On Mar 27, 2005, at 1:01 PM, anonymousff wrote:
I also have had similar experiences regarding the desire to cry that
dissolves, especially when I have good strong experiences after
my Sidha/TM practice.
this also brings me to experience a desire to nullify the whole
existence and be in a "cave" mode as you described below.
It dose looks like a loop experience that I always thought
as my own unstressing.
You see more to it and it rings as truth, I'm not sure I fully
understand
the connections you make to lokas (what is it?) or more important
what one needs to learn from it and how not to be stuck in ones
own movie that repeats itself.
( I practice TM and Sidhis many years but didn't learn
the philosophy behind it or behind the experiences, everything in
TMO seems to be just unstressing... ;0 )
I had this on my office computer; sorry for the delay:
This illusory sundering of the continuum of plenitude that is the single nature of all entities is a function of the “delusory valuation-absolutization” of thought. This delusory valuation or absolutization—which is inherent to avidya or marigpa—is the result of an activity of the organism that endows the contents of thought with illusory value and illusory truth and importance: a vibratory activity that seems to emanate from, or to be concentrated in, the center of the chest at the level of the heart, “charges” our thoughts with apparent value, truth and importance, even though in themselves these have neither value nor nonvalue, neither truth nor nontruth, neither importance nor nonimportance. Later on we will see that the inner Tantras, and in particular the Atiyoga, divides thoughts into three main types: coarse or discursive, subtle or intuitive, and super-subtle. Our feeling of lack results from the delusory valuation or absolutization of the super-subtle thought-structure known as the “threefold projection,” which consists in the conception that there is an experience (or action, etc.), an experiencer (or agent, etc.) and something experienced (or acted on, etc.), and which involves a directional structuring of experience. When the threefold projection is delusorily valued / absolutized, the illusory, delusive subject-object dichotomy arises, veiling the indivisibility of the Base or zhi as the latter seems to suffer a cleavage and therefore totality seems to be disrupted, and thus giving rise to the subject’s feeling of lack-of-completeness, which is the core of duhkha—that is, of the First Noble Truth. In fact, once there arises the illusory mental subject that experiences itself as intrinsically separate from the rest of the continuum that the single nature of all entities is, that subject experiences the lack of the plentitude and completeness that characterizes this continuum.
Though the teachings distinguish between the mind (Skt., chitta; Tib., sem), which is defined as consciousness or awareness of a form, and a series of mental factors or mental events (Skt., chaitasika; Tib., semjung) involved in the cognition of that form, both are indivisible aspects of the cognitive apparatus of deluded beings. In regard to the former, the Abhidharmakosha declares, “consciousness is a selecting awareness,” and also, “perception (involves) a process of singling out.” This refers to the occurrences that take place immediately after consciousness comes to experience itself as separate from the rest of the continuum that the single nature of all entities is: upon facing the continuum of what appears as object, another apparent split takes place in our experience, whereby the continuum of what appears as object is divided into figure and ground. Our attention circumscribes itself to one segment of the sensory field that we find interesting among those that conserve their configuration and that we are used to associate with one of our concepts, singling it out as figure and taking it as object, and leaves the rest of the field sunk in a “penumbra of consciousness,” so that it becomes background. It is at this stage that the mental factor or mental event called “recognition” enters into play, causing us to understand the segment that was singled out in terms of the corresponding concept. (The tendency to single out, within the ever-changing totality of sense-data, segments of this totality that maintain a certain continuity of pattern, is the function of a pre-conceptual interest, which is the precondition for the subsequent application of the concepts that will take part in the recognition of objects. Hence, it is clear that perception is an active process driven by impulses and concepts in our own psyche rather than consisting in the passive reception of data [as both Aristotle and Lenin, among other Western thinkers, wrongly believed].)
Though the continuum of what appears as object was split by our own mental functions, we are under the illusion that this split is inherent to a given reality that we take to be self-existent and objective, and thus we think that the figure is a substantial, self-existent entity, in itself separate from everything that was turned into background. And in the immediately following moment we wrongly believe the figure is inherently and absolutely the mental concept in terms of which we have understood it (i.e., we believe that the segment we have singled out is inherently and absolutely a dog, a house, this or that human individual, etc., and that it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, etc.). Both illusions are functions of the delusory valuation of thoughts: in this case, of the delusory valuation of the intuitive thoughts in terms of which we recognize the segments of the sensory field that our mental functions successively single out.
We also may recognize qualities in the object, and conclude that the “entity” we face has such or such inherent qualities. According to the qualities that we recognize, it may happen that we come to a positive or a negative judgment that results in a feeling-tone of pleasure or displeasure, respectively, and that endows our object with positive or negative value—which then we believe to be inherent to the object. In fact, as we have seen, so long as we experience ourselves as mental subjects at a distance of our objects, we are doomed to accept the latter, experiencing a fleeting pleasure and endowing them with positive value; reject them, experiencing pain and endowing them with negative value; or ignore them, deriving a neutral sensation and not endowing them with either value. However, all the ensuing states will be pervaded by the underlying feeling of lack that derives from experiencing ourselves as being at a distance from the plenitude of the undivided continuum of our true nature. Furthermore, our judgment of the qualities of our objects may lead us to try to appropriate those we deem desirable, or, conversely, to try to keep at bay or destroy those we find annoying or menacing: no wonder avidya or marigpa is at the root of all individual, social and inter-social conflicts, and is the deepest cause of ecological crisis.
We have seen that the delusory valuation of the “threefold projection” illusorily splits the continuum of our awareness and its contents by giving rise to the appearance of there being an experiencer-doer, an experience or action, and an object that is experienced or acted upon. The experiencer-doer is what I have been calling the mental subject, which we consider as the core of our being and conceive as a soul or mind: as an intrinsically separate, autonomous and independent source of perception, thought and action, inherently different from the “material” world and from “other souls or minds.” Furthermore, the delusion called avidya or marigpa involves believing consciousness and intelligence to be functions of this illusory, apparently separate mental subject, rather than being functions of the single nature of all entities, as is in truth the case.
(...)
In Tekchö (khregs-chod) thoughts arise spontaneously of their own accord, as they have always done, so that the only difference between this practice and the experience of an ordinary individual is that, in the second case, thoughts veil the Base and fail to self-liberate, as a consequence of which samsaric propensities (vasana, bagchag [bag-chags]) are established in the individual, whereas in the practice of Tekchö thoughts self-liberate rather than veiling the Base, and therefore no samsaric traces are established. If we consider the natural arising of thoughts as a generation or creation stage (kyerim [bskyed-rim]), we have to conclude that in Tekchö this stage is not contrived but self-generated, as corresponds to the principle of lhundrub inherent to our own true nature. In their turn, ideally the stage of completion or perfection (dzogrim [rdzogs-rim]) ought to occur simultaneously with the arising of thoughts and should not depend on an action on the part of the illusory subject—which is how it occurs in the third type of self-liberation that will be considered in the description of Tekchö in Part Two of this book (a type of self-liberation that takes place right as the thought arises, so that thoughts are like drawings on water, which dissolve as they arise, and which neither conceal the true condition of the Base nor give rise to samsaric traces).
In Thögel (thod-rgal) what arise spontaneously of their own accord are the visions necessary for the method to function (see the section on this practice in Part Two of this book). Furthermore, the systemic loops consisting in the runaway (i.e., the spontaneous, uncontrolled exacerbation) of tensions toward their logical extreme and subsequent self-liberation, together with the self-liberation of the whole of dualistic delusion (a self-liberation that consists in the dissolution of the illusory mental subject that feels itself to be separate from the visions), develop in an equally spontaneous, lhundrub manner. Though the principle of lhundrub means that whatever occurs—the manifestation of visions, the development of tensions, and the spontaneous liberation of these tensions together with the whole of delusion—does so spontaneously rather than being the result of actions carried out by the illusory subject, the runaway of tensions depends on the mental subject’s automatic reactions before the self-manifesting visions in a condition that is subject to the dynamics of the rölpa mode of manifestation of energy, which does not allow the development of dualism.
