 10:15

10:34 And so it used to be just there's sound, there's texture, there's color, there's smell. It certainly has some kind of a taste. But now we have something that has all of them. Her sweater has a particular color. We can all see it. And it has a texture, it has a smell and a taste. It makes this kind of sound when you rub it. And so now we have objects that have the appearances as their attributes. Report an error in the passage at 10:34 Highlight the passage at 10:34

10:58 And that's all over the place. I just gave one example now. How many examples are there? Where we objectify, and now the object that we've conceptually designated, the sweater, has all of the attributes, as if it somehow is holding them. It's like a magnet, and it holds it, it's holding onto its color, its shape, and so forth and so on. And again, it has a shape also, it has a thickness, it has a mass, it has... Report an error in the passage at 10:58 Highlight the passage at 10:58

11:24 Electric charge, that is the particles making up the sweater, they have electric charge, they produce electromagnetic fields, they have a certain gravitational field around them and so forth. So there's a major placeholder there, the sweater, or the molecules in the sweater. And we do this not only of course for physical objects out there in the world, but we also do this internally. Report an error in the passage at 11:24 Highlight the passage at 11:24

11:44 I have a mind, I have a body, I have thoughts, I have emotions, I have consciousness. I have a personality, I have a personal history, I have hopes and dreams of the future, I have potentials that I haven't realized yet, I have virtues and I have vices, and so we have again major, major placeholder. And then you look, okay, what's the placeholder? What is it that has all of these attributes? And which came first? Was there already something there? Report an error in the passage at 11:44 Highlight the passage at 11:44

12:15 Independently of anybody looking or conceptually designating, labeling, thinking about, was there somebody already there? Present, just sitting all by its lonesome. Her sweater, independent from her trousers, from her body, from anything around it. Just an absolute sweater, abiding in absolute space and time, waiting for somebody to recognize it. Report an error in the passage at 12:15 Highlight the passage at 12:15

12:36 Ah, there's the sweater. And the sweater, the bearer of all those attributes, kind of saying, okay, you finally saw me. Give me a name. Pulova. Or sweater. Or jumper. Or say, what's the Swahili word for sweater? Call me something. But I'm already here. I already have all my attributes. So call me whatever language you like in whatever terminology. But I'm already here. Report an error in the passage at 12:36 Highlight the passage at 12:36

12:59 I've already defined myself. I am. I am that I am. A sweater. Whether it's a sweater, whether it's an electron, whether it's a galaxy or person, whether it's an emotion. Do emotions have qualities? I think they do, don't they? And so when we say this is an object or this is a subject, I'm a subject. I'm a person. My mind is a subject. Report an error in the passage at 12:59 Highlight the passage at 12:59

13:23 Whether it's an object or a subject, we're identifying these things by way of their attributes. And the subject or the object is that which bears the attributes. Report an error in the passage at 13:23 Highlight the passage at 13:23

13:34 So now, there was the etiology, though. We start with a flat-out unknowing, some type of a subconscious movement. That's maybe the one part that really is not phenomenological. But we need some kind of explanation. And Buddhism is rather keen on causality. That is, the notion of something happening for no reason whatsoever doesn't find any place in Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 13:34 Highlight the passage at 13:34

13:54 It doesn't mean that we know the cause, but the general kind of, how do you say, ontological principle is things don't happen for no reason whatsoever. Because if they did, they would either happen all the time or never. But they wouldn't happen some of the time and not at other times. And the fact that things do occur on some occasions and not at other occasions would imply something happened here and it didn't happen there. Report an error in the passage at 13:54 Highlight the passage at 13:54

14:18 So it's just all logic, but it actually makes pretty good sense to me. Report an error in the passage at 14:18 Highlight the passage at 14:18

14:24 So there's this triggering. There's a substrate, it's catalyzed with the karmic energies, gives rise to substrate consciousness, gives rise to this primal sense of I am, catalyzes then non-conceptual, then conceptual mentation, then catalyzes the conceptual mind that makes sense of everything. And now we're in this world we feel familiar with, populated by objects, and for most of us populated by subjects, unless we insist on saying all subjects are simply objects, is what the materialist flat-footedly does. Report an error in the passage at 14:24 Highlight the passage at 14:24

14:53 It's moving right on. And then in the midst of all of that, with this reified sense of I am, and now it's really embedded. It used to be primal, raw and naked. Now by the time it's been filtered and configured by way of non-conceptual, conceptual mentation, and then the full conceptual grid, well informed with language, acculturation and so forth, now we have a very robust, fortified is the term. Report an error in the passage at 14:53 Highlight the passage at 14:53

15:19 It's like fortified bread. Well now we have a fortified sense of ego. I know who I am. I'm an American. Californian, Southern Californian. I'm a Stanford graduate. And we lay it on. We lay it on. We pack in our personal history. We pack in. This is what makes me unique. This is my stamp in the universe. And now if you insult anything that I am, well, that's going to hurt. Report an error in the passage at 15:19 Highlight the passage at 15:19

15:48 Anything. Insult Stanford. That'll piss me off. Because I'm a Stanford man. Anything that I identify with. You know, I have two kneecaps. Report an error in the passage at 15:48 Highlight the passage at 15:48

16:01 Insult people who have two kneecaps. Look out, you've just insulted me because I'm a two-kneecap person. And so there it is. Wherever we're identifying with, that's where we've made ourselves vulnerable. And not only to insult and so forth, but in other ways it's two. And that is, it's not only I am, but I have. And of course I have two kneecaps and I also have a cell phone. And I don't have your cell phone. Report an error in the passage at 16:01 Highlight the passage at 16:01

16:29 But I have this cell phone. So if your cell phone gets damaged, I'll teach you a little lesson on renunciation. You really shouldn't be attached. But somebody damages my cell phone, that hurts. Or my brand new car, and somebody puts a nick in it. I'm seeing other cars with nicks all over the place. It doesn't bother me at all. And that one's pretty much total, and that one's got a great big dent. Oh yeah, that's life, that's life. Report an error in the passage at 16:29 Highlight the passage at 16:29

16:57 And then my car gets a scratch, and that hurts. Something's wrong with the universe. And it's just because of that grasping, that identification with, it makes us vulnerable. So in this practice, without wandering all over the place, in this practice, what we're doing is rolling back the carpet. We ask for, when does saṃsāra begin? Well, it begins in a state of unknowing, which means it doesn't begin because there's nobody to know it. Either retrospectively, because again, you can't remember what you didn't know in the first place. Report an error in the passage at 16:57 Highlight the passage at 16:57

17:25 But saṃsāra begins every morning. Every morning. And that is... In the beginning, before you're awake, when you're still resting in non-REM sleep, deep sleep, that's a little beginning of a saṃsāra. It's as good as any. I mean, it doesn't get better a thousand years ago or a billion lifetimes ago. You know, that's the nature of saṃsāra. It's the same old, same old. So just like if you see one H2O molecule, you've kind of seen them all. If you've seen one beginning of saṃsāra, that's probably good as any. Report an error in the passage at 17:25 Highlight the passage at 17:25

17:54 Because there was no ultimate, absolute, ontological beginning of saṃsāra. Totally problematic. Buddha completely refuted it. So let's just, never mind some absolute beginning, let's say, well how about the beginning for today, and let's say it started at 4.30 when you were still deep asleep, and so there was unknowing. Report an error in the passage at 17:54 Highlight the passage at 17:54

18:11 And then this whole sequence coming out to this whole world of conceptual elaboration where everything is reified, and each of us wants to find happiness, and there's only a finite number of goods out there, especially for the hedonic, only a certain number of cell phones, etc. Report an error in the passage at 18:11 Highlight the passage at 18:11

18:28 And so then we're all set up for, if I don't have a cell phone, I wish I had yours, maybe I can whack you to the side and run off with your cell phone. So there's craving, there's hostility, there's envy, there's arrogance and so forth. And then voila, here's saṃsāra ready to roll, ready for another day. You know, craving, hostility, all the mental afflictions as we're scurrying about as moving sentient beings in the pursuit of happiness, always looking in the wrong places. Report an error in the passage at 18:28 Highlight the passage at 18:28

18:54 And so in this practice of shamatha, the one we just did, We're rolling that back. In fact, we've been rolling it back all along in the practice of shamatha. And that is from that whole conceptual grid. It's rumination, semi-conscious rumination, totally caught up in the grid, saturated by craving and hostility, anxiety and so forth, the full catastrophe. Report an error in the passage at 18:54 Highlight the passage at 18:54

19:15 And in the practice of shamatha, you're rolling that back. You're seeking to calm that obsessive and compulsive proliferation of conceptualization. Basic shamatha, mindfulness of breathing. You're rolling that back. You're taking one step back from full-fledged, full-bore saṃsāra. Right? Okay, the outermost display, that total mesh, like a fly caught in a spider web with all six of its legs enmeshed in it. Report an error in the passage at 19:15 Highlight the passage at 19:15

19:44 What are you going to do? So, well, you tuck in. You roll back away from that whole conceptual grid, try to calm the whole system. And so you're taking a step back into, Conceptual mentation, in which case conceptualization is operative, they're still thinking, but it's not nearly so elaborate, compulsive and obsessive. Report an error in the passage at 19:44 Highlight the passage at 19:44

20:07 And then you keep on relaxing and releasing, releasing and inverting, and you go to non-conceptual mentation. And now you're able to still distinguish this from that, but you're not talking about it, right? So it's simpler. And then you roll that one back, and so the mind is really quiet, as in this practice right here. Report an error in the passage at 20:07 Highlight the passage at 20:07

20:28 Really quiet. This will take some time when developed and cultivated. You roll it back even from the mentation of distinguishing this from that in terms of the objects, the appearances arising to the mind. Because you're withdrawing your way. That's what we just did. And we're coming back, we're coming home. We're coming back to the nucleus and we withdraw even from the non-conceptual mentation. Report an error in the passage at 20:28 Highlight the passage at 20:28

20:51 In other words, we're getting very close to the center now. And then we run up again against this amorphous presence. Of, I'm still here, and I'm doing something. I'm inverting and releasing. I'm doing that. I may not be doing much. I may be in something of a straitjacket. Somebody made me sit still here, but at least I can do this. Report an error in the passage at 20:51 Highlight the passage at 20:51

21:22 I can invert, I can do that, and still let me do something here. And then we're examining that. Of course, we're very deliberately activating that sense of agency by releasing and inverting the awareness. a straitjacket, I've not you know Report an error in the passage at 21:22 Highlight the passage at 21:22

21:34 And now that we've isolated it, almost like a chemist that has a pure chemical and got it in a vial or you put it right there between the two plates under the microscope, you're looking at it now at just the pure strain as you're now coming right into that raw, simple sense of agency that's doing very little, doing something very primitive, release, invert, release, like an amoeba or pulsing, some kind of a pulsing organism, pulsing in, pulsing out. You're coming right in upon that. Report an error in the passage at 21:34 Highlight the passage at 21:34

22:04 To see if you can identify or simply observe what comes to mind, what do you see? So it's not a Zen koan where there's just no answer, you have to totally go into another mode. This is posing a question for which there can be an answer. Because it's a simple question. When you're inverting in upon that kind of raw sense of being the agent, you know, if somebody has free will, me. Report an error in the passage at 22:04 Highlight the passage at 22:04

22:26 If somebody's making decisions, me. Somebody's doing something, that's me. And so, good, what's the referent of the word me? Report an error in the passage at 22:26 Highlight the passage at 22:26

22:34 And looking for that nuclear me, that autonomous agent me that's doing this, that's controlling the mind and controls the body on other occasions. And when inverting awareness in upon the lived experience, your actual sense of being an agent, then you see what you see. So this once again is not philosophizing. There's nothing wrong with philosophizing, but that means that's what they're good at. They're really thinking about it a lot. That's not this. Report an error in the passage at 22:34 Highlight the passage at 22:34

23:02 This is not thinking about it a lot, any more than when Galileo was looking through his telescope, those little specks around Jupiter. He wasn't figuring this out by thinking a whole lot. He was simply observing them very, very carefully. And by that observation he got the answer he was looking for. And so here we're observing very carefully what comes to mind when you seek to observe that which is doing something, meditating, and see what comes to mind. Report an error in the passage at 23:02 Highlight the passage at 23:02

23:29 And maybe nothing comes to mind, in which case that's the answer. Or maybe some type of an appearance comes to mind. Maybe it's an appearance of your face or some color or some shape or something. If something comes to mind, then you ask of it, is that just an appearance? Like a cube, tetrahedron or face, whatever. Is that just an appearance but not the agent? Or is that actually the agent? Or an appearance of the agent? Report an error in the passage at 23:29 Highlight the passage at 23:29

23:55 And you probe into it. See, are you the one? Are you the one? And see whether it's empty or whether you've actually... Hit gold. You actually bumped into the agent. So there's one practice and then something I think even a bit subtler than that. Because we're not always doing something. That is, we've been practicing not doing anything. Report an error in the passage at 23:55 Highlight the passage at 23:55

24:14 But even when we're just sitting there and we're simply aware, there does tend to be, unless your experience is very different from mine, when I'm just sitting here and not talking, Report an error in the passage at 24:14 Highlight the passage at 24:14

24:29 since there's somebody here observing, being aware, this side, not that side, this side, even when he's not talking, Still there. That quiet, cognizant presence and agent, discreet. It's not a family. It's not a lot of people. It's not you. Report an error in the passage at 24:29 Highlight the passage at 24:29

24:47 It's this one. So good. Then we go into that mode. Alright, can you inspect that? You're experiencing it, so if you're experiencing it, why can't you inspect it? Look in there. Take the, you know, rip the curtain back off the Wizard of Oz and see, hello wizard, what's up? And see what appears to the mind. And if you see one more appearance, appearance of anything, Then you can ask further, good, what's witnessing that appearance? And take it back, like a hall of mirrors. If you keep on seeing appearances, ask yourself, good, that's an appearance. Report an error in the passage at 24:47 Highlight the passage at 24:47

25:18 What's aware of the appearance? And if another appearance comes up, good, what's aware of that appearance? And just see what you see. Report an error in the passage at 25:18 Highlight the passage at 25:18

25:27 What you can see this practice is doing is a full-fledged assault. It's an assault, like a battering ram breaking down one of the gates in a medieval castle. It's a battering ram, an assault. Battering like boom, we've all seen it in the movies, right? Boom, boom, boom until hopefully for the invaders that great big thick wooden gate collapses and then in come the troops. Report an error in the passage at 25:27 Highlight the passage at 25:27

25:52 We're assaulting boom, boom, boom in this oscillating motion, assaulting that klishtamana, that afflictive mentation, that sense that there really is someone here and it's over here, not over there. And seeing, although there is such a sense, that's true, there is sense of sense. Just like I can think that I am Napoleon Bonaparte, that delusion does exist and it has causal efficacy. But then the question is, is there a Napoleon Bonaparte here? Report an error in the passage at 25:52 Highlight the passage at 25:52

26:19 No, that's where you don't find one. So that's again a crucial distinction. The delusion is real, active, it does things. But the delusion of thinking, I'm Napoleon. But then you look, where's the Napoleon you're grasping onto? And then you say, oh, well, you're deluded because you're grasping onto something that doesn't exist at all. And thinking it does, right? And so there is a sense, this krishtamana. Report an error in the passage at 26:19 Highlight the passage at 26:19

26:39 This primitive, raw, primal coagulation of a sense of I am over here. And then we probe right into that. And we see although there is such a sense, does it actually have a referent? Is there any person, an agent, an observer, someone, an ego, a self, that corresponds to that sense, I am over here. And that's what we're battering down. And seeing, is that sense actually delusional? Report an error in the passage at 26:39 Highlight the passage at 26:39

27:09 In fact, does it represent nothing, refer to nothing? It's just a delusional, really conate, instinctual, this is right there among primitive animals, an instinctual grasping onto something that in fact doesn't exist at all. And to see that is to break through that door. Of course, what's next door to that is substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 27:09 Highlight the passage at 27:09

27:35 And once you break through to that, once your coarse mind on all of these levels has dissolved into the substrate consciousness, Report an error in the passage at 27:35 Highlight the passage at 27:35

27:45 Well, lo and behold, that's blissful. Just by nature, blissful. Blissful, luminous and non-conceptual. So this simple practice of shamatha, and you can see, that's pretty much the technique. We'll have one more phase after the break. It is very simple, radically empirical, utterly non-dogmatic. It's just seeing what you see. If we try to fish for some right answer, we'll just get some concept and that won't do any good at all. Report an error in the passage at 27:45 Highlight the passage at 27:45

28:11 It has to be experiential. But we see how we're rolling this back. Rolling back from the full conceptual grid, right back to the klistamana, the afflictive mentation, and then right back to the substrate consciousness, where temporarily then you've lost your mind, because it's dissolved into, melted into that substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 28:11 Highlight the passage at 28:11

28:32 So from the configuration of that unique crystallization of your own mind, it's melted right down to raw, basic H2O. And if you've seen one substrate consciousness, you've seen them all, in terms of how you immediately experience them. It's just those three qualities. It's bliss, luminosity and non-conceptuality. And if cockroaches could practice shamatha, that would be what they would discover. Report an error in the passage at 28:32 Highlight the passage at 28:32

28:55 Because their substrate consciousness is no better or worse than ours. Their coarse minds, I'm assuming, are probably a lot less complex than ours. But that's because it's arising independence upon a much simpler and cruder brain and nervous system. So it's tracing back to there. Report an error in the passage at 28:55 Highlight the passage at 28:55

29:15 So there by nature you're resting in this self-illuminating mindfulness of substrate consciousness. And of course, as you're experiencing that, pausing right there, then you are simultaneously aware of the substrate, because it's not isolated from the substrate. As you're experiencing that sheer natural luminosity of your own substrate consciousness, you are simultaneously experiencing this open expanse, this vacuous expanse of your substrate. Report an error in the passage at 29:15 Highlight the passage at 29:15

29:45 Therefore it's called substrate consciousness because you're conscious of the substrate and simultaneously when you're resting in the substrate consciousness you're also self-aware, that is aware of the substrate consciousness itself. So there's a co-extensiveness of the substrate and the substrate consciousness. They pervade each other, right, when you're resting there in the substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 29:45 Highlight the passage at 29:45

30:06 So there's nothing here for those of you who study prasangaka madhyamic philosophy. I can tell you with a lot of assurance. That there's nothing here that violates anything of the Sankhaka. This utterly phenomenological count of the substrate consciousness, there's nothing to refute. It's not inherently existent and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 30:06 Highlight the passage at 30:06

30:26 It simply is the subtle continuum of mental consciousness, but with, I think, quite a sophisticated and detailed phenomenological description of what it's like. Report an error in the passage at 30:26 Highlight the passage at 30:26

30:37 So now I think is the time, and I'll try to keep this relatively brief, we'll have a break coming up pretty soon, but finally take the bull by the horns. And that is this third mark of existence. We've looked in some detail into impermanence and how we can get ourselves into so much unnecessary suffering by grasping onto that which is by nature changing, fleeting, impermanent as being stable, durable and unchanging. Report an error in the passage at 30:37 Highlight the passage at 30:37

31:01 And then how much confusion and how much misery, real sadness, grief, conflict. And it just doesn't seem to end by us sentient beings grasping onto that which is not by nature a true Source of happiness. But thinking it is and then grasping on with, or pursuing it with kind of fixation, with incredible craving and desire. Report an error in the passage at 31:01 Highlight the passage at 31:01

31:26 Or if we get it, then holding on to it tenaciously as if our very life depends upon it because I found that which makes me happy. And it's enough to make the Buddhas weep. I mean, because it's just saturated by delusion. It's like being in a non-lucid dream and then running around, who's going to make me happy? You know, if you could have clairvoyant vision of somebody having a non-lucid dream. Report an error in the passage at 31:26 Highlight the passage at 31:26

31:45 You wouldn't know whether they'll laugh or cry. Because there they are getting, I'm afraid this is going to happen, I hope this happens, who's going to make me happy? Where's my, where do they call it my, oh that ridiculous phrase, the other part of me, what's that called? My soulmate. My soulmate, when we got split in half a long time ago, and the other half wandering around with a female body, oh where is she? Where's my soulmate? Who's going to make me happy? Report an error in the passage at 31:45 Highlight the passage at 31:45

32:10 And you're doing that in the dream, where's that one woman who's the one for me? And somebody observing from the waking state, thinking, I don't know whether this is a comedy or tragedy. It's kind of like just totally weird. What are you looking for, dude? Don't you know this is all within your own mind? Report an error in the passage at 32:10 Highlight the passage at 32:10

32:29 And you're not going to find happiness there. But of course, when you're in the midst of a non-lucid dream, you don't know much because you fundamentally have gotten confused about what you're experiencing altogether. Report an error in the passage at 32:29 Highlight the passage at 32:29

32:41 So we've covered that, mistaking that which is not a true source of happiness as being a true source of happiness. Then responding with attachment and craving, with hostility and aggression when anything gets in the way. We move then briefly to the third of the marks of existence and that is grasping onto that which is not I or mine as being really, inherently, truly and absolutely. Report an error in the passage at 32:41 Highlight the passage at 32:41

33:02 I or mine. And this again, just everywhere, just everywhere. People grasping onto their land as being absolutely theirs, maybe because the Bible says so or because some war said so or some... Nobody else said so. Grasping onto land, grasping onto natural resources, grasping onto an island off the coast of your country and saying, no, this is war, Japan and China, this is our little island. Report an error in the passage at 33:02 Highlight the passage at 33:02

33:27 I mean, it just never ends. Grasping inherently like, this is absolutely ours and there's been a lot of national pride, all this kind of business. It's been going on forever. And of course, it's not only land, it's possessions, it's spouses, it's children, it's body parts, it's memories, it's all kinds of things. Report an error in the passage at 33:27 Highlight the passage at 33:27

33:44 As if they're somehow truly, absolutely and inherently mine or absolutely, truly, inherently me. And so, again, it's like a tragic comedy because we keep on being deluded time and time and time again. And this very simple practice, rather Zen-like really, is designed to go kind of like to send a smart bomb right into the nucleus, you know, right into the nucleus and kind of just, you know, throw back the curtains. Report an error in the passage at 33:44 Highlight the passage at 33:44

34:12 And see, is there really anybody in here, autonomously, inherently, the one who really has this body, really has the mind, controlling the mind, observing from in here, the little lighthouse of my head, and really observing all the stuff out there, is there really anybody home? And you knock, get this hollow sound. At least I do, I don't know about you. But you know, you're looking there and there's this kind of radical not finding. Report an error in the passage at 34:12 Highlight the passage at 34:12

34:38 Or even better, there's a finding of an absence. And that's what's really getting at. That's real crux. It's subtle, but it's not. Not incomprehensible. And that is, if I'm looking for my cell phone, or let's say, no, let's say I'm looking for my pet elephant. I'm looking for my pet elephant. I left her around here someplace. I look out the window. I don't see it. Then you say, well, maybe it didn't look hard enough. Because there's a lot of ground around here. Report an error in the passage at 34:38 Highlight the passage at 34:38

35:02 It could be out back there. You know, my pet elephant. So merely not finding it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Maybe it just didn't look in the right place. That elephant, you know, is grazing in the backyard there. Report an error in the passage at 35:02 Highlight the passage at 35:02

35:15 If I know that my pet elephant, if it exists at all, has to be inside this room, if I'm sure of that, if I have a pet elephant, it's in this room, I think I've just covered it. There's no pet elephant here. It's not merely not finding it, but I found that there's no pet elephant here. There are no elephants small enough that it could be hiding. So I've discovered something. Report an error in the passage at 35:15 Highlight the passage at 35:15

35:38 It's not that I couldn't find it. I've discovered there's no elephant in this room at all. And I'm certain of it. Now I'm totally certain. You could have pulled a fast one on me. Gotcha. But there is a distinction there, right? You actually see that it's not there. You have made a discovery it's not there. Report an error in the passage at 35:38 Highlight the passage at 35:38

35:59 There are wonderful examples of that in physics. I'll give a real quick one. Ether. Ether. Up until 1887, it was almost universally assumed by physicists. There had to be some physical medium that saturated space. There had to be. In terms of the whole understanding of the natural world and the whole nature of waves. Report an error in the passage at 35:59 Highlight the passage at 35:59

36:18 And wave interference and so forth, they knew that light traveled through empty space. They knew that. And when light travels through empty space, they didn't have photons theory back then, they had waves, fields. They knew that light fields or light waves interacted with interference patterns. Just like waves on the surface of water, sound waves and so forth, wave interaction was well known in the latter part of the 19th century. Report an error in the passage at 36:18 Highlight the passage at 36:18

36:42 And they knew that light, the fields of light, Waves of light exhibited wave patterns, so there had to be a medium. Had to be a medium. Because they would cancel each other, they would augment each other. These just beautiful mathematics of wave interference patterns was well known, and light distributed those, right? And so, of course, there had to be an ether. Report an error in the passage at 36:42 Highlight the passage at 36:42

37:06 Lord Kelvin said there's one thing of which we're totally certain, and that is the presence of the real substantial ether. That we're certain of. He said that in 1891. Report an error in the passage at 37:06 Highlight the passage at 37:06

37:17 He was a little bit behind the times because in 1887, a couple of physicists by the name of Michelson and Morley did an incredibly sophisticated experiment called the Michelson-Morley experiment. And it wasn't that they didn't find the ether. This experiment was so well designed that they discovered that it doesn't exist. Report an error in the passage at 37:17 Highlight the passage at 37:17

37:38 They discovered its absence. Lord Kelvin was four years out of phase. It takes sometimes, you know... A number of years for an old deeply ingrained belief to be discarded, even though they never had any evidence that the ether did exist. Nobody ever saw it. There was no evidence. There was no positive evidence ever that the ether did exist. But their whole metaphysical framework made it imperative it must exist, even though there was no evidence. Report an error in the passage at 37:38 Highlight the passage at 37:38

38:10 Because how else do you explain the interference patterns of... Waves of light interfering with each other. They do. There's got to be a medium. It's unimaginable that light could exhibit these wave interference patterns if there weren't a medium. It's unimaginable. Therefore, there must be a medium, and we call that the luminiferous ether. 1887, these two really sharp guys show it does not exist. Report an error in the passage at 38:10 Highlight the passage at 38:10

38:38 If it did exist, we would have detected it. The experiment was so well designed. The experiment came up with negative results, therefore we now know the ether does not exist. That took a little while. Even Lord Kelvin, brilliant physicist, even four years later, he said, of this we're absolutely certain. Report an error in the passage at 38:38 Highlight the passage at 38:38

38:54 And then gradually they said, well, you know, there was never any evidence for it. Now they found evidence, conclusive evidence, it doesn't exist. So maybe we just have to rethink our notions of causality altogether. That light still exists wave patterns, but there is no medium. There's nothing rippling. And I know you can't imagine it. Tough luck. Some things are still true even though you can't imagine it. And Lord Kelvin hadn't quite picked that up in 1891, but Albert Einstein picked up on it. Report an error in the passage at 38:54 Highlight the passage at 38:54

39:27 And he came up with special relativity. And you cannot have special relativity if there is an ether that is an absolute medium, providing a context for absolute motion. So either ether has to go or special relativity. Well, Einstein knew already ether was out. And that opened the door for him. Being a catalyst for the second great revolution in physics. There's a real moral to this story. And that is people clinging to the ether even after the evidence was in that it didn't exist because they couldn't imagine how light could have interference patterns without a medium. Report an error in the passage at 39:27 Highlight the passage at 39:27

40:01 In other words, they insisted that there must be mechanical interactions for every causal interaction and there wouldn't be one if there's no ether. So the moral of the story, you know, I'm coming back to, can't imagine how a non-physical emotions, desires, belief, trust, hope, I can't imagine how that can influence the brain, because one is non-physical, the other one is physical. I can't imagine how that can happen, therefore it mustn't happen. Report an error in the passage at 40:01 Highlight the passage at 40:01

40:25 Therefore there is no such thing as non-physical mental phenomena, therefore they must be really equivalent to physical phenomena, because after all we can't imagine how there could be causal interaction unless they're both physical. Report an error in the passage at 40:25 Highlight the passage at 40:25

40:39 But there's no evidence that mental events are physical. But they can't imagine causality unless they're physical, therefore they just go to their physical. It's the same old, same old. It's the same mental process all over again. Believing something even though there's no evidence, even though there's massive counter evidence, but simply because you can't imagine how it could be true. Report an error in the passage at 40:39 Highlight the passage at 40:39

40:58 And this is still happening a lot. I can't imagine how that could be true even though the evidence is there. Therefore, since I don't have a worldview that can accommodate that, I'm going to now ignore that. And that's happening a lot. So I think we're really approaching a very big paradigm shift. Where eventually just scientists and mind scientists say, okay, we've had enough already. This stupid, tired, anachronistic, mechanistic, dumbass view of everything having to be physical and bumping each other in terms of causality, it's so bloody stupid, why don't we just throw off that moldy old coat and be empirical for a change? Report an error in the passage at 40:58 Highlight the passage at 40:58

41:36 And recognize, okay, we can't explain how it happened, but yes, non-physical mental phenomena influence the brain and the brain influence mental phenomena. What are you going to do? There it is. It's just true. And now suddenly nature got a lot larger because it includes emotions and dreams and maybe even ghosts. And so we come back to the issue of personal identity. Report an error in the passage at 41:36 Highlight the passage at 41:36

41:58 Here's the hypothesis because our time is short and I'll give you working hypotheses. But bear in mind, if you simply memorize the right answer, it's not going to do you much good at all. So that's not the idea. It's not to indoctrinate, to get you to be a good Buddhist. The only way this actually has muscle. Report an error in the passage at 41:58 Highlight the passage at 41:58

42:13 What really transforms is if you take these working hypotheses and you do the research yourself. You can't simply memorize somebody else's research and get all the right answers. Then you're just good Dhammapada toting Buddhist. Report an error in the passage at 42:13 Highlight the passage at 42:13

42:25 But you won't get liberation. So the hypothesis is when you look in here no self is to be found. Neither is an agent nor is an observer. It's an empty set. No autonomous self in here. Therefore no autonomous self out there. Report an error in the passage at 42:25 Highlight the passage at 42:25

42:39 Then we come back to the same point. Are we refuting that we exist at all? And now that's just stupid. Who's going to do the refuting? Me? But then I'm the one that doesn't exist. So how can something that doesn't exist refute something that does or doesn't exist? It doesn't work. So we're going to have to allow ourselves back into the universe because I am an agent and moreover I'm morally responsible. Report an error in the passage at 42:39 Highlight the passage at 42:39

42:59 By the law, if I rob a bank, they'll send me to jail. And like karmically, if I do something really unwholesome, I will get the consequences. So here it is. Even if I can't be found under analysis as an isolated pod of selfhood, then we can ask, okay, not that way. That's what is not self. And this body is not intrinsically I or mine. My brain is not I or mine. My emotions are not I or mine. Report an error in the passage at 42:59 Highlight the passage at 42:59

43:26 Not intrinsically by their own nature. Nominally, of course, it's my body. It's not somebody else's. So then we can ask if I'm empty in terms of having this inherent autonomy, Autonomous, controlling, ego-substance kind of identity. If that doesn't exist, then how do I exist? And then we see, how about this word dependent origination? Report an error in the passage at 43:26 Highlight the passage at 43:26

43:47 How about all phenomena existing as dependently related events? Denshing Dao Wa to Jungwa. Jungwa means something that emerges. It's a happening. It's more like a verb than a noun. Something that's always emerging, emerging like a cumulus cloud that's going like that. Report an error in the passage at 43:47 Highlight the passage at 43:47

44:07 Taking one example of an entity, this person right here, emerging from moment to moment in a dependently related fashion. Report an error in the passage at 44:07 Highlight the passage at 44:07

44:16 And so, and then in terms of this whole flux of experience, that on different occasions we refer to ourselves, other people refer to ourselves in different ways. So if you ask, is this a relatively tall person? You say, yes, you're relatively tall. Sure. Well, why do you say I'm tall? Because I'm a person. Report an error in the passage at 44:16 Highlight the passage at 44:16

44:38 Why do you say I'm tall, relatively speaking? Why? And you say, well, you're almost 6 '2", and most people here are not quite that tall, so relative to the rest. But I say, wait a minute, I'm not my body. I'm not my body. So I didn't say you're your body, but independence upon your tall body, I'm going to call you tall. Even though your body isn't you, this is good language. Report an error in the passage at 44:38 Highlight the passage at 44:38

44:58 You're a tall man, right? And then we can say, well, are you, how do you say, do you talk, do you, just a bunch of stuff. That is personal history, level of intelligence, creativity, personality and so forth. Are you a teacher? Are you a husband? Are you a grandfather? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. But do you always see that it's always relational? And whenever we designate I am and then we fill in the blank, it's always I'm referring to something that is not actually me, but it's an attribute or conduct of me. Report an error in the passage at 44:58 Highlight the passage at 44:58

45:29 I teach, therefore I'm called a teacher. But the basis of designation, why does anybody call me a teacher? Because on occasion I teach. The act of teaching is not a person. The act of teaching is not a person. But independence upon that action, then I'm called a teacher on occasion. But my grandson hardly ever refers, I don't think he ever refers to me as a teacher. I'm grandpa. Because when I'm in that mode, I'm not a teacher, I'm his grandpa. Report an error in the passage at 45:29 Highlight the passage at 45:29

45:58 That's my primary job description. And likewise, my spouse definitely does not regard me as her teacher. That's for sure. I'm very careful on that one. Report an error in the passage at 45:58 Highlight the passage at 45:58

46:10 But I'm very happy to rise in the role of spouse and spiritual friend. That works very well. But that's also, there's a relationship. So how we do exist is all relational. Relations of that little boy, I'm grandfather, here I'm a teacher, here I'm a student, here I'm a customer, here I'm this. And all is arising, and whenever I'm designating myself, I'm tall, I'm unintelligent on occasion. Sometimes I make foolish errors, quite foolish, silly. Report an error in the passage at 46:10 Highlight the passage at 46:10

46:37 And other times rather clever, sometimes really silly, etc., etc. is always based upon, designated upon something that's not me, but still in terms of good conventional usage, we say, yeah, but those are true statements. And some of them are diametrically opposed. Sometimes Alan's quite stingy, and that's a reality-based experience. You say, but I saw you there, you were quite stingy. Report an error in the passage at 46:37 Highlight the passage at 46:37

47:01 And then I saw you three days later, and Alan's quite generous. And they're both true statements. But one person isn't simultaneously stingy and generous, nor am I intrinsically either one. Independence on this behavior, then I'm validly designated as stingy, and independence on that behavior, now I'm validly designated as generous and smart and foolish and funny and boring and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 47:01 Highlight the passage at 47:01

47:26 None of these are really me, but conventionally they can be all valid, including diametrically opposed one. If you take me to a National Basketball Association basketball team, I'm the short guy. Right? Where's the short guy? Oh yeah, there he is. Alan, what's up? What are you doing on the court anyway? You're too old. But I'd be the short guy there. Right? So it's all relative. Report an error in the passage at 47:26 Highlight the passage at 47:26

47:48 And so there we are. We're always arising in a relationship. But that being who's always arising, never static, never stable, no nucleus that has all these relationships, the nucleus is empty. And the relationships are everything. But even though the nucleus is empty, no autonomous self-existent ego, nevertheless, I am responsible for my behavior, unless I'm brain damaged or psychotic, something like that, hasn't happened for a long time. I'm responsible, and moreover, I'm causally efficacious. Report an error in the passage at 47:48 Highlight the passage at 47:48

48:21 I do things. Even though you can't find me, I can't find me, you can't find me. This nuclear autonomous self, nobody can find. Nevertheless, this person has causal agency. I'm influencing your thoughts right now, as you are influencing me. And you say, you know, but how can that be? There's nobody really there. I know. Report an error in the passage at 48:21 Highlight the passage at 48:21

48:40 But that's it. I exist as a matrix of relationships, always in a state of flux as you do. And so it's kind of these wave interference patterns arising all over the place with no nuclear cells bumping into each other. So how this gets really interesting though. So there's the phenomenal self. And I'm a man, why? Because he's got a man's body. People do have sex changes and they may already have a sense they're a woman. Report an error in the passage at 48:40 Highlight the passage at 48:40

49:03 They want to have more of a congruity between their body and their sense of identity. They do change and then there they are. Anybody looking at them says, well, it certainly looks like a woman and that's who they feel they are and the body now is pretty womanish. And so on that coarse level, coarse body, coarse mind, we have a sense of identity. Report an error in the passage at 49:03 Highlight the passage at 49:03

49:21 Multi-faceted changes over time and we do exist in that level. But now what is so interesting here in this practice of shamatha is we're stripping down, we're taking off layers and layers and layers. I just lost my grandfatherhood. When I'm going in, I've lost my spousehood, I've lost my gender, I've lost my human species specificity. When you're going right down to the nucleus, you left your humanness behind. Report an error in the passage at 49:21 Highlight the passage at 49:21

49:49 That which made you distinctly human, that'll come back. But when you're going right into the nucleus, it's not there. You can't bring it with you. Because you're going right down to this stem consciousness. So you go right down there to this transparent, luminous, blissful flow of consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 49:49 Highlight the passage at 49:49

50:11 Of course, sense of identity. It's gone dormant. It's not obliterated. It's gone dormant. And it's said now that that is the continuum. That's substrate consciousness. That's the continuum. That's what everything implodes into in the dying process. And that's what carries on into the bardo. And then takes on this dream-like series of experiences during the bardo, in which you do have a form, but it's very much like a form in a dream. Report an error in the passage at 50:11 Highlight the passage at 50:11

50:38 So you feel you're here, you're seeing things over there. You cruise through that and then you come to the end of the bardo, this intermediate period after death prior to the next conception. And there's a beautiful symmetry here. And that is when you come, when you die from the bardo, that particular dreamlike phase comes to an end. That bardo mind, that bardo body, it again collapses, it dissolves, and it dissolves right back into the substrate, into the substrate. Report an error in the passage at 50:38 Highlight the passage at 50:38

51:05 You just got conceived. Into the substrate and then out and then as the fetus, as the... As the fetus then develops, then out and you're embodied now. That stream of consciousness has become embodied. It's become conjoined with, let's say in a human, the egg and sperm, and the egg and sperm start to develop. Report an error in the passage at 51:05 Highlight the passage at 51:05

51:26 Then independence upon that increasingly sophisticated conglomerate of mass energy, the formation of the nervous system and so forth, then out of the substrate emerges the substrate consciousness and independence upon. The formation of the brain, the nervous system and so forth, then gradually the derivative forms of consciousness gradually develop and emerge. Report an error in the passage at 51:26 Highlight the passage at 51:26

51:49 Already well developed by the time the birthing process takes place, you're born and there you are. And now another coarse mind is fully manifested and come into the world. So there's complete symmetry there. So now in the Buddhist context, Hindu context, many, many contexts, including Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, some pretty heavy hitters in the Western tradition. Report an error in the passage at 51:49 Highlight the passage at 51:49

52:09 There is a continuity of consciousness from embodiment to embodiment. And so now from this context, which can be studied scientifically and it has been, as I mentioned by Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker and so forth, then one can ask this question, all right, who was I in the past life? In my past life, who was I? You know, it's an okay question. It may not be very easily answerable, but there should be an answer for it. So in my immediate preceding life, who was I? Report an error in the passage at 52:09 Highlight the passage at 52:09

52:37 Who was I? Then we can ask, well, who's asking? Who's asking? And if the one asking is, well, you know me, this Stanford graduate, this 63-year-old guy, I wanted to know who was I 65 years ago? The answer is you weren't anybody at all. If that's who you think you were, you didn't exist at all. I mean, what part of conception don't you understand? 65 years ago, the question is you were nobody. If that's your platform, who was I? Report an error in the passage at 52:37 Highlight the passage at 52:37

53:13 As this fully formed American male blah blah blah didn't exist at all, anywhere, at all. But if we ask that question from the perspective of the substrate consciousness that's here right now, because that's also coextensive, right? It's flowing right now. If we ask that question from the perspective of the substrate consciousness, where was I 65 years ago? Oh, okay. Report an error in the passage at 53:13 Highlight the passage at 53:13

53:36 And then we'll point to a previous embodiment where there's a continuity of that substrate consciousness. So if that's your basis of designation, Of I am. Not your body, not this coarse mind, not your personal history, your accomplishments and all of that. But if the basis of designation from which you're asking, who was I in the past life, if that basis of designation is that continuum of substrate consciousness, then that's a perfectly good question for which there is a real answer. Report an error in the passage at 53:36 Highlight the passage at 53:36

54:03 Then you can trace that back. How would you do that? You'd slip into the flow of the substrate consciousness. Here's how you do it. You slip into the flow of substrate consciousness. So you're not... up in that whole network of I'm a mind, of the coarse mind, and this You slip down into the subterranean mode, into that substrate consciousness. And even though when you're just resting there and experiencing the substrate consciousness as such, blissful, luminous and non-conceptual, that is your substrate consciousness, not anybody else's and it's not collective. Report an error in the passage at 54:03 Highlight the passage at 54:03

54:35 It's not a Jungian collective unconscious. It is unique, distinctive, individuated and moreover it is configured. It's configured by karma, by memories. The memories are stored there. So this is a theory of consciousness that can be tested. And so in utter contrast to the widespread materialistic view that memories are stored in the brain, no they're not. Report an error in the passage at 54:35 Highlight the passage at 54:35

55:00 That's a complete mistake. Memories are not stored in the brain. They're accessed by way of particular brain parts, that's for sure. And if you damage the brain parts, then you may not be able to retrieve those memories. Report an error in the passage at 55:00 Highlight the passage at 55:00

55:14 But the brain is more like the keyboard than the hard drive. Damage the keyboard, you may not be able to access some of the data in your hard drive. That doesn't mean the data is in the keyboard, but if you damage the keyboard, you can't get in or out. It might be accessed, you may not be able to influence it, right? And so, sure, we all know that. Report an error in the passage at 55:14 Highlight the passage at 55:14

55:33 People who have Alzheimer's, have senile dementia, have memory loss, brain damage and so forth. But people have known this for a long time. Again, it's not breaking news. Damage your brain or brain wears out or it gets ill in one way or another, you may not be able to retrieve your memories any longer or of a certain type. Report an error in the passage at 55:33 Highlight the passage at 55:33

55:50 That doesn't mean that they're stored in chemicals. There's no information intrinsically in the nature of any chemicals or electricity, but it's certainly true. And here neuroscience has shed a lot of light. That by way of the activation of, or independence upon the activation of, certain configurations of neurons in the brain, then we are able to access memories, but they're stored in the substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 55:50 Highlight the passage at 55:50

56:15 And they're not stored in the brain. Now that's a hypothesis, but it's a testable hypothesis. None of the materialistic hypotheses are testable. That's the ridiculous thing about them. They're presented as scientific truths. They're not even scientific theories. Because a theory lends itself to being tested. And they don't even try. Report an error in the passage at 56:15 Highlight the passage at 56:15

56:31 This is what so bugs me. I love science and this is such pseudoscience. You might have noticed it irks me a little bit. Here's a theory you can test. It might sound very occult, mystical, you know, la-la and all that kind of business, but this can actually be tested. Here's the hypothesis. Memories are not stored in the brain. They're accessed by way of the brain mechanism when you are operating out of the coarse mind. Just like people can't see if their visual cortex is damaged. Report an error in the passage at 56:31 Highlight the passage at 56:31

57:00 And so forth. There's a lot of nuance there, many beautiful correlations, but that's when you're operating under the coarse mind. When you go beneath that, so to speak, and you're operating under the substrate consciousness, then you're accessing memories independently of brain activity. Because they're not stored in the brain, they're stored in the substrate consciousness, and you've got a direct access. So settle your mind in the substrate consciousness, which is implicitly, in a manner of speaking, that's where all the memories would be found. Report an error in the passage at 57:00 Highlight the passage at 57:00

57:29 And then take the laser pointer. When you're just resting there in that luminous, clear, silent, blissful space, you're not locked into a trance. You actually have an extremely supple, malleable and sharply pointed attention when you want it. You take that laser pointer of your mind, of your attention, and you point it. Report an error in the passage at 57:29 Highlight the passage at 57:29

57:47 You point it to the past. And you point, like, okay, what did I have for lunch a month ago today? Give yourself a target. And you point your attention to it. Until it's illuminated, until you have definitive knowledge, until you have certain knowledge that you've just illuminated a memory and not just catalyzed some kind of a fantasy. I'm going to take a long story short. Report an error in the passage at 57:47 Highlight the passage at 57:47

58:11 It's called the Alaya Project. I wrote about it at length in the book Mind and the Balance. It's a rigorously scientific study that can give negative and positive results and put the Buddhist hypothesis to the test of experience. And there's no such test for any of the materialistic theories. They just assume them. Blind faith. This one you can actually test. Report an error in the passage at 58:11 Highlight the passage at 58:11

58:31 But now let's just, as they say, cut to the chase. You're 63 years old, you've achieved shamatha, this is all hypothetical, and you direct your attention back and back and you keep on getting veridical memories, right back to childhood, and then you, like a fly fisherman, you cast the fly of your attention, you direct the laser pointer of your attention to, okay, where was I 65 years ago? Report an error in the passage at 58:31 Highlight the passage at 58:31

58:56 And you target it. I mean, it's a conscious, like a smart bomb or a smart missile. You target it. 65 years ago, what was up? And this is a test that's been done many, many times. Many, many times. Including recently. Report an error in the passage at 58:56 Highlight the passage at 58:56

59:12 And you target that. And then you see, you get positive data. That it should be, if the materialists are right, you're targeting a non-entity. You're targeting a null set. You're targeting a place where there's no experience because you didn't exist and no aspect of you existed. And the substrate consciousness or whatever all arose as an emergent property of the brain. Report an error in the passage at 59:12 Highlight the passage at 59:12

59:31 Could be true, there's no evidence for it, but no, if you want to believe that, you're welcome to. Here's a theory you can actually test, and that is target from that laser pointer of Shama to target a memory that was prior to the formation of your brain. And now you can cause a revolution in your own mind at least, and see what you come up with. And then test whether your alleged memory, you may have a strong conviction that you're remembering something and not fantasizing. Report an error in the passage at 59:31 Highlight the passage at 59:31

1:00:01 But of course we can be deluded. Everybody knows that. We can be totally certain of something that we're totally wrong about. Buddhism has known that for a long time too. And so let's imagine though that you target something and you remember being, in my case, let's say somebody in Tibet. I have a pretty strong connection with Tibet. So let's imagine I was somebody in Tibet. And then I recognize, okay, I'm such and such age. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:01 Highlight the passage at 1:00:01

1:00:23 I'm this name. I lived here in this part of eastern Tibet. And I'm a boy. I died when I was a boy. I remember who I was, my parents were. And I'm looking ahead and I say, oh, that's how I died. Yep, I see, I get that. And that was my dog's name. And that was my cousin. We were really good buddies. And a lot of detail. Okay, imagine. It's all hypothetical. I'm not making any claims. Everybody would have thought experimented. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:23 Highlight the passage at 1:00:23

1:00:49 So imagine that. And then imagine, okay, I remember the town name. I remember the boy, parents, cousin, dog's name, etc. I remember how I died. That's researchable. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:49 Highlight the passage at 1:00:49

1:01:01 That's researchable. Then go research it or have somebody else research it and see, was there any such boy? Et cetera, et cetera. Because I don't know. I've read a lot, but I don't know. Some boy in eastern Tibet, how would I know? And all that, I don't know anybody in Tibet who died, what, 48 years ago or what's, no, 64 years ago or whatever. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:01 Highlight the passage at 1:01:01

1:01:19 I don't know anybody. So if that memory turns out to be veridical, they say, well, in fact, yeah, you got that all right. There was a little boy. He died when he was 13. He was actually killed. And his parents were this, and his dog's name was this, and how did you know that? Then you've made a discovery that memories are not stored in the brain. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:19 Highlight the passage at 1:01:19

1:01:41 They're stored in the substrate consciousness. You bypass the brain, went right to the memories, and you've got some veridical ones. So that's an experiment that can be done. And the basis of destination, now I could say, from the perspective of substrate consciousness, that's who I was in my past life. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:41 Highlight the passage at 1:01:41

1:01:56 Not that Alan Wallace was that in the past life, because Alan Wallace is locked into this grid. I was born then, I'll die then. That's the whole story of Alan Wallace on that level, right? But the substrate consciousness, oh, that's got continuum. And then one can say, okay, before that, before that, before that. So I think I'll keep this anonymous. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:56 Highlight the passage at 1:01:56

1:02:14 We're about to take a break. But when I was driving out here with Tony Steele, he drove me here. He told me of a, since he didn't say I could make this public, then I'll keep it anonymous who he's referring to. If he makes it public, then that's his choice. It doesn't have to be secret, but I don't quite think it's my role to make it public, who it was in question. But Tony Steele and a small group of people were having a conversation with a Lama, though quite a few of them. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:14 Highlight the passage at 1:02:14

1:02:41 And the Lama was very candid. It was a personal conversation. It was among people who really had a good connection with His Holiness. They had a lot of confidence, trust in Him. He knew them. He had a good sense of real connection with them, the Lama. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:41 Highlight the passage at 1:02:41

1:02:57 He said, I can remember past lives going back about 3,000 years, the Lama said, about 3,000 years, and gave some specific examples. Now, if that were just some hippie, whatever, you know, I want to have some too. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:57 Highlight the passage at 1:02:57

1:03:14 I'm starting to remember them myself. It's all by context. You know, some bozo from, I don't know, some bozo land says, I have a sense that there are planets around other stars. I have a strong intuition. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:14 Highlight the passage at 1:03:14

1:03:32 Who's going to take that seriously? That's very sweet. Pass the dough. I just read it today. In 1995, they discovered, actually, by very sophisticated technology and mathematics, 1995 they discovered the first exoplanet. Now they have more than 3,000, and in today's news, they now think that about one out of every five stars that is more or less sun-like, like our sun, about one out of every five. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:32 Highlight the passage at 1:03:32

1:03:58 Now based upon measurements and very sophisticated analysis, they think that now one out of every five stars like our sun has a planet that is potentially habitable. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:58 Highlight the passage at 1:03:58

1:04:11 And I'm taking that very seriously. But why? Only because of context. Because I have a lot of respect for astronomers and their technology and their mathematics and these esteemed institutions. And they cited people from UC Berkeley and from this and this and said, well, it's impressive. I think it's probably true. Why would I doubt it? Report an error in the passage at 1:04:11 Highlight the passage at 1:04:11

1:04:31 So it's all by context. Well, this Lama is a, let me say, he's a person of tremendous integrity. And when he says that, as Dupan Ramachi in the movie Yogis of Tibet, he says, I can remember all of them by context. And I say, well, most people say that. I would say, that's very cute. Was it Cleopatra, by the way? You know, Napoleon pop up anywhere in your past life? Report an error in the passage at 1:04:31 Highlight the passage at 1:04:31

1:04:55 You know, I would just say it with a grin. But when it's a Lama of this stature, then I immediately say, whoa. That's pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. So, one can see here, I hope, that there is kind of an opening here to just a vast scope of discovery. Many of them have been made already, but that doesn't make them any less novel. That is, when we discover them for ourselves, we're the first one who's ever done it, from our perspective. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:55 Highlight the passage at 1:04:55

1:05:22 So I'm going to answer briefly here, it's now four o 'clock. This has been a quickie, though. And that is, I mentioned in the Buddhist hypothesis, and frankly, very little ways on this, if it turns out to be false. Nobody's going to lose any sleep over it. So I feel absolutely non-defensive about the Buddhist hypothesis of the five sensory modalities being non-overlapping, that you can smell smells, but you can't smell colors and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:22 Highlight the passage at 1:05:22

1:05:45 And somebody brought up a point that I'm already aware of, but it's good to bring up, and that is what about synesthesia? Synesthesia. And this is where you do hear colors and see sounds and so forth. And what about that? Wouldn't that be a case of overlapping? Where one sense modality is picking up, one sense consciousness is picking up, let's say auditory, is hearing colors or you're seeing sounds. And so if that's true, then that would in fact contradict Buddhist view that these are non-overlapping. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:45 Highlight the passage at 1:05:45

1:06:16 So one way or another, I'm just interested in the truth. I don't feel any empathy, so I've got to defend Buddhism here. But I happily thanks to the Vajrayana Institute a couple of years back. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet a man I knew, I'd heard speak at Stanford. I knew of his reputation, I knew of some of his writings, his research. So I knew a fair amount about him because he's quite a celebrity. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:16 Highlight the passage at 1:06:16

1:06:38 And his name is Ramachandran. I'm quite a world famous neuroscientist. Or I used to go to school more than 40 years ago at the University of California, San Diego. Very fine neuroscientist and he's really a world expert on the synesthesia. Writes, done research, writing, speaking about it very eloquently. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:38 Highlight the passage at 1:06:38

1:06:56 And it's exactly that case where people say, I can see, I can hear colors and so forth. And then they describe them. And I've actually seen a video on this where people, a group of synesthetics or whatever they're called, they're comparing, you know, oh, I see like that. And so they're quite convinced that they are seeing sounds and so forth. And so clear like that. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:56 Highlight the passage at 1:06:56

1:07:20 And then people like Ramachandran has looked into the brain mechanisms that are correlated with this. It's very good science. And they're saying, aha! And there is some kind of a crossing of wires between, let's say, auditory cortex and visual cortex. I'm speaking rather broadly here, but I think it's not misleading. But there's some kind of a peculiar anomalous interface between the neuronal connections of the visual and auditory cortices. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:20 Highlight the passage at 1:07:20

1:07:44 So there's a clear physiological explanation at least of the correlates of this first person experience. So we'll conclude before our break. The question is, is that kind of experience veridical? And that is, do we ever have experiences that are really illusory? We believe in them, we are experiencing them, but they are not true of anything outside of our own imagination. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:44 Highlight the passage at 1:07:44

1:08:07 Like thinking, I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. I may be totally convinced of that. I may even actually see myself. If I've taken d 'artura, maybe I'll see myself as a squatty little French corporal strutting about speaking with a French accent. So that's possible, but that doesn't mean there's any Napoleon here. It just means that you're really convinced there is. I'll give a parallel, and then I'll give a brief response to that. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:07 Highlight the passage at 1:08:07

1:08:31 I've heard a number of people over the last few decades talk about out-of-body experiences. Out-of-body experiences. So first of all, I'll just show my hand. Do I believe that out-of-body experiences occur? Yes, I do. I think they're rare, but I think they do occur. And I gave one example of that woman, Pam Reynolds, pseudonym, brain dead for hours on end, having out-of-body experiences, witnessing veridically conversations, sounds and vision in the operating room that turned out to be true. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:31 Highlight the passage at 1:08:31

1:08:58 That is, they were witnessed by the nurses and doctors in that room while she was brain dead, masked and her ears were plugged. I say, that's an out-of-body experience. And the neuroscientist who was in charge of the whole thing did not discount her experience. He said she knew stuff that she shouldn't have been knowing. And then he just left it at that. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:58 Highlight the passage at 1:08:58

1:09:17 And then I don't know what happened after that, but there it is. So I think it's not easy to discount that one. That's one of the most compelling accounts and studied very carefully. So I think it does occur. In Tibetan Buddhism, in the practice of dream yoga, a very advanced phase of dream yoga is called developing the special dream body. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:17 Highlight the passage at 1:09:17

1:09:36 And His Holiness the Dalai Lama alludes to it in a wonderful book called Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying, which are the edited transcriptions or proceedings of a Mind and Life conference we had in 1992. This very advanced stage of completion, highest yoga tantra practice, where you take your subtle energy, the prāṇa, the pranic body, you shape it and then you propel it like a bullet, like a projectile out of a cannon. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:36 Highlight the passage at 1:09:36

1:10:04 You actually direct This special dream body, you project it out of your heart chakra, out into the world, and you basically project it as a ghost. And it's not just remote viewing, you actually have a sense of being present wherever you send it and viewing it whenever you're looking at intimately, like right there, like Pam Reynolds looking at the operating room. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:04 Highlight the passage at 1:10:04

1:10:24 But you've projected this dream-like body, this bardo-like body, this energy body, which is immaterial. And you're actually witnessing locally something that's very far away. And then you reel it back in again. You come out of samādhi and then you continue on. So it's the Dalai Lama talking about that. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:24 Highlight the passage at 1:10:24

1:10:43 I take that very seriously. But it's very rare. It's very, very advanced dream yoga. But now, over the last few decades, I've heard quite a few people claim to have out-of-body experiences. Including when I was a monk back in the mid-1980s. I met one woman. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:43 Highlight the passage at 1:10:43

1:11:04 I was living most of the year on the East Coast, about 3,000 miles away in Amherst. I was finishing my undergraduate degree in physics. She lived in Seattle. And she wrote to me, after I'd been lecturing in Seattle for the summer, she wrote to me, said, Alan, I had this amazing out-of-body experience, and I visited you, your room, there in Amherst. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:04 Highlight the passage at 1:11:04

1:11:23 And I saw it in great detail. And she described it. Here's your room, and here's where your bed is, and here. And it was an amazing experience. And I saw your room completely clearly. Her description had nothing to do with my room at all. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:23 Highlight the passage at 1:11:23

1:11:41 There's just no way. It wasn't similar at all. She was very convinced she was having out-of-body experience. But wherever she was, it wasn't my room. Because what she was describing had no resemblance to my room at all. Although she was very confident that she was having out-of-body. Well, she wasn't. If she thought that was my room, she was mistaken. And that happens a lot. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:41 Highlight the passage at 1:11:41

1:11:59 Where we have an experience, a sense of having an out-of-body experience, but it's private. They're really configurations within your own substrate consciousness. It's a private showing. And you may be totally convinced that it's public, that you're seeing what other people see, but you're not. And that happens very frequently. Now you see, I'm not a total cynic or skeptic here. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:59 Highlight the passage at 1:11:59

1:12:18 I think it does happen, but not nearly as frequently as many people might think. So when it comes to synesthesia, this is a minor point, and I don't know the answer. Let's just be very upright. And I'm mildly curious, but I've got a lot of things to do. But when I heard on this, I think it was a film I saw, people reporting their synesthetic experiences, what I noted is that there was no conformity between one person hearing the taste of chocolate and this person seeing this sound. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:18 Highlight the passage at 1:12:18

1:12:51 They would describe it, but there was no consensus. It seemed to be really private. This is how I see the taste of chocolate. And this is how I hear blue. And so forth. But it seemed to be entirely discreet. Everybody was having their own individual experiences. And I saw no conformity, no consensus at all. Zero. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:51 Highlight the passage at 1:12:51

1:13:15 In which case, even though they were speaking truthfully, I don't think they were making it up, I have no reason to believe from that little database that they were experiencing anything outside. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:15 Highlight the passage at 1:13:15

1:13:27 The free flow of their own imagination with some crossed wires in their brain giving rise to it. So then I would say, although you think you're hearing tastes, I don't believe you. I know you think that, but so did this woman think she was having an out-of-body experience and there was no evidence for that at all. It's actually illusory that you're thinking or experiencing something which is true from your perspective, but it's not true from anybody else's perspective, in which case it's very local. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:27 Highlight the passage at 1:13:27

1:13:56 So I may think I'm Napoleon, but that's just total local, totally local. And loco, loco-loco. And that's my sense of the synesthesia. If at some point they show, and maybe they will, I'm wide open, I don't really have no passion about this at all, if they bring together a large group of people with synesthesia and they find some consensus, we're all hearing Brown as this way, and we're etc., etc., and they're getting some real regularities there. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:56 Highlight the passage at 1:13:56

1:14:25 So it's intersubjective. They say, well, that's interesting. Looks like the Buddhist is wrong, at least in some cases. So we have to modify the Buddhist view because there's experience. But from what I've heard thus far, I haven't heard any consensus at all. So it looks to me like it's just a conjuring trick of a disoriented brain giving rise to illusory experience. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:25 Highlight the passage at 1:14:25

1:14:45 That's my tentative conclusion. But I'm ready for new evidence. We'll see what happens. It'll be interesting. Let's come back at 4.25. We have another session to go, and there's a big one. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:45 Highlight the passage at 1:14:45