June 17, 2015 Wednesday Morning, Emrich Retreat
Questions on Awakening, Realization, and Transition
(This talk reviewed by B Bartz)
Barbara: The question was about soul higher self, how we can understand these terms. Aaron will speak…
Aaron: Good morning. My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. If you have a crystal and hold it up in a certain way to the sun—this is a beautiful crystal—is it yours? And the Lemurian, is that also yours? Whose crystal is the Lemurian? Very beautiful. I love its energy, as does Barbara. If the sunlight shines through the crystal, you get a rainbow effect on the floor. Without the crystal, there is no rainbow, without the sun there is no rainbow, so those are conditions for the rainbow. We say that that light, those colors, are expressions of the rainbow. Very direct expressions. The only conditions for them are light and the crystal. They’re very free of distortion, therefore, not hundreds of conditions, just light and crystal. And here is this beautiful rainbow. There’s purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, the whole rainbow effect. The red is not the green. The yellow is not the blue. They’re all expressions of their source.
Each of you is what I call spark of God. At the beginning of, let’s call it intention to express beyond the Source, you shone forth as this small spark, perfect in every way, free of distortion. An expression of the One. I could speak about this for 3 or 4 hours, so let’s keep it to 5 minutes. Sometime it would be an interesting topic for a workshop, just in itself.
Awareness awakened—there’s a beautiful teaching on this in Flight of the Garuda. It puts it in somewhat Tibetan terms and it may not be fully understandable, how awareness opened into this awareness body, broke the seal, blazed out. Essentially, when you came into heavier density form, first density as simple vegetable, second as more complex vegetable and animal, third density as human, you took on various bodies– the form body, the mental body, the emotional body. There is still the pure spirit body. The spirit body is that original spark, and added to that, the other bodies.
The Judeo-Christian world tends to think of the soul as the mental and spirit body. I think of not the word soul, but perhaps the word atman comes closest to it. The terms atman as the spark, and paratman as the Source. I think of this as the pure spirit body. I don’t use the word soul because it’s often misunderstood to include the mental and even the emotional body. Usually you drop off the physical body for soul, but you think of it as including mental and even emotional body. Pure spirit body.
After transition from this present incarnation, there is still consciousness. There is still a mental body. And unless you are fully awakened, there is still self-identification with that mental body and perhaps even with the form and emotional bodies. This is part of what leads you into the karma of rebirth.
When there is no longer self-identification with any of the heavier bodies, all that remains is this pure spirit body, then in the process of awakening, what happened for me is coming through that transition as a fully enlightened being, there was no self-identification with any of these bodies. There was just the pure spirit body and awareness, which is, it is not my awareness, it is the awareness, totally connected to the Source, the awareness of Love.
Then for me, there was the decision made through awareness and using consciousness as a tool, mental movement, thinking, but no self-identification with it, to continue to use the mental body so I could teach. If I had no access to the mental body, no access to my memories or other kinds of thoughts or understanding of dharma, to access to any of that because I cut myself off from mental body, I could not teach. Beings who make that choice do not make any lesser choice than I made. Perhaps a more noble choice. They move on into 7th and 8th density, into the higher densities, where, it’s like the rainbow coming back into the crystal. Imagine how the rainbow lights up the crystal when it comes back in. The crystal gives off the rainbow; the rainbow comes back. It hyper-charges the crystal. Billions of these rainbows coming back into the crystal. The source becoming bigger and bigger.
I was once asked, can an infinite God expand? Yes, there is always expansion. No paradox here. It is infinite, and it expands.
So there is a choice, once there is this degree of awakening, whether one moves back into the Source and expands the Source, adds one’s very radiant and beautiful energy to the Source. And of course Source can always use more and more of this love. Or whether one remains at this 6th density level, as I have chosen to do, uses whatever body is appropriate. For one like Jeshua, at the high 6th density level, he chose to use a physical body. But when he came back into the incarnation before that choice to move into the incarnation, there was no self-identification with the physical body. Throughout the lifetime as a human there was occasional self-identification with it, but the deep wisdom to see that self-identification arise and immediately to release it. This is a part of what allowed him to move through the stages of his life with very little fear.
So, beings may pick up the mental body as I did without incarnation, come back into a physical body as some bodhisattvas do, ideally without self-identification, or they may move on into a higher density.
Let me say one last thing. So what I think of as, not soul but the spark, let’s just call it the spark. I don’t want to use a foreign word like atman because it doesn’t have a meaning for most of you. Spark, the spark of the Divine. And then the higher self is the spirit body plus the mental body. This is why each of you can connect with and touch with the wisdom of your higher self. If there was no mental body as part of the higher self, it could not communicate with you.
Each of you is that. Each of you is this third density human and is also a 6th density entity of pure spirit body and mental body. This is what each of you is. And when you aspire to connect with your higher self and the higher self’s wisdom, you rely on the means of communication you have, which is the mental body. But sometimes you may feel it just as energy.
I would say for me that pure spirit body and the term spark that I just coined are synonymous.
Q: What is the difference or similarity as you described between densities and dimensions?
Aaron: I think they are simply are different articulations, but I don’t use the word dimension so I don’t know how beings who use it intend it. Density is very specific. Dimension is used in a multitude of ways, so it’s less clear. People talk sometimes of a higher dimension, this dimension, that dimension, but for me the articulation lacks clarity because there are so many other uses of the word dimension.
John: One can have a full experience of cessation and the unconditioned while in human form. However, because we’re human, we come back into the experience of the body and the mind. At the time of death where there is the dropping away of the body, I’m assuming since the Unconditioned is always there, that there is the opportunity to experience, fall into, once again the Unconditioned.
Aaron: I think I understand your question. Let me speak, and if I have not fully understood it, I can add to it.
In meditation, as one moves deeper and watches objects arising and falling away, arising and falling away, first through the conditioned mind, through, we use as consciousness the Pali word citta. Kuttara citta means the conditioned mind, mundane. We watch from the mundane mind mundane objects arising and passing away, arising and passing away. This is a very brief map of the path.
There comes a point where one becomes disenchanted with this whole arising and passing, arising and passing. What I am seeking is not here. That moment allows, the term is lokuttara citta, the citta that are capable of seeing the supramundane. That is the citta that can open to the Unconditioned, which has been invisible before because we’ve only been looking at the conditioned. We use this as the metaphor: only looking at the fingers I can’t see through the fingers. But at a certain point, when I say this is not what I’m searching for, I look through. Ah! On the route to this there is what is called a cessation experience where there is no longer self-identification with and no eventually no longer awareness, consciousness of the body. I’m looking at the fingers, then I look through. I am not really conscious of the fingers anymore, only the space beyond them.
Cessation of the form body. Cessation of the, let us say of the experience of owning this self. So cessation of the mental body, the form body, the ego, it all drops away. We have not yet entered the Unconditioned. We’ve just gotten right up there, where we can see through the fingers so clearly.
And then because the lokuttara citta are open and every citta needs an object, the lokuttara citta, the supramundane citta begins to focus itself. There’s all that space, and into the Unconditioned. The direct experience of the Unconditioned.
I’m expanding on this, John. I know you know all this, but I’m explaining it to the group.
One rests in that experience for a while. Of course being human, eventually one has to pull out of it. But it’s a transformative experience because one so clearly sees, “I am not this body. I am not this ego.” One not only knows “I am not this,” but, the rainbow coming into the Source, one starts to know what I am. I am That.
There’s a very beautiful book by a teacher named Sri Nasargadatta Maharaj called I Am That. I recommend this to anybody who is interested in reading more. It’s a very beautiful explanation of the non-duality of “I am That.”
So when it comes back, and one has this experience not just once but perhaps a number of times—not thousands but several, or a number of times, and each time when you come back there’s less and less self-identification with this body and mind. You know this, you’ve experienced this, and yet there is still some degree of self-identification. The deeper one goes, the more the self-identification falls away.
When you come back and you find there still is some self-identification, that gives you the opportunity to look at, where am I attached? How am I holding on to this mind and body? The deeper you go, the more the attachment dissolves, until finally, with the arahant, there’s simply the use of this body, the use of this mind as tool, no attachment at all. So the arahant, the one who has fully dissolved any threads of attachment, upon transition simply opens into the Unconditioned. There’s no attachment of any sort.
For the one who has not done this work at all, upon transition there’s a lot of fear and grasping for the old body, and an almost immediately rolling into a new body, new incarnation. There’s no freedom at all. For one who has done these practices and gone deep, so that there is a lot of not complete but much fallen away of attachment, as you move through the transition process, the meditation comes into play. One sees perhaps beautiful lights and forms and colors, and grasping comes up, and there’s noting—grasping, grasping. Coming back into the pure mind. One sees what seems like horrendous, truly terrifying objects. And again one notes either fear or aversion or whatever. And because of the power of the noting and the power of centering in the practice, one doesn’t get hooked in either way to grasping or aversion. Thus, as one goes through the transition process, one moves through it sometimes finding realization within that transition process because of the power of the noting. But if not full realization, one moves through it deeply knowing the Unconditioned and the nature of relationship between conditioned and unconditioned. Coming into the stage beyond transition knowing what work one needs to do, the places one is still hooked. Then drawn into the next life with the intention to clarify those particular areas where one still has attachment and aversion, still have confusion.
John: So, two questions related to this. One is, for a fully awakened arahant still incarnated, and they have the enlightenment experience of the arahant of the Unconditioned… (beginning again) For a human…
Aaron: For a human who was awakened in a past life and comes back? (No.) A human who is fully awakened and became an arahant?
John: For a human who is incarnated and has the awakening experience, realizes the Unconditioned, the final experience of the Unconditioned while incarnated, how can that being function in the world, because the experience of the Unconditioned, the body and mind drop off so completely?
Aaron: If they cannot function in the world, they have not had the true experience. The deepest experience ceases to make any distinction between the Unconditioned and the expressions of the Unconditioned, and is so deeply grounded in wisdom and compassion that it must function in the world.
John: So that being comes back into their body and mind without any identification and attachment.
Aaron: Correct. But filled with love and wisdom and compassion and much more attuned to the world and less shaken by the world, able to respond appropriately because there’s no move to fix anything, just the deep wisdom that understands what’s needed.
John: The other question is, at the time of death and transition, when one is moving through the bardo or transition, the images that could give rise to attachment or aversion…
Aaron: It cannot give rise to that for the arahant.
John: But for someone who is not yet an arahant…
Aaron: Who is not an arahant, who has had a deep awakening experience but is not yet an arahant.
John: Or any human, as that being is moving through the transitional phase, the images that could give rise to attachment and aversion are simply manifestations of that person’s ego mind, yes?
Aaron: Yes. Let me give an example here. A being who has had a very deep awakening experience but has not yet fully resolved its attachment to material goods, very kind and loving person living with a lot of spaciousness in the world but, “Mine! Mine!” he’s able to watch that come up in the world, but it still comes up. And he doesn’t really pay a lot of attention to it. Moving through the bardo state, seeing all kinds of things—this and this and this!—he gets completely sucked into it because he has not yet resolved this in himself. And it’s probable that he will then fall almost immediately into a new incarnation in which he’ll experience either a huge abundance of things and need to deal with that, or a great lack of things.
There may or may not be a conscious choice. At some level, going through that bardo state, if one moves through it to a place of some clarity and is not tumbled into a new incarnation, one reflects with one’s guidance what kind of incarnation will be most suitable. One is able to choose one that will give you practice where you need the practice, but will not overwhelm you, will not be too hard. But if one just tumbles through, that choice is taken away, because one is just like the wagon going down the hill—whoosh! Picking up speed.
John: Is it possible to have this experience of going through the bardo in our dreams while we are still incarnated?
Aaron: It’s more a memory of past life in the dream, going through the bardo state in the dream and remembering it. If one has the practice of lucid dreaming, it’s a wonderful place to practice.
So I would add one note here. If one has practiced to the degree that one in the lifetime has or has not fully resolved all grasping, all aversion, all self-identification with the heavier bodies, but in going through the bardo state after the transition, one fully resolves it, remember that the body is energy. This heavy physical body is energy. Energy is light. The practitioner, if the body is simply left alone, there is still awareness. The body may be lying down or still sitting in meditation, simply no longer alive, but able from the depth of its practice to sit for some days. And gradually all the energy in the body begins to dissolve. If the body is in a room, light starts to pour out of the room. It’s called attainment of the rainbow body. All the light, all the energy simply releases. And this is part of the process of that being, who may already have been an arahant or within that process of opening to the rainbow body, it’s part of the release of all self-identification of all of the heavier bodies, the expression of the rainbow body. There are a number of documentations of this in various literature, of great masters who have attained the rainbow body upon transition. It’s just an interesting phenomenon. But it’s simply a statement of, here is the release of all this energy because there’s no self-identification with it anymore. And it’s simply the physical, the mental, the emotional bodies just dissolve into light, into the rainbow. Just an interesting added point.
All right. Let’s have other questions.
Q: I have heard, in one writer’s estimation, that everyone’s image of heaven is what they get when they die, and there’s no bardo.
Aaron: There are two different statements here, that everyone’s image of heaven is what they get when they die, and separately, that there’s no bardo. There is a transition through the bardos. That is my experience, so I cannot agree that there is no bardo.
Q: I didn’t mean to imply there is no bardo—for them there is no bardo.
Aaron: I assume the author is still living and doesn’t remember the transition process, or he would understand that there is a flow through the bardos, but sometimes if one does not have enough consciousness, there is no bardo. One just dies and there’s a blankness. And then one comes back into birth, and there’s no memory of anything having passed by.
The statement that everyone’s vision of heaven is what he gets—there’s some accuracy to that. What is heaven? Who could define heaven? If I ask each of you, what is a heaven realm to you, you’d give me different answers. I can only speak from my experience, that looking back on many past lives, and the period between one lifetime and another, reflecting on what that awareness that I was experienced, they were different experiences. But the more open one becomes, it’s like looking this way at the iPad screen– Oh, heaven is this iPad screen on a chair. Heaven is an iPad screen on a chair on the floor. Heaven is the iPad screen on a chair on the floor in a room full of people. Heaven is the iPad screen on a chair on the floor in a room of people beyond the great sky. It keeps opening up. The deeper you go, the less likely you are to say, “This is heaven,” and just to say (deep breath) and be open and inclusive. And it keeps going out. It’s infinite.
For me, the deepest experience of what I would call, I don’t want to call it heaven but Source, is the deep immersion into light and love, and the power of that light and love which changes every particle of your being. It would burn you away if you had anything heavy in yourself.
In meditation, some of you have experienced moving into deep light, into high vibration, to a point where you feel, “I can’t go any further or I’ll be destroyed.” And you stop. And there’s a kindness to the self not to throw yourself into the fire. But then the next time you go a little further. You come back and you do some of the work with sila to purify anything that’s negative in the self, and to be increasingly ready for that high vibration. You purify the body also. And then at another sitting, you’re able to go further into that light, that radiance, to hold more of it. And it transforms you.
I see that it’s almost 10 o’clock and we want to sit. Let’s release the body…