December 4, 2004 Saturday, Teacher Training Intensive
Higher Stages/States of Consciousness
Aaron:My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. It is a joy to sit with you in this sacred space that was so lovingly created, to join with you here again. I know that many of you, when you sit here, you feel the energy of those past years and even of the nails driven in and the paint smoothed on.
When Barbara and I spoke about the possibilities of topic for today, the one I most hoped to share with you is this on consciousness. If you had chosen one of the other options, I still would have brought some of this material in. But I’m very glad that many of you made this your first choice.
There are a number of aspects to consciousness that I wish to speak about today. It touches on the reason for your practice, on the process of your practice, and it also touches on the question that you plan to address this afternoon: what to do when consciousness becomes unwieldy, distorted, in ways that may create harm for self and others. How do you better understand that unwieldy consciousness, not only in terms of dis-ease, but to understand the distortions more clearly how this fits into the larger scheme of the progressions of consciousness.
Let’s begin with some background. First, I want to distinguish between states of consciousness and stages of consciousness. I want to clarify the vocabulary we will use. This is not the only vocabulary, but it is a useful one and it is important for us to have a shared means of articulation so that we can better understand one another.
Almost all spiritual and metaphysical systems distinguish 3 states of consciousness. These are articulated in different ways but are basically the gross, subtle, and the supramundane. We could call them mundane, subtle, and supramundane. We see these in the Buddhist lists of consciousnesses, the mundane consciousness, which is all the mind and body consciousnesses, or mundane citta in Buddhist terminology. The supramundane or the lokuttara citta, and that area which we would call subtle consciousness. There is a specific Pali word for this grouping of citta; you don’t need it.
The states of consciousness are often likened to the states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep. This mind and body that use the 5 physical senses and the mind to comprehend the world, this is the gross or mundane level. In the dream state, there is no longer a physical body. The dreamer seems to glide from place to place so even if you dream a body, it has no solidity to it. This is likened to the subtle state. When you move into a sound sleep and the dreams stop, there is a nothingness, and emptiness; sleep is likened to the supramundane state. It’s interesting to note that every human processes through these 3 states every day.
Another model we can offer is that of the 3 kayas. You’re all familiar with this. Nirmanakaya is the form body, paralleled to the awake state in daily life. Dharmakaya is the truth body, the ground, the state of nothingness, sound sleep beyond the astral state. Sambhogakaya is the bridge between nirmanakaya and dharmakaya The kayas are non-separate. Wherever you go, there is dharmakaya whether or not you are aware of it, and sambhogakaya ties it to nirmanakaya..
In that highest supramundane state of consciousness, there is no experience of a separate self. The term “no-self” is one that has plagued many people because they suppose that the self is annihilated at that state, but of course you understand that nothing is annihilated. In that supramundane consciousness, there is awareness both of the ground of being and the expressions of that ground. One still walks around and acts and speaks in the world. One cherishes this human expression of the ground known as “self”. But one no longer relates from it as separate from anything else.
I want to emphasize here that in the gross state we are not aware of the subtle or supramundane states. In the subtle state, we’re aware of both the subtle and gross, but not supramundane. In the supramundane state, we’re aware of all 3 and understand the simultaneity of the three states.
Another articulation of these states has to do with energy, defined as energy bodies. When the body is open, one accesses that plane. We speak of the etheric body. This is the gross state, the level of the physical and mind senses. In the etheric body, one accesses the etheric plane. The astral body: this is a bit hard. There is no exact parallel. We can only say “this” relates to “that”; we can’t draw a straight line between them. We have states we have planes of being, and we have bodies but they do not plug in precisely. The etheric plane relates to the gross state, the astral plane relates to the subtle states, the causal plane relates to the supramundane states. To open to each plane means that energetic body is accessed. Astral consciousness is beyond mundane consciousness. The astral plane includes and surpasses the etheric plane. Astral involves the mental and emotional levels of being. When the astral body is opened, one rests on the astral plane.
The being who has opened to supramundane consciousness still functions both on the etheric plane and on the astral plane, yet rests very solidly in the causal plane. The being who has opened into the subtle state has not yet accessed the causal plane. Of course it’s there; they just have not accessed it. They will function somewhere between the etheric and astral planes. In their daily dealings they may be very much on the etheric plane. In certain areas of ethics and inner life, they may function very much on the astral plane.
The person who has opened the causal body still also lives in the etheric and astral bodies but is not much self-identified there any more. Consciousness is much more integrated. This is hard to state in words. The consciousness is so much within the causal body, so deeply aware of the non-dual, that even with a very mundane action or interaction with another, there is no “other” perceived. It’s like looking at your fingers. You don’t see them as coming from 2 separate hands, you know they’re from the same body. The two hands are from the same body. One hand doesn’t punch the other hand. So the person who has opened the causal body really is no longer primarily acting from and involved in the etheric body, but is aware others are thus involved.
These then are the states of consciousness. Please think of them as a simultaneity, one a top the next, where you have the mundane or gross state, the etheric body at the top, the subtle state, astral body next, and the supramundane state, causal body at the bottom. As consciousness deepens and awareness deepens, one opens into all 3 simultaneously. But one may be just at the top, or into the top 2 levels.
Before we go on to the next piece here I would pause to see if there are questions.
Q:I have a curious child’s question. After all these years of working with Aaron, are you yourself mostly in causal energy?
Barbara:Not completely. Often. The causal body is open, but not always stable.
Q:I think all of us move into causal. I think we generally move between the 3 levels, most of us here. We’re not always aware of causal energy but we can go there.
Barbara:We’ll explain this. There is low and high astral, and I think that most of us, most of the time, are functioning between that low and high astral. We’ll explain that. A few of us have had some deep entry into the causal level, which is really just non-dual consciousness. It’s a beyond-Christ-consciousness or Buddha-consciousness. Christ consciousness and Buddha consciousness are sometimes said to be at the top of the astral level, sometimes considered the start of the causal level.
These are the stages of consciousness. It’s important that we distinguish these. We’ll come to them in a while. States of consciousness are just these 3 states: gross or mundane, subtle, and supramundane. Most of this class function in the subtle state of consciousness most of the time. Most of you have had tastes of the supramundane, but it’s not where you live most of the time. And none of us are any longer just in the gross state of consciousness, with no opening of the astral body.
Q:Can we make a practice of reminding ourselves of the supramundane?
Barbara:This is called resting in rigpa! I hope you practice it frequently!
Q:So eventually we get more and more there.
Barbara:The practice that I do is simply when rigpa is not noticed, asking where is it? I remind myself to open up, come back. We’ve all done this many times, the practice of resting in pure awareness, and noting the opening to pure awareness.
Q:For me, so far, Aaron has been quite clear about the etheric body. You asked if we were clear on the etheric body. Yes. On the astral body, not quite.
Barbara:Okay; Aaron will speak.
Aaron:I am Aaron. We are talking about 2 separate but related things, states of consciousness, which are mundane, subtle, and supramundane. These are alternatively labeled gross, subtle and causal states or mundane, subtle and supramundane states.
When we use the term “body,” we’re more involved with energy. In the mundane state, the etheric body is the only active energetic body. The astral and causal bodies exist but they have not yet been activated. In the subtle state, the astral body is accessed. The etheric body is still inaccessible. The causal body is not yet accessible. In the supramundane or causal state, the etheric, astral, and causal bodies are all accessible. When we speak about stages of consciousness, which I will do next, we will talk more about what we mean by these 3 bodies: etheric, astral, and causal and what is experienced within them. You will understand the bodies better through the stages of consciousness. I pause.
Q:In the written message you sent, you talked about the 3 levels of consciousness as being gross, subtle, and causal. But today you are calling the third state “supramundane.”
Barbara:They’re synonymous. In supramundane consciousness we access the causal body.
Q:Ah. I wondered if causal, as you are talking about it in relation to etheric and astral…
Barbara:Causal is the traditional metaphysical, non-Buddhist metaphysical statement of it. Supramundane is the Buddhist statement of it. But they’re really synonymous.
Q:Is the word causal derived from cause?
Aaron:I am Aaron. Yes. The causal state is so named in that one sees so clearly into karma, understanding the whole flow ofvinnana, rebirth consciousness, that one has at least begun to move outside of that chain of cause. The being resting stably and awake in the causal state is no longer participating in a cause. Causal also refers to the Light Body Template that is the start of the chain of manifestation. I would not want to call it “original cause” There is none. But it is the level at which the chain of becoming is ignited.
When asked, where do I exist, I have said I am beyond the causal state, beyond the causal plane. In the traditional systemization of this in many spiritual traditions, such as in the Hebrew Kabbalah tradition and the Hindu tradition, what we call Christ consciousness is considered high astral. Non-dual consciousness is considered causal because at that level, one sees into cause and is no longer pulled into it. In other spiritual traditions, Christ/ Buddha consciousness is considered causal. For me, what defines the opening of the causal body is the step into knowing the emptiness of the separate self. No self, no karma. But some people experience that “no-self” as the Christ consciousness. It is a semantic issue.
Moving beyond non-dual consciousness, one moves into the…, there is no real word for it, beyond the causal plane. It’s hard for me to explain to you what I mean by that. With full enlightenment, opening completely into that causal body, resting fully in non-dual awareness, there is no more karma. And yet one moves beyond even that.
It’s not just a matter of no longer having a body. The only way I can think to explain it probably does not help you much, which is to say that the being who is ready to move from 6thto 7thdensity, that readiness takes one to this place beyond the causal plane.
I think I can put it best this way: in the causal state there is non-dual consciousness, what you often term as pure awareness. There is no acting from a self or other, but there is still awareness of the energetic body and, if it exists, the physical body, and responsibility to those. There is the clear-seeing of that relationship in the same way you see a leaf as expression of the tree. The leaf exists, but there’s nothing there in the leaf but the tree. It’s a particular form that the tree takes.
At this level of non-dual consciousness, one knows the self and all the expressions of the self simply as expression of the divine. And one knows the expression of every self, clear or distorted, as expressions of the same divine, really as further expressions of the Self. The Self is no longer a personalized self. Very simply, here is the divine and all its expressions, One.
Beyond the causal plane–I think the difficulty in articulation here is no matter what pictures I put in Barbara’s head, it’s very hard for her to authentically express something she has never experienced.
I have told you sometimes when you’ve asked me what do I do on vacation, that I release the mental body, I release the energetic body. It’s as if that drop of water dropped into the sea holding just the faintest, the very faintest boundary that enables it to pull back. So I don’t move fully into 7thdensity, but I rest in that space of complete beingness and complete non-beingness.
Resting in that space, there is no thought, but there is full being. There is simply the highest expression, the highest experience of divinity: of power, of limitlessness, of radiance, of joy and peace.
I think I would define it in this way. If, in your meditation experience, as you move toward no-self… – we’re going to have to go back and discuss the progressions, the stages of consciousness, and look at Christ consciousness and the shift from Christ consciousness to non-dual consciousness, so I’ll step back and fill in – But in your meditation, at that point where the ego seems to fall away, the body dissolves, there is a sense of bliss, of joy, of deep connection. But there is still the most subtle sense of a self related to divinity. Here is the leaf on the tree looking back at the tree.
In non-dual consciousness, the leaf let’s go of any sense of looking back on the tree. It knows itself to be the tree. So there is the shift from Buddha consciousness to non-dual consciousness. This, what we call fully resting in rigpa; it is an experience of non-dual consciousness. That’s not the end. One goes on from there; I don’t know how else to say it, and I know I’m not giving you much clarity. I simply cannot take you there. I pause.
Q:Aaron said before, the intermediate level, the astral level, was related to normal dreaming. My question is, then is lucid dreaming an entry into the causal?
Barbara:Lucid dreaming takes us to the high astral, which would lead us to the causal. Let’s put it this way. If while dreaming lucidly, aware that you’re dreaming, you dream of moving into that space of no-self, then you’re in the causal level. The lucid dreamer that still has a dreamer as a doer is still in the astral level.
Q:Dreaming to me does not feel like a higher state of consciousness than waking consciousness. It seems chaotic.
Aaron:I am Aaron. Yes, you are correct. These parallels are offered as metaphor. We can see that the awake, dream and sound sleep states differ. In just the same way, the three states of consciousness differ. The dream state is not necessarily a higher state of consciousness than the awake one, but in the dream state, the physical aspects are not so much predominant but the subtle aspects of experiencing. For the person who is mostly rooted in mundane consciousness, the dream state has this difference, but it’s not a higher state at that point. What is important here is the phase of consciousness and we’ll talk about that.
This is very complex. I think as the day goes on, this will start to fit together for you. I honor your question, Q, but I think it will answer itself to some degree through the day, and be better if we take it in progression than if I try to jump ahead and answer it. I pause.
Barbara: He says, let us just ask, are you clear at this point, relatively clear, that there are 3 states of consciousness, and that there are these 3 energetic bodies?
Q:When someone dies who was mostly in the mundane consciousness, what happens then?
Aaron:I am Aaron. Another question that perhaps we will put on hold until we discuss the phases of consciousness. Simply put, when you are here in a body, and are mostly in mundane consciousness, the dreaming is chaotic and there is no tool of awareness to create stability in subtle consciousness. The person who dies and experiences subtle consciousness experiences it as chaos, nothing but terror. He/ she then is deeply impelled to move into a new body, to recreate the mundane state.
But the person who has moved through the stages of consciousness to a point where subtle consciousness is stable and where there is a strong mindfulness, strong awareness, so one is able to view the chaos as chaos, view the fear as fear, and to do this without the creation of a solid self, this person is not so impelled to create a new body. This person then may spend a considerable amount of time on the astral plane, growing, learning, and eventually be karmically led carefully to move into a new body. Not just whoosh, new body, but carefully chosen. Or this person may have clarified the karma enough that there is no need to move into a new body. The causal state, supramundane consciousness, is not a necessity for the release of karma to a sufficient degree not to need to move into a new body. One can do that from the subtle level. I pause.
Q: I have a question. My background is in science, and science increasingly is providing evidence of what happens in the mind in different mind states. The Dalai Lama has participated in some of these studies. I’m looking for a way to integrate what I know about the science of mind with what the teaching is today because I know that it is possible to measure certain biochemical reactions in each of these mind states, and that science has names for them, for what happens in the brain in these mind states. I thought that everything fit into the basket, the category, of objects of mind. Even the explanations of what is happening are objects of mind.
Barbara:Yes, but within the state of non-dual consciousness, there is no longer an object of mind. Awareness transcends subject/ object duality.
Q:But everything in between is just a story.
Aaron:I am Aaron. It is and it isn’t. You are not just a story. If we prick you with a pin, you bleed and say, “Ouch!” The blood is not a story. The mind creates everything, yes. And yet, in that process of creation, or let us call it co-creation, things are existent. It’s easy to move into a nihilist philosophy that says nothing exists. That theory is as erroneous as to move into a philosophy that says everything exists as mundane object and there is nothing but its mere physical existence.
Let me phrase it in this way. Everything exists first on a mental level. The opening lines of the Dhammapada say this beautifully:
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
If there is no thought, there cannot be a thing. The whole progression starts with the thought. This gets us into the cycle of dependent origination. There is the thought. We bring forth intentionality and the energetic components, and bring the object into existence.
In a very over-simplified expression of this, suppose you see somebody walking down the street, somebody who has been an irritating person to you in the past. You’ve felt a grating energy with each other. This person hasn’t even seen you walking toward her. She’s not thinking of you. She is feeling a bit sad, not angry so much as sad. A dear friend was visiting and left that morning. She had just seen her off at the airport. She’s feeling sad.
You see her coming toward you. You feel that her energy is a bit low, and your mind creates the angry person you’ve seen in the past. Then you address her with a certain anger as she approaches you. Your energy is prickly. She co-creates this next step with you. If she is not conscious, not awake, she doesn’t realize that her energy is responding to your prickliness, and hers becomes prickly. Suddenly you’ve created the angry confrontation.
It’s a thing, that angry confrontation, an object.
If instead as you had seen her walking toward you, you felt her energy, felt your energy move into a prickliness in response to her energy, and had just taken a deep breath, centered yourself, and met her despondent energy with a spaciousness, kindness and lightness, even if she was not aware and reacted to you by pushing against your energy in a hostile way, it would still not create the angry confrontation. She can’t draw you into an angry confrontation unless you’re willing to go there. You co-create peace or hostility.
Biochemically, when you are in that, – we have so many overlapping kinds of terms: states, bodies, progression, – when you are in that space of awareness that is able to note what’s arising within the self and not create a solid self around it, everything changes. I don’t know the names of the chemicals here, I’m not a scientist so perhaps one of you can teach us about this. But the body releases different chemicals when there is spaciousness or tension. Anger has one set of chemicals; mindfulness has a different set of chemicals. These are manufactured and released or not released on the basis of mindfulness and the most stable stage of consciousness of the moment.
I’m trying to keep the material today in some kind of progression. It’s very hard because there are so many diverse aspects.. There is no linear flow to this information. As I speak, more of this will come out. I pause.
One important thought is we can never find an original cause. This relates to dependent arising. Many emotional, mental, energetic and physical causes come together to create certain conditions at the biochemical level. There is no linear flow to any of it. But presence is the thing that creates space, peacefulness and happiness, that allows the causes for peacefulness on the biochemical level , which allows the body and mind to be more peaceful. All of this comes back to mindfulness and to the deep intention to non-harm.
Let us move here now to the stages of consciousness. Then we’ll try to put some of this material together. I am just unpacking several different suitcases here, and then we’ll see what clothing we’ve got and how we can put it together into an outfit.
There are many different formulations of the stages of consciousness. Ken Wilbur’s material on consciousness is perhaps the most concise modern statement. I do not know if Barbara is pronouncing the name correctly, but Piaget, did a great deal on consciousness levels, especially in children, and on the progression of consciousness.
Some of the Christian mystics like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila address stages of consciousness. They begin at a higher level of consciousness. John makes the statement that the beginning is at psychic consciousness, which I consider to be at a rather high level of consciousness, not yet Christ consciousness, but close to it. But we need to consider the very simplest levels of consciousness as well.
What I present here is a very basic articulation, and is a more or less agreed-upon progression in many spiritual traditions, although traditions use different terminologies and some find 5 stages and some find 8. Some find 11. The various numbers depend on whether some are separate or grouped as one stage.
First, and this one is not included in Barbara’s notes to you, pre-human consciousness, the consciousness of plants, for example. Interestingly, the consciousness of plants and of the earth almost brings us around full circle. It is almost a non-dual consciousness. The distinction is that non-dual consciousness as I use that term is the highest level of consciousness within the causal body. This non-dual consciousness is deeply aware of the expression of the self and of the One as non-dual, whereas for the plant or the earth, there is no experience of a self. There has not yet been that differentiation made. The animal begins to learn self-awareness.
Coming into human consciousness, we can follow this through the levels of the child as it matures. The baby sees everything as self and doesn’t distinguish between self and mother. This is archaic consciousness. But slowly it learns that some objects are unpleasant and that experience starts to create a sense of a self. The baby first discerns it’s uniqueness from the mother on the physical level, then on the emotional.
The older baby’s experience has a magical quality. It still feels itself as very powerful and yet it also experiences itself as powerless. It’s really moving from the astral plane pre-birth experience into the etheric experience of the limited self. It has no sense of reason, as yet. If it cries and the cry doesn’t produce an immediate result, it cries harder. It does not go through a thought process, “Maybe they didn’t hear me; I’ll say it louder.” Simply, “WAAAHH!” It’s impelled out. And then somebody comes along with a bottle or a dry diaper, or comfort.
We call this level magical consciousness. If you wish to read more about it, about this and the next level, mythical consciousness in children, I would suggest you read Piaget, whose work on these levels of consciousness is very precise and clear.
Mythical consciousness develops in older children. The child tries to understand the world and develops strong sets of beliefs, which are part of this phase of growth. A common view is, “This is good and that’s bad”. When 2 children live as neighbors, in one family, perhaps they serve very spicy curries. The mother says, “Ah, good, spicy food.” The family doesn’t like bland food. And the neighbor has been raised on mashed potatoes and meat loaf. No spices. One mother says, “Spicy food’s not good for you,” and the other mother says, “Bland food’s not good for you.” The children develop a belief system.
This is a very oversimplified statement of mythical consciousness. Much of the fundamentalism of any religion is based on mythical consciousness. Literal interpretations of the Bible are a statement of mythical consciousness.
The next phase is rational consciousness. The child tastes the neighbor’s food and finds out maybe she doesn’t as like it as much as home cooking but it’s not harmful. The child studies science and learns maybe the world was not literally created by a Creator in 7 days. Maybe there is evolution and the Bible story is a figurative statement of it. So as the rational process begins to develop, there’s a release of the old belief systems, the old myths.
Rational consciousness, as it is usually described, relates only to the physical senses and what the mind can know empirically through the physical senses. As one progresses, one will experience beyond the physical senses. At first that experiencing will be unconscious, but after awhile there is awareness of some knowing beyond the physical senses. The mother starts to wake up one minute before the baby cries, feeling “Something’s not right”, and then the baby cries. She knows she didn’t hear the baby cry; it was an intuitiveness, something happening energetically. She tells the husband and he says, “You’re crazy.” But, every night she wakes up just a few minutes before the baby cries. She’s not worried about the baby; she knows the baby is just waking up because it’s hungry. So she’s not sending fear-based energy to the baby in an indirect way that wakes the baby. She’s not participating with any sense of fear. She’s just taking the time to wake up and stretch a bit, ready herself for the cry, and to go and get the baby and feed it. No matter how much the husband says, “You’re crazy,” she knows this is real. Or maybe it’s the husband who wakes up and the wife says, “You’re crazy.” After awhile he or she knows, “I’m experiencing this. There is something beyond the physical senses happening here.”
One also begins to be more concerned about the needs of others and not just about the needs of self. Rational consciousness is often very self-involved and sees the others as a background to the self. Vision logic consciousness is still logical, still based on reason. But there’s also the experience of the visionary working through the non-physical senses. There is not yet the real opening of the non-physical senses but a readiness for it.
Magical, mythic and rational consciousness, are at the etheric level of experience. Another way of phrasing this is to say that in magical, mythic and rational consciousness one is dwelling in the etheric body. By etheric, we mean simply related to the mundane body and the physical experiences of that body. There is not yet an opening of the astral body. The astral body brings in deeper awareness of mind and emotions. Compare this to the waking and dream states. In the awake state, you are in the body. You know sensations and there is body awareness. In the dream state, though the self may seem to move, it’s all happening in the mind. The body lies in bed. When you fly in a dream, the body does not fly. Out of body experience is called astral projection because the physical body remains still and awareness projects out of the body. Vision logic consciousness is the beginning of the move into astral experience. Vision-logic consciousness is a low astral stage.
The opening to the astral level begins an increasing awareness of energy. As the subtle state opens, the being begins to move into, to access the astral body, as well as the etheric body. The astral body has always existed, remember, but it was not accessed before. Now as it begins to be accessed, the being moves into vision logic consciousness.
Please note that all of the preceding stages of consciousness are still available. One stage will be the most stable in experience, at any given time. For example, a person then may live mostly at the rational level. There may be moments when the old beliefs break through, or even that magical consciousness of the infant, and then a roar of rage may erupt. And there may be times when there’s more opening into the vision logic phase of consciousness. See these as intersecting planes. Rational consciousness is predominant.
So we have the being for whom the astral stage has just been accessed. The next stage does not usually open until the stage before is stable. If the next stage opens before the stage before is stable, then there can be what you call mental illness, distortions. We’ll come back to this. Let’s go through the stages first.
As vision logic consciousness develops, there’s a move, not an imbalanced move but very much in balance, holding on to logic but opening more and more to the astral, to the subtle energies, to vision. The psychic aspect of consciousness may open, with clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.
The logical or rational is still held onto but it’s seen in a much wider perspective, so that that which would not have seemed rational earlier in this progression now does seem rational. For example, that one could hear one’s spirit guides now is logical, or that one could sense danger in a situation that reason would not say was dangerous. One may begin to see auras. One can begin to work more skillfully with the body energies and feel them.
The psychic level of consciousness opens into what we call subtle consciousness. This transition often moves through what is classically called “the dark night of the senses,” which is a different, a milder experience than the “dark night of the soul” that comes with the transition into the causal body. Subtle consciousness is a refinement. In psychic consciousness, one is simply hearing, seeing and experiencing through the non-physical senses, but the voices are loud. Your guides are all here shouting at you! Subtle touches the much more subtle energies that permeate everything. Those of you who work with body energy, especially in a formal way such as C does, you’re working at the subtle level. Some of you who are in medical fields, such as S and A, you could be working only at the rational level, or you could be working at any of the levels beyond that. Both of you have developed the ability to work at the subtle level. The rational level is still very much there, and the subtle level, combining both. This is where we find intersecting planes.
We continue with this work, often through many lifetimes, integrating the different levels so that what is useful at the earlier levels, I don’t want to call them lower because that implies lesser than, simply earlier levels, what is useful is accessible. Mythic consciousness allows us to touch into all the great myths upon which Jung so deeply focuses. The rational level allows us to live in an intellectual world and understand how things work. Vision logic level allows us to visualize, to imagine, and thus to co-create a much more wholesome possible future than that toward which the rational levels seem to be taking us.
Inventors are often working largely in the vision logic level, but also often with access to the psychic and subtle levels. Unfortunately many of your politicians seem to be somewhat stuck in the mythical level, caught more in beliefs, or else very much in the rational level. Some of them even lose touch with the rational level; it’s not well-integrated yet. It’s all got to be integrated to be successful. Some politicians move into the vision logic level and beyond. Gandhi is an example of a political force who was stable in subtle consciousness, and for whom the causal body was open.
With states of consciousness, we looked at the model of the 3 states as simultaneous. If you are in that gross state of consciousness, and have not moved into subtle and causal states, you’re only accessing one state. In the subtle state, you have access to both gross and subtle and in the causal, access to all three.
The stages of consciousness will function at the highest state of consciousness that has been opened. The person who is in mundane or gross consciousness with opening only of the etheric body, cannot move through the progression of consciousness beyond rational consciousness. The person who has opened to subtle consciousness, who has opened the astral body, can move through the progression of consciousness all the way through rational, vision logic, and subtle. They cannot yet move into the next stage of consciousness because the causal state has not been accessed yet, for the causal body has not opened.
At the end of subtle consciousness, we see what is often termed the “dark night of the soul.” What happens here is the subtle consciousness becomes so refined, very open to all the various energies. But there is still the experience of separation from God. There is still someone seeking something. That something cannot yet be known since the causal body is not open. People will experience that dark night in a wide variety of ways. In its classic way, it can be a very painful, soul-searching experience. But I find that for people who have been working with a practice like vipassana, that dark night often has a much smaller place. There is some turmoil within, perhaps the sense, “I can’t get there,” frustration, but not intense despair to which the “dark night” can sometimes lead.
In the terms of the Buddhist progression of insights, this is the point where one begins to see everything arising and falling away. There is no knowledge of anything beyond this arising and falling away. The heart prays that there is, but there’s not yet been that breakthrough into the Unconditioned. This is the point in the exercise we often do with the fingers, where one is at that place of still looking at the “fingers” of physical or energetic expression, but not breaking through. The shift to the causal consciousness is the end of the dark night of the soul. It’s really the breaking through of the fingers, looking beyond.
There’s no what-comes-first here. In whatever way it happens, one breaks through, opening from the astral state into the causal state. The causal state becomes accessible. The causal body opens. Consciousness accesses that causal level, and we experience what is sometimes called Christ or Buddha Consciousness. I think the term “divine consciousness” is a good one. So in the causal state, one opens to divine consciousness.
Here is the place where the individuated self breaks up. There’s still a physical body, there’s still a mind, but all sense of separation falls away. And yet it’s still not non-dual consciousness. When I say all sense of separation falls away, one knows God, but one does not yet fully appreciate the non-duality of this expression of the self and God.
I think of a flower that would have the ability to look down at the earth, up at the sky, see the rain, and that seed from which it came, and say, “Ah, I came from that. I am that. I am that sky and ground. I am expression of that seed.” And yet there’s still the subtle edge of duality there.
With this experience of divine consciousness, one fully appreciates the divinity, not only within the self but within everything, everything is seen as an expression of God. I think the difference is that with divine consciousness everything is still seen as expression of the divine, but one is still left asking, “Where is God itself?” The shift into non-dual consciousness resolves that question. With non-dual consciousness, there is no longer a looking for God anywhere. God is manifest. One is deeply aware of all the levels within this progression and able to act to use them appropriately. This is also true of the divine consciousness level, except that one has no access yet to non-dual consciousness.
There is sometimes another, lesser dark night between divine consciousness and non-dual consciousness. Usually this is less a painful dark night, because the being that is resting in divine consciousness is so filled with joy and peace, and there’s more a sense of patience and understanding that what needs to come next will come.
Usually one stays at the divine consciousness level for a long time. Within the course of any lifetime, it could be 20 or 30 years before non-dual consciousness becomes the stable level of resting. Many of you in this group, through your meditation practice and especially through the practice of resting in rigpa, in pure awareness, have the opportunity to touch on non-dual consciousness, get a taste of it, though it is not stable for any of you.
Those of you who in one way or another through your life work find that that work necessitates the practices of subtle consciousness, you have almost certainly been drawn to that work because you were ready to develop subtle consciousness, to become more stable in it. If you look back at this past decade, for example, you can see how much subtle consciousness has stabilized, that before that there was more vision logic or psychic consciousness.
In summary, the person who has opened into the causal state, has opened the causal body, is able to move into the progression of consciousness we call divine consciousness, Christ or Buddha consciousness. They are then able to move beyond that into non-dual consciousness. The person who has only accessed the subtle state, only opened the astral body, is not yet able to move into divine consciousness or non-dual consciousness. Much of Buddhist meditation at the higher levels of practice is about that shift, the opening of the lokuttara or supramundane citta, which is to be equated with the opening to the causal state.
Vipassana as practiced in a traditional Theravada presentation is one of the clearest paths I know to move from the astral state into the causal state. Some of you spent time with me a number of years ago reviewing the whole progression of insights as delineated in theVisuddhimagga. This is really about the increasing access to these deeper states of consciousness and about the progression of consciousness.
Note that our next step will be to try to put some of this together and answer some of the prior questions and then we’ll come back for part three.
Q:Aaron talked about the Buddha/Christ nature. At one point he said it was in the astral level, at another point he said it was in the causal level.
Barbara:He says there was an error if I said that, and apologizes that he did not catch it. Buddha/ Christ consciousness is traditionally considered to be in the causal level.
Q: Not high astral?
Aaron:I am Aaron. It depends which side of the doorway you’re on. You begin to open to this level of consciousness on the astral level. Remember this progression is a spiral, not a set of plateaus. You see divine consciousness there but you haven’t yet tasted it. But the experience of divine consciousness, of Buddha or Christ consciousness itself, is part of the causal level, is entered when the causal body opens. The subtle consciousness that is preparatory for divine consciousness is in the high astral level. Then the dark night, that point of, in Buddhist terminology, change of lineage knowledge, that shift of looking at the fingers to looking through, and then we shift, that is the opening into the causal state. I pause.
Q:Eventually I would like to hear more about that part called Buddha nature or Christ mind. Is it just divine consciousness?
Aaron:I am Aaron. There was once a small book, C, that you and others enjoyed years ago, calledChrist In You. It was the statement of the Christ consciousness, the divine nature, within everything. Christ consciousness is simply the consciousness of the divine nature of everything. Nothing is excluded. One recognizes that anger or other negative emotion may still arise. It is not no longer seen as other than divine, is simply a karmic distortion that’s still there and not fully resolved. But one lets go of the thinking, “I have to fix this or that in order to have this divine energy”. One instead knows, “I AM this divine nature. This is the essence of me.” Then one turns back to the work of resolving what still needs to be resolved, in terms of unwholesome karma, negative thought, and so forth. I pause.
Barbara:He says, so it’s that level where there’s no longer any old belief that something is broken and has to be fixed before we finally become something else. It’s the awareness, I’ve always been “That” and yet I still have to go back and attend to those old distortions.
Aaron:I am Aaron. This is why there’s such a long period of time between the stable opening to divine consciousness and the opening to and final stabilization of non-dual consciousness. Within that time one is going back and cleaning up everything. One may have tastes of non-dual consciousness, but one knows one is not ready to fully develop and try to stabilize non-dual consciousness because the earlier work has not been done. One is still looking at aspects of the self and saying, “This one is not divine. This one is ‘other than’.” Until everything is integrated and, I would not say fully resolved– anger or doubt, or some other emotion may still arise, but there’s no holding it as self, and there’s no contraction around it—until one reaches that point, one can not say that the divine consciousness is stable. After it is stable one will move on toward the stabilization of non-dual consciousness. I pause.
Q:Aaron said something interesting about plant consciousness also. I just recently learned that roots of trees will break into water lines. And of course, plants will turn toward the sun. I am wondering, is that an example of intentional action without the gratification of self, since a plant presumably has no sense of self?
Aaron:I am Aaron. This is a complex question and we could spend a day on it. On the plant level, we have the plant devas, the overriding spirit of the plant. These are each unique expressions of consciousness. For example, there is that for the pansy or the rose or the maple tree, but there’s also a higher Deva level of flower. There are specific terms for these. I am not familiar in English with the most frequently-used articulation.
There is communication between the higher deva and the individual plant deva, imparting a sense of direction. The plant connects, it is not conscious, it is also not just energetic, but there’s a kind of telepathic, it’s hard to use the word telepathic here because the plant doesn’t have a mind in that sense—information is exchanged. Let us leave it at that.
So the plant receives information, and I’m not going to specify what information the plant receives. There’s not yet a conscious mind. It’s almost the awareness of the plant that receives information. You already know the energetic awareness of the plant can receive information. If you spend time talking to your plants and sending them loving energy, they flourish. If you water them and put them in an appropriate location and don’t give them any energy, they will not flourish. There’s an energetic exchange.
The plant as a second-density being is in the process of developing a self-consciousness. Higher second density beings, such as this dog resting on Barbara’s feet, really he knows who he is and who each of you are. He’s developed that consciousness. The squirrel on the deck a few moments ago is close to developing that. He doesn’t yet have the ability to relate in the way the dog does, but this is the whole process of second density.
I think in terms of what you’re asking, Q, it is not a knowingness, “I want water, I will dig into this water line,” on the plant’s part. There is no “I” in it. We could simply call it survival instinct, attuned-ness to the elements, and that level of informational exchange with the devas, all of that is what directs the plant to turn its face to the sun, or its roots into the water. I pause.
Barbara:He says he wants to help us see the cyclic nature of this, that the plant in some ways is in non-dual consciousness but it’s a different non-dual consciousness. It is ignorance, before self-awareness, not transcendence of self that knows the self at the etheric level and simultaneously knows oneness at the non-dual level. . He says this plant is at the place where we all were before; we’ve all heard him talk about that figurative “leaving the garden”. Before that, there was non-dual consciousness but it was an immature non-dual consciousness. Then we’re out of the garden and God is still in there. We want to come home. Then we start to evolve through this progression of consciousness to come back to a mature non-dual consciousness.
Aaron:I am Aaron. Within that mature non-dual consciousness, you are co-creator. While in the immature consciousness you are still co-creator, but there is no awareness of that and no responsibility to it. So there is no intentionality. You don’t hold the intention for the good of all beings, and bring it forth in a conscious way. There’s just beingness in that first level. I pause.
Barbara:Unless there are any specific questions on the progression of consciousness, let’s stop here for 1 hour, and then we’ll come back and let Aaron tie things together. Aaron says one of the things he had hoped to get to today was not just to integrate the parts that he’s laid out but to talk about it in terms of what we call psychosis and other mental experience. He doesn’t know if we will have time to cover all of that. We’ll do what we can. We have class on Monday night, and will come back to this.
(lunch break)
Barbara:We’ve just been talking for two hours, hour and a half…
(Summary of the teacher committee work on DSC policy and planning regarding students with severe emotional / mental health issues. Tape off and on)
Aaron:I am Aaron. First I want to honor the deep and important work that you have just done in considering how best to serve students who are going through such mental difficulties, to support them from a place of non-harm, of them, of yourselves, and of other students. I just want to thank you for that.
I presented a lot of facts this morning. From my own perspective and that of many of my peers, the spiritual path very much equates with the progression of phases of consciousness and the move toward non-dual consciousness. From my perspective, this is the entire reason for your incarnation. Beings on a non-physical plane are following the same path toward this progression of consciousness.
When people ask me, why are we doing this, the best answer I can give you is it’s the nature of your true being. That’s like asking why does rain fall. Of course there are specific answers like gravity. But as a metaphor, it’s simply the nature of rain, that’s what it does. The nature of the Unconditioned is to express itself and to further co-create itself.
The nature of water is to flow down the mountain to the sea. The nature of consciousness is to flow toward non-dual expression. That water that gathered on top of the mountain as ice and snow is no less the sea than the sea to which it flows. It is evaporated from the sea and rained down on the mountaintop and then it flows down to the sea. It already is the sea but it doesn’t yet know its sea-ness because it hasn’t yet joined with the sea. Now I’m speaking in an imaginary way, because of course water does not have that level of awareness to know the sea. Consciousness arises from That Which Is, moves into the illusion of separation, which is real on a mundane level, moves into the illusion of separation and the experience of individuation, and then it flows back into non-duality.
This is why the Unconditioned is limitless – unborn, undying, infinite – because that which it expresses is constantly flowing back into it and enriching it. Along the way you deepen in compassion, lovingkindness and unconditional love. These are the resources that you bring back to the sea in order to enrich it.
Everything you are doing here at Deep Spring Center and in your dharma teaching is toward this progression of consciousness. On a smaller scale, we can say that it’s toward the learning of wisdom and compassion, but they in turn enrich the water that flows to the sea. Each individual aspect of the divine becomes increasingly able to express that wisdom and compassion.
Humans at all levels in this progression of consciousness and at all states of consciousness will come to your classes. You will not necessarily know where they are, at least not unless you get to know them fairly well. Through the years I have cautioned many of you there is no rush, the important thing is to build a stable foundation and to trust that once the foundation is in place, the next opening will come. See this as a set of falling dominoes. You don’t have to worry about domino 11. When domino 1 falls, just be concerned with domino 2.
A different metaphor, if you’ll forgive me for that sin of mixing them. Don’t worry about decorating your house, just make sure the foundation is strong, the windows tight, the roof strong, and that all the electrical and plumbing systems work. Once the sound house is there, it will evolve as it needs to.
Sometimes you have a student who is very unstable in their everyday life and yet with strong kundalini opening and/or no-self experience. As an aside, one of the things this group did not talk about and does need to talk about in the future is the kundalini opening experience and how that ties into everything I have just spoken. Kundalini generally opens during the subtle stage of consciousness. Not the subtle state of consciousness, the subtle stage, beyond vision logic and psychic consciousness. But it can come at another time. If it comes too early, the foundation is not yet there to support it. Remember that you are working with students in one lifetime, and that this progression of consciousness will be ongoing through many lifetimes. This makes it hard because sometimes in this lifetime a student seems stuck, perhaps at rational consciousness or vision logic consciousness. They’ve not yet consciously opened to the psychic and subtle levels. But in a past lifetime, they have thus opened, and the kundalini energy force is flowing and open. But in this lifetime there may be emotional and mental confusion. There’s not yet the foundation to support it smooth opening of Kundalini.
Another difficult situation is if the student is having very strong out-of-body experiences (astral projection) or moving into no-self experiences, in a way that feels disintegrative of the ego in an unwholesome way. Let me explain.
At the right time, as the ego seems to disintegrate, there is the move into the divine consciousness or even into non-dual consciousness. As I pointed out earlier, the whole channel is open. Looking at it through the chakra system – the crown chakra, third eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, spleen and base chakras – the chakras are all open. The student is deeply integrated in all of these aspects of being. But if there has been, here’s just one example, some kind of strong kind of physical abuse in this or even a past life, so that some of the lower chakras are closed, then instead of that 6thor 7thchakra experience being unitive, and the student being able to integrate it all the way through to the base, it becomes an escape. Although you are for the most part not able to see this, it results in what Barbara sees as a fragmentation of the aura. What Barbara sees is the inner aura very broken, in that case, and the outer aura very strong and full.
When all the chakras are open and integrated, the 3 or 4 predominant layers of aura are all balanced. I know that doesn’t help those of you who do not see auras, and it’s fine that you do not see it. A few of you do see it to some degree.
What you can see and look for is whether the student is able to take these higher experiences of emptiness of self, these experiences of divine self and of non-separation, and live them in their daily life. And if they are not thusly able, it’s very important to direct the practice back into everyday, real-life experience. It’s important to ask the student to integrate these experiences into relationship, work, and the physical body.
There are 2 levels of mental distortion that you will see in students, and they cannot always be differentiated. One is a level at which the mental disorders have not yet altered the body chemistry. Let me explain this briefly. When you’re peaceful, your body chemistry is one way. If you feel threatened, your body chemistry changes. It’s as simple as that.
There’s change in body chemistry with fear, with anger, even simply with intention to run a race or gather with others to lift something heavy. In many beings, this change in body chemistry is very temporary and the body settles back quickly into what would be considered a normal body chemistry.
Let’s talk about this on the physical level. Imagine yourself lifting something heavy a number of times. After a dozen or so movements, the arm begins to feel strained and sore. If you stop and rest, the muscles will come back to normal. However, if you keep lifting, after that first sensation of strain or tiredness, eventually the muscles may literally lock up, or become inflamed.
What I’m talking about can be likened to that. The body chemistry will change and then come back to so-called normal. But given certain factors, it will not come back to normal but will shift itself into a different chemical path. There is no first cause here. One condition is genetic predisposition, one is karma, the predominant habit energies of dealing with emotional and physical distress; these are just a few of the factors that will determine whether the chemistry returns back to normal or whether it moves into a distortion.
Your modern psychiatry has labeled that distortion “psychosis.” There is a change in body chemistry. But what I want you to see is that there is not a duality that can say, “this is neurosis, this is psychosis”. There is a multi-aspect conditioning that brings forth either form of distortion. There is a plateau at which point the body chemistry has shifted. That doesn’t mean it can’t shift back, but it takes a lot more to shift it back at that point, often medication and different kinds of extensive work. People have tried electric shock to shift it back, and many other things.
When a person moves into that level of distortion, you can no longer just talk it back because the shift in body chemistry itself has created a state in which the rational mind cannot function smoothly to hear the discussion. Then medication is helpful to balance the chemistry in a way that the rational mind can again be accessed.
We may find a person who is caught in two extremes at once, one at the magical or sometimes mythical consciousness, and the other at a higher level, often psychic or subtle consciousness, beyond vision logic. Those in rational and vision logic consciousness do not normally experience what you would call psychosis. If one advances into psychic and subtle consciousness and yet is still stuck with some unresolved issues, caught back in magical consciousness based on emotions and mentality, something sometimes short-circuits chemically in the body.
Sometimes psychiatric help with those early issues can be helpful, but my finding is that often those early issues are from past lifetimes, or both present and past lifetimes. What I have personally seen to be most helpful is a balance using medication as is appropriate, just to the degree to create the shift in which the rational mind is able to function. Then reintroducing meditation practice only to the degree that the person is able to remain balanced and grounded, watching carefully. When the rational mind is able to be stably utilized, we bring strong attention to the reality of all conditioned objects as arising and passing away. Because for this individual, subtle consciousness is already open, as the wisdom mind discerns this truth of conditioned arising and cessation, there is a revisitation, but usually a gentle revisitation, of the original trauma, the ability to resolve that trauma and release that lower level of consciousness. Then the subtle consciousness becomes stable again.
I will not use names here, of course, but there are several people in the sangha and extended sangha who have experienced this process. There are people who were on medication or been diagnosed as bipolar or with some other difficult distortion. There are people who were sent to us precisely because they were “hearing voices,” and some wise therapist considered that maybe the voices they were hearing were real in some manner. We had to teach these people to distinguish between what is arisen out of delusion or hallucination, really based in that early magical consciousness, and what was the real result of the hearing of guides in subtle consciousness.
In so doing, many of these people strengthened their commitment to their path, strengthened their commitment to non-harm to all beings, their intention to liberation. They did the ethical work that was needed; they released what was needed. They were able to become very functional, productive humans, functioning at a psychic and subtle consciousness level. Some of these people then moved into divine consciousness. Some are not ready for that yet.
But for all these 5 people of whom I am thinking, there was not a return to the so-called psychotic symptoms. Of course, this was a matter of years. During some of those years, Barbara met with such people quite regularly, once every week perhaps. Later on, perhaps meeting with them only once a month, but they attended sittings and classes and did their practice.
I am not saying this can work with everybody, I simply want to help correct the erroneous notion of psychosis as a state that cannot be worked with in meditation. It needs to be worked with quite carefully. But it is not something other than the rest of the flow of the psyche, it’s just a particular stage or kind of distortion.
I’m skipping quite a bit here because I know we will be out of time in 5 minutes. I wanted to get the basics of this. It’s something we will talk further about. We have a few minutes for your questions. I pause.
Barbara:Questions?
Q:I’m getting the impression that it all works out in the end. That for each of us it’s a different pathway but lifetime to lifetime, medicine or meditation or both, we all eventually open up.
Barbara:Aaron says it all does work out in the end, but sometimes it’s hard to see that end from where we are now, and there can be enormous suffering. Beings can go through many lifetimes of suffering. And beings may actually kill themselves in this lifetime and in several lifetimes before they finally get it worked out. He says, our real question is what best supports that opening, with the utmost care for well-being and non-harm?
Aaron:I am Aaron. What best supports that opening with the utmost of compassion which is committed to non-harm, and yet which is strong and able to say no in a forceful way. Compassion is not afraid, but compassion is not weak.
The understanding of this is where you become true teachers. It’s not about how to teach vipassana, although that’s certainly an important part of the whole. But rather, beginning to see the whole of the path from whatever perspective you have of it right now, and beginning to understand it all does work out in the end, but meanwhile right here there is enormous suffering. And in conference with each other, helping to understand what can best bring any particular person forward at this place and time.
Fortunately for most of your students, it’s easy. They simply come to class and they do the practice, and it flows. But there are always going to be those students who are stuck, and particularly in a group like this. I say that not because there is something wrong with you but because there is something right with you. You are not presenting a very rigid practice, but an openhearted practice. Deep Spring is a place where people who have stumbled and fallen over and over feel safe to come and try again. I pause.
Q:Can the stages of consciousness be useful guides in selecting the emphasis in our individual practice and practices for our students?
Barbara:Aaron says absolutely yes. He says this is why he has presented them. He says the first step is to see them in yourselves…
Aaron:I am Aaron. I will say this. You must remember these are intersecting planes. It’s valuable to see what the predominant level of stable consciousness is in you. Watch those moments of higher consciousness and those moments of lower consciousness. Is mind able to observe those without grasping at them or without self-identifying with them?
You do not TRY to move into the next stage of consciousness, you notice it glimmering on the horizon and offer the intention to approach. You hold it with awareness. It’s just like walking your trail, D. What you did was to take one step at a time, and know that the resting place for the night would come. If somebody had told you it’s 10,300 paces before there is a place to lay your sleeping bag, that would have been unbearable. But you took one step, and one step, and one step, each one filled with whatever beauty or discomfort were present, and then you were there. But you also held the intention for that resting place, and did not constantly take detours to investigate every side trail. I pause.
Q:I understand the issues about grasping at spiritual progress, but in the future, at future meetings, I’d like to hear more about how our many different meditation practices can relate to the stages of consciousness.
Barbara:I think that would be a very valuable discussion. For the most part, I think the basic vipassana practice we’re teaching relates to everything from rational on up. And actually relates to everything. Aaron is correcting me. He is saying it relates to the lower levels also, but only at rational consciousness is there ability to relate it to the lower levels; magical and mythical consciousness can’t practice vipassana. We have to be at least at rational consciousness to do vipassana practice.
Aaron:I am Aaron. We observe what arises. If it arises in the physical sense body, we note that. If it arises in the supramundane sense body, such as an inner hearing or seeing, we note that. We note that it’s all conditioned, all impermanent, not self. That point of equanimity with formations within the continuum of knowledges and insights is the point of readiness to shift into causal consciousness. At this point the practice doesn’t change, it’s just that “seeing through the fingers,” the “change of lineage” knowledge. We will talk more about this. I pause.
Q:How tight are the constraints on the skillful use of medications? And what are the consequences of unskillful use?
Aaron:I am Aaron. Because of the shift in the chemistry of the body, the skillful use of medication will shift that chemistry back to the degree that the rational mind that had previously been attained can again be attained. We do not use medication for someone who has never moved out of magical consciousness. Such a person whose mind has simply not developed beyond that infantile state might benefit from medication that quiets the energy, if they were hurting themselves by banging the head or hitting others, but this is just a palliative use.
When somebody who has exhibited at least the beginnings of rational consciousness, and suddenly slips back into an archaic or magical consciousness, loses contact with rational consciousness, when this is related to a shift in the body chemistry, one must experiment with the amount of medication. If it’s a crisis, one may need to overmedicate and then gradually reduce the medication until the person is able to function again in rational consciousness. If it’s not a crisis, by which I mean a place where the person is a danger to themselves or others, one would begin a mild level of medication, building it up until the person was stable. At that point, one carefully begins the meditation practice.
As I speak of all of this and have spoken this afternoon, we are not speaking about a student who is having a kundalini opening experience. The difficult part of the present situation was the mix of shift in body chemistry and that it was partly induced by the kundalini experience. Such a shift is not always induced by kundalini-opening experience. So let us separate them temporarily. In the student who is not experiencing a strong kundalini opening, once the energy is stable and the rational mind is functioning smoothly, meditation practice may be carefully re-introduced, carefully to be sure that the student is able to continue to work with watching objects arise and pass away. This formal noting, as choiceless awareness practice, then allows them to be able to look back at those off-balance energetic stages and see them also as impermanent and not self.
This is how Barbara, John and I worked with X(a student experiencing strong Kundalini opening)during the retreat. He was very receptive to it and able to work with it. I think what happened with X after the retreat was that the kundalini energy was so strong that it threw him off balance too quickly for the mind to note it. So the reintroduction of the medication is allowing enough stability that he can go back to his noting practice. And now he is very clearly seeing these unstable energetic and emotional states simply as born out of conditions. He is increasingly able to watch the beginning of their arising and bring balance in a conscious way without increasing the medication.
I would briefly bring in the use of street drugs as what can be an unskillful use of medication. People may have a quick look into the causal realm through such drugs, and no foundation at all to support that experience. The result can be a deep yearning and inspiration to return to that experience in a more stable way, but also brings grasping. People may not be willing to go where they must, to the very bottom of the ladder and start fresh. And the high experience itself can bring enormous pain and instability because something energetic is prematurely opened.
At the right time, the use of such a drug can empower, but it is seldom done correctly. In past societies, shamans were trained to recognize the correct time, and it was offered in a sacred and supported setting. This lack distorts present use.
Again this is a brief answer. I pause.
Barbara:Aaron is saying that it’s very important for all of you to recognize that, especially for those of you who with no psychological training, there’s a point where you simply have to say, “I don’t know about this. I hand it over to those who do know.” And it’s better to err on the side of caution by saying, “I can’t work with this student,” than trying to push through with something you don’t know about.
It’s 10 after 4. I know we could have a lot of questions yet, but we’ll meet on Monday night for class…