33 Overcoming the Problem of Subjectivity

Spring 2016 - 33 Overcoming the Problem of Subjectivity

Transcript

Olaso. So for our meditation, we will return again and again to this practice that really launches one on this very straight path of Dzogchen according to the Dudjom lineage, so obviously taking the mind as the path, but just before, as I came out of meditation, it just occurred to me, this statement from this very, very fine theoretical physicist … I met him briefly, just like ‘hello’. I don’t know him, but I really like him, to meet him to get to know him better. Paul Davies. He’s a very fine physicist and he wrote this article in Time magazine and the title of it was: ‘The Search for Aliens is a Huge Shot in the Dark.’ A huge shot in the dark. And he concludes, yes, it’s interesting and you can get it online, I’ve the website here, I’ll give it to everybody, but in this regard, he said, the United States government just wasn’t giving much money for this, and as I recall, I didn’t memorise the article of course, I think he said some private donor just put in 100 million to kick start and get back in so that they can keep on checking and checking. Is there anybody out there? Any extraterrestrial intelligent life?

[00:01:08] But here’s this final paragraph, he says, ‘whatever strategy used in searching for extraterrestrials, it’s still a huge shot in the dark. There may be no intelligent life out there.’ Or even life of any sort. That is conceivable that a hundred billion galaxies. Conceivable. ‘But to not even try would be hugely disappointing. Part of what makes us human is our sense of curiosity and adventure and even the act of looking is a valuable exercise.’ And here’s what really lingered in my mind. As Frank Drake, the astronomer who began SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence on a shoestring budget in the 1960, expresses it, as he expresses it, ‘SETI is really a search for ourselves, who we are and how we fit into the great cosmic scheme of things.’

[00:02:22] Somebody just gave $100 million to follow that strategy. That would be about 20 contemplative observatories. (laughter). That’s basically how I consider money—how many contemplative observatories can it buy. I don’t need a new car, I don’t need a new house. How many … that’s the basic monitor— one contemplative unit, you know, that’s how much money is worth. He said what makes us human is a sense of curiosity and adventure, and what I find astonishing is how little curiosity there is. Like zero. Shall I call that up again? I mean it’s just like, are you serious? To find out who we are and yet no curiosity actually look at who you are, but rather look into deep space as if you’re a kid lost in the universe, saying, anybody out there? I’m lost. I don’t know where my mommy is. Is there anybody out there? Hello. I don’t know who I am? I don’t know where I live? Anybody out there? So sad. (laughs). I think we are lost, children lost asking somebody else to tell who we are and we are going to assume they’re going to tell us the truth, and not eat us. (laughter).

[00:03:35] I think chances are quite good, they might, you know … there’s some cute little critter kid came to your door, was asking question, and he looks tasty, you probably eat first and ask questions later. That’s what we’ve done with our fellow species. But it’s really remarkable that we’re looking outside, as far outside as possible, in deep space to find out who we are. Our search for ourselves, who we are, and how we fit into the cosmic scheme of things, that really is quite remarkable. We’re following the trajectory of Galileo and yet it’s almost pathetic … I think it is pathological - the inability, the cognitive deficit to do the most obvious thing if you want to understand the nature of stars, look at them. If you want to understand the nature of brains, look at them. If you want to understand the nature of anything, then the whole field of science, look at the phenomena you want to understand. Until it comes to our own mind, and then we have psychology departments all over the world including Harvard, which means it’s psychology building after William James, and the last thing we need to do is to emulate him. When he said first and foremost and always, we must rely upon introspection to understand the nature of mind, how many introspections do you think there are. Maybe more than the last time I checked, but the last I checked I think it was zero.

[00:05:13] So … it’s a very peculiar world we’re living now but it’s not, it’s not, how do you say, incomprehensible. Because if we look at the history of experimental psychology that has moved beyond the philosophy of the mind … a lot of smart people thinking about the mind, which they’ve been doing for centuries, and rightfully trying to turn this into an empirical science like Galileo, astronomy versus history or philosophy of mind, or whatever philosophy of the universe, that the way it started about 135 years ago was, people like Wilheim Bundt in Germany and William James in America, Titchenerin upstate New York, they tried introspection but they tried it in the most bizarre possible way. They didn’t do introspection themselves, they would give other people, extremely primitive training in introspection and have them do it. William James was the exception, he was very gifted, but he didn’t have any idea of how to train other people in introspection. And he didn’t have any idea of how to train the attention, and if your attention is all screwy, your introspection abilities will be parallel. So they wanted to understand the mind, they taught other people to practise introspection and they interviewed them. Imagine if that’s what Galileo did. You know, I got a telescope here. Anybody want to look?. (laughter). I’ll ask you what you see. Incredibly, bizarre.

[00:06:30] So here we are. It’s just … I find … wah, this is … I feel like the alien. I really do. And then in terms of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, well, the assumption here, of course is the … everything that humanity knows is known by Eurocentric civilisation and the people you’ve trained. The Chinese, Indians, Singaporeans and so forth, Western styled education, NUS is a very Western university, right? So it’s Eurocentric approach, And if we don’t know it, nobody knows it. That’s the assumption. And so, I could write them a letter and tell them there is extraterrestrial intelligence. They’re called Tibetans [laughter]. Because they may as well be from another planet. And they have a whole set of this vast array of methods for exploring the nature of the mind, finding out who we are, what’s the nature of the mind, what’s our role, what’s our place in our universe, what’s the role of the mind in nature and they’ve been doing this for … if we count the Hindus before the Buddhists … for 5000 years and we’ve not been doing it and maybe they learned something. You know.

[00:07:56] And even now in 2016, by and large, people studying meditation study the brains of and behaviour of meditators, they don’t ask them questions about what they’ve discovered. Even when they’re practising what’s called insight meditation. Yeah, but what’s the health benefits, does it release stress, increase productivity?. Can I get rid of warts? Well, there’s good reason why the introspectionist movement failed. They started in about 1875 in Germany, and in Americas especially, and by 1910, it was dead and they buried it, in the same year very symbolically that William James died. He was a great advocate of introspection. But they just didn’t have any means for training attention. Nothing. They had no sophisticated means of training attention and introspection. The scientists themselves on the whole didn’t do the introspecting, they had other people do it, and they were basically lay people with hardly any training. And of course then the subjects who were being studied were studying you doingintrospection, they tended to want to please the scientists, so they basically all their observations were coloured by the scientists, you know, telling them you’ll see this probably, why don’t you check, they led the witness. And they basically came up with no consensus, and after 35 years or so, they just stopped doing it. Behaviourism came over, behavioural psychology came with a great steamroller and just, and just said, no more introspection. No more introspection and let’s not even talk about subjective experience at all, because it is not scientific.

[00:09:27] So it’s now time, without gripping about the past, but there it is. There’s our peculiar past, that introspection just fell out of sight, out of the academic psychological study of the mind more than a century ago … and it’s never been resusc[itated], we’ve never even looked back. But here we are. We’re not in that we have the humility, I think it’s basic common sense to look outside of our culture. And here we are, looking at the culture of India, of Tibet and so forth to explore the nature of the mind in the more rigorous way possible. And this is the entry to it. This is the telescope. So I don’t want to go on long, ‘cause we’ve very interesting material to cover in the text and related material. So I’m going to try to be now very concise, just hit some bullet points … when you’re practising mindfulness of breathing and thoughts come up, thoughts are noise, right? The signal is the sensations of the breath, and thoughts, chit chat, blah blah blah comes up, that’s noise. You’d like to have as little of that as possible. As soon as it comes up, you like to release it so you can have a clear channel. Like tuning into the radio station, where there’s just that station, no static, no nothing, crystal clear. Signal, yes, noise, no. That’s what we like when we’re practicing mindfulness of breathing, and now that we’re going into this practice, that which was noise is now the channel, and that instead of regarding thoughts and memories, emotions, desires and so forth, and agitations and all of that, as noise, you know, pardon me, you’re distracting me, I’m trying to focus on my breath, we just have switched the spotlight over to those phenomena. We’ve switched, turned it away from all five sensory domains including the tactile. So now that’s noise. It’s off target. It’s not what we’re seeking to attend to, and we’re seeking to focus single-pointedly on the space of the mind, and now whatever thoughts, images, memories and so forth come up, that has our full attention.

[00:11:09] Now is there noise or is it now a problem as we practice are we experts the very first time we start? Of course not. The noise is the same old noise as before. It’s excitation and laxity. Right? And so if a thought is arising, thought, memory, emotions are arising, and you are hovering right there in the immediacy of the present moment, still, unwavering, clear and discerning and observing memories coming up, thoughts, emotions, fantasies and so forth and so on, and you’re right there, the unflickering candle flame illuminating whatever is arising here and now in the space of the mind, that’s not noise, that’s the practice. But of course, as soon as there’s the cognitive fusion and your awareness is then sucked into it and drawn away from the present moment, drawn off to the referent, of the thought, the memory, the desire, the emotion, well, that’s noise. That’s the distraction. Now okay that’s what we want to clear out. Or, so there’s one, and you know what to do about it. Relax, release, return. On the other hand, noise is where your whole system is just bogged, getting bogged down, the measuring apparatus is running out of juice, you know the battery’s going dead, and there you are, sitting and kind of like … (laughter) … fading out, and so, there’s no clear signal. Not that you’re distracted and not because of noise. It’s just that the battery’s going dead. So you’re just basically on the slippery slope of falling asleep.

[00:12:45} So those are the two impediments, right? The same old, same old, that’s the impediment for any type of shamatha. But now, the distinctive feature is that we are opening the Pandora’s box of the mind and whatever comes up, it’s allowed to come up freely, unimpededly, without censorship, just free flow, and then of course the challenge is to be the rock in the stream of this gushing torrent of thoughts, memories, emotions and so forth, and not be moved by them. You get wet, but you don’t get swept downstream. Now we have in science something quite magnificent, the theme of objectivity. I think I’ve mentioned this before, so now extremely concisely; objectivity has two meanings here. And one of these is: be objective in the sense of make your measurements, analyse your measurements, draw your conclusions free of subjective bias. That is, your preferences … remember what William James said, in some areas, your personal biases are just irrelevant, throw them out. There are gravitational laws and they have nothing to do with what you want with the case. You just have to find out what is the case. And so don’t have any preference, just see what is the case. What happens at death, is there continuity or not? it’s a simple question. It doesn’t matter what your preference is. Something happens, either it’s obliteration or it’s not. It’s a binary in fact. But whatever your preference is, it doesn’t matter. Something’s true and we should just find out what the truth is and then deal with it.

[00:14:23] I find the notion of obliteration very easy to deal it. I mean really. I really don’t get it what’s so scary about that. It’s just the opposite of the danger, like no danger, because I don’t exist anymore, I just don’t find that intimidating at all. Immeasurably more daunting is the notion that oblivion cannot happen. That I’ll be here forever, in one guise or another. In any case those two are comparable, that we have the laws of gravity and what happens to consciousness at death. Something happens, it doesn’t matter what your preference is. And so it’s that ideal of objectivity. Scientists don’t always live up to it, but they know what the ideal is, right? Buddhists have ideals of ethics and we don’t always live up to it, but we know what the ideals are, right? Non-violence, benevolence. So there’s one. And that one, that objectivity in the sense of freedom from bias, that’s equally important in Buddhism as it is in any branch of science. If we make our investigation when we’re practicing vipassana with a bias, with a preference, tilting it, to try to be orthodox or to be anti-orthodox, or whatever, we may as well stop, it’s useless, right?

[00:15;37] So that’s one ideal, equally viable, equally indispensable in contemplative inquiry and scientific inquiry. The other one is the interesting one though. And that is we can call it ontological objectivity, and the notion of objectivity here and why Frank Drake would suggest this with a serious face, I mean clearly he’s a good scientist, I’m not doubting that, but we’re going to look deep into this space and hope that somebody out there can enlighten us about who we are and what our role in nature is, this is the ideal of objectivity, gone to maybe it’s absurd extreme. 'Cause we don’t even know if there is anybody out there. But we’re waiting for them to tell us who we are. Why? Because it’s objective, and that objective here, ontological objectivity means, that what we are attending to exists independently of our observation of it. And so if there is extraterrestrial intelligence, it doesn’t matter whether we know about it or not, whether we discover them or not, they’re there or not, and our preferences and so forth or our ability to find them is neither here nor there. Yes or no, but it’s already a done deal. There are already are sentient beings out there or not. And that would be objective, to make that discovery. Objectively, they already existed. Objectively, Jupiter already had moons. Objectively, the whole field of astronomy and so on and so forth. Objectively, that’s what’s there, independently of your system of measurement, that’s the idea, right? Independently of your system of measurement.

[00:17:21] Well, this is going to be obviously a major reason why introspection was experimented with briefly, in a really poor amateurish way and then discarded without even looking back. The most obvious thing from one perspective if you understand the mind, then look at it. I mean, what can be more obvious, that’s the whole history of science, look at what you’re trying to understand. But from another perspective, I wrote a whole book called ‘The Taboo of Subjectivity’, if you’re going to observe your mind, then you have no objectivity whatever, because the mind you’re observing does not exist at all independently of your experience of it. Nobody has a stray mind wandering around that nobody’s aware of, you know. And so now this is by its very nature subjective, which means that’s a taboo. Right? And so, no wonder they gave up on it, because they say this is not scientific. This does not lend itself to … if I say right now I’m going to observe what the next image that comes to mind, okay. There it is. I know what it was. But now does anybody else know it? Then it’s not subject to third-person corroboration. So I could tell you it’s a watermelon, but maybe I’m wrong, maybe it was another kind of melon [laughter], maybe I’m deceiving you, because it was really a naked girl and I’m just too embarrassed to say that. Or maybe I just want to trick you, or maybe I’m telling you the truth and you have no way of knowing, so then how can we even progress when it’s faith based. Right? What do we do? And say this is hopeless, there’s no third person corroboration here, which means we can’t even get on the road for scientific exploration because you have no way of confirming anything I tell you. If I tell you it’s a water[melon] … if I tell you this or that other thing, I’m thinking this, I’m remembering that, hoping that, how do you know that I’m telling you the truth, how do you know that I’m making accurate observations.

[00:19:05] They say, this is just hopeless from the start, so why don’t we just stop. So it’s one, a psychologist said, she’s world famous, I think I’ll keep her anonymous, ‘cause this might sound critical, but it’s just an observation. She said, and I quote her verbatim, almost, she said, she’s been doing research for 40 years, world famous, and she said, ‘when we interview people about their experience, we do not regard their statements as being true of their experience. We simply say the truth is … they said it.’ That’s all. And that is a 3rd person empirically testable statement. Did the person say it or not, did you have a tape recorder, did you have a tape recorder? That they definitely said it, I got it. But is their statement about their first person experience, was it correct? We don’t even ask the question. In other words, first person is off the table. Well, this practice here is a way to bring it back onto the table.

[00:20:03] What really struck me years ago, now nine years ago, right? 2007, the shamatha project, two times three months, we had 35 people in each group, and Amy and Brendon, there’s nobody else here who’s, I don’t think, just the two of you, yeah? in the group right here. So Amy and Brendon were in the study in 2007. And what I recall very vividly was over the course of the three months, as we met every afternoon and we had discussions and people shared their experience, I met with everybody once a week, that’s normal, that by the time we had finished the three months, we had quite a large common vocabulary, that people within the retreat would be using—laxity, excitation—and I can’t remember all the other terms we used, but we used a rather large vocabulary and we all knew what we’re talking about. Nobody was clairvoyant as far as I know, but we could listen to other people talking, and this, oh yeah, I had an experience like that, and then we would use the term. I coined the term or mostly I would take it from the buddhist terminology, and then we would be using these words very easily, comfortably, and we had a very clear sense that although I don’t know your experience, we’re talking about the same thing and using words and we understand what they mean. I would say the closest analogy is mathematicians. They’re not clairvoyant, and they’re speaking in abstraction, but they all know what each other’s talking about, and they know who the brilliant ones are, they know who’s proven what, who hasn’t proven what and that’s by intersubjective high level of training developing common vocabulary and common inquiry and then finding consensual knowledge. And that’s what contemplatives have been doing for millennia, making discoveries that are consensual, replicating, intersubjective. So how do we start? Well, I can go on and on, but I’m eager to get to the practice. We’re seeking another type of objectivity here. And that is, it’s an internal objectivity. Of course, the objectivity of seeking to observe without bias. And that’s where this opening Pandora’s box with no editing, no censorship comes in. So we don’t block out, oh, I don’t want to think about that, oh no no no, oh, none of that.

[00:22:22] But now the internal objectivity is not observing something that exists independently of the observer but it is seeking, cultivating the ability to observe the events, and get a good signal to noise ratio within the system. That is you are observing thoughts and not just thinking about your thoughts. You are observing emotions and not just having feelings about your emotions. You’re observing this wide range of phenomena and not having cognitive fusion with every single one of them. But actually observing them coming up, and when Lerab Lingga says what’s the object, observe the nature of each of the phenomenon, this means you’re not getting caught up with the story, with the drama, the individuality, oh I remember my mother here or I remember this, I remember that. That’s looking at the contents. Whereas the nature of the phenomena is just thought as thought, emotion as emotion, desire as desire, memory as memory. And observing the nature of the phenomena coming up, and observing the impact of your observation on the events that arise, observing whether they are momentary, whether they persist, observing whether there’s cognitive fusion or there is not. Right? And so without deep investigation, but careful moment to moment discerning mindfulness, we can start developing a database of observing that is in our own experience, observing what is arising and making clear observations and then when it comes to discussion, as when you’re having with Glen, for example, then sharing experiences with each other and checking intersubjective corroboration. But in fact, oh yes I’ve had that experience too, yes just recently someone mentioned that same type of experience. We’re developing then a consensual body of insight that overcomes the limitation or the problem of subjective experience being subjective. Because it’s intersubjective. Right? A lot more could be said but I want to get back to meditation.

[00:24:26] So let’s go right back to focussing shamatha on the mind and let’s start getting good at it because this is our telescope, for really exploring who we are, what’s the nature of the mind, what’s the role of mind in nature.

As you’re settling in, just consider the possibility as you’re finding your posture, just consider the possibility that the Buddha and all of these other contemplatives, Hindus, Buddhists and others, that they are actually correct when they say, if you penetrate through your mind, like sending the Hubble telescope outside beyond the atmospheric distortion of our planets, so when you direct the Hubble telescope out into deep space, there is nothing between the telescope and the stars and galaxies except empty space. No atmospheric distortion. What would it be like, to move your awareness beyond the atmospheric distortion of your own personality, and your own personal history and your language and your beliefs and your assumptions and your ideologies and worldviews, to penetrate beyond that, and look into the deep space of your mind, in a transpersonal way, not referring to god, I’m just referring transpersonal sense of your personal history. Probe deeply into the space of the substrate, which is a repository of all the memories you ever had in all previous lifetimes. Pythagoras said he could remember 20 previous lives. Pythagoras. He said he could remember people from the past lives. He was also a siddha. According to Aristotle, he’s primarily a siddha and secondarily a mathematician. But that’s true. What if it’s true that Buddha said, I could remember thousands of his own past lives, going back through cosmic cycles. This would mean you’re sitting, you can enter into a time machine and you can remember earlier phases of this planet from one perspective but nevertheless it’s like dropping in, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, maybe a hundred thousand years ago. What if in your earlier life, you were on another planet? If you go into your mind and then get glimpses, video glimpses of another planet, you can actually explore the history of the universe from your perspective, from lifetime to lifetime, by way of the mind. Wouldn’t that be interesting. And that’s just substrate consciousness, let alone if you cut through the substrate consciousness to pristine awareness. Well, that would be big. [laughter] Okay. Let’s jump in.

[00:27:19] Bell rings.

Meditation session.

[00:27:40] The Buddha very famously said that ‘the mind established in meditative equipoise comes to see reality as it is.’ This is a referral to objectivity, balance, evenness, so that when we make observations, it’s free of distortions, free of noise. So with the motivation to find freedom, awakening, by way of knowing reality as it is, settle the body, speech and mind in their natural state; dynamic equilibrium, all the way through.

[silence]

[00:30:19] You have mounted your telescope, you’re ready to begin your observations, and you’ve settled your mind in its natural state. Still, rooted in relaxation, a sense of ease so that you can sustain that stillness, that continuity, of composed, focussed, unified attention, and you do so with clarity. You’re ready to go to work. Arrive there, that still point of awareness resting in its own nature, relaxed, still and clear. Just before you put it to work.

[silence]

[00:32:10] And now lets approach the main practice, in a bit of a roundabout way, as if we’re walking around the block before entering the building. [pause]. So we start right here, awareness resting in its own place, resting in that stillness and clarity, the flow of discerning cognisance. And now let your eyes be fully open. And fully direct the light of your mental awareness to the visual domain. We return to the theme of stillness and motion. Rest in the stillness of your awareness while observing the fluctuations, the motions, the changes, within this elliptical field of visual appearances. In the seen, let there be just the seen. Let your body be still, just like a telescope. Let it be still. Let your awareness be still. Distinguish between what’s being presented to you in terms of visual appearances versus the conceptual projections superimposed upon this non-conceptual field.

[silence]

[00:34:29] As the appearances themselves are non-conceptual, let your awareness to your best approximation also be non-conceptual; a simple witnessing, observing the nature of these visual appearances. Now close the eyes, and single pointedly direct your mental awareness, your attention, to the auditory domain, the domain of sound. And in the sound, let there be just the sound,without associating it, labelling it, visualising the sound of a dog, a dog barking, distant dog, whose dog, not my dog, all of that. Release it. And in the heard, let there be just the heard, moment to moment.

[silence]

[00:37:21] Now direct your attention single pointedly to the somatic domain, the field of tactile sensations, observe them in the same way, to the best of your ability, restraining the tendency to superimpose upon these sensations and the feelings within this space, of 'I' and ‘mine,’ and simply observe tactile sensations as tactile sensations, tactile feelings as tactile feelings, without labelling, without associating, without conceptualising. Simply observe them for what they are, appearances arising in space.

[silence]

[00:39:17] Once again, open the eyes. Open all your senses. And see what you can directly perceive, with all your senses open. The visual, obvious. Sound, yes. Tactile sensations, yes. Any smell or taste, check. And once you’ve waked around the neighbourhood and scanned each of the five sensory domains, look again. Are there any other appearances you can directly perceive as you can directly perceive colors, sounds, tactile sensations, and so on? Are there any other appearances that you can directly perceive not by way of any of the 5 senses, the physical senses, but only mental, examine closely? Are you immediately aware of anything that’s not come to you by way of any of the five senses?

[silence]

[00:41:07] Those are the contents of the mind, the contents of the space of the mind, those are the object of mindfulness in this practice; those events, those impulses, those appearances that you can directly observe; discursive thoughts, images, mental images, memories, and the domain in which these occur is the six domain, the domain of the mind, Illusive, but as real as anything else. Now single-pointedly for the duration of the session, to the best of your ability, focus your mental awareness on this mental domain, drawing your attention away from the five physical domains, single-pointedly focussing on the mental domain and within that domain, simply observe the nature of whatever arises from moment to moment, here and now, without letting your awareness be drawn away to the referent of the thought, the memory, the fantasy, the image. When we’re drawn away, it’s by way of the conceptual mind, thinking of things elsewhere by way of thought, by way of memory, whereas here we observe the thoughts, the memories themselves and we are observing them, we are perceiving them. Rest in that flow of perception.

[silence]

[00:45:14] The first challenge in this practice is to distinguish between stillness and motion. When we are simply caught up in rumination, it is motion in motion, awareness in motion with thoughts in motion, memories in motion, but we enter the doorway, when we recognise stillness and its distinction from motion. And we set out on the path as we experience the first of four types of mindfulness, single-pointed mindfulness, in which we are simultaneously aware of the stillness of our awareness and the movements of thoughts and other mental events. Here is objectivity within the domain of the mind.

[silence]

[00:48:04] This practice can be sustained only if there is a deep, core sense of ease, of looseness, free of grasping. And it calls for a stillness of the body, let your body be still like a mountain, and the stillness of awareness, let your awareness be still like space.

[00:51:33] Bell rings.

[00:52:20] Olaso. Let’s go back to the text. Time’s a-passing. But I’m going back, because I’m like a terrier, it’s got its teeth into something that can’t let go. Back to the 100,000 verse Prajnaparamita sutra, we can’t just … if we are living in Tibet a hundred years ago, is … we just cut right through that, yeah, yeah, it makes sense, the great lamas achieve that, the great mahasiddhas of India, sure, Buddha achieved that, sure, you know. But this is a lot, this is a lot to bite off. Okay, achieving high states of concentration, okay that’s imaginable. That there might be a form realm, okay, maybe so, possible, quite plausible. But then you settle in meditative equipoise in the 4th dhyana, it’s called the perfection of mindfulness, you’ve transcended any fluctuations of pleasure, let alone discomfort. It’s just like a vast ocean of equanimity. It’s very, very even. It’s like … this is objectivity. This is real objectivity. No perturbations, no imbalances, sheer equanimity, that feeling of equanimity. The mind is profoundly unperturbed in this 4th dhyana, the highest dimension within the form, form realm. And then they say you experience numerous types of paranormal abilities. It’s just not obvious what the logical connection between these two is at all. So you’ve achieved a state of profound equanimity and your mind is absorbed in the form realm, but what does that have to do with that you can cause even the earth to quake, etc, where is the connection? And as I’ve quoted Arthur C Clarke before, any level of technology sufficiently advanced and not understood looks like magic. This looks like magic, how can we, you know, how can this look like anything but magic, such that you either believe it, or you are really a devout Buddhist, you’ve faith, you have faith, okay, I believe. Or you’re a modern person, you think, you know, yeah but I’m not good at blind faith. What? Teutonic plates cause the earth to quake. How can the 4th dhyana cause the earth to quake. I don’t see the logical connection. Right? So let’s linger here. I’m not in a hurry. Because this is a brilliant man writing this, he’s no dope, he’s no village, you know, country bumpkin that just believes everything he’s told. He’s brilliant and of course he’s speaking in line with Atisha and Nagarjuna and Shantideva. Right. This is like.. he’s writing in the 17th century, that’s like two thousand years in the Buddhist tradition of people saying this again and again and again, from generation to generation. And say, oh by the way the Hindus can do this, the [dalais?] can do this, shamans can do this. We all know, right? And yet we don’t know, this kind of looks like .. are you kidding me? So let’s just pause for a moment and just shift to something this is not ..okay some of you have been, had some instruction in dream yoga, okay remember, so you become lucid, you cut through and suddenly you have this radical shift of perspective on the same events … but it’s totally different because now you were in the dream, of the dream and taking everything to be real and objective within the dream and responding accordingly. And now with the same dream suddenly your perspective has shifted and now you’re looking at the whole dream from a perspective of being awake, you know you’re dreaming so you are in fact awake, and yet the dream continues. Now once you stabilise that, how do you stabilise that when people first have lucid dreams, they become very excited. [00:56:16] I’ve had lucid dreams. Lots of people, many people have. And the first thing is, ‘oh boy’, and then you wake up. Like a number of you who’ve reported to me, 'oh I had this really good meditation and then got very excited and then it was over’. And then, I want it again, I want it again, how do I get that back, you know. It’s very common in meditative experiences and in lucid dreams, you get excited and then it’s gone. Or the conceptual mind says, ‘I’ll take that. I’ll figure this one out.’ and then …you know, it’s like an elephant trying to explore a mouse with his foot [laughter]. Lightly I’ll just want to touch .... Lightly. Aww. So the first thing is see if anything rings a bell here, the first thing is relax. So you’re lucid, yeah, yeah, whatever, sure people get lucid all the time, no big deal. Sure, I’m lucid. So first, relax. But then don’t just fall back into non-lucidity, don’t lose the dream, maintain continuity; so, of the dream and of your awareness that it is a dream, maintain stability, continuity so you continue dreaming and continue your awareness that it is a dream. That’s your next big one. In other words, more lab time, more lab time. This is the best lab in the universe for exploring the mind 'cause everything in the dream is mind-made. This is the best lab, right. But then it will be also good if it’s not a dull, blurry, vague, nebulous, kind a dream; it would be good if it’s like a high definition dream, right. Really clear, razor sharp. So it would be good if you’re very relaxed, stable and clear. Anything ring a bell, ring a bell? This is why Stephen LaBerge years ago asked me to come and co-teach with him, we did it six times. He’s an expert on lucid dreaming. I know something about shamatha, 'cause you could see, we both saw, but this is kind of obvious, if you really want to become good at lucid dreaming, dream yoga, then for heaven’s sake develop your shamatha skills, makes the mind serviceable in the day time and the night time. Relaxed, stable and clear.

[58:40} But now once you’ve done that, let’s imagine now that you’ve fused your shamatha with a little bit of vipashyana, this is insight after all, to recognise the dream as a dream, that is night time vipashyana. What else we call it. That’s knowing reality as it is. You did it before and now you do, hallelujah. You are awake. Right. But now in dream yoga, this enters into a second whole phase of the practice. It’s a real discipline, and it’s at least about a thousand years old. And the discipline is now emanation and transformation, within the context of lucid dream. You now, and this is not an ego trip, it’s to really explore the nature of the dream reality by interacting with it. It can be an ego trip if that’s your motivation, but that’s not the motivation of the great dream yogas of history like Padmasambhava, Naropa and so forth. You learn the nature of reality by interacting with it, working with it, testing its malleability and so forth. By emanation, projecting yourself within the dream, transforming the dream, transforming yourself in the dream and just seeing how malleable is dream reality. Is anything that’s objectively real, anything that is subjective inherently existent in that whole matrix of subject/object within the dream? Is there anything that is tough, gnarl-ly, unmovable, or is everything malleable, right? You explore that. Well, you explore that by for example in the dream, why not? See if you can cause an earthquake. That shouldn’t be too hard, in your dream, why not? You can do that. It shouldn’t be very hard at all, actually. You can cause an earthquake. You can transform one to many. That’s one of the classic practices—transforming one form to many forms. Or transform others one thing into many forms. A tree into a forest. Once you get a whole flock of chickens and so forth. And then transform many from to one. A whole forest into one tree. Transform many of your forms back to one. This is just standard exercise, right, within dream yoga. You experience becoming visible and invisible. Easy, peasy. That’s no problem in a dream. Why not? You can do that, no big deal, right. You pass through walls, that’s one of the first tests I give my students when they get, you know, get lucid. See if you walk through a wall. Standard procedure. And as you probably know, they get half way through, they get stuck. I’ve lost so many students that way, they’re still stuck. [laughter].

[1:01:05] Happily, that’s not true. But then we’ve to learn. How do you … ‘cause they’re lucid enough to get into the wall and they’re not lucid enough to get through it. Because their mind goes into seizure mode and says, but it’s a wall, and then they get stuck right in the middle of the wall. Very uncomfortable, you know. [laughs]. Then they’ve to figure how to get out. Well, generally just wake up and say the hell with this. [laughter]. And then they develop ingenious methods and you’ve probably heard some of them, you walk through the wall backwards. That works. Because you don’t know when it’s supposed to get firm, and so you’re through it before you even know it. Some people try running like Harry Potter. See how that works out [laughter]. And some people when they really get more lucid they just walk through it. Because they know there’s no wall there. It’s an appearance of a wall, stupid. There are no molecules there, there’s no wall, there’s no body, this is an appearance of a body, this is like one rainbow penetrating another rainbow. One mirage, you know. What’s the problem? Just walk right through it, right. So you experiment with that. All of this is just kind of like … ordinary in dream yoga, oh you pass through fences of course, walls, fences, pass through mountains, sure, in your dreams, why not? You can do it, sure. You can move about with an unimpeded body like a bird in the sky. That’s one of the easiest things to do in a lucid dream. Fly. Most people can. A few can’t, the Italians can’t I understand, but most people can. I’m just teasing you. You move through space in a cross legged position in a dream, sure. Why not? You don’t have to flap your wings, there’s no air anyway. So what’s the point of flapping wings with no air, you know. You can also breathe underwater. That should be no problem. Because there’s no oxygen under the water, and there’s no oxygen above the water, so it should make no difference, right. Because there’s no air and you’re not breathing. But you can certainly feel like it, or you can move up through the earth and down into the earth, as if moving in water. Sure. It happens all the time. That’s easy peasy to do. I mean, when you get it there?

[1:03:11] You walk upon water without sinking, sure. Why weren’t … what’s the problem? As if you proceeding on line, you below forth smoke and blaze with light, like a bonfire, yeah. Why not? You can. And in the dream, in the dream, if you ever have the sun and the moon appear in the dream, any reason why you couldn’t reach out and stroke it. No, why not? Nice sun. Nice moon. Why not? Okay, but of course, we know that’s a dream. Nobody is being foolish here. We’re not saying dreams are the same as the waking state. They’re not. We know that. [laughter] Oh oh, from our perspective of being non-lucid in a waking state, we know that, we know that, we’re all awake. And the Buddha says, yeah, yeah, right. [laughs]. And yet in Atisha’s seven point mind training, after he makes a brief reference to the preliminaries practices, and in the old edition, there’s one reference to making the mind serviceable with shamatha. That was edited out later. But it’s useful. When he goes into ultimate bodhichitta, he’s starting the main practice. Main practice. He has seven mind training, right. The first line of the first of the seven mind training, I guess it’s the second ’cause you have the preliminaries is 1:04:32 [? tibetan], view phenomena as if they were dreams. That’s the very first one. He’s going right into ultimate bodhichitta, right into wisdom, right into vipashyana, and he doesn’t say, start doing an analysis of yourself, whether you’re one or many, your body or mind, he doesn’t do that, he could, he can do anything he likes, but he doesn’t start from the inside. He doesn’t start by probing into the nature of the mind, its origins, locations, destinations. He starts by saying, look, see appearances. View them as if they were dreams. That’s where he starts. Now he didn’t say, use them as dreams, because then he would be a bit psychotic, right? If you can’t tell the difference between waking reality and dreaming, you’re pretty messed up. You’re delusional, right. 'Cause they are not the same. But he says, as if, [1:05:36 Tibetan?] like dreams, like if they were dreams and of course, he was one of the great madhyamaka masters of India, where, according to the middle way view of Nagarjuna, it is said that all phenomena of waking states do not exist from their own side, by their own nature. Any more than they do in dreams. In the dreams, phenomena appear to exist from their own side. The mountains, the people and so forth appear to be over there, and they are not. There’s nothing over there existing from its own side anymore than there’s someone over here from my side in the dream who’s really here.

[1:06:14] Now from the waking perspective once we’ve awakened from the dream and we look back on the dream, oh yeah, for sure, definitely, I didn’t just go off and visit another city and meet with my dead grandma and so forth and so on, no, they weren’t really there. From a waking perspective, it’s totally straightforward. 20/20 vision. Hindsight. But if we’re in the midst of a non-lucid dream, we’re having a conversation with our dead grandma and we’re visiting some place, it could be a thousand miles away, that’s because we’re taking everything literally, we’re taking appearances at face value. I see grandma over there, she must be over there. She’s talking to me, I am shaking, giving her a hug. She’s there, she’s there, right. Until you’re awake and you look back and say, no she was not, right. And the Buddha, Nagarjuna are saying from a waking perspective, gosh, you people, your experiences are a lot like a dream. Why don’t you start viewing such… why don’t you start to approximate a perspective which is more like ours, ’cause we see things as they are. Like a dream, not as a dream. Like a dream in the waking experience, all these appearances seem to be from their own side. The object seems to be entirely from their own side and I’m simply witnessing them. And the daytime dream yoga teachings, the teachings of Nagarjuna and so forth say, your waking experiences, as they are a dream, this raises the interesting question. I am trying to pose very objectively, I’m not trying to persuade you to take this literally. Im looking at an incredible statement and trying to make sense of it. That’s all I would hope for. If this isn’t just like magic. You know. It’s not magic. It’s either true or false. That’s all that really matters. It’s true or false. If it’s true, if it’s false, this is just boring. There’s so much falsehood … just follow the American elections, you get all the falsehoods you can hope for. So if this is false, this is of no interest at all, you know. Just read fairy tales, whatever, science fiction. If this is true, how on earth could it be true. How can we see beyond a magical perspective to this being something sensible, something meaningful. In other words, to what extent, is waking experience like a dream? In what manner is it similar? In what manner is it dissimilar? Because nobody is saying that they are the same. But what facts are similar? Right. That would be the interesting question.

[1:08:44] So to make sense of this, you’ll recall that Karma Chagmé Rinpoche said that it’s not only bodhisattva or vidyadharas you know highly realised beings that have these abilities, in fact. it’s just sheer technology. There’s no reference to wisdom here at all. Wisdom of identitylessness with three marks of existence, no reference whatsoever to insight into emptiness. That’s why he said, non-buddhists, shamans and so forth, you can have other kinds of views but if you simply achieved this technology, the 4th dhyana, then you can on that basis you can develop these siddhis. How on earth does that occur? Where’s the connection? If you’ve cultivated faultless shamatha alone in the achievement of the 4th dhyana, such realisations occur. Well, there’s no way of interpreting that except for that’s what exactly what he means, and they are achieved by buddhists, non-buddhists, and so on. So what he’s saying is that as we saw basically the identical statement in the Pali canon, that was remarkable, almost verbatim, remember, even touching, caressing the sun and the moon, everything else there was basically, looked like basically it was just a photocopy from the Pali canon, the Buddha’s teaching about this and the dīghanikāya and then a thousand years later, after a thousand year database of people achieving these, the 4th dhyana, displaying these abilities, then Buddhaghosa compiling the first thousand years of the Theravada tradition, systematising and giving a wealth of stories of accounts of people actually achieving these and demonstrating these abilities. I mean that’s really remarkable but what’s more remarkable and what really caught my attention when I was reading this for the first time I was while I was in guidance by, under the guidance of Balangoda Ananda Maitreya and then in my between sessions I was studying the Visuddhimagga and studying this, I thought, wow, this is the technology, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Now what is common between the worldview that we in modernity accept and that of the shravakas, because this is something the shravakas achieved. Don’t need realisation of emptiness, don’t need Bodhisattva, let alone Dzogchen or any of that.

1:10:59 Ah, and what is the common denominator between our general worldview nowadays, the world view of science, and the worldview of the shravakas and the worldview in which these abilities can be developed. Okay. Is there any common denominator? And the answer is yes. Whether you’re a shravaka, you’re a non-buddhist, or you’re a um…, most type of scientists, almost all, living in the modern world, you assume as Einstein did, for example, that there’s a real world out there that exists in and of itself, and we’re exploring it. It’s called metaphysical realism. I’m going to spend a little bit of time on this. It’s extremely important, because if you like to understand Madhyamaka and the theme of emptiness, you’ve to understand metaphysical realism by that name or any other name. But you’ve to know what it refers to. it’s exactly the target. Okay? And so just a brief reminder of naive realism and I don’t think I know any naive realists, think that the colours are really out there, independently of eyeballs and the sounds and so forth and so on. That’s how they appear to be and people who are completely philosophically uncritical and don’t give any thought to it, they will think, well, you know, the trees are really green, they are just green, look they are green, green is really out there, I just photograph green of the tree way over there and the sound of the music is in the air and smells are in the air and so forth. And if one is unsophisticated, naive and hasn’t given it any real serious thought, that’s how things appear? So he said … well that’s it. So you’re a naive realist. I don’t know anybody, any intelligent, well-educated person who thinks that. But then there’s metaphysical realism and here’s what this is and see how similar, how familiar this sounds. This is from Hilary Putnam, his words and he was … he just passed away last month. About one month ago, at the age of 90, he’s really I think… he earned my enormous respect, he was for years at Harvard, one of the clearest thinking, insightful philosophers of mind, philosophers of mathematics, philosophers of science I think in modern era. He was really very brilliant and I’ve read him quite extensively with great admiration. Here’s how he defined metaphysical realism which he critiqued. He said,metaphysical realism is the view that, one, the world consists of mind independent objects - the world, the universe is out there already, basically the six- day plan is already done, then we came along. Okay. Whether you believe in the bible or not, it’s already there. No bible, okay. Big bang, 13.8 billion years and here we are. But it was here before we were. Homo sapiens 200,000 years. Universe 13.8 billion. So one was a done deal before we ever showed up. Very same theme as the bible, just a longer time span, right?

[1:13:33]{So the world consists of mind independent objects, there’s the ideal of objectivity. The ideal of objectivity. For most of the history of science like the first 250 years, they were looking for the God’s eye perspective, and that is, what’s out there when we’re not looking. They recognized,Descartes, Galileo, they all recognized colours arising independence on our eyes and our sounds and our ears and so on. They recognized that, so they knew that these appearances, these qualias, colours, sounds, smells, tastes, warmth, coolness and so forth, they are not out there, they arise relative to our sensory perceptions. And if you are a bat, you’re a cockroach, you’re a bumble bee, you’re a dog and so forth, you’d be living in another kind of world, as far you’re concerned. Because your appearances will be arising in dependence upon your brain, your sensory faculties, they knew this a long time ago about 400 years ago. Not so interesting if what you want to know is the nature of reality as God sees it. What’s really going on outside of our anthropocentric bubble, right? This is what Galileo was after, to know the mind of the creator by way of the creation and that continues to be the driving force behind science today, apart from practical applications and so forth, is what’s really going on, with no allusion to God but simply what’s going on when we’re not looking. The Higgs Boson recently discovered almost certainly with the large Hadron Super Collider if they thought that the bose… I just said it, bose hedron, thank you, say it again, Higgs Boson, thank you. Higgs Boson. If they thought the Higgs Boson exists only relative to the large huge super collider, that is simply arising relative to that. Was that really worth $7 billion dollars? They’re assuming that was already there 'cause this is the god particle. This is the particle in the universe that is responsible for providing all the … all the other particles with mass. In other words, that’s a big deal. You get a Nobel prize. Not by predicting something that would be an artefact of the large Hadron Super Collider. So they’re assuming it was already out there and they discovered it with this expensive machine. And Higgs, the Scottish physicist, predicted it 50 years or so before they discovered it but they’re assuming it was already out there when they discovered it. That’s metaphysical realism. It was already there and we finally discovered what was already there independent of any observation. Mind-independent, independent of super colliders, already there. Okay, that’s metaphysical realism. For those you who studied Madhyamaka, this is inherently existence by its own side. Exactly what they mean. The Higgs boson they discovered it because it was inherently existing, existing independent of any machine and any conceptual framework. We just got it right and then gave it a label after a Scottish physicist. There’s the first point. The world consists of mind-independent objects.

[1:16:52] Here’s a second point. These are really juicy and really to the point. There is exactly one true and complete description of the way the world is. It’s already out there, and so if you’re describing it, you know, like blind man looking at the elephant, one person might be at the bottom and getting one piece and a geologist’s getting another piece but if you put all the pieces together like a jigsaw, you are coming together, you’re converging upon the one true complete representation of that which is already there and that was the universe and that’s the ideal of many scientists. It gives them a sense of being part of a larger whole that … I will do science only for forty years. I’ll add my contribution and future generations will come to approximate the complete vision of reality.Physicists thought that they were already there at the end of the late 19th century and oops, not quite. But they thought they had already figured it out. But that’s the second point. That’s exactly one true description of the way the world already is, and the third one is, truth involves some sort of … truth … do Higgs Boson exist or not? There’s a true statement there. Yes or no. Truth. True statement involves some correspondence between an independently existent world and a description of it. Your description is valid if it corresponds to what is out there independently of your description. Right? That was really I think very succinctly stated.

[1:18:04] So what’s really out there? I hope this is getting exciting for you. This is, this is hot stuff, right. So what’s out there when no one’s looking. When we look we see all the familiar stuff but it’s all anthropocentric. You know. If you have blurry vision, what you see is a whole bunch of blurry stuff out there. It’s not out there. It is arising because, you know, you have old eyes and so on. So what’s really out there? Well, Descartes, Galileo, they grappled with this 400 years ago. Descartes said, look there’s secondary qualities and these are the ones that are arising relative to your sensory faculties. But of course there’s something really out there, God created it after all. They all believe this. It was done before we ever came along. So what does God see? What’s out there when nobody is looking except for God because he’s always looking. What’s really out there? And he said the primary attributes, the primary qualities, the secondary are relative to a dog, a cat, a goldfish, a bumble bee and so forth, and so yeah yeah yeah whatever. But what’s out there when nobody is looking, independent of anybody looking? What’s really out there? And Descartes came up with, concluded primary qualities are thought to be properties of objects that are independent of any observer such as solidity. The solidity of a glass. You can be a bumble bee, you can be a porpoise, you can be anything you like, but [makes sound], still solid, that’s independent of any observation, that’s what Descartes said. That’s the first one, solidity. It doesn’t matter who you are, who’s looking. How you’re looking. It’s already solid. That’s the way it is, okay. That’s solidity is one. Extension, how big is it? It doesn’t matter what your perspective is. It is this big or no bigger. When we’re looking at it, this is how big it is. This is the shape; this is extension. Right? Motion. Doesn’t matter what you see or not. You could die from an asteroid hitting your house while you were fast asleep. It was in motion, you didn’t see it coming, you’re still dead. It was in motion, whether you looked at it or not. Right. Motion. It’s really out there. And then, number, how many glasses? Doesn’t matter what you think. Doesn’t matter who’s looking. There’s a certain number. Figures. Not quite sure what he meant by that. But I think maybe shape. It would be a good, you know, possibility. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself. How’s that? Nice, clear, you know, reference to the Buddha’s notion of svabhava, inherent existence. That’s it. They exist in the thing itself. I am holding an inherently existent glass here, holding inherently existent water. They can be determined with certainty. I am and do not rely on subjective judgements. It doesn’t. Voila, the glass. Really there, from its own side. Call it whatever you like, you can call it a “schmorble” anything, it doesn’t matter, it is what it is, and whatever you think about it, you label it and so forth, doesn’t matter .If I throw it at you, you can get wet. You can think dry all you like, you’re still wet and bruised. So that’s really juicy.

[1:21:41] Now is there anything left out of that picture because this is now widely accepted even to this day. What’s really out there? Democritus twenty five hundred years ago said particles in motion. That’s pretty much the view now. Elementary particles in motion but let’s add fields, there are electromagnetic fields, gravitational fields and so forth. So, okay. Particles and fields, that’s what’s out there when nobody is looking, There’s space, spacetime, that’s out there, nobody looking, doesn’t make any difference. Spacetime, particles, fields; that’s what’s really out there. And they have no colour, they are soundless, they have no odor, they have no taste, and they are not warm or cold, they have no qualia at all. They are just particles and fields, they are absolutely objective, you can measure them objectively, and you can know with certainty what’s really absolutely out there, independent of any observation. And that’s what the world consists of and read any book on cosmology and you will find the history of that. Started with the big bang, don’t quite know how it started but you can’t have everything. It started and then particles and fields, spacetime expanding and here we are. And we are, as I went to a planetarium, where was it just recently … oh, Los Angeles, a beautiful a planetarium. The astronomers love saying this, it’s was so poetic. We are stardust. Human beings are made of stardust and of course they are equating human being with human being’s body. Because, after all, that’s what’s real. That’s what real. That’s what’s real real - is your body. Is anything left out of this picture, 'cause now I read the whole text, I studied cosmology, you know not high level, but I did study it, and I told you before, study textbooks about cosmology and I read multiple ones, and there is no … well, it’s the history of the physical universe and they are presenting it as being complete with no reference to mind and no reference to consciousness anywhere in the whole book. It never comes up. It’s just particles, fields, spacetime and then all configurations from photons up to galactic clusters, and black holes, and white warps and supernovas, the seven dwarfs and all kinds of things. But it’s all physical.

[1:24:05] Is anything left out that might be significant. Well, Sigmund Freud had a comment about this and I quote and he wrote this about 90 years ago, ‘the problem of a world constitution that takes no account of the mental apparatus by which we perceive it’, I want you to hang on every word here, I’m going to read it from the beginning, ‘the problem of a world constitution, a world view the depiction of the universe’, right? ‘that takes no account of the mental apparatus by which we perceive it’, this excludes the mind, ‘is an empty abstraction of no practical interest’. You’ve just described a fictitious world, Stephen Hawking, thank you, and all the other great cosmologists. You’ve come up with a great story of a universe that does not exist, anywhere. Because there is no universe that anyone knows anything about, that’s devoid of mind, devoid of consciousness, and that’s one they described. Devoid of consciousness, devoid of mind. That’s what they described. Mind doesn’t play in at all, there’s no explanation for how it starts, what caused it. There’s no explanation if it has any role. They ignore it. There’s no explanation of origins of consciousness at all. They’ve described a fictitious universe that is purely material. And we know of no such universe because the only universe or worlds that we know of are the ones of which we’re aware. Those are the only ones.The only universe we know of is one which the mind is present, is operative and is by means of this mental apparatus that we know about the universe. To exclude that from the description of the universe is crazy. That’s crazy. And he says there’s no practical interest, because you’re describing a fictitious world. It may be very good for hedonia, and it is. It may be very good for developing technology. It’s been fantastic. But you described a world that doesn’t exist because there is no world that anybody knows anything about that is devoid of mind. And you skipped that part. This is of no practical interest, he says. And then one might, if one is me, say, doesn’t this mean the whole science is an illusion. That your whole scientific world view is an illusion because you’re describing something, you’re describing a universe that is absolutely objective with no subjective elements at all. It’s like describing left with no reference to right. Up with no down. You’re describing objects with no subjects. That does not make any sense. How could you describe left without right? North without south? It makes no sense because you can’t have north without south, you can’t have objects without subjects. So imagine geography that says only north exists. It makes no sense. And yet they’re describing a universe where only objects exist. And then after 300 years of this, we have William James, Wilhelm Bundtand suddenly coming along and saying, oh maybe, we left out something, oh yeah I know, mind, maybe we should include the mind. And what’s happened ever since then? Two things have happened.

[1:27:36] They don’t know what to do with this critter. They just don’t know what to do with this pesky nuisance of something that was looked, overlooked for 300 years and so they do one of two things. This is cognitive science across the boards. They either equate mind in general, and consciousness in particular, with something that is objective, that they do understand: brain activity, functions of brain activity, emergent properties of brain activity. But in no cases are there any compelling evidence that equation is actually true. They just say it by calling the tail of a dog a leg. There’s no evidence that it is. But if you’ve got a tail and you just don’t know what to do with it and you do know about legs, it kind of looks like a leg. Why not just call it a leg? And so if you don’t know really anything about nature of the mind because you refuse to look at it. Professionally refuse to look at it, oh what the hell, just equate mind with something you do understand and get on with it. And you know something about behaviour. So the behaviour is that mind is a simply disposition for behaviour. Something they could understand and they just…what the hell with it. Mind is the disposition for behaviour and they got away with that for about 50 years until the brain scientists said, aaaarh, we can equate it with something else. We can equate mind with brain. And of course they have more money, so they draw a bigger microphone. So mind is the brain now. Everyone’s saying, mind is the brain. Why? Because they’ve got the microphone.

[1:29] Why is Trump famous? Because he has the microphone. [laughter]. Not because he’s saying anything intelligent whatsoever. But he has the microphone. You can put Mickey Mouse in front of the microphone, he would still get nominated. Faster than Donald Trump. Because he’s … oh come … [laughter]. Who gets the microphone? Who gets the funding? They’re the ones the media covers. And it’s mutually empowering. So there’s one of the two routes. If you don’t know what to do with mind in nature, you don’t know what to do with consciousness in nature, number one, you can wait for extraterrestrials to tell us. Good luck with that. Or you can just say, oh, the hell with that, just call it something, call it an integrated information system. Call it brain activity. Call it a neuron. Call it, just call it something we know about, and stop, so we can get on with other things. That’s one thing. But we’ve no evidence that there actually is equivalence, we just say it. Right. And then everybody else just says it, and then everybody knows it, oh, because they said it, you know.

[1:30:23] And then the other possibility is just say it does not exist at all. If it’s not equivalent to something physical, then to hell with it. It just doesn’t exist at all. And as I said before, we have major physicists and neuroscientists, and psychologists and philosophers that get so exasperated with trying to equate the mind with something physical, which it isn’t. They just say, to hell with it. Mind doesn’t exist at all, mind doesn’t exist. Experiences don’t exist. Appearances don’t exist. They’re not physical. And so just say they don’t exist. Why don’t we just agree. Right? That’s what has been happening in the last 100 years in the cognitive sciences and the persistent refusal to actually look at the mind. So Freud says, but don’t think science is an illusion. No, our science is not an illusion. He just said it was, right? He just said it was of no practical interest. But then he wants to side with science because he’s not religious. In fact, you know, he makes a big point, it’s called future of illusion. Religion is an illusion in his view. So our science is not an illusion. [Alan laughs]. What would be an illusion, would be to think that we might attain elsewhere that which science cannot give us. So better wait for extraterrestrials than look for something outside of science. And this was written in 1927, this is the future of illusion, so there’s really been no progress at all. I mean this is an objective fact, there’s been no progress on understanding the nature of the mind/body relationship for the last 90 years. There’s been no progress actually understanding the nature of consciousness, its origins, how it interfaces with the brain? What happens in death? There’s actually been no … I mean, they like to do a song and a dance, oh, we’re making some progress and you say what? And then you get this resounding silence.

[1:32:08] Ninety years of failure, and they’re still saying, don’t look outside 'cause it’ll make us looks stupid. If those funky Tibetan yogis and Indian yogis and Taoist monks and so forth, if they find something we haven’t, and they didn’t even use any technology, we look like idiots. Let’s just assume and let’s continue to assume that nobody knows anything about this except for us, and if we know nothing, that means nobody knows anything. And we’ll just study the brains and behaviour of contemplatives. So that’s what’s been happening so far. So consider these wild [six oh five? inaudible 1:32:41][laughter] the… I mean I’m not going to let go. It’s not that I want to beat up on the materialists. It’s boring. But this statement, this is not boring. You can fly through the air. You can walk through walls. You can make the earth tremble. You can caress the sun. It gives me a sunburn just to think about it. And I can’t even imagine what that would be, that great big ball of nuclear reactions. Nice sun. And yet, these are not crazy people. The Buddha himself said it, we are not like that, people who apologize, apologists for the Buddha, no, no he didn’t say this he is rationally empirical, he’s basically 20th century, he was kind of like us. No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t like that at all. He said that. [laughter]. What would you do? Run for the hills. Buddhism is hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo, clap trap. We can make a song out of it, you know. What do you do? So there’s a possibility the Buddha is actually delusional. No he had a delusion breakdown, on the night of his enlightenment, and out of that he had a massive influence on the most sophisticated cultures of all of India, of Asia, for 2500 years and now his message has gone global, and all because the person is fundamentally psychotic. That’s a possibility but I don’t really find that to be a possibility. That just doesn’t make any sense to me but he did say this, like it or lump it, so I think that is impossible, and if it were just one person, but when it’s so many others that are not just reporting it but allegedly they achieved this, demonstrated it and so forth, then to say they’re all…then it has to be a great big conspiracy to fool us.

[1:34:40] It was 2500 years to fool the white people [laughter], you know. I find that’s just a waste of time and we are fooling ourselves. We don’t need any help from outside. You know. So I think conspiracy theory is silly, that the Buddha was psychotic, no, it just doesn’t wash, no, no. And Nagarjuna and Asanga and Atisha and Shantideva and Tsongkapa, and Padmasambhava and Milarepa and Naropa and Karma Chagme and Lama Mipham Rinpoche, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he accepts all of this of course. That they’re all psychotic? And we are the only sane ones? That doesn’t strike me as reasonable. And so, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. [Alan laughs]. Sherlock Holmes [laughter]. Also known as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. [laughter]. But what on earth is the truth? Because I find it completely ridiculous to think that the Buddha was psychotic and he made all of China psychotic, and India and Southeast Asia, and me [laughter]. Me too. That I can believe, but the rest, all of the rest of them being, I can’t believe that. And so how can we make this plausible? How can we make this sensible? And something that doesn’t depict the Buddha as being psychotic, and yet doesn’t insult our intelligence. Because I’m not interested in doing either one.

[1:36:18] When I was growing up in a Christian family and I heard things from Christian doctrine, it didn’t make any sense to me. And I said, well, we just take this on faith. And I said ye, why did God give me this intelligence? If not to use it, to trash it as soon as when I hear something implausible. So why did God give us intelligence? I never got any answers for that. So kept on looking. That’s not a denunciation of Christianity at all. It’s … I found from my perspective certain statements don’t make any sense to me at all. I’m just … that’s self-narrative.

[1:36:55] So tomorrow, we’ll begin to look at something plausible. And if you like to see the background, It’ll take you some work, maybe not during this retreat, look at Buddhaghosa, look into the technology, the type of contemplative technology, the dhyana technology that is needed in the shravakayana context to develop those siddhis. It’s not just achieve the 4th dhyana and you become superman. Oh it’s arduous. When I read about that and I said, oh my God, there’s a large Hadron Super Collider over here. That was an enormous amount of work and money, but so much work and intelligence, 3000 people working there. And this, poohwow, this is inexpensive, but this, wow, the training for this is kind of mind-blowing to develop these abilities. But I won’t go into all the details of that but I will start weaving this together, to make this actually intelligible. That this is technology, it’s not magic, it’s not religious belief, it’s not superstition.

[1:28:07] We’ll see. Stay tuned. See you tomorrow.

Transcribed by Shirley Soh

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by Annette Dorfman

Special Thanks to Jon Mitchell for contribution of partial transcripts.

Discussion

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