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The ALCHEMY of FREEDOM

The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence

A. H. Almaas

SHAMBHALA

Boulder

2017

SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

4720 Walnut Street

Boulder, Colorado 80301

www.shambhala.com

© 2017 by A-Hameed Ali

Cover art by Andy Gilmore

Cover design by Katrina Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Almaas, A. H., author.

Title: The alchemy of freedom: the philosophers’ stone and the secrets of existence / A.H. Almaas.

Description: First edition. | Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016027279 | eISBN 9780834840607 | ISBN 9781611804461 (paperback: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Spiritual life. | BISAC: SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / General. | PSYCHOLOGY / Personality. | SELF-HELP / Spiritual.

Classification: LCC BL624 .a457 2017 | DDC 204/.4—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027279

AUTHOR’S NOTE

WE LIVE IN TURBULENT TIMES, a time of accelerated change on many fronts that includes a great deal of upheaval. It is in the context of such changing times that I am introducing this most recent teaching, which turns the known paradigms of spiritual awakening upside down, questioning them while still upholding their validity. Inclusivity and freedom are values that emerge in this life-affirming and human-cherishing exploration.

I wrote my previous book, Runaway Realization, to open the horizons of the reader to an expanded range of what the Diamond Approach encompasses, and what spiritual awakening includes. I introduced in that book different kinds of awakenings or realizations from what are commonly known within most spiritual circles. And I explored how practice could be reconciled with the teaching of nondoing. Spiritual discourse in recent times has been so dominated by nondual teachings that many spiritual teachers have had to call themselves nondual teachers in order to even be recognized as spiritual. I wanted—in my last book and also in my online course with Sounds True called “Endless Enlightenment”—to liberate spiritual awakening from such a one-sided view of what is possible, and to bring balance to the larger sphere of spiritual discourse.

My books before Runaway Realization reveal the rich wisdom of the Diamond Approach, which includes both individual and nondual realization. They go into great detail about much of what has been known as classical spirituality in the various world traditions. In Runaway Realization and this current book, The Alchemy of Freedom, I have referred to my most recent teaching, which is simply one part of the treasures of wisdom in the Diamond Approach, as the view of totality.

I want to emphasize to the reader that it is not easy to grasp or appreciate what the view of totality means without first learning about individual and nondual realization—what I have called the first and second turnings of the teaching wheel in the Diamond Approach. To truly appreciate the view of totality, one needs to also be acquainted with some of my previous books. Reading The Unfolding Now or The Inner Journey Home would provide such preparation.

The present book attempts several things. One is to point to how we can learn experientially what the view of totality means. I go over some of the realizations and transformations necessary for such unexpected openness. Second, I discuss some of what becomes possible when such openness is available—illuminations and understandings of enlightenment that seem esoteric only when looked at from the perspective of nondual realization. This enlarged range of direct experiencing brings back all the realizations of the previous teachings—whether individual or nondual—but in a greater clarity and a more encompassing synthesis. This third thread reveals in a direct way how all the complexity and richness of the spiritual journey expresses kinds of simplicity that are difficult to appreciate because of how ordinary they seem to the inexperienced traveler. This book does not exhaust the matter, but discusses some of its highlights.

The essence of reality turns out to be a kind of simplicity difficult to appreciate or grasp because of how indeterminate it is. And this is true for the beings experiencing it as well. Emptiness simply expresses it; so does awareness, love, truth, or creative dynamism. And as they express it, they also reveal that they are limited in encompassing what this essence actually is, even though the realization of any one of them is awakening and enlightenment. We begin to appreciate that the freedom of reality expressed in the complete and fulfilled life all human beings seek—and few find—is actually the simplicity of the ordinary.

A. H. ALMAAS

June 2016

EDITOR’S PREFACE

FOR MILLENNIA ALCHEMISTS sought the philosophers’ stone, the miracle substance believed to be the key to all the secrets of existence. Turning lead into gold or granting immortal life were magic tricks compared to the limitless potential of the stone. The quest to find the philosophers’ stone—thought to be the central element needed for the perfection of the human soul—was fueled by some of the prime questions of human existence: What am I? Why am I here? How has this world come to be?

As we turn over these questions about the true nature of what we are and what reality is, we are drawn down a path of playfulness, delight, and paradox. We find ourselves playing hide-and-seek with the purity that is at the heart of all reality and all spiritual transformation. This wily true nature is neither hidden nor can it be caught. Our experience of it is unmistakable—whether as awareness, love, truth, or consciousness—and yet we cannot say finally what it is. It pervades everything and yet is nothing in particular. This true nature appears in many ways, and even though each form of true nature is all of it, true nature can never be exhausted.

Every time we catch hold of true nature and know for certain what it is, it gives us the slip. We can even begin to question what is grabbing hold of what. Do we chase it or does it catch us? And does it even make sense to call true nature an “it”? The more our efforts are thwarted, the more our minds baffled and our desires distilled, the greater the chance that we might wake up to a kind of revelation that has nothing to do with seeking and finding.

Taking up where he left off in Runaway Realization, A. H. Almaas explores what it is that makes anything and everything and nothing happen: the central element, the spiritual prima materia, the true nature of experience and reality. Where we are helpless to tread, our being itself can be ignited in a way that can’t help but unfold its true nature. It is this self-creative dynamism of being that makes possible the view of totality and the nonhierarchical view of the Diamond Approach, where realization is free from having to be in any particular condition.

In the first section of The Alchemy of Freedom, Almaas discusses some of the awakenings that are central to this self-creative dynamism of true nature. No one of these awakenings individually nor all of them taken together can be seen as the cause of this alchemical activation. Although it is impossible to pin down why being comes alive in one consciousness and not in another, there are nonetheless clear markers when this unbridled revelation of being is forefront. Most obvious is its expression in the individual consciousness as what Almaas calls “red sulfur,” an unstoppable quickening that becomes the fuel for runaway realization, where realization lives through revealing further awakenings and mysteries of reality. This inner combustion—different from and rarer than any particular realization—orients the individual consciousness toward greater opening, toward manifesting more of what it means to be human.

In the beginning of the spiritual path, the spontaneous revelation of true nature serves the process of our liberation, transformation, and enlightenment. We experience the richness and variety of the qualities and forms and dimensions of true nature, each of which reveals precise understandings about who we are and what reality is. But when being is truly alive, realizing the nondual depth of our nature does not bring an end to its revelations. It cannot help but push beyond the frontiers of what is known and disclose more of itself. In the final chapters of this book, Almaas delves into the implications of this view of true nature, parsing different wisdoms that become possible beyond dual and nondual realization.

It is in this sense that true nature is the lapis philosophorum, the stone of the philosophers, the elusive key to all the secrets of reality.¹ In its unyielding purity and incomparable liberating power, the philosophers’ stone reveals itself as the mysterious true nature of all reality—both spiritual and ordinary—in all times and all places, yet without ever being limited to being anything in particular.

Probing the paradoxes of true nature reveals more questions than answers. We can know directly in our experience its dynamism, its purity, its tremendous liberating force, but can we know exactly what it is? Is true nature anything apart from the forms it takes? How can it be the central element of everything and yet nothing in particular? How can it be the agent of all change and also what it is that changes? Is it the source of everything or is it everything? Is it me or is it my nature?

Our sincere love to know what is true can lead us not to final answers but to freedom from our usual habits of mind, to a kind of openness with discernment and a kind of readiness without motivation. We can encounter a reality innocent of our usual assumptions and preferences and postures, a reality innocent of us. In this simple openness, reality becomes free to manifest any possibility.

The philosophers’ stone can so polish our minds and hearts and bodies that we are free no matter what we are experiencing. We can be as free staring at our smartphone as we are free swimming in emptiness. Our experience of true nature can become so total, our love and interest so absolute, that the idea—and even the experience—of true nature can fall away altogether, leaving an ordinary simplicity, a freedom without condition, including that of true nature itself.

ZARINA MAIWANDI

1. Throughout the book, “philosophers’ stone” is used in the plural possessive, both to translate accurately lapis philosophorum and also to convey the sense that the great work of being human is more than only individual.

Introduction

TRUE NATURE

TRUE NATURE, the fundamental nature of what we are—and of everything—is what matters most when it comes to spiritual transformation. It is the single most important element for liberation. The more we understand it, the more we realize that it is not simply the most important element; in fact, it is the only element because it is inherent to all the other elements that are necessary along the way. True nature, when we experientially and sufficiently understand it, is every single thing—every event, every place, all and everything. And all and everything does not have to be sublime; it can be ordinary and still it is true nature.

However, it seems that to be able to accept this simplicity and to live a normal life with this kind of freedom, we most often have to go through a spiritual journey. We have to go through the various stages, the deaths and rebirths, the discoveries and awakenings, the enlightenments and illuminations. We have to experience all the subtleties and mysteries of reality.

The teaching stream from which this book is written, the Diamond Approach, contains both this kind of hierarchical view of the spiritual journey, with progressive stages of experience and realization, and also a nonhierarchical view of reality, which expresses the singleness of true nature. The progressive view, employed by many teachings and sometimes referred to as the journeys of ascent and descent, encompasses experiences and understandings that are instrumental to waking up. But at some point, regardless of what path we follow, we can begin to recognize that there is more to reality, that the secrets of the universe cannot be enclosed in any one view, no matter how consistent or vast that view is.

One way that I have characterized the different modes of this teaching is by borrowing a metaphor from Vajrayana Buddhism. That tradition speaks about the different phases of their teaching as turnings of the wheel of truth. Each turn of the wheel signifies a particular stage of the teaching, and each turning is an entire teaching in itself. The Dharmachakra, or wheel of truth, turns three times in that tradition. I find the metaphor itself useful even though there is no direct correspondence between the contents of the turnings of that teaching and those of the Diamond Approach.

When we survey the many developments of the Diamond Approach teaching, we can recognize, in its present condition, four broad movements through which it expresses reality. Each of these can be seen as one complete turn of the teaching wheel. The first turning involves the realization and development of what I refer to as the individual consciousness, which is sometimes equated with the Western notion of soul. The soul discovers her true nature and begins to live a life imbued with the qualities of true being. As the individual consciousness’s experience of true nature deepens, she realizes, in the second turning of the wheel, the boundless nature of being. What is in the foreground here is the experience of the unity, oneness, and nonduality of reality. Since the inception of the Diamond Approach, we have been working mainly with these two turns of the teaching. Realizing true nature as our identity, waking up to the unity of existence, and learning to integrate these experiences into our daily life constitute, for a long time, the bulk of our inner work.

The second turning of the teaching culminates in the transformation of the individual consciousness into an indestructible inner body of consciousness that can express and live nondual realization. This inner body of pure awareness, of the purity of true nature, becomes the fulcrum of the third turning.

The third and fourth turnings of the wheel are related to this fulcrum, which heralds possibilities beyond the nondual unity of reality. The realization of this inner spiritual body, which I sometimes call the vajra body, reveals, in the fourth turning of the teaching, many new and unexpected wisdoms about the nature of reality. The progressive stages or degrees of realization, which characterize the first two turnings, give way to altogether different kinds of realization. Just as the first turning begins with the individual consciousness and moves, in the second turning, into the nondual dimensions of reality, the third turning starts with the vajra body instead of the individual consciousness and moves, in the fourth turning, into a reality that is neither dual nor nondual. Experiencing reality in this radically different way reveals profound new possibilities for living our realization.

But regardless of where we are in the turnings of the teaching and no matter what is happening, it is always the one and only reality that is revealing itself. Each one of us in every instant is reality revealing itself. This is the simplicity that is unveiled in the fourth turning of the teaching. We often miss this radical simplicity because of all kinds of psychological and phenomenological impediments. Most of us have to go through all manner of spiritual experiences—openings and insights, processes and developments, understandings and awakenings—before we can begin to discern this simplicity, which challenges the notion of the hierarchy of realization. Instead of degrees of progress and ultimate goals, the fourth turning discloses the wisdom of nonhierarchy and the pure simplicity of reality expressing itself however it wants.

And the way to this simplicity is to recognize the centrality and the significance of true nature. Whether we recognize it as presence or awareness or emptiness, true nature is crucial to the process of awakening, realization, enlightenment, and liberation. It is the source of all spiritual experiences, insights, and transformations. There is no other source. Nothing can happen without it. All our various experiences are nothing but true nature manifesting in one way or another. This is one of the most important wisdoms that arises in the third and fourth turnings of the wheel.

We have been implicitly working with this wisdom all along—as the unfoldment of the presence, qualities, and dimensions of true nature in our experience. But, in this book, we are not going to focus specifically on any of these experiences because, from this perspective, the content of the experience doesn’t really matter. True nature is true nature, whether we experience it as strength, love, clarity, blissful consciousness, pure awareness, absolute emptiness, or something else entirely. No matter how it appears, it is always the same nature. Our mind and the situation determine what form it takes, what color and flavor it manifests on a given day, but it is always one truth. There are not many true natures. To recognize this requires a great deal of maturity and realization and, in fact, many kinds of enlightenments. Only then does it dawn on us that true nature is the Alpha and the Omega of the spiritual quest. It is the central element in the beginning, the central element in the middle, and the central element in the end, which is an endless end. And the fourth turning reveals to us that there is no beginning, no middle, and no end of the spiritual quest.

All the subtle and mysterious and luminous truths that we learn along the way are not only necessary so that we can live in the condition of freedom where everything is reality, but they are also expressions of reality. They are not mere stepping-stones toward something else; they are each full expressions of reality. I was recently reading somebody’s story of enlightenment and transformation, an account replete with experiences and insights, and I saw that what matters most—in all of what happened, in all of what is happening, in all of what will happen—is the truth and presence of the purely spiritual element. That is the elixir of enlightenment; that is what transforms and reveals everything.

When this elixir—a transformative agent full of presence, energy, and aliveness—appears as the nature of everything, we call it true nature. We can experience true nature as light, as illumination, as love, as emptiness, as presence, as awareness, as consciousness, as truth. In fact, there is no one way of experiencing true nature, and that is one of the secrets that is revealed in the fourth turning of the teaching. There is no final or ultimately definitive experience of true nature.

When true nature has not only force and power and energy and presence but also contains understanding and illuminated cognition, then it attains a diamond-like quality, experienced as objectivity, clarity, and precision. This is what I call the philosophers’ stone, the lapis philosophorum of the alchemists. They thought that whoever found the philosophers’ stone would be able to unlock all the secrets of existence. The stone has all the qualities and faculties necessary to illuminate and discriminate reality, to distinguish what is false and what is true.

I am focusing on true nature as the philosophers’ stone because, from the perspective of the fourth turning of the wheel, what is relevant or dominant is not the transformation, liberation, and enlightenment of the individual consciousness, which is usually seen as the function of the elixir. Rather, the fourth turning highlights the recognition of the philosophers’ stone as the key to all the secrets of existence. And that is the interest in the fourth turning of the wheel—that the secrets of reality and life become available and accessible.

The philosophers’ stone as I will use it here refers to true nature in general, in whichever way it expresses itself. When it expresses itself in a diamond-like form, it is more clearly recognized as the key that opens the secrets of reality. But any way that true nature manifests is illumination. There is also a deeper truth about why I’m not restricting the philosophers’ stone to any one form or view of true nature, a deeper truth that connects all its forms and experiences, whether diamond-like, liquid, gaseous, empty, spacious, or altogether formless. We will further explore this truth as we go on.

What is important for us to understand here—we can understand it in any of the turnings, but it becomes most obvious in the third and fourth turnings—is that without the philosophers’ stone, without this miraculous, magical whatever, which is difficult to confine to any one word, there is no illumination. Without it, the transformation of human consciousness is not possible. Without it, we would continue living as semiconscious animals, as brutes, as clods of consciousness.

Human consciousness, if we consider it in the conventional sense, lacks two truths that I think of as the twin truths of the philosophers’ stone. First of all, true nature is inherently incorruptible. The philosophers’ stone cannot be corrupted; it cannot be destroyed; it cannot be distorted. It retains its purity regardless of what our experience is and what is happening. Whenever we discover it, we recognize it as a purity that is totally unmarred. The second truth of true nature is its illuminating and liberating power. It is the power of illumination, the power of liberation, the power of enlightenment, the power of discrimination and intelligence, the power of creative revelation, the power of consciousness and awareness.

Without the philosophers’ stone, human beings have no chance of seeing through and understanding the delusions and the structures that form our conventional experience. We do not have the intelligence. We do not have the heart. We do not have the will. From the conventional point of view, when we embark on the spiritual path, we are so enmeshed and so obscured—with so many issues, delusions, and illusions that are all intertwined and overlapping—that it requires a miraculous, illuminating light to discern, reveal, and penetrate all that obscuration. Human beings in ordinary experience simply do not have the kind of intelligence that can decipher the delusions of our everyday life, nor the kind of capacity that can transform our consciousness.

So if it weren’t for this magical illuminating power of true nature, the situation would basically be static and hopeless. We would be living eternally in the conventional perspective, which is neither good nor bad but simply limited. For real transformation to happen, for our consciousness to become free, to become realized and enlightened, to become open to all the possibilities of reality—which means we can begin to explore reality, discover its secrets, and live and express them—we definitely need the help of true nature.

When awakening experiences arise, most of us think that they do so because of our practices and what we do, because of our intelligence and understanding, because of our sincerity and diligence. Although there is some truth to this view, the shadow of arrogance persists in it. This is called “the tail of the devil”; the head may be gone, but the tail still trails behind. From the perspective of the fourth turning, we don’t do any of it nor can we do any of it, not because we are failures, but because reality is simply not designed that way. Reality is not designed for individual human beings to liberate themselves. Reality is designed for true nature to manifest itself in a way that human beings call liberation. Part of the secret of the philosophers’ stone is that it reveals itself by liberating itself from the shackles that it experiences through whatever human being it is experiencing itself as. And you could say, “It is my nature, my light, my intelligence.” But the situation is tricky: Is it yours or are you its?

When we are experiencing ourselves as true nature, we realize that a human being is really the alchemical laboratory. The human being, the human consciousness, the human body is the laboratory where alchemy happens, where the philosophers’ stone does its work. The human consciousness, the human mind, the human heart are the instruments through which the magician works. So it’s true that our mind functions, our heart functions, and our body functions, but they all function simply as conduits. The more we recognize them as instruments and conduits, the more the elixir flows through the veins of the human consciousness revealing the light that illuminates itself by illuminating the obstacles in its way. And by illuminating itself, this light—which is our nature, which is what we are—illuminates whatever it comes in contact with.

So we will explore in detail who the prime mover is, who the illuminator is, and what is responsible for realization. What is responsible for the arising of clarity, understanding, and spiritual experience? Every time we have a spiritual experience, it is nothing but the philosophers’ stone appearing in one form or another. It is nothing but true nature manifesting itself. The philosophers’ stone or true nature is pure spirit, but we will see as we go on that spirit is also everything. It is every single thing and all things. It is every single thing among all other single things, and it is all things as the unity of the collection of every single thing. And it is also every single thing as all things. This gets very interesting and is part of what I mean by the secrets of existence.

Besides being fascinating and beautiful and magnificent, this self-illuminating light is helpful. Illumination is not merely illuminating, it is also compassionate and loving and tender and considerate. It is contagious and infectious. The more we are illuminated, the more we want others to experience that also. We can’t help but be generous and giving, because self and other is one, and the nature of self and the nature of other is one; it is true nature giving itself to itself.

Because at the beginning of inner work our understanding is limited, we need many different manifestations of true nature to address precisely the complexity of our proclivities, issues, obscurations, and delusions. But in this book, I am collapsing all spiritual notions—Buddha nature, the Tao, God the Father, Christ, Allah, truth—in the understanding of the philosophers’ stone because there can’t be many true natures. Otherwise, they would be in competition. We can only know this kind of oneness in our direct experience. Even though true nature differentiates itself, discriminates itself, manifests itself in many ways, forms, qualities, and dimensions, it is always one.

Even though it is not an object, we might be tempted to objectify the philosophers’ stone. In my experience, as long as we feel it and are in touch with it, as long as we are devoted to it and respect it, it doesn’t matter what the mind does in terms of its delusions. The stone will expose and shatter all our delusions. The human mind cannot think precisely enough, the human heart cannot be courageous enough, the human belly cannot persevere enough. It is true nature that does everything. It is the true guide, the real self, and the no-self; it is the enlightenment, the nonconceptuality, and the freedom. The more we recognize this truth and are devoted to it, the more true nature will impact and transform us.

True nature reveals itself as the nature of everything—at different levels and in different ways. After a while, it even transforms the meaning of the nature of everything. The nature of everything doesn’t necessarily mean there is something that has a nature. Even the expression “true nature” becomes problematic. Is true nature the nature of what I am or is it me? They are not the same thing. To say “true nature” means it is the true nature of something. It means there is something that true nature is the nature of. Are you one thing and your true nature something else? Or are you true nature? Is it both or neither? Or is there another possibility altogether?

We will be playing with words and meaning in this way, not as a form of mental acrobatics but as an experiential touching of the wisdom of the fourth turning, the wisdom that lies beyond the dichotomy of duality and nonduality. This may be fun for some and confusing for others. What’s important is that we be open and engaged in a living exploration of true nature, our experience, and our life. This teaching takes us into the bowels of reality and reveals the most sublime light in the midst of that—not only in the midst of that but as that.

Part One

ELEMENTS NECESSARY FOR AWAKENING

1

NECESSARY AWAKENING

IN THIS BOOK, we are studying true nature in an in-depth way. What is true nature and how does it live? We need to explore these questions experientially, directly, and immediately by looking at the trajectory and development of all our spiritual experiences and awakenings and also at our particular experience in the moment. Our understanding needs to be informed by everything we have known as well as what is unfolding now.

One of the things that we learn in the fourth turning of the teaching wheel is the importance of particulars. Any particular form, any particular event, any particular experience is completely itself and also a complete expression of reality. The same holds true for true nature: Regardless of how formless or indefinable it is, it is particular among particulars. That is to say, it is different from the other particulars that we experience, and it is important to recognize this difference. True nature is a particular, and it is a particular that is different from all other particulars. One major way it is different is that it is a particular that is an absolutely pervasive particular. Being absolutely pervasive means that true nature pervades all particulars absolutely, consuming them completely—without exception and without leaving anything behind. True nature does not leave any place or any thing outside of itself.

This is one of the many paradoxes of true nature: It is a particular and it is everything at the same time. If true nature were not a particular, we could not talk about it or point it out. We couldn’t even refer to it as true nature. When we call it true nature, we recognize that it is a particular. And yet, it is a particular that absolutely pervades every other particular without ceding its own particularity.

When I consider my experience and learning over the past forty or so years, I see that the life that is lived now is not owned by the individual me; it is reality living its possibilities. I can remember that many years ago, I experienced myself as an individual with a subjectivity, as the subject of various kinds of inner and outer experiences. What I recognized in the freedom of the fourth turning is that there isn’t a subjectivity; there isn’t a subject that experiences things inside itself in relation to other things that are outside itself. The terrain changes completely. There is still self-reflection and thinking and feeling, but when that happens, it is at the periphery of experience. The dominant experience, the dominant center, is simply true nature itself, and everything else appears as manifestations of true nature. In an attempt to refer here to a kind of freedom, the term “true nature” is still an approximation; I am still using language in a conventional manner. There is nothing out of the ordinary in this condition of simple freedom. Even to call it “a condition of realization” is an approximation.

Sometimes I refer to it as “reality mode,” as reality manifesting itself and perceiving itself from a particular location. This way of living reality is simple and free, with no traces of enlightenment and no traces of true nature. In other words, there is no feeling in it of “I am experiencing true nature,” or “this is the realization of true nature.” It is simply reality living itself. Now this might sound strange and is, in fact, quite mysterious. Some traditions call it “traceless enlightenment,” which refers to freedom that has no traces of enlightenment. You don’t think of it as enlightenment, and you don’t feel it as enlightenment; enlightenment actually becomes an irrelevant word.

This freedom is not a condition, not an experience, not a certain kind of happening or occurrence. It is not a particular dimension or a particular realization; it is not an awakening or an enlightenment. All these things do happen on the spiritual path, and many of you have experienced them. The special and particular experiences of opening, the recognitions and realizations of whatever kind, and the awakenings and enlightenments are all an important part of what makes this simplicity possible. Freedom requires all these things. They are significant in terms of revealing the simplicity of just what is, of just what is happening—a simplicity that neither has nor needs any commentary.

What matters most on the path is not any particular experience or realization, but more the recognition and experiencing of spiritual activation, the lived experience that our being is activated, is set aflame, is turned on. The essence of consciousness is awakened, and the soul of being is afire, turned on in such a way that life becomes a continual revelation, a continual awakening, a continual enlightenment—moving from one realization to another, one illumination to another, one discovery to another. This is the spontaneous freedom of spirit to reveal its treasures.

When I say that what makes this simplicity possible is the activation of a spiritual process, I notice I am using words that are not completely refined or accurate. A process requires time and development, different elements and steps, and this activation isn’t anything like that. It is more like your being is so active that nothing can stop it. It is an irrepressible revelation of reality. It keeps on doing its thing regardless of what’s happening. This unfoldment of realization and discovery has its own inherent and unstoppable momentum. A combustion begins that has no end except the end of all things, the realization of all things.

At the beginning of any path, you are in hot pursuit of reality. If you are really into it, and the enlightenment drive is turned on, you are seeking and you are practicing and you are passionate and you are loving whatever is happening. Your experience of reality is that you are in hot pursuit of God. You can’t rest because there is something you are aspiring to, whether it appears as a seeking or as a natural impulse.

But when this essential activation is foreground, God is after you. Reality is chasing you, and it is not going to leave you alone. When this occurs, it happens regardless of you, regardless of your resistances and delusions. It can’t help but confront and challenge whatever obstructs the way. This quickening has its own momentum independent of your mind, your resistances, your history, your influences, and even your practices. It is independent of position and view, regardless of whether the view is owned by a self or not owned at all. It doesn’t matter what you do. Even if you try to forget, it knocks on the door, and it keeps waking you up and keeps showing you what it is. It can’t help but keep revealing itself, keep stripping itself right in front of you, over and over again. More accurately, at this point, it is actually stripping itself to itself and not to an identified entity.

When we recognize and learn about this unstoppable activation, when our being is finally liberated and our consciousness freed, we see that living our realization means something entirely different from what we thought. In the beginning stages of awakening, living our realization has mostly to do with how we can bring the qualities and dimensions of being into our life, with how we can bring the features of our awakened condition to everyday life situations. But from the perspective of essential activation, living our realization is not a matter of bringing our particular mode of realization into our life or of integrating our life into it. It is more that realization itself can’t help but continue to live however it wants. Living realization means that realization continues to live, continues to grow and develop, and what realization is continues to change—it reveals new meanings and new content. The life of realization is runaway realization—realization realizing further realization.

Although the various experiences of realization—the bursts of awakening—are significant, it is important to recognize that we are not focusing here on any one particular experience or kind of realization. We want, instead, to see what it’s like, so to speak, when God takes over. And when God takes over, the possibilities never end. God is full of life and is not going to finally rest in any one place. God will play and will turn reality upside down, creating all sorts of mischief. This reveals a kind of freedom that is indefinable because it is not dependent on any particular state. It is a state-free freedom, a state-independent freedom.

So when someone asks me what my enlightenment experience was like, I often respond, “Which one?” What I mean is that there are many enlightenment experiences and, although they are all important and significant and sometimes even necessary, the truth is not any one of those enlightenment experiences. None of them is the freedom and simplicity of reality living its life. It’s true that there are conditions or experiences that are necessary for spiritual activation to happen. We have been working with and exploring some of them for some time in our teaching. But there is no single experience that makes this activation happen. In fact, even though we will explore some of the elements necessary for this spiritual activation, I don’t know all the factors that are needed for it to occur.

Many traditions have been trying to find out what the necessary factors are, but I don’t think anybody knows all of them. Different teachers know various ways to invite this possibility, to dispose us for its happening. What we know for sure is that this kind of essential activation is possible and sometimes can happen, and that there is a continuum of how dynamic and intense the activation is. But it is a rare occurrence. You can have experiences of awakening and even enlightenment—you might not even think of them as experiences but as reality itself—but the kind of spiritual activation I am talking about is a whole other matter. When spirit is loose, nothing can constrain or stop it. This is very different from having an experience of a certain condition that persists or is always there. When spirit is loose, reality is continuing to reveal more, continuing to transform, continuing to surprise itself because, basically, at some point, you are not there.

One of the elements that is necessary for essential activation to happen is an encounter of the third kind with true nature. What do I mean by “an encounter of the third kind”? It’s an expression many scientists and science fiction writers have used to refer to how we know some other life-form, whether earthly or alien. Encounters are divided into three distinct modes of knowing. In the first kind of encounter, you hear or read about something; you know through hearsay. For example, you read about Buddha becoming enlightened under a bodhi tree and then you know that such a possibility exists. In the second kind of encounter, you know it more directly but still from a distance, like seeing a flying saucer or hearing its sound. You may attend a talk by a particular teacher or take a course in some teaching. You nevertheless have some distance from your experience of being, and you haven’t yet shaken hands with it. In spiritual experience, this is analogous to intuiting and sensing that something more is possible. You have a feeling about or faith in something, you aspire and practice, but you haven’t peered into its eyes yet. In an encounter of the third kind, you are immediately in touch with the thing itself as it is. You see it, shake hands with it, look into its eyes, touch it, feel it, know it, and talk to it. This is a direct encounter—as close an encounter as you can have with an other, with something you haven’t met before. For essential activation to happen, we need to have a clear encounter of the third kind with true nature, and it needs to be as complete as possible and happen as many times as possible.

In an encounter of the third kind with true nature, you recognize true nature as it is. This means not only experiencing it, but experiencing it in its purity, experiencing it as it is. We will spend some time deconstructing our ideas about what it means to see true nature as it is because we have already had many experiences of true nature and have developed many smart ideas about what it is. And yet if we consider all our spiritual experiences, we can see that each of them feels like reality as it is. What does it mean to have many different experiences, each of which feels like an encounter with reality? Recognizing true nature in its purity means directly seeing that it is not constructed. Reality is not a construction of the mind. It is not an emotion or reaction of the heart. It is not a sensation of the body. Even though true nature is independent of all mind, heart, and body, it expresses itself through them, maturing them by utilizing them. An encounter of the third kind is the experiential recognition of spirit as spirit—experientially knowing that spirit is and knowing spirit in its purity. We will leave aside for the moment what spirit is, whether God or Buddha nature or something else. For this kind of direct encounter, it is simply enough that we recognize that spirit is, that we can experience spirit without an intermediary.

This kind of direct experience and knowing of the purity of true nature I call “necessary awakening,” an awakening of true being. This means that an encounter of the third kind with true nature is necessary for essential activation. But being necessary does not mean it is sufficient. That is to say, it doesn’t mean that an encounter of the third kind by itself will be sufficient for activation. It is necessary, though, in the sense that activation won’t happen without it. The activation of the life of being, this irrepressible, unstoppable dynamism, is not possible without this necessary awakening to true nature, awakening to spirit.

At the beginning of the journey, especially if we are coming from the conventional perspective—which is experience that is dominated by duality, ego, and a sense of self—we recognize true nature as an other. It is other than you, other than what you have known yourself to be, and other than the reality to which you are accustomed. It is completely other. And this otherness is an emblem of its radical difference. It is radically different from everything you have known. It is altogether other than any emotions, thoughts, and sensations you have ever had. It is miraculously other and yet it is its own thing absolutely. It is not a result, a response, or an effect of the nervous system or the mind or the heart. By referring to it as “radically other,” I don’t mean that it is another separate entity, but simply that it is utterly different from anything else you have ever known.

When we experience true nature, whether it is as a quality or dimension of being or a vision, we realize that it is far different from our ordinary experience. It is from the perspective of conventional experience that true nature appears as radically other. I am not saying that true nature is absolutely other. In realization, in awakened experience, we realize it is not other. So to say that true nature is absolutely other would be to say that it is always other and that it can never be anything else. But that is not the case; it only appears so when we are not realized. When we have a clear encounter of the third kind, we recognize the radical otherness of true nature. This recognition is important because without it we would think that true nature is part of what we have already known ourselves to be. We would assume that true nature is part of the conventional world. We wouldn’t see that it is from another world.

Recognizing that true nature is from another world, from another dimension or realm of reality is a significant part of necessary awakening. If we have an experience of true nature and simply think, “Oh, that was nice. It felt good. That must have been an experience of pleasure or some kind of love and sweetness,” we might mistake it for a continuation of our usual experience and not see that it is a quantum break with reality as we have known it. If we don’t recognize the radical otherness or difference of true nature, we haven’t yet awakened. True nature remains for us just another pleasant experience and is severed from the stream of consciousness that can begin to activate the life of being.

In talking about necessary awakening, I am not revealing anything new. We have worked with encounters of the third kind all along the path. It does not matter what form of true nature you experience—whether a kind of presence, awareness, or emptiness, whether bounded or boundless—because all forms are basically one truth manifesting in different ways. What is important is that you recognize the underlying purity and otherness of true nature regardless of what form it takes. And it doesn’t matter whether you experience it as inside you or outside you, as a sudden eruption or a gradual emergence. An encounter of the third kind might feel like something happening within you or outside of you or everywhere; it might sneak up on you or be a long time coming.

Despite what form it takes and how it manifests, what is important is that we recognize the fact of spirit: that spirit is, and it is purely what it is, and what it is is radically different. True nature is not a figment of anybody’s imagination; it is not a construction or reaction or theory. As long as our experiences are incomplete in their recognition of true nature, we will find it difficult to recognize its miraculous otherness.

When I had the experience of encountering true nature many years ago, I recognized a dynamic presence and fullness that was amazing and so different from anything I had ever known. Even though that was only the beginning, even though it hadn’t unfolded yet to reveal its manifold possibilities, even in its simple form, the effect on me was feeling that “I could die tomorrow and I would be content.” What I encountered fulfilled something so deep and so profound that I recognized it as the most central and miraculous element of reality.

By emphasizing the radical and miraculous otherness of true nature, I am pointing to the quantum leap in consciousness and awareness that it makes possible. In this encounter, we discover the philosophers’ stone. We might not know that it is the philosophers’ stone or what it can do, but we recognize that it is something wholly different, something so unique and so itself.

This direct encounter with the purity of true nature is one important factor that seems always to be present in spiritual activation. There are also other elements that we will explore as we go on. And some elements of spiritual activation remain mysterious. Why does it happen in one experience and not another? Why does it happen to one person and not another?

Different traditions talk about experiences of spirit or God or true nature as necessary for awakening, but we need to encounter these directly and fully. We need to truly recognize the miraculous otherness of true nature, even if later we realize that it is not actually separate from anything else. Before we can see how it is the same, we need to recognize its radical difference, its otherworldly purity. The spiritual aspirants who are working on themselves, the monks and nuns and sadhus—what are they all after? They know that there is something that is unique, that is precious, that is other than their everyday experience. You can have an intuition of this, and you can know it directly. And if you encounter it truly, if you recognize its purity and its otherness, you cannot forget it. It leaves an indelible and living impression, an impact that is necessary for the essential activation of the life of being.

2

PRIMARY AWAKENING

AS WE EXPLORE the properties of the philosophers’ stone, the liberating power of true nature, the point is not to experience any particular state or condition of reality. Our inquiry is mostly a matter of challenging various positions and beliefs that obscure our view of reality and our understanding of reality. It’s true that as our view opens and expands, it becomes possible for us to have various experiences and realizations. Everybody will have perceptions, experiences, and realizations relevant to where they are and what their present unfoldment is. In other words, we are not aiming at any one particular experience; the possibilities are infinite. When I say that true nature, as the philosophers’ stone, is central for spiritual life, is the essence of spiritual life, is the force of spiritual life, I am exposing and challenging various positions and attitudes that we have about reality. Some of these are gross and others quite subtle.

The ordinary world we live in—what’s called the conventional or consensus world—is, as we all know, a world of adversity, of individual difficulties and larger, societal upheavals. And sometimes, when these difficulties, both personal and worldwide, assume gigantic proportions—as seems to be the case these days—many people turn to spirituality. This is not unusual in the history of the world. Some of us turn to spirituality as an escape because we don’t want to face the difficulties of life. Others of us turn to it because we are resigned to the idea that not much can be done about these difficulties anyway. We recognize our limitations and turn to something that can bring meaning to our life. Or we might turn to the life of spirit for respite and refuge while we continue to engage the world as it is.

I am not implying that spirituality is different or divorced from everyday life. Spiritual life means experiencing and living life in its completeness, which includes its hidden truths. When our turn to being comes from the purity of reality—what we call true nature—the movement toward spirituality is innate and doesn’t have a cause. We are simply driven to know reality and to see the truth. It is like being in love. We can’t help it. We have to be close to reality, to see reality, to be one with reality. Most of us are motivated by all these reasons at one time or another. But if we don’t have the drive that comes from the purity of being—meaning that the enlightenment drive is activated and working—we can’t penetrate the delusions that obstruct the life of realization.

The first turning of the teaching wheel, which can be seen as the beginning stages of spiritual awakening, reveals to us that there is such a thing as spiritual experience, that there is such a thing as spirit—as true nature or divinity or purity—and that we can experience it. In the second turning, we see not only that there is such a thing, but that it is the nature of everything. This awakening brings in the nondual perspective, which can lead to many other experiences of reality. The second turning shows that true nature is the being of all beings, that without true nature nothing will be, nothing will appear, and that there is no existence without it, because it is the existence of all existence. This understanding of the boundlessness and pervasiveness of true nature is implicit in nondual experience and realization.

It is in the first turning that we recognize and experience true nature as a particular, different from other particulars and outside the known world of particulars. The radical otherness of true nature points to the fact that it is outside the purview of the world of conventional experience. The second turning of the wheel reveals the other side of true nature: that it is not only a particular but an absolutely pervasive particular. It pervades and constitutes everything, in a way that makes apparent the oneness, unity, and nonduality that is the hallmark of mystical experience. From the perspective of nondual experience, the encounter of the third kind with true nature is still dualistic because, even though in that encounter we recognize the radical otherness of spirit or God or whatever, there is still an “I” experiencing a true nature, regardless of whether we experience it as inside or outside of the self.

From the perspective of the nondual, the dual is full of delusions—delusions of separateness, of particulars, of self, of gratification, and of all sorts of other fallacies. But there are teachings that consider the dual perspective a true manifestation of reality. They believe that it is possible for the world of strife as we know it to become harmonious and that dual experience can bear the fulfillment and the completion of life. And, in fact, most of us do have some experience of this. There are times when we are participating in the ego perspective—a self with possessions interacting with other separate persons—and we feel good and happy; we are doing what we want to do and getting what we want to have. This is often what everybody wishes for at the beginning of the path, and some teachings say that it is actually possible for the whole world to live like this. But from the nondual perspective, such a life appears impossible. From the perspective of the oneness of reality, strife and suffering seem inherent to the dual perspective because of the existence of the self and the transitory nature of all forms.

The fourth turning of the teaching shows us that dual and nondual are different views of reality, each of them disclosing something different about how reality can manifest. Reality can appear as a discrete self navigating an external world and can also manifest as an indivisible unity. The nondual view is emphasized in so many teachings because it is a useful and effective antidote to the dualistic view. It challenges the prevailing assumptions of duality and makes it possible to get beyond these limitations to something that has the possibility of greater freedom and fulfillment. But we should not forget that there are teachings that reveal that fulfillment is also possible in the dualistic view—the fulfillment of a human being as an individual with self-determination.

Even though both views are valid, we can see, from the view of totality, that both dual and nondual understandings still harbor delusions about reality. One of the main delusions shared by both views, and many others too, is revealed in the Sufi saying, “When I say this is true, I don’t mean only this is true.” Both perspectives adhere to the delusion of being categorical. Those who subscribe to either view believe, “This is it, this is all of reality, and only this is true.” Nondual practitioners can no more easily admit the reality of the world of suffering than secularists can admit the underlying divine oneness of reality. Both camps posit their own version of the ultimate condition of reality as definitive.

From the perspective of the view of totality, both views are correct. Both convey truths about the manifestation of reality, and freedom means that we have an option. We can hold either view, we can hold both views, we can alternate between views, or we can have no view at all. We begin to see that reality cannot be completely encapsulated in either view. For instance, we can recognize that true nature is a particular radically different from other particulars and also that part of its difference is that it pervades all particulars. This understanding combines the dual and nondual views. It reveals that this particular, although it is a particular, is also everything because it pervades everything, for it is the nature of everything and constitutes everything.

The fourth turning of the wheel confirms this truth about true nature, but it also reveals that this truth depends on the principles of pervasiveness and sameness. There are other, subtler principles in which the particular is the all without having to resort to the notions of pervasiveness or infinity. This introduces another view of reality, one that I have discussed in my book Runaway Realization and which we will explore more as we go on.

One way of seeing the freedom of the fourth turning of the wheel is that we can never say, “Only this is true.” We find no place, no condition, no state, no realization, and no accomplishment that are ultimately definitive and final, because any of these can be true depending on the situation and the circumstances and the intelligence of true nature itself.

The fourth turning reveals something about true nature that is not immediately obvious. Although it is implicit in the first two turnings of the wheel, it doesn’t become explicit until the fourth turning. What we see is that there are other ways of looking at reality and true nature apart from the Aristotelian logic of finding out what the ultimate or final constituent of reality is. Many paths of enlightenment focus on finding the ultimate and realizing the ultimate as reality, but the fourth turning reveals this as only one point of view, only one way of looking at reality. One of the problems with the view of ultimates is that different teachings posit different ultimates. How do we reconcile them? Often someone ends up saying, “My ultimate is the true ultimate and yours is only provisional.” We can see many examples of this kind of reasoning in religions and spiritual traditions.

So when I mentioned collapsing all ultimates—Brahman, Shunyata, Christ, Ein Sof, Tao, and others—into the philosophers’ stone, I didn’t mean to imply that there are no differences between them. Brahman is not the same thing as Shunyata, and Shunyata is not the same thing as the universal Christ, and Christ is not the same thing as Ein Sof, and Ein Sof is not the same thing as the Tao. Each is a different way of experiencing true nature and each gives rise to a different experience of reality.

By collapsing them all in the philosophers’ stone, I am saying that from the perspective of the fourth turning, each is a different face of true nature. None of them is the final nature of true nature, and we cannot find the final nature of true nature. Here we run straight into the limitation of language. By saying “the final nature of true nature,” we fall into the trap of the worldview that has a concept of a final nature. Who says that we have to look at things that way? Why does there need to be a final nature of something? In the notion of final, there is already implicit a beginning, a middle, and an end, there is already implicit the ideas of relative and absolute. All this is conceptual. Certainly, reality can be looked at that way, and because reality allows itself to be experienced that way, we have all these competing ultimates. But we can also look at things a different way. What if there are no ultimates in the classical mystical, or even scientific, sense? Maybe if we entertain this possibility we’ll find out that anything can be ultimate.

Also, the meanings of “sameness” and “one taste” change in the fourth turning of the wheel. In the classical experience of boundlessness or nonduality, “one taste” means that everything participates in the same reality or shares the same source or expresses the same nature. Everything is equal in significance, and uniqueness is not of interest. In the fourth turning, the sense is more that each thing in itself is an equally valid manifestation of reality. Just imagine the freedom you’d gain from the superego if you really recognized and realized this. The fourth turning of the wheel is the direct experience, the realization, the recognition, the vision, the thinking, and the creativity of a different kind of equalness of all manifestation. This is an equalness in which the particulars do not lose their difference, uniqueness, and significance. The equality of forms in the second turning levels the playing field, where each particular is simply another manifestation of the ground and thereby equal in significance to any other particular. The important wisdom is that of sameness, of all particulars having the same nature. In the fourth turning, equalness is not because of sameness or shared ground; each particular in itself is equal to all others. And yet, they are all of one nature, albeit a more mysterious nature than that revealed in nondual realization. This recognition hits you and impacts you at all levels. Nothing is excluded; everything is included in the view of living reality. It opens up the whole of reality all at once.

So when you encounter a delusion, reality says, “In this moment, reality is appearing as a delusion.” And the delusion turns into a window, into another way of experiencing reality and enlightenment. Each of you is a big window, but this window, you will notice, has a frame around it. The fourth turning of the wheel removes the frame. Every time a frame is removed, reality exposes another way that it can be. That is what I mean by saying that by challenging positions and beliefs in our view of understanding reality, we allow other possibilities to emerge—new possibilities and also familiar possibilities seen anew. All the qualities and dimensions of being that we have explored can become more accessible and gain a different meaning and a different kind of utility as we behold them from this more total view.

I am only giving one example of another kind of realization, another way reality can manifest itself. There are many others. In the fourth turning of the wheel, we see that freedom is the never-ending unfoldment of reality to reveal true nature in all its possible faces, in all its manifestations. This means that the life of realization is a life of discovery, a never-ending growth and unfoldment and evolution. And evolution is not simply the evolution of the mind or the evolution of the heart; it is the evolution of enlightenment, the development of realization. But evolution and development are not actually adequate notions at this juncture, because they imply that each further revelation is an advance on the one that preceded it. It is more that enlightenment and realization cannot help but unfold in ways that demonstrate their further implications and illuminations. And reality unfolds in this way without any value judgment about what particular face it might be manifesting in the moment.

This is the kind of freedom that is made possible by essential activation: Our being, or reality in our location, is activated to the extent that its unfoldment is unstoppable. Reality itself is compelled toward further realization. Its movement is unrestrained, not because it doesn’t like how things are now but because it is full of potential that is bursting and can’t help but push toward the edges of what is known. This means that the enlightenment drive has been liberated to the extent that it is free from any view or perspective of reality.

The closest analogy to the unstoppable force of essential activation is the energy of the instinctual drives. Many of us are getting older and may have forgotten the force of the sexual drive, but some of us are still young and in touch with that energy. The sexual act has distinct phases. When you are engaged in foreplay, you can stop at any time. If the phone rings, you can stop and answer it. But if foreplay progresses beyond a certain degree, you cannot stop. You have to go to consummation. That feeling that the movement is unstoppable, that it has taken over your rational mind and your voluntary actions, that you are no longer in control of what is happening, when seen in terms of the dynamism of being, is what I mean by essential activation. This means that the enlightenment drive has reached the kind of freedom where it takes on a life and momentum of its own. It is relentless; it has to keep bursting and moving toward the frontiers of reality.

This does not necessarily mean that the enlightenment drive is always experienced with the intensity and excitement of the sexual drive. Sometimes essential activation will feel like an intense passion for discovery and knowing, but at other times it is quiet and still and carefree. But things keep happening anyway, regardless of how you experience the moment. Reality keeps moving from one realization to another without ever coming to an end. This means the enlightenment drive is ripening and maturing.

Again, we can compare it to the sexual drive. When we are teenagers and at the beginning of our sexual lives, we want to finish as fast as possible. That is the whole point—to make sure we get to the climax. And as we know, many young people finish so fast that they miss out on the possibility of more conscious enjoyment. As we mature, develop, and understand more about human love and interaction, we learn to take it easy during lovemaking. We enjoy the moment as it is happening and we are not oriented toward any goal. We are not pushing to orgasm or to closure. Sometimes it does happen unexpectedly: We are playing and talking, admiring each other, touching each other, and some intensity happens and there is this explosion. And as you mature, even the explosion might be very different from what you expected, and things can continue and go beyond momentary explosions.

This brings in sexual tantra. The idea of sexual tantra is to not care about the end. The end is not what matters. If you simply enjoy the interaction and the aliveness in the moment, the pleasure of the aliveness will intensify and will bring about different states of realization. That is one of the methods of coming into realization. In normal sexual activities, this can appear as different kinds of experiences, different kinds of climaxes, different kinds of orgasms. Many kinds may arise for both men and women. If we are mature enough, we can find many forms of realization in sexual interaction where the drive is activated but is not seeking to reach a specific goal.

This is also how the enlightenment drive appears in the fourth turning of the wheel. You are not interested in getting to realization; you are not looking for something; you are just living fully and realization simply happens. We can be surprised because realization happens in a certain way for a while, and then it begins to happen in a completely different way. If we go beyond the memory of what has happened, then the door is open for new possibilities, for living energy to manifest and express itself in different ways. This means that the life-force, the enlightenment drive, is free and not oriented by our point of view or by a previous experience of reality or realization or true nature. Because our view is open and free, true nature can manifest possibilities that we never anticipated.

We might become aware of essential activation as we begin to work on living our realization. When we move in that direction, we see that living our realization changes our realization. In the beginning, we think we have realization and need to work out how to express it in our lives. But as we go on, we realize that realization itself changes in order to express itself. Realization expressing itself, living itself, brings a dynamism that moves realization from one degree to another, from one kind to another. This is one of the features of essential activation: The enlightenment drive is in a different gear, where it is revealing reality spontaneously and naturally. The enlightenment drive no longer appears—as it does in the beginning of the spiritual path—as our seeking and searching, as our wanting and longing. Instead, essential activation means that the unfoldment is happening and that realization is occurring in a way that is free and unstoppable. Seeking has ceased, has come to an end, and further revelations are simply the expression of realization.

This unstoppable dynamism is unsettling for many of us because we want to find a place to land. We need to have some place that we think of as reality, as a home base that we can come back to. In the dual perspective of the first turning, even though we experience true nature, we tend to settle in the ego identity. The home base in the second turning of the wheel is the boundlessness of true nature, the nondual condition. The fourth turning of the wheel offers no refuge. There is no fixed home base. The freedom of the fourth turning comes with absolute insecurity. There is no security in the sense of stability. Dynamism becomes more important than stability. True nature here has engaged the creativity of its dynamism in a totally open-ended freedom.

The dynamism of the fourth turning knows no end. It is not only that realization is open and open-ended, but also that the openness is open and the open-endedness is open and the endlessness is open. These are some of the wisdoms that emerge in the fourth turning. We could fill countless books with all that the fourth turning reveals.

Here we are focusing on essential activation, the ripening of the enlightenment drive that animates the life of spirit. Although I don’t know all the factors that are involved in essential activation, there are some things that are clearly necessary and helpful. We’ve discussed necessary awakening, one factor that is needed for activation. This is the full encounter of the third kind with true nature, where we recognize through direct, immediate encounter that there is such a thing as spirit. We know spirit not only through faith, belief, hearsay, intuition, or flashes of experience but by full, continuous encounter. We come to know true nature directly—that it is, that it is not constructed, that it is not part of our mind or heart or body or nervous system, and not part of somebody’s concept or idea. We come to know true nature is its own thing. We come to know that this is what spirit means.

The second ingredient needed for essential activation is what I call “primary awakening.” Necessary awakening is necessary in the sense that without it there would be no activation. Primary awakening is central to awakening, the most important part. But neither necessary nor primary awakening are necessarily sufficient for activation—that is to say, more conditions are often needed. For some people primary awakening is sufficient, but not for most. Although it is implicit in necessary awakening, primary awakening is something different; it is the awakening to the truth that we are true nature, regardless of what form or formlessness it takes. If you directly encounter true nature and know it fully, primary awakening is the next natural step. But for most people, there is a wide and deep chasm between necessary awakening and primary awakening. This is the gulf that we try to bridge by working on the narcissistic abyss. This is the gap between encountering true nature and being true nature, between recognizing that spirit is and recognizing that spirit is what you are. It is a movement from a dual encounter with true nature to a nondual one. It is also the movement from experience to realization.

In this teaching, we deal with primary awakening by inquiring into the narcissism of the self and the realization of the point of existence. In this segment of the work, we learn what realization is. It is not only discovering our essential identity and learning our true nature. The point is to recognize that true nature is what we are. Although the work on the point of existence makes clear the distinction between primary and necessary awakening, primary awakening does not necessarily have to be the realization of the pure form of spiritual identity.

Another way we can see the difference between necessary and primary awakening is the distinction that some philosophers and sages make between thatness and whatness, between the that and the what. We can consider the thatness and the whatness of true nature, that it is and what it is. In necessary awakening, we recognize that true nature is, that spirit is. All spiritual teachings agree that there is true nature, there is something spiritual, there is more to human beings and to reality than meets the eye, there is something otherworldly and invisible. This is the that—that true nature is. But what is it then? All the qualities and the dimensions that we work with in this teaching and all the perspectives of the various wisdom teachings answer this question of what true nature is.

The important shift that happens in primary realization is recognizing, “I am not only fully encountering true nature, I am fully being true nature.” This means that there is a realization here that the that and the what are the same thing: “What I am is that I am, and that I am is what I am.” In primary awakening, the encounter with true nature, with spirit, is so full and so complete that there is no longer any separate you or it. You and true nature are the same thing. You realize that what you have encountered is not alien but your spirit. True nature becomes both your that and your what. It is your being and your essence.

Most of the time, being and essence are seen as two things. The being of something reflects the fact that it is. The essence of something is its true character, what it truly is. The usual word for it is “quiddity”—the inherent essence of something. Sufis call it mahiya, a variant of the sacred syllable hu, which refers to true nature and literally means “that.” “Mahiya” means “what that is,” what true nature is, what its essence is. There is the beingness of an apple and what it is. An apple is different from an orange. It has quiddity, mahiya, essence.

The fullness of primary awakening has two sides: You are both being yourself and knowing what being yourself is. There is the fullness of nonduality, in which you realize, “I am completely it. There is no me and no it. I and it are eliminated in the illuminating light that recognizes itself.” This is the fullness of nonduality and the totalness of immediacy, but there is also the fullness of knowing that this is the case. You not only experience “I am true nature,” but you know it. There is cognition and insight. So the illumination of primary awakening is not simply in the transformation of identity but also in the transformation of the knowing of identity.

There is both a change of being and a change of knowing. The being of the self changes and the knowledge of the self changes. In other words, self-realization can happen in degrees. It can be complete or incomplete. As we work through this terrain, we might not even experience what it’s like to be true nature, or we might experience it in various degrees of completeness. So, for example, when one of the groups in this school does the work on the narcissism of the self, very few people in the group experience self-realization. Most students experience some of the processes related to self-realization, but they don’t complete the process. And the incompleteness of self-realization will appear as a limitation of the certainty that true nature is what you are, is that you are, and is knowing that and what you are. The more complete the primary realization is, the more certainty and knowledge we have of what we are, and this certainty relieves us of the mental need for assurance. It relieves us from self-doubt and from questioning the reality of our experience.

As I said, primary awakening has two sides—a shift of identity and a recognition of the shift. A shift of identity by itself is not the awakening, because you actually are yourself frequently but you just don’t know it. Those times when you are feeling good—when you’re in nature or having sex or walking in the street and carefree—you are really being yourself, but you are not awake to being yourself and what it is that you are being. Realization means that you are not only being yourself, but that the illumination of being yourself is so intense and so bright that you actually see it, recognize it, and comprehend it. You see that it is something, that there is in it wisdom, that there is in it understanding. Primary awakening is not only an experience of freedom but also an experience of understanding and discriminating what this freedom is. We see that what we are has changed, that what we are is something fundamental, something miraculous, and we know what this miracle is and we know that we are this miracle.

Primary awakening is usually referred to as true nature waking up to itself. It is a shift from awakening to true nature to true nature awakening. We recognize “true nature is what I am,” where “I” is a figure of speech. There is no “I”; it is true nature recognizing itself. True nature sheds the garment of the self and recognizes itself with its own light, with its own luminosity. And by recognizing this, we see that not only does true nature make possible the existence of everything but that without true nature, there would be no experience, no awareness, no consciousness, because true nature is the source of pure light, pure awareness, and pure consciousness. We realize that without true nature there would be no life, no experience of life, no conscious experience, no perception, because all of those things come from the luminosity of true nature. In primary realization, we are recognizing that light; and that light is recognizing itself, not by self-reflection but by being itself, by being the fullness. The actual quiddity—the whatness and essence—of light is recognizing its being and recognizing that the quiddity and the beingness are one thing. Essence and being, which are still distinguished in necessary awakening, are identical in primary realization.

It’s important to understand that primary awakening is not limited to the realization of any one particular way that our true nature manifests. The experience of primary realization can be of any form of true nature—absolute emptiness or pure presence or pure awareness or nondual awareness.

In the second turning of this teaching, there is a progression of self-realization to subtler dimensions until there is the realization of what I call the absolute, followed by the integration of all dimensions into the absolute. We call this absolute nondual realization. By absolute, I mean something similar to how this term is conceived by other teachings, such as the Parabrahman of Advaita Vedanta, the Dharmakaya of Mahayana Buddhism, or the Divine Essence of Sufism.

But the fourth turning of the wheel shows us that absolute nondual realization, although it is enlightenment, is only one way of looking at enlightenment. Realization can happen in other ways. It is not a matter of only being true nature. True nature is more mysterious than just being the being of all beings. It also reveals things about being, about the relationship of being to all manifest experience and the question of whether it is or is not. One of the realizations in the fourth turning of the wheel, for instance, is that the questions of whether true nature is emptiness or fullness, whether it is being or nonbeing, whether it is boundless or bounded, whether it is infinite or finite, are trivial and irrelevant questions that don’t apply to true nature. All these are possible ways for true nature to manifest itself, but true nature can manifest itself in ways that defy the logic of these questions. Other questions come into play then, and that radically opens the field of what is possible.

So primary realization—being true nature and knowing yourself as being true nature—is a necessary element for essential activation, but it is not in itself essential activation. Essential activation reveals primary realization, but it also reveals other modes of realization, other ways that enlightenment can appear—all the way to recognizing that duality is enlightenment. We can see how there can be enlightenment in duality and how duality and nonduality can coexist and interact. We learn that we can’t live life fully without both dual and nondual experience. If we stick exclusively to one or the other, we live a limited life. If our experience is only dual, our life is incomplete. If our experience is only nondual, there isn’t really life. But taken together, dual and nondual experience and their interaction make it possible to understand what it means to live a human life.

If, when we are realized and established in one form of primary realization—whether that is absolute emptiness, supreme presence, the Tao, Christ consciousness, or the Brahman—we take that to be the final realization and ultimate freedom, then we exclude the other ways true nature is manifesting. This means that any face of true nature that is different from this ultimate becomes other. Just as true nature appears as completely other from the conventional perspective, if we fixate on any realization as ultimately definitive in primary realization, then different kinds of realizations will likewise appear as radically other.

When we move from necessary awakening to primary awakening, true nature shifts from being radically other to becoming absolutely non-other. We recognize that true nature is not only not other, but that it is the opposite of other. It is what we are—fundamentally, essentially, and absolutely—through and through. The truth is that true nature is absolutely other and absolutely non-other. It is absolutely different from the perspective of the conventional constructed reality most people inhabit and it is absolutely what we are. True nature is the very marrow of our being, but also its bone, its flesh, and its skin.

The freedom of the fourth turning of the wheel shows that any realization can be our realization absolutely and, yet, can move on to other realizations. On the other hand, if we stick to one realization, all other realizations remain other and are not accessible to us. Essential activation reveals the freedom of continual realization and the importance of the completeness of our primary awakening, regardless of what condition we experience. As long as the primary awakening of self-realization is incomplete and uncertain, we will continue to search and to seek.

The certainty of realization does not mean there will be no more issues to work through. The certainty means that when the issues arise, you recognize they are issues; when vulnerabilities arise, you recognize they are vulnerabilities. And at the same time, you realize that what you are is not this vulnerability, even though that is part of what is arising in the moment. The certainty of what you are actually makes it easier for issues to arise because they don’t challenge you as deeply as when you are uncertain. So freedom includes working through further issues, which become opportunities to recognize yourself in new ways.

When our self-realization is certain, life will continue to flow with discoveries, not because we are searching for them, but because that is how life expresses its joy and fullness—by spontaneously manifesting new revelations. In primary awakening, reality is awake to its primordial nature. If we recognize, respect, and heed this awakening, it will keep unfurling itself to disclose more and more of reality. All other awakenings, realizations, and enlightenments are a matter of seeing the further implications of this primary awakening. Living this awakening is lively and fun, it is profound and liberating, and it is endless.

3

THE NONHIERARCHICAL VIEW OF THE PATH

WE ARE EXPLORING a particular activation of our being—the turning on of a switch—that animates our being with a kind of life that is powerful enough to continue combusting and to continue blazing in a way that not only continues its form but also transforms itself, revealing further possibilities spontaneously and without restraint. This does not mean actualizing a particular state or arriving at a particular understanding, although both of these can happen. This essential activation is the freedom of being, of our true nature, to manifest its myriad possibilities and move us through various awakenings and realizations.

We’ve discussed two factors—necessary awakening and primary awakening—that are vital for this activation, which is not a particular state or awakening or enlightenment. Necessary awakening is the direct experience and recognition of true nature as the unique, radically different, and miraculous truth that it is. And primary awakening is more than this kind of close encounter of the third kind with true nature; it is realizing true nature by experiencing and knowing that it is what we are. We realize true nature as both our being and our essence.

Both of these factors are integral segments of this teaching. The third factor that is important for essential activation is something that I haven’t yet explicitly discussed much in previous books. It is not available in the first or second turning of the teaching wheel, and it is difficult to recognize unless we are functioning in the fourth turning of the wheel, which allows a radical openness of mind and view that catapults realization into an altogether different order of possibility.

In the usual way that we teach this path, we work first with our individual consciousness, its structures and limitations and its properties of freedom and flow. In doing so, we explore the various essential qualities that are part of its nature; we see the ways in which true nature manifests itself within and through the individual consciousness. As our experience and perception become more subtle, we discover and explore the boundless or formless dimensions of true nature, moving from one dimension to another, each one adding more understanding, more realization, and more subtlety to our experience of our true nature and of reality and the world. Throughout this entire process, the self is challenged in various ways as realization continually chips away at the ego identifications. We can change from being the self to being true nature itself. In boundless or nondual realization, we know our true self as being true nature as well as being everything, being the ground and the nature of everything.

This is a progressive way of teaching about true nature. Part of the power of the method of this path is that it renders the experience of true nature accessible to many people because the method is sequential and incremental. Proceeding in this way makes it easier for us to tolerate the experiences of true nature, to open to them, and to relate to them. It also makes it easier for the self to let go because of the holding and support that happens when we work in a progressive way. As we work gradually and thoroughly through our immediate experiences, our understanding and recognition that there is something else—something beyond the ego view—grows steadily. And we are increasingly able to trust this something else and trust reality because we recognize from our immediate experience the purity at the heart of all of reality, the clarity that is pure goodness, pure light, and pure illumination.

Because of this gradual approach to presenting true nature, we can easily assume and develop the view that reality is hierarchical. We experience that the essential qualities of true nature are deeper than our ordinary experience; and even more profound than the qualities is the realization of the boundless dimensions. We can experience the nonduality of the boundless dimensions as a greater realization than the experience of the differentiated qualities of true nature. And the integration of the boundless dimensions is a still subtler realization. This way of working predisposes us to consider true nature a hierarchy, where one state is deeper than another, subtler than another, or more profound than another. Our realization goes through successive stages, each more inclusive than the preceding one, and this process of increasing subtlety breeds in us the notion that some forms of true nature are more important than others, that some manifestations of true nature are more real, more fundamental, or more powerful than others.

But is this actually the case? We can definitely see it this way, and it is a valid and useful way of experiencing reality. Many of us have enjoyed the fruits of the hierarchical, gradual, and progressive approach. It is the progressive movement through time and the gradual shifts of awareness that give our experiences the sense of being hierarchical, which then makes us see reality as having a hierarchical order. The hierarchical view is not unique to this path. Many traditions—Kabbalah, Sufism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism—contain hierarchical components, with different planes and levels of being that are progressively revealed. Even sudden or nondual paths can be hierarchical because they view pure awareness or pure consciousness as higher or more true than all other kinds of experiencing.

The fourth turning of the wheel shows us that although it is valid, true, and useful, the hierarchical view of true nature is not the only way to see reality. Another way of looking at everything, of looking at all that happens in the first and second turnings, begins to manifest itself. The more fully we have integrated the first two turnings, the more likely that the wisdoms of the fourth turning will arise naturally and spontaneously as the fruition of that integration.

The fourth turning reveals a new possibility, a new insight, which is not an experience or thought but a kind of realization, understanding, and wisdom that arises from many experiences. The entirety of all the experiences that we have had, the collection of all and every experience, gives rise to seeing true nature in a new way. This new way is actually implicit in all the experiences we have had along the path, but it’s usually difficult to see it explicitly. This is partly because of how our mind works and how our self and ego structures—both of which have a linear and progressive quality—tend to reveal themselves and get dissolved and partly because of how the teaching is presented. In a sense, part of the fourth turning of the teaching wheel is setting aside the first two turnings—seeing that they are true and useful but being open to how else reality might manifest.

What we learn in the fourth turning, the insight that arises, is that however we experience true nature—whether as personal presence or absolute nonbeing—it is a single truth, one truth appearing in different guises. We recognize that true nature is strength and compassion, clarity and intelligence; it is truth and it is love. True nature is equally will and presence, being and nonbeing, spaciousness and awareness. True nature is the inseparability of emptiness and presence. All of these are simply faces of one truth, manifestations and appearances of one reality. When we have enough discernment, when our being is activated, we can see that each includes all the others. In any one, all are implicit. This is different from the experience of the oneness and unity of nonduality, which is based on the principles of sameness and pervasiveness. The oneness and singleness of the fourth turning does not come at the expense of particularity and difference. And it addresses a different matter, a different question—one that points to an omnidirectional unity, where directionality does not suggest extension in time and space.

Whenever true nature manifests itself, all of true nature is there. When we experience compassion, that compassion has emptiness, has awareness, has truth, has love. Although they may not be manifest, they are all there, and if we stay with our experience, and don’t try to get somewhere else or try to change anything, if we simply let it be, it will by itself unfold and reveal other possibilities because these other possibilities are intrinsic to it. The view that arises from this insight of the equalness and completeness of each manifestation of true nature is that experiencing personal presence is no less important than experiencing nondual awareness. Experiencing the emptiness of everything is not more important, more significant, or more powerful than experiencing the joy of being human. We see that there is no hierarchy in true nature.

Anytime we experience true nature, we are experiencing a single truth. We are not experiencing different true natures or different parts of one true nature. We are not experiencing different levels of it. Although in the hierarchical view of the path we discover different levels or dimensions of increasing depth and subtlety, the fourth turning of the wheel reveals the nonhierarchical view of the path. The view of totality, one of the wisdoms of the fourth turning, accommodates multiple views of reality, including the view of nonhierarchy. We see that any experience of opening, any fundamental insight into reality and into ourselves, any experience of the purity of true nature and the purity of reality is as valid and important as any other. Any experience of true nature is as significant as any other because it is the other; it is all others. Each experience of true nature is all experiences of true nature. Each form is all of true nature; each dimension is all of true nature.

This is a subtle insight that is difficult to see when we are at the beginning of the path. So for a while, we teach that true nature manifests the essential qualities of strength and will and so on, which makes it easier for us both to experience these qualities and to believe that reality is hierarchical. This is useful because it is easier for the human mind to accommodate the hierarchical view. So when I say that experiencing compassion or clarity or presence is the same thing as realizing the absolute nature of everything, it can seem rather far fetched. The absolute is so immense, so deep, so profound, and so much at the bottom of everything that spiritual forms appear to emanate from it. But it is actually true nature that is manifesting itself as the absolute emanating the qualities. The absolute does not emanate any qualities; it is always and only true nature doing that.

What is this true nature that is any and all of these things? This becomes the salient question, and it is what I have been referring to as the philosophers’ stone. The alchemists spent millennia trying to find it. They considered it the final result of the magnum opus, the great work of spiritual and material transmutation. Some alchemists thought they could make it, others believed it had to be discovered. Some thought it was white, others red. Some thought it was a stone, others a liquid or gas. And some understood the philosophers’ stone to be a metaphor. I am not teaching anything about alchemy here; I am borrowing the idea because it fits with what I am trying to say about true nature. The key to the secrets of existence, true nature is so mysterious and so invisible that we can only see its faces. We can only experience true nature in the manifold ways it presents itself, and yet it is always one thing.

Even to say that true nature is invisible is not correct. That means there is something there that is not visible. But who says that true nature is something there that is not visible? I’ve already said that it is not a something. And we’ve even questioned whether it exists or not. When we understand true nature with this subtlety, we come quite close to the monotheistic understanding of the Godhead—something that is unknowable by human beings but is always creating everything. What I’m saying about true nature is slightly different from that because that view makes God something different, something other than or additional to the spiritual qualities that we experience. I am saying that true nature is not different from what we experience.

When essential compassion is manifesting, it is true nature and it is all of true nature. When we are experiencing the boundless realization of the absolute in its nonduality—where everything is the luminosity of nothing, of pure nonbeing—it is true nature manifesting itself. Both are manifestations of one true nature, and that one true nature has implicit in it all other possibilities. When we experience true nature as a presence outside of us, that is true nature. When we see true nature as an angel appearing in front of us, that is true nature. If we see true nature as arising and erupting inside of us, that is true nature. True nature is the mystery that is simultaneously and equally everything and nothing, every single thing, one thing, and no thing at all.

In a sense, the mind can be reformatted so that it does not think hierarchically. You first have to close all the open windows and shut off all the ongoing processes before you can start up again in a new way. Then, after you reformat the hard drive, you have to restart the computer. That is what happens in the fourth turning of the teaching. Many kinds of reformatting can happen. Sometimes you have to reformat the whole drive, which means you have to delete everything and start over completely with an entirely new operating system.

The fourth turning introduces a new nonhierarchical operating system while still recognizing the truth and usefulness of the hierarchical view. But these are not the only views available; the possibilities are endless. If we take seriously the nonhierarchical view, it means there is no comparison, no lower and higher, no beginning and end. Even realization does not have hierarchy—there is no lower or higher realization. Each realization is valid, complete, and a true manifestation of reality. And not only every realization but every experience is reality manifesting itself in the moment. This includes everything—not only all the qualities, all the ways in which true nature manifests itself as diamonds and pearls and oceans and vast skies and flowers and fields and rivers, but also actual mountains, oceans, and stars. And none of them is more important than another, none of them is higher than another; there is no low and there is no high. If we completely explore any manifestation—inner or outer—if we are with the experience totally, as happens in our primary practice of inquiry, it can lead us to everything.

The nonhierarchical view shows us that if we stay with where we are and understand it, everything can be revealed. Our direct and immediate experience is the philosophers’ stone that holds the key to all secrets and all possibilities because true nature is all possibilities and it is what we are. The alchemists sometimes called this magical agent and transformative catalyst “the elixir” or “the water of life” to refer to its vibrancy, aliveness, power, and newness. And when the emphasis is more on unlocking the secrets of existence, they refer to it as the philosophers’ stone.

But the way I have been discussing true nature, from both the hierarchical and the nonhierarchical views, indicates that true nature is not a thing. It is a mysterious kind of truth that is continuously changing while also being a single truth. True nature is energetic, alive, and dynamic, always manifesting new forms, experiences, and insights. We can think of this as true nature always evolving or always developing or always maturing our souls. This is true and is a good way of seeing what is happening. But we might see that what we consider evolution, development, and maturation from the perspective of the individual can also be, from the perspective of realization, simply that true nature is manifesting whatever is needed in that moment. Evolution, development, and maturation imply a hierarchy of better and worse, of higher and lower realization. But the dynamism of true nature simply manifests whatever is needed, whatever is possible, and whatever somebody is ready for and capable of experiencing. True nature isn’t thinking that this possibility is better or more evolved than what came before. Rather, it is simply what is possible, and so it reveals itself in that way. True nature constantly transforms itself to reveal what is possible at each point in each moment.

We first discover the inherent dynamism of true nature when we see the unity of individual consciousness and true nature. Our individual consciousness is overflowing and dynamic and creative, and it can experience and realize all the qualities of true nature—brilliancy, purity, strength, compassion, peace, light, presence, joy, and so on. When we recognize that individual consciousness and true nature are inseparable, we behold the beginning manifestation of the truth of the philosophers’ stone—the dynamism of true nature.

This dynamism is usually referred to in alchemical literature as “red sulfur.” Sulfur is yellow, so what is red sulfur? It doesn’t exist in nature, and the term was used by alchemists to designate the combination of two elements that represent two sides of reality. The union of these two elements, their merging, is what creates red sulfur. In chemical terms, these two elements are sulfur and mercury, and their combination causes a chemical reaction that creates red sulfur. According to the literature, sulfur is fiery, combustive, active, and masculine; and mercury is flowing, receptive, changeable, and feminine. Red sulfur is the marriage of masculine and feminine, active and receptive, which creates an unusual dynamism.

The dynamism of red sulfur is a good metaphor for the power of the philosophers’ stone, the combustive, creative dynamism of true nature as it is ignited and activated. True nature is creatively dynamic in the sense that it is creating right in the moment the experience that is happening. The creative dynamism of the individual consciousness and the nondual dimension of creative dynamism are manifestations of this dynamism in the first two turnings of the teaching.

But the fourth turning of the wheel reveals more about the creative dynamism of true nature. We see that it is not as if there is a true nature, one of whose properties is creative dynamism. We come close to understanding the indefinable truth of true nature when we understand that it is self-creative. So, for example, when essential strength arises, essential strength is creating itself. Something else is not creating it. It is not as if there is a Godhead someplace that is creating essential strength in the moment. Rather, the quality is self-creating. It does not have a source outside of itself. There is no true nature separate from essential strength that is creating this quality. Essential strength is true nature creating itself as essential strength. This goes for all spiritual manifestations. When pure awareness arises as the luminosity that makes up everything, true nature is creating itself as that. It is not as if true nature is over here and is creating pure awareness over there. Pure awareness is self-creating; pure awareness is true nature creating itself as pure awareness.

You might be thinking, “And what is it that it is creating itself from?” There is nothing in particular that it is creating itself from. It is self-creating. It arises from itself as itself. There is not anything else but it. You won’t find anything underneath or behind true nature. It is what it is completely. Each quality is what it is. We are way beyond the notion of creatio ex nihilo, in which God creates the universe out of nothing.

We learn from this that each experience, each manifestation, each form in the world is what it is and is being self-created in the moment. All of reality is self-creative. In the second turning of the teaching, we see that creative dynamism is one of the dimensions of true nature creating all of reality from the absolute. The dynamism of this dimension reveals the possibilities of the absolute as all appearances, all qualities, all forms, and all dimensions. But we realize in the fourth turning that even the absolute itself is being created. The whole thing, the whole picture, all of reality, is self-creative. There is not something apart from self-creation that is doing the creating. Everything is always creating itself.

We recognize here that the source and the sourced are one. Compassion is the source of compassion. The absolute is the source of the absolute. The nondual is the source of the nondual. The dual is the source of the dual. All of them are the self-creation of true nature.

The fiery combustion of red sulfur is a good image for this dynamic aliveness of self-creating true nature. Different traditions understand this combustion in different ways. Some take it to be the unification of masculine and feminine qualities within us. The alchemists talk about it in terms of anima and animus as well. Other thinkers stress the importance of polar beings, of man and woman coming together to spark true activation. Some even go so far as to say that it is not simply man and woman coming together, but one particular man and one particular woman who fit each other in a unique way. This means that there is an already existing polarity that needs to find itself, to find its counterpart, and that the meeting of the two will trigger the combustion.

All of these are different ways of understanding how activation can happen. I am using the alchemical image of red sulfur to refer to the intrinsic dynamism of true nature, which creates itself in the act of its awakening. The self-creating dynamism, the self-creating unfoldment of true nature appears as the various forms of spiritual experience, awakening, and realization. When we recognize and truly understand the self-creating dynamism of true nature, we see that all forms, qualities, and dimensions are one truth. If we stay with our experience of true nature—whether that is light or presence, emptiness or fullness, personal or boundless—it will reveal all the rest. All the qualities, forms, and dimensions of true nature are implicit in each of them. All we have to do is be exactly where we are and understand the truth of the here and now. Because we are not focusing on any particular state or condition of realization, all that matters is where we are individually.

When we realize the truth of nonhierarchy and the self-creating dynamism of true nature, any real experience, state, or knowledge can catalyze the process of endless realization. But if we take the view that some realizations are deeper or more fundamental than others, then we have to proceed gradually through all the steps, stages, levels, and degrees of realization. This is fine, of course, because it is one way that awakening and enlightenment can occur. What I am presenting as the liberating power of the philosophers’ stone reveals another possibility. When we see the identity of all the manifestations of true nature—which are one even though they are different—true nature spontaneously unfolds to reveal the mysteries inherent to it.

Recognizing these truths—that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature, that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature creating itself as that manifestation, that each manifestation of true nature can spark endless realization—is another factor involved in essential activation. What’s important for us to see is that red sulfur conveys a particular property of the philosophers’ stone when it is combusted and activated, when our being is so activated that it recognizes the truth of nonhierarchy, it recognizes that any experience of true nature can ignite the life of realization. When this kind of combustion occurs, it means that essential activation has happened.

Inner activation means that realization is alive and that the philosophers’ stone can keep revealing new ways of experiencing and understanding true nature. One of these is the wisdom of nonhierarchy, which generates different kinds of realizations that are not possible without it. This shows us that another element needed for activation is the experience and recognition that each form of true nature—every spiritual experience—is a manifestation of one truth and that each of them is all of them and contains all of them. This means that if we are truly practicing inquiry, if we are really letting ourselves be where we are and we understand the implications of our experience, reality itself will naturally reveal whatever is possible for us to see.

This radically changes our view and understanding of realization. You are just as realized if you realize personal presence as you are if you realize the absolute emptiness of reality. Realizing pure presence is as significant as realizing love. Realizing personal will is as profound as realizing the essence of intelligence. Although seeing manifestations of true nature as hierarchical is easier for the human mind, once we experience the truth of nonhierarchy, reality opens in unimaginable ways. Nonhierarchy is definitely more difficult to understand and to experience, but it also carries the possibility of greater freedom. It not only allows us to feel the personal freedom of enlightenment, but it also frees enlightenment itself to discover further kinds of enlightenment.

One of the obstacles to the view of nonhierarchy is our concern about the social, political, and moral implications of it. Thinking that reality manifests itself as a great chain of being that spans all the way from the purity of enlightenment to the distortions of contemporary life is one way to deal with the different kinds of suffering that we see in the world. It’s true that the hierarchical view is much more suited to these kinds of considerations. In fact, many traditions express the value of seeing things this way. Kashmir Shaivism, for example, begins with Shiva and Shakti, and Shakti manifests formlessness and forms all the way to the individual soul, all the way to the physical world. One after another, each manifestation is more gross than the preceding one. Spiritual life then, in this tradition, becomes the work of ascending the ladder to ever-finer states. This is a valid approach, and it works. There are many situations that are better understood from the perspective of hierarchy.

What I am specifically addressing here is hierarchy and nonhierarchy on the spiritual path. Both views have their place and their uses. Seeing the nonhierarchy of true nature also has the effect of allowing our usual, hierarchical way of working to become more liberated and more open. Once essential activation has happened, the quality of red sulfur—both active and receptive, both combustive and changeable, both masculine and feminine—can begin to infuse the usual, hierarchical way we work. The dimensions, states, and qualities that we encounter in the hierarchical approach can become more available and easier to access because our inquiry is powered with the force of activation.

It has always been the case that when some new element of this teaching emerges, it does not come at the expense of what precedes it. What follows often draws out the implications and expands the understanding of what has come before. So the nonhierarchical view does not negate the hierarchical view; it simply adds to it. In this way, the nonhierarchical view introduces another way of seeing reality as well as injecting our usual way of working with the force and potency of essential activation. This perspective brings not only freedom but also immense energy and aliveness.

We can see that all spiritual experiences, regardless of how limited or liberated, are revelations of one reality and transformations of one truth. Red sulfur reveals the catalytic quality of true nature, its unstoppable combustion and flow. This unity of active and receptive is the philosophers’ stone, which is dynamic and creative, alive and self-unfolding, the truth and the unfoldment of the truth simultaneously. It is both masculine and feminine, the essential hermaphrodite, the innate androgen.

During the first and second turnings of the wheel, this energy appears as the enlightenment drive beginning to fuel our work, leading us always to deeper and subtler realizations. But, at some point, realization can become steady and established. What is spiritual life then? This is the perspective we are exploring in this book. Many traditions believe that after enlightenment, you simply abide in the enlightened condition and nothing new happens, and that is the case for some people. But for most people, enlightenment itself becomes a ground for discovery, and true nature is liberated to reveal other possibilities, not because we are seeking them but because that is how reality expresses itself. Seeking ceases and liberated living is continual discovery. When the essence of our consciousness is activated, it reveals not only the forms and dimensions of true nature but also everything about true nature, all the secrets of reality. This unfoldment is the runaway process of realization realizing further realization, the process of endless, and finally traceless, enlightenment.

4

ENDLESS AWAKENING

THE FOURTH TURNING of the teaching makes possible the view of totality, a view that accepts as valid other views—including the dual view of the first turning and the nondual view of the second turning—and, in so doing, makes available many other views of reality. In my last book, Runaway Realization, I introduced the view of totality. Here I am delving into the core of it to see where it comes from and what makes it possible.

It is difficult to experience and comprehend the view of totality without essential activation, which makes it possible for awakening or enlightenment to be released from having to be in any particular condition. We cannot grasp the view of totality intellectually. We have to embody it; we have to live it. Our realization has to impact our consciousness in such a way that the view of totality naturally arises. Because the view of totality does not require any particular view and is open to all views, it heralds freedom in many senses of the word.

So far, we have been focusing on essential activation and on the alchemical red sulfur, the unstoppable combustion of the self-creating dynamism of true nature. Essential activation is not simply a matter of the enlightenment drive being awakened or activated. It means, specifically, that the enlightenment drive is functioning in such a way that it is not only leading us to realization and enlightenment, but it is also leading us from one realization to another. When we feel longing and desire, yearning for liberation or true nature or God, that is not yet essential activation. That longing does mean that the enlightenment drive, the drive for liberation or union, is active. But essential activation has to do with the unrestrained revelation of truth that doesn’t have anything to do with our seeking. It has to do with reality expressing itself in an unfettered way, and in a way that makes it clear to us that it is reality expressing itself.

So if we consider the path of realization from the perspective of the fourth turning, we can identify four important junctures. Some of these I have already discussed in detail as factors necessary for essential activation. I am now enlarging the context and seeing essential activation as one important juncture that makes possible an ongoing understanding of reality, a ceaselessly wider illumination.

We can see these junctures as nonhierarchical—as equal events, each of them important on its own—or we can think of them hierarchically as four successive stages. Nonhierarchy cannot be understood intellectually. It is not a matter of being able to conceive of or believe in nonhierarchy. We need to see directly and fully that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature. This is an actual experience, realization, and understanding that each dimension and aspect and form of true nature is all of true nature and not simply one discrete piece of true nature.

We might like the nonhierarchical view because of its sense of equalness and freedom, but liking it does not make it available to us in a real way. The nonhierarchical view is not possible without realization and experience and, actually, without many kinds of realizations and experiences. Until the nonhierarchical view is actually available to us experientially, it is more useful for us to work within the hierarchical view of reality. The view of totality makes this possible because it does not discard or negate one view in favor of another. We can see things hierarchically, nonhierarchically, or in some whole other way. All views are available; which view is operating depends on where we are and the situation at hand.

The first of the four junctures on the path of awakening is necessary awakening, which refers to the close encounter of the third kind with true nature. The second juncture is primary awakening, which we usually refer to as the self-realization of true nature. This is different from the personal experience of true nature as radically other. Primary awakening is being true nature and recognizing yourself as being true nature, which means that true nature recognizes itself through your individual consciousness. Whereas you encounter true nature in the first juncture, in the second juncture of the path, you realize true nature or, put another way, true nature realizes itself as and through you.

Both of these—necessary and primary awakening, the experience and the self-realization of true nature—can occur in any form, quality, or dimension of true nature. As we know in our work, the encounter with true nature exposes us to many qualities and forms. This teaching has a detailed understanding about how to open the possibility for that kind of close encounter with true nature, and then how to work on the self-realization of true nature. This spans the movement from the dual experience of true nature to the nondual experience of it. Just as the encounter with true nature reveals many differentiated qualities and forms of experience, so the self-realization of true nature moves through many realizations, including individual realization and the various boundless dimensions of nondual realization.

The third juncture on the path is essential activation, the igniting of red sulfur, the philosophers’ stone expressing its self-creative dynamism. Activation means that realization is alive, that it can spontaneously unfold to reveal the possibilities—forms, formlessness, and otherwise—of true nature. Activation ignites the process of a living realization by recognizing that all form and formlessness, all manifestations of true nature, are the selfsame true nature. The experience and realization of any expression of true nature is all of true nature.

Even though I am talking about it as the third juncture, this activation does not necessarily come third; it can happen at any time. It might be that recognizing the primordial purity of true nature in necessary awakening activates this dynamism. Or the self-realization of primary awakening might spark it. Or we may first need to recognize and realize the nonhierarchy of reality. And, then again, none of these might do the trick.

As I said, we don’t know all the factors involved in essential activation. I’ve discussed three elements that are necessary and useful, but none of them individually nor all of them taken together is necessarily sufficient for activation. Necessary awakening, primary awakening, and the recognition of the nonhierarchy of true nature are all important factors needed for activation, and yet they don’t ensure activation. It’s like throwing a dinner party: It’s necessary and useful to cook the meal and pick out good music and invite dear friends, but none of that guarantees that it will be a lively party.

In addition to the factors I’ve mentioned, activation might require other things. For instance, the completeness and certainty of our awakening is another important factor. The more established we are in necessary and primary awakening, the more fully we have integrated them, the greater the possibility that reality will reveal further mysteries.

Our work on clarifying the individual consciousness and its form of self-recognition helps to prepare us for the spontaneity of essential activation. This involves working through the issues, conflicts, defenses, and structures of our particular individual consciousness. The structure of self-recognition, which carries our history and gives us our sense of identity, can also be liberated. It can become clarified, which means it can carry our individual history without using it to define us. It can become something like an assemblage point that moves our experience from one place to another without us completely forgetting the history of our particular personal location. For some people, this process of clarification, which can contribute to the nonhierarchical realization of true nature, might be the most important factor for essential activation.

But what do necessary awakening, primary awakening, the nonhierarchy of true nature, and essential activation have to do with being human? What do they have to do with our lives?

This brings us to the fourth juncture on the path of realization and awakening. Here we recognize and understand reality experientially as true nature and as what we are. I mean reality in all senses of the word, which is what I call Total Being. Everyday reality, which is reality according to the dualistic view, is included in what I mean by reality. Once we have an encounter with true nature, then reality appears differently. And when there is realization of true nature, then that primary awakening changes our perception of reality, and we understand it differently. Each kind of realization changes our understanding of reality. In other words, realization is not only about how you experience yourself but also about how you experience reality, how you experience everything. Total Being refers to all these understandings of reality and all other possible ones.

The first two turnings of the wheel divulge the dual and nondual understandings of reality. In the nonduality of the second turning, we can experience that reality and true nature are the same thing, which is not obvious in the first turning. Seeing the nonduality of true nature, the oneness and unity of all manifestation, has to do with a specific way that true nature manifests. The oneness of nonduality has to do with true nature being the ground of everything, with all manifestation sharing the same true nature. As I said, the experience of nondual unity is based on principles of sameness and pervasiveness.

The fourth turning introduces other possibilities of experiencing reality, including other ways of experiencing unity and oneness. True nature manifests itself in ways that reveal more of its secrets, allowing us to perceive reality in new ways. For example, we can experience and realize reality in a holographic way. Although science has understood some things about the holographic universe as a projection of information, I am talking about an actual experience of reality that is different from both the dual and the nondual views. Modern science understands that any part of a hologram contains the information about all other parts of the hologram. But the present cosmological theories of the holographic universe do not use this property directly. Instead, they propose that our three-dimensional reality is a projection of a two-dimensional surface that contains all the information of the three dimensions. Although this actually approximates some possible perceptions in nondual realization, where all manifestations are surface phenomena of a fathomless nothingness, it is different from what I mean by the holographic view.

The view of realization that I am calling holographic is an experience, perception, and understanding that directly uses the property of holograms. It is the realization that any part of reality—whether our individual location, an object, or a form—contains all the rest of reality, all other forms and dimensions of reality. Parts are connected, but in a way that is different from that of nondual realization. They are connected as they are in a hologram, in the sense that each discrete point of time and space contains all other discrete points of time and space. This experience of unity is quite different from the nondual perception of sameness, which has a sense of unity that extends through space.

Because of the view of totality and the recognition of the nonhierarchy of all manifestations of true nature—the understanding of which arises in the fourth turning—many new kinds of realization become available to us and each of them discloses another way in which reality can form itself. It turns out that reality is much more plastic and mysterious than we thought. The nondual perspective of reality shows the unity and the luminosity and the beauty of reality by shifting the vantage point from the self to various boundless dimensions of true nature. But the dual and nondual ways of experiencing reality have something in common: Both arise from an abiding, continuing vantage point from which to experience reality.

The fourth turning introduces the possibility of living without a fixed vantage point. We can experience reality from a series of shifting vantage points, or we can experience reality without any vantage point. This possibility is intertwined with the view of totality, which is an open view that allows and acknowledges all possible views without creating a hierarchy of views. When I say that the vantage point of experiencing reality can change, I mean we can experience reality from the vantage point of love, for instance, or from the vantage point of awareness or from the vantage point of emptiness. And we can also experience reality without any vantage point. This brings us back full circle to the simplicity of everyday experience—what Zen Buddhism refers to as the way of nonthinking, as opposed to the ways of thinking or not thinking.

The freedom of the fourth turning includes the liberation of enlightenment itself. Because all experiences are seen as nonhierarchical, we can experience any kind of realization or no realization, essential experience or ego experience, without disrupting the sense of freedom. Every realization at each juncture on the path of awakening changes our perception of reality and changes what reality means. The fourth juncture shows us that all of reality—Total Being—is true nature and is what we are. This is what makes all of this relevant for you and your life. This recognition brings an unimaginable freedom, a freedom to be exactly where you are without any concern or worry about your realization or lack thereof. Both enlightenment and delusion are manifestations of reality. And because you recognize everything as a manifestation of reality, nothing can ruffle your feathers.

So the simple physical act of drinking your jasmine green tea is equal to experiencing the emptiness of all forms or seeing the luminosity of reality or experiencing the love that is creating the whole universe. The fourth juncture on the path of awakening—recognizing all of reality as true nature and as what you are—means that any particular, and the totality of the universe at all times, is true nature. True nature, the radically other particular of necessary awakening and the absolutely pervasive particular of primary awakening, is now—in this new kind of realization—not only any and every particular but also completely present in its totality in every particular. The particular can be an object, an experience, an event, or a phenomenon; it can be any of these or all of these at once, throughout all space-time.

Another kind of realization is the realization of what I call the “clean ordinary.” From this perspective, sipping your green tea is as significant an experience as the enlightenment of emptiness or the realization of love. Any experience of any kind can be experienced as ultimate without being experienced as the totality of true nature. All experience is simply reality doing its thing in one way or another.

From this perspective, freedom is the freedom from having to be in any state or condition. This is sometimes referred to as divine indifference. The indifference to what is happening allows things to open and keep moving from one experience to another. And more important than any of the experiences, which can be truly wondrous, is the indifference itself. Indifference doesn’t mean you don’t feel joy or love or anger; it means that it doesn’t matter what you feel or experience. It doesn’t matter in the sense that you are not invested in reality being one way or another; you are not trying to skew your experience one way or another. You are naturally at ease with yourself and with reality. Reality rejoices at this kind of indifference, this total openness and surrender, and expresses this joy by revealing more of its secrets.

5

THE REVERENCE OF TRUE NATURE

I REMEMBER CHANGING TRAINS in Europe years ago for the first time. When you go from one train to another, you have only one or two minutes to get out of the train with all your luggage and get on the next one, or you miss it. So depending on how much luggage you have, you might make it or not. I always wondered how the Europeans managed it, and then I realized that they carry very little. For some of us from the United States, loaded with trunks and suitcases and bags, changing trains is a bigger deal.

If we have grown accustomed to how reality appears in the first two turnings of the wheel—either as dual or nondual—the shift in perspective that occurs in the third and fourth turnings might feel like we are changing trains with little time and lots of luggage. And the train we’re trying to catch is one of those super-fast, levitating bullet trains! This change in view might be particularly difficult if we have settled in nondual experiencing because we might assume that nonduality is the true way that reality manifests. We might not expect other forms of reality or perception to be possible.

We are each in different places and facing different issues. Some of us might have been waiting for years for the nonhierarchical view of the path. And others of us might be in the process of discovering and learning about the variegated qualities of true nature or the vastness of boundless being. Wherever we happen to be is exactly where we should be. Being where we are—allowing it and exploring it—is the central tenet of our practice of inquiry all along the path.

From the perspective of nonhierarchy and the view of totality, we can see the wisdom of this practice in a new way. Wherever we are, wherever we happen to find ourselves, is a manifestation of true nature and contains all of reality. There is no point in striving to be anywhere else. So even if this shift in the teaching seems inaccessible, even if it seems improbable or outlandish, from the perspective of totality, all you need to do is be where you are. You can receive the benefit of this wisdom simply by allowing yourself—your heart and your mind and your body—to be impacted by this teaching.

When first receiving a subtle teaching, it’s important to listen with your heart and with your being. If the mind understands the teaching, that can help open up your experience, but the openness and receptivity of the heart is foremost. Should you feel that these ideas are over your head or are too radical to accept, you can let that be and allow yourself to simply feel whatever is here. There is plenty of time to work everything out and understand more about the perspective that I am presenting in this book.

Years ago I listened to various teachers and most of the time understood little of what was being taught. This is the norm in spiritual teachings—most people do not understand much of what is being communicated by the teacher. There are various reasons for this, but most importantly it shows us that learning is not just a matter of conceptual understanding; in fact, it is primarily a matter of transformation and awakening and realization, all of which are experiential.

Sometimes we can rapidly absorb a teaching, and other times we can’t get very far with it for a long time. But we don’t need to get into a mental struggle with the ideas and the notions. Although understanding is an important part of awakening, it need not happen immediately. We can engage the teaching with the heart, with the heart’s devotion to and love of the truth. Often, it is the heart that first resonates with the teaching, that first experiences the teaching, and the mind might take a little while to catch up.

We have been focusing on true nature—on what we are and what reality is—and we are looking at it from a view that is different from the usual hierarchical perspective of forms and dimensions. As we look at true nature from this different perspective, we confront questions and challenges that can open up new kinds of experience and realization. My interest is not simply to disseminate what is new in the teaching. The perspective I am teaching here actually arose decades ago. I am teaching it now because I see that it might be useful, that it might support wherever we are on the path of awakening. No matter where we find ourselves, no matter what our experience is, this view can open and energize whatever we are learning. As I said, we are not exploring any particular condition or state or realization; rather, we are recognizing something about how reality works, about how true nature lives.

So far, we’ve discussed different experiences and views of true nature—the dual close encounter of the third kind with true nature, the nondual self-realization of true nature, the nonhierarchical realization of true nature, and the essential activation that makes it possible for realization to be free, for reality to be liberated so it can reveal its purity in its various facets or faces. This frees us from being caught in any particular view or being stuck in any particular experience that we think is good or valuable or right. We can be liberated from all kinds of judgments, comparisons, seeking, and effort because wherever we are is fine, wherever we are is simply what it is.

When we first have a close encounter with true nature—where we directly experience its radical otherness—we recognize that it is something miraculous. Even in this beginning experience of true nature as a something among other things, we sense in the experience an inherent purity, an inherent goodness, an inherent magic and power. And the more we learn about it, the more we encounter it, the more we experience the realization and the freedom of true nature, the more we are awestruck by its majesty and beauty. We see that the self-expression of true nature is what makes it possible for us to have any spiritual experience. It is what makes it possible for us to have any insight or understanding.

Without true nature, we are hopeless as human beings; we are lost in an intractable sort of way. Without the light or the guidance or the presence of true nature, we are unconscious and asleep—“fodder for the moon” as Gurdjieff put it. That is to say, without true nature, we are basically serving the perpetuation of life, the perpetuation of the universe. Instead of being the universe that is self-manifesting—what he called “the trogoautoegocrat”—we become food for evolution and don’t actively participate in the actual creative effulgence of life.

Seeing the role of true nature in illuminating the dire situation we find ourselves in impacts our heart and our soul, and it transforms our relationship to true nature and everything that expresses it. The more we recognize and encounter true nature, the more the heart is touched. True nature touches the heart in a way that nothing else does. When we realize how exquisite true nature is, we become stunned. How can it be? How can there be such a thing? How can there be such an energy, such a power, that is compassionate and strong at the same time, that is precise and loving at the same time, that is the nature of everything and creating everything at the same time? We experience an immense sense of awe and wonder. We can’t help but love true nature for what it is because of its magnificence, its beauty, its liberating power, its loving generosity, its loving light. It is like a luminosity whose action is pure love and pure goodness. The more it touches us, the more we feel real and satisfied, and the more meaningful our life becomes.

Our sense of awe is not only full of wonder, appreciation, and love but is also imbued with a deep respect for the truth and power of true nature. This respect can develop naturally into a profound reverence for true nature; in this way it becomes a factor useful for essential activation. This reverence—a mix of love, joy, delight, respect, and awe—is both a feature and an expression of that activation. It is a natural response to the fullness of our encounters with true nature and to the completeness of our realizations of true nature. We can’t help it; it simply happens.

We fall in love with true nature, but not in the sense that we like it or enjoy it or value it. It is not that kind of love. It’s more as if true nature is the central thing in our life, in our death, in the existence and meaning of everything—there is no getting away from it. True nature is the very heart of the universe in such a way that all we can do is to kneel in complete humility before its amazing power and beauty and goodness.

The more that we have this attitude of love, respect, and reverence, the more possible it is for essential activation to occur. And as essential activation happens, this reverence only intensifies. This kind of reverence is a certain attitude of the heart, a certain attitude of the soul—humble, prayerful, and offering up whatever is left of our individual consciousness. In kneeling before true nature, what we are giving over is ourselves. This is something that happens as a natural response to the recognition of the majesty of true nature. When we realize that this amazing exquisite reality is also what we are, we feel even more grateful. And although all of us might feel this reverence to some degree, it can grow and become an abiding attitude that gets more intense as we learn more of the secrets of reality.

Many issues and beliefs can limit our experience of this kind of prayerful reverence and profound devotion, dedication, and commitment to true nature. It might be that we have not yet had a full encounter with true nature, or that we have still not completely understood it, or that we are taking it for granted in some way. The attitude of reverence means that we recognize the immeasurable significance and the infinite importance of true nature for our life and for our consciousness—throughout this life and whatever occurs next.

Some people think that if there is nondual realization of true nature—if you realize true nature as what you are and as what everything is—then it doesn’t make any sense to feel reverence and devotion because that implies dualism. They think that being prayerful or loving or adoring or supplicating implies there is a you separate from true nature. But we only need to study the great masters of the nondual condition to see that they constantly pray to true nature—crying, remembering, and supplicating—even though they fully know that there is no separation between them and true nature.

It is true, of course, that we can realize true nature as a nondual truth, but when it appears relationally, it can manifest itself in a way that looks dualistic. We feel reverence toward true nature, and this reverence is for what we truly are and what everybody and everything truly is. So even though we realize that we are everything, the impact of that on the individual consciousness is awe and reverence for true nature. When we explore it further, we might see that it is the reverence of true nature itself, that it is true nature waking up to itself and being awestruck by its own magnificence. It reveres and adores the truth. It rejoices in its own majesty without taking ownership of it. As individuals, we often take ownership when we feel “this magnificence is me.” But, in reality, it is only true nature that can say that.

And this attitude of wonder, love, dedication, commitment, and prayerful reverence is vital for the continual practice that makes it possible for realization to keep proceeding to further realizations, to realizations other than only dual and nondual. This can become runaway realization, which means that realization keeps changing, unfolding, and presenting new faces of reality.

As I said, if we study and observe the masters of various spiritual traditions, we can see that they spend a lot of their time in solitude in a kind of prayerful attitude toward true nature. I notice this in myself, and also in people quite steeped in their tradition who are deeply realized and considered the exemplars of their teaching. None of these people walk around thinking, “I am it. I got it. I’m done.” That is narcissism. There is a delicate balance here: We recognize that true nature is what we are, and yet we continue to practice with an attitude of devotion and reverence without the one who is practicing becoming separate from true nature. This reverence is neither an idealization nor a product of our imagination, both of which will distort our experience of true nature.

So the attitude of reverence is for what we are and is much bigger than the individual that we are. It is what we are beyond the individual. And we are also always the individual while we are the totality. Because we are at once the totality and an individual—inseparably but distinctly—it is possible for true nature to feel reverence toward itself without resorting to the dual view. But usually we can express this only in a relational way, which makes it appear dualistic. Although in the beginning it is important to recognize the radical otherness of true nature, part of the challenge here is not to become dualistic in the attitude of reverence, not to think of true nature as something other but to realize it as what we are.

We could say that true nature transforms our individual consciousness and our heart and mind so that we learn the correct relationship to true nature. But true nature is actually transforming and revealing itself. And part of the revelation of itself is the arising of this humility, this reverence, and this prayerful attitude acknowledging a mystery so fathomless that regardless of how much we realize and understand it, it is still new and there is always more to learn.

The more we experience this innate reverence of true nature, the more we have faith and trust in its truth, power, and goodness. And as our trust and faith increase, essential activation intensifies and realization becomes more dynamic and more liberated. So even though there is the possibility of duality and the danger of self-aggrandizement, people who are activated in this way usually don’t become trapped in these; they are interested only in learning more about reality. Their attitude is “I am the truth and I want to know myself more, and this prayerful reverence and humility allows me to know more about myself, which is reality, which is you, which is everything.”

This kind of reverence, adoration, and love is most concretely expressed in our attitude toward practice and in the way we practice the teaching. Our practice includes the way we conduct ourselves in the world. Do we act according to the recognition that true nature is the magnificence of everything and everybody? Does our respect and reverence extend to other people? We can even feel this reverence as gratitude for all teachings because teachings by their nature express this reverence more explicitly. Even though we might admire the awesome discoveries of modern neuroscience, we don’t usually experience that admiration as prayerful reverence for science. The attitude of reverence has more to do with the sublime and the holy. We see versions of it—devotion, supplication, prayer—in monotheistic traditions, but the attitude of reverence toward true nature or the Tao or Brahman manifests in most spiritual teachings.

Some Christian saints talk about it as the fear of God. There is a lot of literature about the wrath of God and what happens if you don’t heed that truth. For a long time, this didn’t make any sense to me, and I wondered why anyone would be afraid of true nature. The way I understand this now is that it’s not so much about being afraid of God’s anger and punishment as it is the recognition of a natural law. If you are not living according to the truth, you are going to be in conflict with reality, and your life will be a mess. You will be in hell. Although this does make some sense, it’s better not to think of reverence in terms of fearing God.

Some people do feel that what is powerful and scary commands respect because they have to heed it and submit to it. But the feeling of reverence toward true nature comes not from fear but from appreciation. We feel humble and grateful when faced with how exquisite and miraculous true nature is. We can’t help but feel love and devotion as our heart bows in prayer to its majesty. We recognize that the light of true nature, its purity and goodness, is what illuminates all the spiritual experiences, insights, openings, and realizations that we have had and will have. We worship true nature because it is genuine and true, because it is all and everything, because there is nothing but true nature. If we don’t experience this kind of reverence, a door is closed. It means that our heart and our soul are not open in a way that can allow us to be touched by the goodness of true nature.

This kind of reverence can infuse all of our life. We can express it in our formal practices, in the way we conduct our everyday life as practice, and in our relationship with teachings, whether our own or all others. The reverence of true nature also appears when we recognize that somebody—whether our teacher, our friend, or a stranger—has realized and is embodying the magnificence of truth in whatever limited or limitless way it is appearing. When we recognize true nature in any of its forms, we can’t help but feel a deep respect.

It is important for us to realize that this kind of reverence needs to happen at some point. This doesn’t mean that true nature has a need to be revered, or that the teaching or the teachers need it. It is you who needs this kind of reverence for your ongoing realization and awakening. If the teacher needs your reverence and devotion, then that teacher is not fully realized, which sometimes does happen. They have issues that they still need to work through. What is important is that you need to experience reverence and respect for your teacher in order to receive their transmission. Your heart needs to be open to receive the teaching, and this openness expresses itself as respect and appreciation for your teacher. I’m not saying you have to be devoted in the way that some people are devoted to their gurus—always doting on them and serving them sweets and drinking their saliva and all that sort of thing. Many teachings have developed intricate spiritual rituals to express this kind of devotion. In our work, we don’t ritualize the attitude of reverence. We simply need to recognize and experience it in our attitude and in our conduct, in the way we feel and in the way we practice.

The relationship between teacher and student can change as our practice matures. At the beginning, there is often an asymmetry of realization between teacher and student that needs to be acknowledged. This asymmetry is part of the truth and it’s the reason why the student comes to the teacher in the first place. In time, as the student learns and matures, the asymmetry can decrease, but even when there is symmetry between student and teacher, the reverence continues. Both the student and the teacher need to recognize the teacher as the teacher, and the teacher needs to relate to the student as a student, even though they might feel more like friends. This is a subtle dynamic that requires a great deal of realization and understanding in order to unfold in an optimizing way.

There is a story that illustrates how the relationship of student and teacher changes and yet stays the same. In Brilliant Moon: The Autobiography of Dilgo Khyentse, there is a moving encounter that helped me further understand the question of reverence in relationship to the teacher. Dilgo Khyentse, one of the icons of Tibetan Buddhism in the last century, was trained by many teachers, but there was an original teacher who he felt was his main teacher. This teacher died, and by the time he was reincarnated, Dilgo Khyentse was one of the major figures in the nondual Dzogchen tradition. He was the head of many Buddhist schools and trained many teachers, including the current Dalai Lama. Dilgo Khyentse was a tall man, over six feet and, at that time in his life, he was overweight and had trouble doing supplications. Despite his spiritual and physical stature, whenever Dilgo Khyentse came face to face with the reincarnation of his teacher, who was still a young boy, maybe six or seven years old, he would always prostrate himself all the way to the ground with tears streaming down his cheeks. Even though his teacher was a boy who hadn’t yet learned much, and even though Dilgo Khyentse was himself fully realized, the attitude of devoted reverence did not waver.

When we feel this kind of awed devotion, it is the reverence of reality itself, of its essence and nature, of its mystery and magic. We can’t help but bow our heads in humility. We can’t help but love its purity and goodness and generosity. And as our heart opens in this way, true nature responds by revealing more of itself. This only intensifies our gratitude, which in turn elicits an even greater outpouring of true nature. We can, at some point, recognize that it is a single force that manifests as the two sides of this dialectic. Our continual reverence and the ongoing revelation of reality are two sides of one true nature. We are free to experience this as a dialectic or as a unity, as both at once or as neither. However it appears, the reverence of true nature is a factor, a feature, and an expression of essential activation.

We have been exploring some of the factors that contribute to the possibility of essential activation, where being is ignited and its dynamism is liberated from having to hold any particular view of reality. Reality is free to appear as any of its various possibilities, and it is so open that it does not need a limit or a final station for enlightenment. Freedom is so realized and being is so freely activated that knowing everything as nondual consciousness or awareness is simply one way that reality manifests. And that way of knowing reality is, in fact, only the beginning of enlightenment, not its end. There is no enlightenment with a capital E. The more we are devoted to true nature and the more we live the attitude of reverence, the greater is the possibility that the self-creative dynamism of reality will continue to reveal further secrets of existence.

Part Two

EXPRESSIONS OF AWAKENING

6

SELF-ILLUMINATING TRUE NATURE

WE HAVE BEEN EXPLORING essential activation, the dynamic liberating power of the philosophers’ stone. As we have seen, many factors are useful and necessary for essential activation, and yet no one factor nor all of them taken together can guarantee that essential activation will occur. I have been mostly emphasizing the obstructions to this kind of activation in terms of ignorance, in terms of the self and its positions and views about reality, in terms of concepts that we believe are permanent features of reality. But as we work with our delusions about reality, we can encounter all kinds of emotional obstacles that also hinder our experience of reality. All of our ignorance and delusions are connected with structures, with set patterns that involve feelings of fear and dread and anger and hatred and pain.

If our practice is going to be experiential, if it is concerned with true awakening, with a true encounter with reality, we can’t work on the cognitive delusions without also dealing with the emotional obstacles. It is important to be aware of this dimension and to feel it arising in our experience because this is part of the practice, part of how true nature is revealing itself. So even though I am only mentioning in passing some specific issues—such as the possible narcissism that can arise in recognizing ourselves as the majesty of true nature—it is important to acknowledge and work with these kinds of emotional obstacles as they arise.

One of the difficulties that can arise in our experience—not only in this teaching but in inner work in general—is the tendency to objectify true nature, the tendency to make it into a something. As we have encounters with true nature, whether we come into contact with it or we are it, true nature can appear as something different from other things, as a distinct particular. Its particularity and its difference give rise to the possibility of setting it apart; and by setting it apart, we objectify it, which begins a process of reification that feeds our sense of being an isolated self. As we objectify true nature, we both misconstrue it and support a sense of self that is disconnected from it. This tends to solidify the shell of the self, which means that we don’t recognize that true nature is what we are.

All of us have had the experience of reifying true nature. Anytime we think, “I am experiencing personal presence” or “I’ve realized boundless love,” we are making true nature a something. Our language does this all the time. Some of us use spiritual lingo as if we were talking about our grocery list of kale and orange juice and organic granola. We tend to talk about our spiritual life in the same way that we talk about the rest of our life—what we’ve got, what we need, who’s got what, what’s next. It’s good to recognize that this happens and also how it can lead to the objectification and reification of true nature.

And the opposite is also possible. We can experience a fear of objectification, either because we learn about reification somewhere or because we recognize that true nature is not an object. We can become careful and vigilant about not reifying true nature, which is also an obstacle to seeing reality as it is. Some of us believe that we can actually avoid reifying our experience as it happens. So we become hypercautious or use practices that avoid or sidestep the process of reification. Many of the Eastern yogic practices—those that employ concentration techniques, visualization, chanting, and so on—and some Western ones too, fall within this category of sidestepping the process of reification instead of going through it. Those practices can actually be effective in sidestepping the issue, but they don’t deal with the underlying fact that the mind has the innate tendency to reify and objectify our experience.

When we recognize that true nature is not a self-existing object and cannot be reified, we may face the pitfall of believing that we can actually stop or avoid reification by using our mind. This is yet another delusion because the mind, for the most part, cannot function without reifying. The ordinary mind is itself a process of reifying and using reification to think. Even though it has the potential to work differently, it develops through a process of objectification and reification from the moment we start learning. From childhood, our thinking develops by apprehending objects and the relationships between objects. This is a built-in mechanism of the mind. Our neural networks are completely set this way. We can’t try to not reify, because it is impossible to stop reifying using the ordinary mind. And the effort to stop reifying is also a misunderstanding of how awakening and illumination happen, how the diffusion of reification happens. The ordinary mind doesn’t have enough luminosity to even notice reification, let alone try to avoid it. Without the illuminating power of true nature, the ordinary mind faced with reification will just spin its wheels, which is what it’s good at.

In other words, we cannot try to avoid objectification, delusion, or reification. The mind cannot try to be careful; the heart cannot try to be protected; the individual consciousness cannot try to get somewhere. All of these are based on the illusion that is already exposed in the boundlessness of true nature. We see from the nondual perspective that there is no separate self that has its own will or that can do anything on its own. Seeing everything as the same reality, the same truth, the same light, helps us understand how the illumination of these obstacles can happen.

I’ve never tried to avoid reification, objectification, or delusion, because I never thought I could. It has always been clear to me that it is not possible. And I have never been afraid of these things, because I recognize that the true protector of practice is the philosophers’ stone. True nature protects itself through its liberating combustion, through its quality of red sulfur. By protecting itself from these dangers, it protects us because the philosophers’ stone is what we are.

But this doesn’t happen if we don’t have the requisite faith, trust, confidence, and reverence. If we are not in touch with the liberating power of true nature, if we are not aware of it and don’t recognize its true value and significance, then we have a limited experience of reality. However, if we continue to be in touch with true nature regardless of how it appears—whether as essential presence or nondual awareness or some other way—when the issue of objectification becomes an obstacle as we inquire into experience, true nature itself will reveal what is necessary to see through the reifications. The light of true nature can attain a certain kind of subtlety or discrimination that reveals reification and sees through it, disclosing a reality that is independent of reification.

The thinking mind cannot do the job. We, as individual human beings, cannot do the job. What does the job is always the philosophers’ stone. And it uses the mind and the intellect; it uses the heart; it uses the will. But we need to have faith in it, not in the mind or heart or will. They are the servants, the channels through which the light functions; without the light, they function in the dark. We cannot avoid reification through the action of our individual will or our wanting or our thinking.

The process of awakening is a self-illuminating process. We can recognize, at some point, that true nature is illuminating its own experience by the force of its own light or awareness or intelligence taking on different forms, manifestations, and subtleties.

On the spiritual path, for a long time, true nature appears as various manifestations that challenge and expose the elements that form the basis of our sense of self. This is how inquiry usually happens. As we begin to inquire, we notice various structures, obstacles, and issues, and the understanding of them frequently occurs in tandem with the arising of true nature in one form or another. So in some sense, true nature functions by way of illuminating delusions, illusions, and obscurations; and through the illumination of what is darkened, it reveals its secrets. That is what self-illumination means. True nature illuminates obstacles by manifesting certain powers and in doing so recognizes something about itself that it hasn’t seen before. True nature is revealing itself and knowing itself as it is practicing seeing through the obstacles.

The language I am using combines the dual and nondual views. Many of us think that awakening and illumination happen either because we do something or because we step aside and surrender to the sudden eruption of realization. This is true from the perspective of the first turning of the teaching. But the boundlessness and nondual realization of the second turning of the wheel show us that there isn’t an independent self that can either do or not do. So nobody does anything, including stepping aside. Although the dualistic view is useful at times depending on where we are and the situation at hand, it can also become an impediment to experiencing reality in other ways.

Thinking that realization happens because “I am stepping aside” is the same thing as thinking that realization happens because “I am meditating.” Both positions take awakening and illumination to be a result of something we are doing. This becomes problematic because it prevents reality from revealing the fact that true nature is always the illuminator. It is the light that illuminates. It is the awareness that discerns. It is the knowledge that knows. The self or the individual or the practitioner doesn’t have these powers, doesn’t have these capacities. And when we use the ordinary style of language—where the subject doing the action is always an “I” or a self—we are appropriating the capacities of true nature. As I said, from the nonhierarchical view, we see that reality does appear this way sometimes, but if we assume that this is the only way that reality is, we limit our experience of reality and miss all kinds of freedom and fun.

When we recognize the self-illumination of reality, we see that as we practice—inquire, meditate, understand—it is Total Being that is practicing. For the moment, I am using Total Being and true nature interchangeably, but I will later discuss the relationship between them in greater detail. So when you are practicing, it is true nature with all its faces, with all its displays, that is practicing, which means that all of reality, the whole universe, is practicing when you are practicing. This is the dynamic of realization, the relationship between practice and awakening. From the beginning, it is always true nature that is practicing and awakening through us as individuals.

When we see that awakening is the self-illumination of true nature, this doesn’t mean that we should stop practicing. It doesn’t mean that we get a free pass and can be lazy and simply rely on true nature to do the job. It means that in our practice, what we have faith in is not the mind or the heart or the body but true nature and its truth and love and power. This trust is similar to how the monotheistic traditions talk about faith in God, except here it is not faith in an other. True nature is not something outside of us or other than us. We completely trust the truth of true nature, and we have unwavering faith in its loving and illuminating and liberating power. The only thing left for us to do in the light of this kind of faith is to stay oriented toward true nature. We continue whatever practice we are doing without believing that we are making any illuminations happen, without believing that our practice or our capacities are what make awakening occur.

This is a subtle and controversial point, one that takes a great deal of experience and wisdom to understand. This is why nondoing, which is the core of inquiry, is such an important part of our practice. When we inquire, we are not trying to do something to our experience; we are simply interested in letting it be and understanding it so it can reveal itself as fully as possible. In some sense, we could say that reality, because of its pure heart—its true nature—appears in a dualistic way so that we can practice, so that we can begin to inquire into and investigate who and what we are, whether we do that individually, dialectically, or in groups.

Reality first appears dualistically as somebody who is practicing, somebody who doesn’t know what enlightenment is or what true nature is and is trying to find out or to seek it as if it is something else, something far away. However, if our practice always remains dual, it can become repetitive and mechanical, keeping us on the same horizontal plane. We need to apply ourselves with sincerity and devotion and reverence, so this dualistic process can begin to open up in such a way that true nature reveals itself as the force and the light behind the practice, as the intelligence that makes it possible for practice to happen at all.

All kinds of issues might arise as we realize that even though we need to continually practice, we cannot do anything and all of reality is the self-illumination of true nature. We might feel that we are useless or helpless, that we don’t have the power or the capacity to do anything. And for a while, we might think this is a bad thing. But it is actually true illumination: The usual self that we ordinarily tend to take ourselves to be can’t do anything. And as we experience how helpless and incapable we are, true nature is waking up—its light is getting more intense and more brilliant.

If we read about the lives of enlightened masters or mystics, we see that often their enlightenment or realization happens when they hit bottom, when they get to the point of being completely helpless and hopeless and incapable. They throw in the towel and completely and truly give up. You can’t fake this; it really has to happen. You have to exhaust all your capacities and truly give up, not out of cynicism or despair but out of the simple recognition that you can’t do anything.

When this truly happens, satori is possible and awakening can erupt as true nature manifests with its blazing light. True nature wakes up by revealing to itself the delusion that it is this little self that is trying to practice and get somewhere. And when it sees this, it does not put its energy into the functioning of that little self. It doesn’t put its intelligence and its will into the action of that little self, because that little self can impede the whole process of true nature awakening to itself. It’s not that the little self has the independent power to impede awakening, but because true nature still hasn’t woken up to itself, it is putting all its power into the activity of the little self. So when the little self feels that it can’t do anything, that it is poor in capacity, it is in fact recognizing the power of true nature.

Illumination further reveals that appropriating the liberating power of true nature is not our fault. Delusion is no more a matter of individual fault than awakening is a matter of individual effort. Being deluded, thinking we can do anything—including stepping aside—is an objective fact of being human. And it is one step toward unveiling true illumination. It’s fine to think of it as letting go or surrendering when we are still identified with the view of the little self. But from another perspective, we can see that it is actually true nature illuminating its field, its organ of perception, lighting it up so that it wakes up and sees itself. We continue to see reality through the eyes of identification with a self until the illumination becomes so intense that we cannot help but recognize the truth. And what that truth is can be revealed on any level. We can have an insight about a structure or see the emptiness of our history or recognize what we are in all of its various subtleties or what reality is in its various possibilities.

Because illumination happened mostly in a progressive way in my case, the teaching that arose from my experience developed a hierarchical perspective. It’s good that it happened that way because now there is a teaching. When teachers wake up suddenly, often they don’t know how it happened and they cannot teach others about it. They can talk about their present experience of being awake, its qualities and features, which does help some people. But going through the process of awakening in a gradual way has revealed the working of reality in great detail.

In my experience, true nature manifested different forms and dimensions of itself, illuminating each of them in a thoroughgoing way that included illuminating whole categories of obscurations clearly and distinctly. This made it possible for the mode of continual illumination to become the particular body of teaching we call the Diamond Approach. The progressive view is not for everyone, but it allows the teaching to be relevant to more people because so many different dimensions of reality have been revealed over time. Within the vast array of aspects and dimensions articulated in this teaching, there will likely be at least one sector of the teaching that is relevant to any given individual.

Even though I am mentioning the progressive view of the teaching, when I say that realization or awakening or enlightenment is nothing but the self-illumination of true nature, I mean that this self-illumination is happening from the beginning of spiritual practice. I don’t mean that at the beginning we are responsible for realization and that, at some point, true nature steps in. Every single time we experience and understand something about reality, it is true nature illuminating itself. When this illumination happens in a more total way, we call it awakening or realization or enlightenment.

This perspective of the dynamic of realization—the relationship of practice and awakening—is an antidote to the delusion that we are liberating ourselves through our own individual efforts and capacities. When we side with this delusion, we are appropriating the liberating power of true nature. We are appropriating the light of true nature, its intelligence and clarity and awareness. The theistic traditions have useful measures to counteract this human tendency to appropriate. They make it clear that we are always at God’s mercy, that whatever good we derive is from God, that we are in a state of paucity and insufficiency. We are told from the beginning that whatever light, whatever intelligence, whatever illumination, whatever goodness arises is always a blessing, is always grace.

Although this deals with our tendency to appropriate the illuminating power of true nature, it can also lead to a position that keeps us firmly in the dual view. Because some theistic traditions consider God, the source of grace, as something absolutely other, we can come to assume that there is a me and a God and that grace always comes from God, from the outside. This view can hinder the possibility of self-realization. We can recognize grace and expansion and surrender, and we can also see, “That is what reality is; that is what I am,” without the “I” referring to the usual sense of self. Self-realization means that we see that true nature is what our being is; it is what is conscious and what is aware.

When true nature illuminates itself, it reveals different possibilities, different secrets. It begins by revealing the luminosity and the miracle of its presence. And once we are converted to true nature, once we trust and value and revere it above all else, then true nature illuminates more of itself. As we stay in touch with true nature—not losing sight of it and inquiring into its presence and its obstacles—true nature can reveal the unity of its nonduality. When we learn about true nature in this progressive way, from dual to nondual, we gain a view of reality that is self-consistent. One thing leads to another and all the parts fit with each other in a way that makes sense. The hierarchical view of true nature, which many teachings embody, makes reality conceptually and metaphysically accessible and self-consistent.

But we might remember Gödel’s famous incompleteness theorems, which state that if a system is self-consistent, it cannot be complete. Gödel wasn’t dealing with spiritual systems but with a simple arithmetical system or logical statements. He proved that any self-consistent set or group or system cannot be complete, because there will be truths and statements in it that are not derived from that system. This is relevant to what I am saying because it is related to the shift from the hierarchical view of this teaching to its nonhierarchical view.

In the Diamond Approach, by staying within the self-consistent and progressive view of the teaching and continuing to inquire into its implications, the field of the teaching opened into the wisdoms of the third and the fourth turnings. The way out of self-consistency was to follow it to its limits. This ushered in the view of totality, which could hold all the experiences and perceptions and insights that didn’t jibe with the original progressive view. And allowing this view to unfold introduced other possibilities and experiences, including the wisdom of the nonhierarchical view as well as other revelations beyond the dichotomy of duality and nonduality.

In the fourth turning, true nature illuminates even more of its possibilities. We see that true nature is beyond space and time. Because it is beyond space, it does not have a size or shape; because it is beyond time, it does not have duration. When people think of true nature as outside of time, they usually think of true nature as a ground through which all time passes; so it is outside of time and yet present in all times. But to think of true nature as present in all times is to include it in time. True nature has no extension in time or in space.

Seeing this reveals that reality can appear as unities that are different from the classical unity of nonduality, which is based on extension through space and time. When reality is truly beyond space and time, it can reveal the unity of singularity. Singularity is when the infinity of reality appears in a single point. All spatial and temporal infinity manifests as one point. All space and all time are one point, where the point is all space and all time without any sense of spatial extension or temporal duration.

The self-illuminating power of true nature can reveal all sorts of novel ways to experience reality. I am mentioning only one possibility, a possibility that is referred to in many teachings but rarely emphasized. When we appropriate the power of true nature, we put the brakes on the acceleration of its dynamism and we dampen the fiery combustion that ignites runaway realization. But when this self-illuminating light becomes natural and spontaneous and free, we begin to see how reality lives and plays.

True nature liberates itself by illuminating itself. The light of true nature revels in exposing and shattering our delusions, leading us always from one mystery to another, from one awakening to another, from one enlightenment to another. Runaway realization is the ride of the enlightened gods, the exhilarating joy of divinity and its royal heirs, the orgasmic play of the free mind and the free heart.

7

SELF-EXPRESSING TRUE NATURE

AS WE EXPLORE the liberating power of the philosophers’ stone, we are learning a more open way of looking at our experience and our practice. We can begin to recognize what true nature is and to more fully see its role in spiritual awakening and maturation. We can come to understand that true nature is behind all the various revelations, illuminations, awakenings, and realizations that we experience. We as individuals, especially as separate individuals, do not have the wisdom and the capacity to do any of it on our own.

But this does not mean that we are off the hook. Realizing that awakening is always an act of true nature, always grace, always a gift, always true nature illuminating itself, doesn’t mean that we as individual human beings do not have the responsibility to exert our capacities. We continue to endeavor, to practice, and to apply our capacities to discover the secrets of existence, to liberate ourselves and all others. This is the other side of self-illuminating true nature. We can come to recognize that realization happens as a dialectic between individual practice and the self-revelation of true nature as Total Being. This dynamic of realization reveals the inner workings of reality.

True nature, the unsullied purity at the heart of Total Being, which is all of reality, is pure illumination, is the light that illuminates and the goodness that loves. And it acts and functions through individuals, through what we ordinarily believe is our intelligence, our heart, and our will. But when we say “our will,” the point is to distinguish it from another person’s will, not to distinguish it from the will of true nature. This is part of our human error: In order to distinguish our uniqueness from another uniqueness, we end up disconnecting ourselves from the ground of all our capacities. We need to be extra subtle here because this language can be misleading. When I say it is “our human error,” I do not mean that there are actually separate human beings making errors; it is always Total Being, which appears in this case as human beings.

There can come a time when we see that we cannot as individuals do the work of waking up; we don’t have the requisite capacity. We are totally helpless and incompetent in the face of what is required. But even when we understand that only true nature awakens, this doesn’t mean that we can be lazy and take for granted that awakening is just going to happen. We still need to practice and to exercise the intelligence, the heart, and the will that true nature is expressing through our consciousness.

We do this not to get somewhere but because true nature as Total Being practices through us as individuals practicing, meditating, and inquiring. We can’t loaf around and idly wait for true nature to bestow her gifts. That attitude doesn’t express the purity of true nature. True nature expresses its purity when we are in the mode of practice and the attitude of practice. This means that we are experiencing and expressing true nature through the three centers: as commitment to continual practice through the belly, as love, devotion, and reverence through the heart, and as discriminating intelligence through the mind.

The dynamic of realization—the dance of practice and awakening—is a dialectic that combines the dual and the nondual views in an inextricable and indescribable way. We inquire as an individual who is exerting, who is endeavoring and is fully engaged, fully interested, fully committed, and fully devoted. And yet, being fully engaged and devoted means that it is true nature expressing itself in those ways, and its purity is expressed as the practice of an individual consciousness. This is how grace is inseparable from practice, from our own activity—or, at least, what we consider to be our own individual actions, orientations, and attitudes.

How else is true nature going to express itself as Total Being? How is it going to reveal itself, illuminate itself, liberate itself, and wake itself up, except through the individual? The individual is both its organ of perception and its organ of action, the lens through which it perceives and the instrument through which it operates. The dialectic between individual practice and realization—the fulcrum of the path—reveals the mystery of two that are one and one that expresses itself as two. Practice and realization are not separate, yet they are distinct. Neither practice nor realization subsumes or displaces the other, and yet they are inextricably one. They are distinct and yet one; we cannot rightly consider them two separate things nor the same thing. It’s true that we can see their relationship as dual—as two things that are related in various ways—or we can see their relationship as nondual, as the same indivisible unity. But the fourth turning reveals that the relationship of practice and realization is far more mysterious than either of these possibilities suggests.

And when we truly understand the dynamic of realization, when we recognize how practice and realization are related, we don’t take it for granted that we will wake up regardless of how we conduct ourselves. We don’t automatically assume that realization will continue happening, and that true nature will continue to manifest itself. When we take the revelation of reality for granted, we are expressing Total Being in a way that does not include the purity of true nature.

When we consider everything that is happening in the world, we see that Total Being can express itself in all kinds of ways. But practice is when true nature is expressing its purity, and it becomes total practice when it marshals everything we’ve got—our devotion, our understanding, and our action. Total practice means that the totality of who and what we are is practicing. There are many degrees of recognizing what this totality is. It can be the totality of our present experience, the totality of the individual, the totality of being, the totality of all and everything in all times and all space.

This is, in some sense, the secret of practice, and we need to learn this in practice. We need to learn it not only conceptually, but experientially as well. We need to see that when we are practicing, we are acknowledging true nature and expressing our devotion to and reverence for true nature, and we are putting into action our commitment to serve true nature—all of which is at the same time true nature expressing itself as that. This is one truth looked at from two sides: the side of the individual and the side of Total Being. And this is different from the oneness of classical nondual experience, which is a unity that subsumes difference in sameness, subsumes the individual in transcendent reality.

In the fourth turning, we recognize the unique role of the individual as an organ of realization. True nature cannot dispose of the individual. It needs you as an individual in order to reveal itself, to illuminate itself, and to awaken to what it is; and it does this by expressing itself. The way true nature expresses itself is through practice. And as practice becomes total practice, then practice is realization and its expression is awakening. Total practice is the self-expression of true nature explicitly recognizing itself as it expresses itself.

True nature is not only the nature of everything but also expresses itself as everything. It is inherently self-expressive. And true nature expresses itself in many different ways, which we know when we experience true nature as a specific particular—as love or clarity or strength or joy or stillness or awareness or emptiness. As our practice becomes total practice, we can see that it is already the expression of realization because the capacities we are using are the capacities of realization. All that we experience—the qualities and capacities, the attitude and orientation, the awakening and insight—are expressions of true nature.

And practice is not limited to formal practices—meditating or inquiry, praying or concentration—but includes all that we do. Practice, which is how Total Being expresses itself, includes our daily actions, communications, and interactions. It even includes our thoughts and feelings and attitudes. We are at the same time true nature expressing itself as the totality and as the individual through which the totality is expressing itself. At some point, it might be possible for us to recognize that the individual and the totality of all that is are exactly one and the same. But even though they are one and the same, they are also distinctly two. When we gather and practice in groups, our work gains power and intensity because it is the same true nature practicing, one true nature expressed through the collected total practice of all its organs as the totality of the field.

Practice becomes total, becomes the practice that is realization, when we have the attitude of devotion and reverence, when we are committed, when we are expressions expressing the commitment. When we are not expressing the commitment, when we are not expressing the reverence and love, when we are not expressing the intelligence and clarity, we are not practicing in a total way. Our practice is not as thoroughgoing as it could be.

True nature as Total Being expresses itself, and its expression of itself can be seen as its practice, and its practice is realization because it is illuminating itself and waking up to itself. The individual can recognize that enlightenment is nothing but true nature revealing what it is and what reality is. And true nature needs the individual in order to know itself and experience itself as enlightenment. Maybe true nature also wakes up to itself through animals and stars and planets. I don’t know about that. But we do know that it does it through human beings. Even if the stars are not aware of themselves practicing, they are nonetheless the expression of true nature because true nature as Total Being expresses itself as all and everything. Nothing is excluded. True nature expresses itself not only through our formal practices and our daily life, not only through our thoughts, feelings, and actions, but also through this book you’re holding and the chair you’re sitting on and the house you live in. It expresses itself as the oceans, mountains, and sky, as the galaxies and the universes—including all the possible parallel and quantum bubble universes.

These are some of the secrets that we learn as we continue practicing, as we continue expressing ourselves as true nature. To express ourselves as true nature, which is to live our realization, is simply to continue the practice that further realizes, further illuminates, further discovers what we are and what reality is. We practice to discover what the possibilities are. We can practice individually, in dyads, in groups, or as a school. And there are many schools these days with different kinds of teachings and practices.

Even though the entire world is an expression of true nature, not everybody practices, which means that true nature is not expressing its purity everywhere. That is why I make a slight distinction between Total Being and true nature. Total Being can sometimes express itself in ways—wars and destruction and hatred—that don’t readily disclose the purity of true nature. It does not make sense that this purity expresses itself as war and hatred. We will later discuss the relationship between Total Being, true nature, and reality in greater detail. For now, it is important for us to recognize that the attitude of continual practice—the application of our commitment and devotion and intelligence to practice—is true nature expressing itself in its purity.

Practice is true nature expressing itself because its nature is self-expressive. True nature expresses itself in our individual experience as practice. It expresses itself in our individual experience in a way that is intimate, personal, and relevant to us individually. And we can recognize that our experience is Total Being, is true nature expressed as Total Being. We can even come to see that our experience, realization, and understanding are the whole universe expressing itself in ways that are relevant for our individual life.

The personal and impersonal are in a living dialectic. The impersonal expresses itself personally through an individual life. Although we think of this as living our realization, it is also true nature expressing its realization. And yet, even though it is clear that true nature expresses itself by manifesting everything, this does not negate or eliminate the fact that true nature is aware of itself through the individual consciousness. Our experience might not feel individual or personal; we can feel that we are everything, as if everything is expressing itself as one totality. But this awareness is made possible through the individual consciousness. We can view reality from both sides—the personal or the impersonal—and both are useful as long as we don’t become fixed in either perspective.

When we recognize this fluidity of view, this radical openness of the view of totality, our practice becomes liberated from various delusions of self-centeredness, and our attitude and orientation align with an expanded view of reality. We can see that, in some sense, the self-expression of true nature as total practice is the philosophers’ stone expressing its illuminating power of red sulfur. The dynamic self-expression of true nature sparks the individual consciousness to constantly realize further ways of expressing true nature, which is true nature realizing more of its possibilities through the faculty of individual consciousness.

8

THE TRANSFORMER

I AM PRESENTING AN UNDERSTANDING, a view—of a path and of reality—that is open and open-ended. It is an open-endedness that makes it possible to recognize a nonhierarchical way of experiencing reality and of relating to our experience and the experience of others. This teaching comes from a place of simplicity, so simple that it is not even the opposite of complex. It’s a simplicity that allows complexity and richness.

When we talk about this simplicity, we cannot really talk about it directly; we can only explore its implications. This simplicity makes it possible to view reality without hierarchy, and although doing so is simple and liberating and freeing, it is also quite challenging. It can bring up all the structures, the unfinished material, the identifications, the positions and delusions that are challenged by the dimensions of the hierarchical view. If we have not worked through some sector of our consciousness, some sector of our individual history, it is bound to be stirred up by this simplicity. When we recognize that it is true nature that is behind all our illuminations and all the fruits of our work, even though we might experience a kind of surrender and simplicity, it can nevertheless give rise to all sorts of difficulties.

This recognition means that we cannot do: We cannot do this, we cannot do that, we cannot do anything. We are incapable in one way or another, and usually when we first encounter this feeling of incapacity, we experience it as a lack, as a deficiency, as an emptiness, as a castration, as a denudement, as a poverty, as a loss. It evokes all kinds of resistances and structures, all kinds of boundaries and ego identities, all kinds of feelings of inadequacy. These are some of the issues that might arise in response to this teaching, and it is good to be aware of them and to welcome them. I am not discussing these issues much, because I am focusing on the view and not on any particular experience, but you might have experiences that activate reactions or structures that have not been fully worked through in your own consciousness.

I have been focusing mostly on the awakening and illumination that comes from recognizing true nature. Implicit in this is that for there to be awakening and for the awakening to be lived in life entails a process of transformation. Transformation is not exactly the same thing as an awakening or an illumination or an enlightenment or a realization. It is a process of the fundamental change of the individual consciousness itself. Awakening or realization tends to be more of an eruption, a discovery that can be sudden and unexpected. We might be practicing in some way and something happens and we find ourselves in a different place, a different dimension of experience.

What happens, then, to the individual consciousness that enables it to live that awakening? What happens to our human consciousness that allows true nature as Total Being to express itself, to express the recognition of itself, to express the realization of its nature through our individual consciousness? It’s true that true nature is always expressing itself, but how is it going to express that realization, that awakening, that more basic recognition of what it is and what reality is?

Realization does have an immediate impact on the individual consciousness, but the consciousness requires a lot more for there to be a capacity to express in life the realization of the enlightenment that has happened. This is the process of transformation, which takes time because it is a process of development and maturing.

Some teachings think of transformation and realization as a sequence with one occurring before the other: first the transformation and then the enlightenment, or first the enlightenment and then the transformation. Other teachings, including this path, see them as interrelated. For us, realization and transformation are two interacting threads, intertwined in a dialectic of mutual influence. We don’t see it as a chronological sequence where an awakening emerges in life by transforming the individual consciousness or a transformation opens the individual consciousness to an enlightenment or awakening. Both can happen, of course, and it happens differently for different people. We can also go through stages where one or the other sequence dominates. We might notice ourselves steadily transforming and then there is a sudden eruption; or, the other way around, we can wake up in some way and then have a lot of work to do to metabolize it and bring it to actuality.

Transformation is necessary for living our realization, and awakening by itself is not automatically transformative. Some people believe that if they awaken, the individual consciousness is immediately transformed one hundred percent, and they can simply live that way. That’s not the way it usually works, though. I don’t know of any teaching that works that way.

The process of the transformation of individual consciousness has two sides: the kenotic side and the developmental side. Kenotic means a clarification of consciousness, an emptying of the structures, rigidities, and identifications that support and constitute the sense of self. Much of the transformation that is needed is the clarification of the individual consciousness, which is occluded by all kinds of beliefs and ideas and worldviews, all kinds of delusions and concepts and reifications that don’t completely disappear just because we are enlightened or awakened to true nature.

We have many realized, awakened individuals in the school, and they are all at different stages in the process of transformation. For some of us, there might be a great deal of transformation happening in terms of the clarification of the soul. We see our structures and self-images, our history and conflicts, our psychodynamics and patterns, and we work with them and understand them. Especially in the early segments of this teaching, which include a hierarchical view of reality, as we work through a certain structure, true nature arises as one or another quality or dimension of being. These close encounters with being might not be big awakenings that have reverberating, powerful impacts on the individual consciousness. For a long time, we might simply be working through our issues, experiencing presence and true nature incrementally in its various forms and qualities.

The first turning of the teaching is very much like this. The individual consciousness, as it is clarified, begins to recognize its spiritual nature. It has close encounters of a spiritual nature. It begins to experience, to know, to embody, and to understand the qualities and dimensions of our true nature. The question of appropriation and ownership is not yet relevant at this stage. Here we need to recognize that these are our qualities; we need to see that this is my compassion, my strength, my will. “Yes, I can do it! Yes, I have the will to do it!”

This sense needs to develop because in the beginning there is a need for empowering the individual consciousness. As we are first learning about our true nature, our consciousness still does not have the certainty that it is true nature and it needs that kind of empowerment. But as our consciousness shifts to the second turning—the awakening to the boundlessness of true nature—our appropriation becomes obvious, and we see that these qualities don’t belong to an individual self; they belong to something far more mysterious, far more formless—what we call true nature or the purity or heart of reality.

This clarification of the individual consciousness involves an emptying, a letting go, and a dissolving of the occlusion and the thickness of the sense of self. The structures and history that support the ordinary sense of individuality are understood and digested. And as these are understood, the individual consciousness becomes empty, becomes more and more transparent, which means true nature is more free to express itself through that consciousness. The more transparent and pliable our consciousness is, the more true nature is able to express its infinite possibilities. Our consciousness can return to an original state of transparency, now with the addition of being awakened to the condition of true nature.

The other side of the transformation of individual consciousness is its development. Our consciousness is not only clarified, but it is actually a growing organism. It’s an organism that evolves. Its capacity for experience, feeling, and responsiveness, and its perceptual capacities keep developing and maturing. And the various qualities, forms, and dimensions of true nature are instrumental in developing those capacities and faculties that we need not only for further realization but also for the expression of the realization we already have attained.

The process of transformation is a maturing of individual consciousness that expands the capacities we already have and also develops new faculties that we never had, or had only in a germinal way. Our capacity for discriminating intelligence develops. This is not just the usual human intelligence, but one that becomes an objective guidance that can discriminate and know our experience directly and immediately; it makes connections that our usual intellect cannot. This discriminating intelligence also gives us the capacity to articulate our experience in a precise and alive way. These capacities to both understand experience and communicate it—which most people either don’t have or have to a limited degree—begin to develop as the individual consciousness develops. The same goes for our relational capacity, our ability to interact with and be responsive to others and the world. And our capacity to act can also expand—in its freedom, spontaneity, intelligence, and effectiveness. So our capacities to discern, to relate, and to act can all develop and evolve in unimaginable ways.

Some of our capacities that we’ve had since birth can further develop, but others are discovered and can expand as part of the transformation of consciousness. As the individual consciousness clarifies, with old patterns and dynamics dissolving, it also grows, matures, and develops. Sometimes it is a particular obscuration or delusion that impedes our awakening, and at other times a specific kind of development is required for awakening to occur. In other words, some awakenings don’t happen for the reason that a particular issue blocks the way; and others don’t happen because we are still too young for them. The individual consciousness needs to mature for more fundamental kinds of realization and awakening and enlightenment to occur. Clarified of its structures, our consciousness becomes more capable of further and new awakenings and realizations.

As we see, the transformation of individual consciousness allows awakening and realization to develop to further realization, and as the new realization happens, that impacts our consciousness and provokes further transformation, further clarification, because it simultaneously exposes something we haven’t yet seen about ourselves and our view of reality and also gives us the capacity to work with it. This is the dialectic of transformation and awakening.

We can experience, as we all know, a condition of awakening or realization and persist in it for some time—maybe even forever—but when we function and interact, we find that we still operate from a usual sense of self, from some kind of unrecognized identifications or views or needs, from structures that have not yet been clarified. Or we might express that realization in an incomplete way, not only because we are influenced by old patterns but also because we don’t yet have the muscles and the capacities and the instrument with which to fully and truly express it. It is actually normal that when one is awakened, the expression of that awakening is not a foregone conclusion. That is what takes time and work.

The process of transformation, both the kenosis and the development of individual consciousness, depends on many factors. The factors have a lot to do with our history, our capacity to be present in mind, heart, and body, our commitment and sincerity to the truth. Transformation also depends on how we work with obscurations, issues, and structures. There are different methods, and some of them are effective in certain ways but not in others. And transformation also depends on the potency of the realization—its power to impact our consciousness—because the realization itself, or the awakening itself, has various degrees of eruption and intensity.

In all of this, essential presence is the elixir, the red sulfur, that both awakens and transforms. It clarifies and develops the individual consciousness, the mind, and the heart. It matures the capacity for action. It ripens our faculties and imbues them with all the qualities we need to live and express our realization.

Awakening happens for different people in various degrees of completeness. And there are many kinds of awakening to different faces of reality or true nature. In each face, we can awaken to different degrees of completeness. And the more complete the awakening is, the more impact it has on our consciousness, which exposes and begins to transform what needs to be clarified and reveals what needs to be developed. Although the nonhierarchical approach is a powerful way to wake up to reality and to the eruption of true nature, the hierarchical view is more effective for transformation, for the part of the path that has to do with clarification and the evolutionary development of the individual consciousness.

In the dance of transformation and awakening, in the play of hierarchy and nonhierarchy, our life becomes a practice that both illuminates and expresses. By expressing ourselves, our totality, we are illuminating what we experience, and as we illuminate reality, we develop capacities as our realization comes into contact with life, with our relationships and our work. Our realization is truly tested by coming into contact with life because it will reveal how much we can express it, how completely Total Being can express that realization. To express it, we have to express it in life, and that means in real-life situations. Grappling with these situations will bring up the structures that still need to be understood.

When we recognize the gap between our awakening and its expression in our life, we appreciate the importance of transformation. Awakening is the discovery of the truth of what we are and what reality is. Transformation means the clarification and development of the organ, the instrument, so that it has enough lenses, enough limbs, to express and live that realization.

We are all at various stages of this transformation, and because true nature is endless mystery, there is no end to the awakening, which means there is no end to the transformation. It’s not as if one day we will be completely transformed and then we are done. For that to happen would mean that there would be nothing new to discover; but there is always something new to discover. And when we discover true nature in a different way, how does it get expressed? Even if there is no issue obstructing its expression, we might not have the instrument through which to communicate it or express it or live it. Developing the appropriate instrument of expression will need some work and some practice. That is one reason why practice continues before enlightenment and after enlightenment.

At this point, you might be thinking that there is something called an individual consciousness that goes through something else called a process of transformation and results in another thing called a mature human being. And although this is true from one perspective, from the view of totality, we see that true nature is the transformer, the transformed, and the transformation. It is the catalyst for transformation, it is what is transformed, and it is the resulting transformation.

By clarifying and developing the individual consciousness and its capacities, true nature, in turn, realizes itself in new and more comprehensive ways. It transforms itself in order to reveal elements and facets of its nature that require greater capacities and more maturity of individual consciousness.

The individual consciousness is the organ through which true nature expresses and realizes itself. As individual consciousness transforms, it develops its own sense of individuation as a personal presence, which is the sense of being a person of true nature, a person that expresses true nature in the world. But there is more to the development of human consciousness than individuation. It can develop in terms of its realization, as well as its capacities of discernment, of freedom, of dynamism. In this path, the full development and maturation of individual consciousness is the metamorphosis into the indestructible inner spiritual body of freedom. This is the full realization of being an individual human being and being the totality of being as two sides of one reality; they are no longer experienced as two at all.

These transformations and revelations of true nature develop the human vehicle by imbuing it with a new kind of luminosity, novel qualities of love, and more penetrating and brilliant intelligence. Just as true nature reveals the indeterminacy of reality as the dialectic of practice and realization, so it unfolds the endlessness of reality as the dialectic of transformation and awakening.

9

THE ONLY TEACHER

TRUE NATURE is always the only truth that we wake up to, even though it has many faces and guises. It is also the light that illuminates that truth and reveals the truth of our obscurations, as well as the practice that expresses that truth. True nature is the guide that leads us to the truth. It is the teacher that points to the truth, that inspires us to appreciate it and to practice, and that supports us in the process of discovery, awakening, and transformation. True nature, the philosophers’ stone that opens all the secrets of existence, is the teacher, the guide, the truth, and the light.

True nature is the single element, the elixir, that makes transformation possible. We cannot transform without the interaction between true nature and our life situations, between true nature and our own individual experience. It’s true that human consciousness can transform without the presence of true nature, but that is more of a horizontal transformation: Throughout our life, we can increase our knowledge or expand our emotional range or learn new skills. But the individual consciousness cannot grow spiritually, cannot awaken to itself and express that awakening, without the presence of true nature. As the transformer, true nature transforms itself from one guise to another; that is what a transformer does. Sometimes it is the truth, sometimes it is the light, sometimes it is a form, sometimes it is a teacher, and sometimes it is a student.

True nature is the inner secret of the dynamic of realization, the dialectic between individual practice and Total Being. Because true nature is the nature of the individual as well as the nature of Total Being, it links them as the agent and the grace that illuminates, awakens, transforms, and liberates. True nature is the intelligence and the love that makes practice an expression of realization.

True nature is the inner teacher and also the external teacher. How efficient and how good the external teacher is depends, in our work, on the extent to which the teacher is able to embody and express the inner teacher. The inner teacher is one facet, one face, of true nature. True nature is the truth and it is also the teacher of truth. It is also the teacher of how to recognize the truth and how to discern the truth.

Teaching and guiding in an explicit way is the same as the revealing and unveiling function of true nature, which is implicit in all manifestations of true nature because each manifestation of true nature, each form of true nature, as we have seen, is all of true nature. In other words, true nature doesn’t hold itself back. Each particular form of reality explicitly reveals a particular quality or a particular dimension that is appropriate to the situation because true nature is not only the teacher and guide but also the guardian and the messenger of truth. In some sense, true nature is the revelation, the angel of revelation, and the source of revelation.

In this teaching, the function of the external teacher is part of the operation of the discriminating intelligence of true nature. When we say a teacher is functioning effectively, we mean that he or she is able to embody and express this discriminating intelligence in the form of a teacher. This discriminating intelligence is characterized primarily by its precise clarity, by its penetrating insight, and by its compassionate sensitivity.

The precise intelligence of reality has a fluid and free balance between analysis and synthesis of all the content of experience. It takes into consideration clearly and exactly the whole of our experience. Analysis means that we discriminate, we see differences, and we see the relationships between things; and synthesis means we see the picture that connects all these discriminations together. The dialectic of analysis and synthesis opens up the revelation of “Oh, this is what it means!” and that becomes a new truth we haven’t seen before. And this creative discriminating intelligence cannot operate without compassionate sensitivity. It is sensitive to the situation—aware of it, attuned to it, and responsive to it.

Although this discriminating intelligence is the teacher or the guide—or rather, the facet of true nature as inner guide—that doesn’t mean it is something separate on its own. It is still true nature. It is an expression of true nature. It is true nature manifesting as the guide who points the way, who inspires the aspirants, and who supports the journey of discovery, awakening, and transformation.

Guidance is implicit in all the qualities and dimensions of true nature. All the variegated experiences of true nature recognize, discern, and reveal the truth of true nature. That is to say, there is guidance and teaching in every experience of true nature. But when the discriminating intelligence of true nature manifests explicitly, the function of guidance is foreground, much more comprehensive, full-bodied, and powerful.

Many teachers teach true nature because they are awakened to true nature. But being awakened to true nature does not mean that the teacher can be precise or complete or empathic. If the teacher has not awakened to the capacity of discriminating intelligence, his knowing of true nature tends to be general and intuitive more than direct and insightful. Although guidance appears in different ways in different people and in different teachings, in our path, it appears as a precise, penetrating, and sensitive intelligence.

One of the functions of the discriminating intelligence of true nature is that it operates as an inner teacher. I don’t mean that there is something sitting inside of us teaching us something all the time. It’s more that this penetrating intelligence gives us the capacity to research our experience, to investigate it and inquire into it in a way that allows the experience to unfold and become an expression of the freedom of true nature. It is as if we had at our fingertips all the discerning capacities—the telescopes and microscopes and MRIs—of true nature with which to investigate our experience and the situation at hand. And the more input, the more data and experience there is, the more comprehensive is the insight and understanding, which then guides and transforms the situation. The bigger the field of perceptions, the greater the scope and the power of the synthesis.

This kind of penetrating intelligence is not abstract, by which I mean that it is not isolated from any situation we find ourselves in. Guidance arises as a living and intelligent response to the situation. When we are recognizing the truth of our experience, when we are investigating and researching what is happening, it is not only to fulfill our curiosity and answer our questions. The intelligence of reality is engaged as a direct response to an actual need that is arising in the situation. It is not motivated by the need to discover something new or be creative in some way. It only responds to loving the truth for its own sake, and its responsiveness is attuned and sensitive to what the situation actually is. It is in this sense that this intelligence functions as a research tool—fueled by the love of the truth and finely calibrated to the situation at hand.

The functioning of this intelligence often has the sense that, “If I put my mind and heart into something, I will find out.” There is a confidence that we are going to find the relevant information regardless of what we are exploring. This intelligence has the capacity to integrate all the knowledge of the past with the present situation in such a way as to discover an insight or solution that is both novel and useful. And the solution or insight is not the end of it. Discovering the truth transforms our experience, which means that the process of discovery and understanding is alive and leads to greater understanding and further knowledge.

When human beings engage this capacity of being, we are pure scientists, meaning we want to know the truth simply because we love it and want to see what the truth is. We are pure scientists with heart, with sensitivity that considers our actual experience. We are not theoretical scientists. We are not even experimental scientists. We are both, together with an aesthetic sense alive with heartful sensitivity—thinking, doing, and responding with utmost clarity, precision, and compassion.

The sensitivity and precision of this discriminating intelligence is what gives inquiry its power. The more that our inquiry embodies these capacities, the more powerful our inquiry is. The functioning of the penetrating intelligence of true nature both contributes to essential activation and is one of its expressions. The presence of this guidance of being opens the possibility for essential activation because it is already a response to the selfless love of truth for its own sake. Such love, when it is constant and operative, is both an opening for essential activation and an expression of it. At the beginning, it is an opening that invites the activation of being and, as that happens, further capacities are developed that enhance the functioning of guidance.

The inner guide is a prevalent and powerful notion in contemporary culture. In our teaching, the discriminating intelligence of reality can function as guidance in the sense that it points the way, but it is not somebody or something different from who we are. In other words, guidance is the functioning of our intelligence, of our truth sense, of our heart combined with our mind in a synergistic balance that allows us to see what is happening and what it means, to penetrate the opaqueness of our experience in a way that illuminates it and that reveals further facets of the truth. In this way, this intelligence becomes a functional tool of Total Being in its revelation of the truth.

I became aware of this discriminating intelligence and guidance of true nature early in this teaching, and I was able to use it and function with it. When I’m exploring something or trying to find out about something, it is simply there. It is close at hand, and I can use it at will. I can focus on something and it begins to operate. Being naïve, I assumed that this function of true nature was like any other quality of presence and that it would be easy for people to experience it, embody it, and function with it. But through the years I have come to see that this is not the case. There is something about this manifestation, this face of true nature, that is particularly elusive.

Most people don’t even get close to the experience of it, regardless of how awakened they are. Somebody can be awakened, can be experiencing presence and awareness and realization, but this penetrating intelligence is not necessarily present. Or we can have the experience of it but it doesn’t seem to function. We are not able to utilize it for our inquiry. We might experience the presence, which feels like a scintillating, radiating, tingly presence in the forehead, but it doesn’t function to clarify our inquiry. Or we might experience its presence and be able to function with it, but with limited degrees of facility and completeness.

How can this be? How can it be present and not function? How can it function but not fully? Does this mean that certain other capacities need to be engaged as part of its functioning? These are still open questions. We do know that certain capacities of mind and heart—and their connection—are needed, as well as the selfless drive to know the truth. Because the operation of this penetrating intelligence is an actual expression of true nature, it requires both the clarification and the development of the individual consciousness. Some of us still have things to clarify and some of us still need to develop in various ways. That is to say, the individual consciousness needs to mature and ripen for this intelligence to function in a full way.

And in addition to what else might be needed, we see that some things can get in the way of the functioning of this intelligence. Because this penetrating intelligence is an objective operation, our subjectivity—our preferences and reactions and agendas—can hinder the operation of objective guidance. It can be present but we are not able to see the insight or channel it through our mind in a way that maintains its power and objectivity. True nature will not manifest its discriminating capacity as long as we have our self-centered interest or opinions about how we want things to happen. As we’ve all discovered, we cannot actually guide or direct our experience; we cannot make it go someplace in particular. The function of inner guidance is simply to help us recognize what our experience is at the present moment and which way it is going.

As I said, true nature is the teacher, the guide, the truth, and the light. This intelligence is the discerning eye of true nature. It’s true that true nature presents all and everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we see or understand any of it. And just because each quality of presence contains everything doesn’t mean that it is easy for us to extract and see its significance. To do so requires some kind of intelligence, some kind of receptivity, some kind of sensitivity that harnesses the discerning power of reality itself.

Experience alone will not transform who and what we are. How we see the truth of the experience—what it is and what it points to and what its relevance to other things is—is also important. People frequently have insights without the presence of this discriminating intelligence, but that sort of intuitive insight or realization is isolated and short-lived. When we have integrated the penetrating intelligence of true nature, we have this capacity of understanding at our command. This means that whenever we want to explore something, that capacity is available.

But being at our command does not mean we own it. It means that there is a selflessness that allows it to operate freely. It is actually at the command of true nature. Even though we cannot appropriate it, it nevertheless functions as our capacity. It feels like what we are, and with no self to hinder it or appropriate it, it can function with the entirety of what we are. It doesn’t belong to the individual, but it has at its disposal all the capacities of the individual. In this sense, the discriminating intelligence is the functioning of our higher intellect, our divine intellect. Imbued by the discerning capacity of true nature, this intelligence can operate on all dimensions at the same time.

When we understand the discerning capacity of true nature, we come to see that it teaches not only as revelation but as self-revelation. It illuminates itself and liberates itself by revealing itself. In its operation, this penetrating intelligence teaches us the capacity to learn. But as it teaches, it learns. As it reveals, it realizes. As it illuminates, it is enlightened. As it transforms, it evolves.

We see that true nature is behind the whole process of learning, unveiling, and transformation. True nature awakens itself by guiding itself as the individual consciousness that appears to be inquiring. In reality, the inquiry of the individual is nothing but the way that true nature is revealing itself. It is Total Being functioning as the student eager to learn and as the teacher, outer or inner, skillfully guiding the student. This is the picture that we see when the discriminating intelligence synthesizes the role of the individual practicing and the action of true nature. It is a picture that emerges when this intelligence utilizes both dual and nondual perceptions in the same insight. This understanding is one of its awakenings: The inner teacher learns in the form of teaching an other, which is a form of itself.

Part Three

ILLUMINATIONS OF AWAKENING

10

AWAKENING IS AWAKE

I WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE the paradox and the dilemma of a teaching that presupposes realization—in other words, that is truly relevant when realization is already the case—with the fact that most of us are uncertain, to say the least, about our realization. So how can this teaching be relevant for everybody? The words might not make sense, but you might learn something anyway. Those who are realized will learn further realization, and those of us for whom realization has not happened completely can learn other things that are relevant for where we are.

What makes it possible for this teaching to speak to this entire range of experience is the nonhierarchical view, which allows us to be wherever we are without trying to change our condition to one that is higher or deeper or more realized. But there is a paradox here too. Although it is true that all conditions are reality, that does not relieve us of the responsibility of learning—of actualizing our potential and furthering our realization—because reality has its own momentum to go that way. If we don’t go along with it, we create all kinds of trouble for ourselves.

Different teachings use “realization” or “awakening” to mean different things. The word “nondual” has become a catchall phrase for awakening these days, one that encompasses everything that is spiritual. Setting up nonduality as the ultimate realization is a disservice both to the nondual condition and to the richness of spiritual experience.

When I talk about awakening, I mean waking up: recognizing the purity that is at the heart of reality—the purity that is true nature. I call true nature the heart of reality because I want to leave it a little ambiguous. If I call it the source of reality or the nature of reality, I introduce inaccuracies. True nature is so mysterious that it is nothing in particular and, at the same time, it is the purity at the heart of reality that makes realization and spiritual experience possible. Spirit is so mysterious that we can’t even say that it exists or does not exist; and yet, it manifests itself as existence and nonexistence and all sorts of other possibilities too.

Awakening to the realization of the purity that is at the heart of reality means recognizing that this is what we are, and when I say this is what we are, I don’t mean that the usual self is true nature. I mean that the usual self is set aside or dissolved and what remains is true nature that has self-recognition. Awakening can be more or less complete depending on our readiness, on the way that true nature is manifesting itself, and on the magic of the philosophers’ stone. We recognize that there are many kinds of realization because there are many ways that true nature manifests itself.

On the other hand, it’s also true, as I said, that all the manifestations of true nature are really one. Realizing any form or manifestation of true nature is realizing true nature in its entirety; but this depends on the completeness of the realization. Throughout the years, I have seen that in each awakening, each realization of any dimension of true nature, if we completely realize it—meaning there is no doubt that it is what we are and there is absolute nonduality with it—nothing else needs to happen. If we completely wake up in that way, we are totally free of the self. And this holds true for any condition of realization that we realize completely.

We can also see that the full realization of any condition, such as presence or love or awareness—if it is complete and if we do not take the position that that is where we need to be—naturally moves on to another realization because of the inherent dynamism of true nature. So even though nothing else needs to happen, it can happen. And frequently, realization moves to further realization by revealing another facet of the self that hasn’t yet been recognized or by revealing our delusions or fixed ideas about reality.

This might leave us wondering, “What does it mean for realization to be complete when it can move to another realization?” When I say that a realization can be complete, I mean that our experience and recognition and understanding of that one facet of reality is full and thoroughgoing; I don’t mean that it is complete in the sense that it is final and it is all there is to know about reality.

This teaching developed within the context of an awareness of many other teachings because we are in the information age, where all cultures and all teachings and the whole world are interconnected. We are no longer separated into discrete spiritual communities doing our practices in isolation. Because of this development, this teaching cannot help but deal with the fact that there are many kinds of realizations and many kinds of teachings. Although I did not set out to account for the variety of contemporary spiritual practices, this teaching naturally developed in a way that understands the wisdom of other spiritual traditions because true nature responds to the particulars of the situation at hand.

From this we can see that there is more than one way to experience realization, and different teachings emphasize one or another experience of nonduality. For instance, we might realize the dimension of boundless love, where we recognize that love is and what it is and that we are it, and that everybody and everything is love. Everything and everyone is luminous and beautiful. We are free and happy, and we don’t need anything else.

And yet, our friend sitting beside us is at the same time realizing that everything is pure, transparent awareness. Reality is radiant, empty awareness, and everybody and everything is only that. The experience of love or no love does not even arise in this condition. Pure awareness is also completely free and doesn’t need anything else. And both experiences are nondual in the sense that there is no separation between one thing and another. Everything is an effervescent radiance and none of it exists in any substantial way; everything is the empty luminosity manifesting everything as love or as awareness.

And to complicate matters even further, someone else might be realizing the mysterious depth beyond both awareness and love, the mysterious depth that is the source of both awareness and love, where we are the inscrutable depth of everything, and everything is nothing but the radiance of this complete darkness and complete mystery. This depth has a sense of rest and unspeakable stillness, a sense of arriving home. Here too we feel free and see that there is no need for anything more. These are all different ways of experiencing the nondual nature of reality and each of them is true. So how do we square these different realizations, each one complete and true? As we work with these and other nondual realizations in the first and second turnings of this teaching, it is important to learn each one of them and to establish them. To establish a particular realization or awakening or dimension basically means to be free from the obstacles that hinder our being in that condition and to integrate the support of true nature for that condition of realization. We don’t establish realization by thinking about it, concentrating on it, or doing practices that always evoke it. Our work is more about seeing the obstacles to realization, making them transparent by recognizing and understanding each one of them. And because the individual consciousness does not have the inner support to allow itself to be present in a way that can recognize realization for what it is, we also work to integrate the support for the realization.

So establishing a realization or a dimension of awakening means that it becomes a station, it becomes permanently available to us. But this does not mean that we need to be in that condition all the time, or that any condition is the final abode. When we awaken in one or another of these conditions, it seems so miraculous, so pure, so real, and so comprehensive—explaining everything we’ve ever wondered about—that it is easy for us to feel that it is the ultimate truth. I have made that mistake too. At a number of points along the way, as different realizations became established and became stations, I thought, “Oh yes, this is it. This is the ultimate condition.” But because this teaching never adopted practices oriented toward realizing any particular condition, each realization always led to further openings and awakenings.

We can see this progression from one realization to another as each subsequent realization transcending the previous one without negating it, but including it in a deeper or more subtle realization. This introduces a hierarchical view of understanding realization. When we consider one realization to be deeper and more subtle than another, this is true in a sense, but it is an observation made from the perspective of the self. It is not true from the perspective of true nature. True nature doesn’t make comparisons. For true nature, each realization is reality, each one is ultimate. But the self perceives a progression and a hierarchy of realization and, as the subtler aspects or positions or concepts of the self are seen, recognized, and understood, further realizations and different dimensions of reality will arise.

Our human tendency to regard whatever realization we are experiencing as the ultimate truth is natural. And many spiritual teachers and practitioners take their particular awakening to be the final one. As I said, many traditions posit different final states ranging from Brahman, Tao, and Dharmakaya to Divine Essence, the Godhead, and Shiva. When we know these states experientially, we find that they are not simply different names for the same realization; each is unique even though there are commonalities.

In this teaching, we encounter many different kinds of realization—some of them similar to those posited by other traditions—and we consider them all different faces of one truth. We see these different realizations as equal, even though other teachings might posit one or another of them as the ultimate and true liberation. And, of course, we don’t have any beef with that. We also see that each one of these realizations is true liberation.

But in this teaching, from the beginning our interest was not in liberation but in truth. We wanted to know what the truth of reality is, what the truth of what we are is. And truth kept revealing itself more and more. The interest in truth is not an interest in God or enlightenment or Brahman. It is an interest in whatever the truth happens to be in the moment. We don’t know and we don’t presume to know what that is from one moment to the next.

And it’s also true that this innocent interest in the truth has given rise to a whole system or map of realization that many people have understood as a series of steps that leads to some ultimate experience of absolute reality. And it does appear this way from the perspective of the self, or from the perspective of individual experience.

We all might feel the need to find the ultimate meaning, the ultimate truth of reality. We see this hunt for an ultimate truth in our sciences. Theories abound that try to explain what the ultimate nature of reality is. Do we follow one of the many string theories or the holographic principle? Do we resort to nth dimension theory or the notion of parallel universes? Was there a “big bang” or not? So even though there is no proof about any of these theories, many scientists are nevertheless divided into one camp or another.

Although I am focusing here on ultimates in the realm of spiritual realization, we can see the same impulse operating in our everyday lives. For some people, the ultimate is becoming a second Beyoncé. For others, it is finding the perfect wife or the perfect husband. We believe there is some final thing—whether money or power or recognition or kindness or sex—that will solve all of our problems. So even if we think of the ultimate in terms of ultimate reality, there might still be all sorts of other things that we are also searching for that are ultimate for us personally.

What is this need to find an ultimate truth? Why do we need to take our true experience of awakening to be final? Even when our realization moves to further awakenings, we tend to see them as different aspects or different facets of the same awakening. The hierarchical view of realization tends to orient toward what is final, what is most transcendent, what is most fundamental, what is primordial. And there is nothing wrong with that. That is one way awakening, realization, and enlightenment can happen. We find a primordial condition and we abide there. And we believe that is it and nothing else needs to happen, which is true.

But what we discover, which does not become clear until the third and fourth turnings of the wheel, is that we are attached to the ultimate. When we are established in a condition of realization and we feel it always has to be the case that we are in that condition, we are attached to that realization. We can become established in a particular realization in the sense that it becomes home base. And once we come to know this awakening as home base, we become attached to it—just as we are attached to the home base of the self at the beginning of spiritual practice. Our consciousness gravitates toward a particular condition of being, which is natural as we are being established in any awakening. Every time we are relaxed, every time we are at ease, we find ourselves in this condition. But at some point, we become attached: Reality has to be this way and only this way. And if we don’t find that experience, we freak out. “Oh no, where is home? I lost my home. It is in foreclosure!”

We can feel ourselves clutching some condition of realization because it has brought freedom and meaning and happiness and selflessness. And yet the self remains in place as the attachment to this condition, as the position that we need to be in this condition, and as the belief that this is the ultimate condition. True nature does not believe any condition is the ultimate condition; it doesn’t believe anything.

The value of the hierarchical view of realization is that it exposes more and more delusions, expanding our experience of freedom and making us more open to various conditions of realization. Thus the dancing Shiva, Nataraja, spins and reveals different faces of reality. And each one of these faces is true realization. There is no need to be troubled by the variety of realizations if we are not fixed on there being only one final condition of reality.

As we realize any condition of being, the condition itself gives rise to nonattachment. That is to say, the more complete the realization is, the less attachment there will be. When that happens, when we are not attached to realization, then the dynamism of true nature is liberated and naturally moves on to something else, revealing possibilities other than even the primordial condition of emptiness and awareness and presence. The dynamism of reality can reveal other kinds of realizations that don’t need to be viewed from the perspective of what is deeper or what is more primordial.

When I say that these realizations—whose experiential universe and wisdoms are all different—are freedom and all faces of one truth, I am not saying that all paths lead to the same place. That is not, in fact, true. Rather, each path leads to different realizations, all of which are true. Some people think that it is the same reality seen by different people through different perspectives. But reality actually can present itself in different ways. So the idea from perennial philosophy, an ancient notion that was revived in the twentieth century—that all spiritual paths speak about and lead to the same truth—is quite different from what I am saying. That thinking attributes the variety of spiritual experience to differences in culture and circumstance. Although I understand all spiritual realization to be different faces of one truth, each one of them is the truth completely while, at the same time, each is different from the other.

The view of totality allows all views—all realizations and teachings—to be valid and true. Each one of them reveals something about liberation, enlightenment, and awakening. And we can abide in one realization forever, but we don’t have to. Just because a particular realization is true does not mean only that is true. The view of totality shows us that this is true and that is true and there is no end to truth. It challenges not only our attachment to an ultimate realization but also our belief in the concept of an ultimate. This frees us to experience true nature manifesting other kinds of realizations.

We can, for example, experience realization that is neither dual nor nondual. To limit reality to being either dual or nondual is inaccurate; these are concepts invented by human beings. Reality doesn’t think that way. The dual view perceives a separation between subject and object, between one thing and another. And the nondual view sees no separation, sees everything as the manifestation of the same reality. But we can realize a condition in which we recognize that separation is itself a concept that gives rise to the polar opposites of dual and nondual. We begin to see both duality and nonduality as conceptual points of view that frame reality in different ways. From the perspective of this kind of realization, we don’t see things as separate or not separate. The concept of separateness is not present and not perceived.

This is an interesting kind of realization that doesn’t depend on realizing any specific dimension of reality, like awareness or presence or love. This is a realization beyond duality and nonduality. But the word “beyond” isn’t quite accurate when we refer to the kinds of realization that happen in the fourth turning of the teaching, because that word connotes hierarchy. Instead, sometimes I refer to this realization as “other than duality and nonduality.” This removes it from being in a progression or a continuum with duality and nonduality; this realization simply is different from duality and nonduality. This realization that is other than duality and nonduality also reveals a subtle sense of freedom. It is a subtle freedom because, in some sense, it is quite similar to the ordinary point of view—where there are people and objects and events—except there is no self. Everything in life proceeds normally but there is no self at the center of it.

And there is another nonhierarchical realization that does not have to do with duality or nonduality but with the relationship of phenomena with each other, the relationship of one form to another. This realization reveals one of the secrets of true nature: that it is beyond time and space. This does not refer to the experience of timelessness and spacelessness, because timelessness is the polar opposite of time and spacelessness is the polar opposite of space. Rather, one of the understandings that this realization brings in is that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature, each form of true nature is true nature in its entirety.

This realization that each quality, each form of true nature, has in it all of true nature turns out to be a characteristic of reality as a whole. This means that your body, because its nature is true nature, which is truly beyond time and space, contains all bodies and contains the totality of the universe. Don’t worry, you won’t feel overcrowded, because this realization usually occurs by understanding the spaciousness of true nature. That spaciousness is simply a reflection of the mystery of beyond-space. This realization is also nonhierarchical in the sense that it has nothing to do with primordial or not primordial, with ultimate or not ultimate. It is a different way of looking at realization. Rather than asking “What is the final ground of reality?” we want to know “What is reality?” Here we find that one of the things that true nature reveals about reality is that it is a hall of mirrors, or that it is a hologram.

And the realizations of nonhierarchy keep expanding the more we investigate our experience. I’m sure when I talk about the many faces of true nature, some people assume that there is something there that has different faces. But true nature is its faces. There is no true nature apart from its faces. Now what does that mean? “You mean even true nature is not the ultimate I’ve been looking for! Can we at least say there is an ultimate but it is unknowable?” That is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that true nature is always and only its face. If there is a way it is manifesting, that’s true nature. This is what I mean when I say that true nature is self-creating, its self-creative dynamism forever igniting new possibilities that are always nothing but itself.

I am mentioning these different kinds of nonhierarchical realizations mostly to show that the hierarchical view of the ultimate is only one way of experiencing realization. There are other kinds of realizations that are equally as free, and maybe even more free, where the question of what is ultimate is no longer relevant or productive. It’s not that the ultimate has changed; it’s that the concept of ultimate ceases to function. In fact, one way to understand the holographic realization is to see that each form and every experience is the ultimate experience, in the sense that it is reality in its entirety.

As long as we are looking for an ultimate realization, we remain fixed in the hierarchical view. When we recognize the subtle presence of the self and our attachment to conditions of realization in our experiences of nonduality or oneness, reality begins to show further possibilities of realization. When we are interested only in the truth, reality unfolds itself in unimaginable ways. We want to find the truth, whichever condition we find ourselves in; whatever realization is present, we investigate it and explore it to find out what it is, to find out what it has to do with reality.

Our need for an ultimate or for finality can also creep into the nonhierarchical view if we make nonhierarchy the last stage of realization. We might already be thinking, “Hierarchy is passé and nonhierarchy is the way to go.” But the nonhierarchical view is so true to its own nature that it does not consider itself ultimate. It is one view among many others, each one of them offering a different wisdom about the nature of reality. The view of totality recognizes the validity of all views—hierarchical, nonhierarchical, and otherwise.

Recognizing the difference and truth of each face of reality makes possible runaway realization, which is realization naturally moving to further realizations. We are thoroughly awake when we awaken to the truth of the dynamic and changing character of true nature. On the spiritual path, we discover true nature, we realize it is what we are, and we see that even though it is changeable, it is always the purity at the heart of all reality. This kind of understanding is not any particular experience but a profound wisdom that results from many experiences of awakening. We see that awakening is always awakening. It does not rest in any ultimate condition.

As we have seen, this is not to deny the usefulness of the hierarchical view. The question of ultimate realization is a useful and important part of spiritual practice. We do need to recognize and realize those dimensions of reality; we need to establish those awakenings and experience them as ultimate reality. In a sense, we can see this teaching as first giving us all kinds of places to land, places that are more expanded, more open, more beautiful and good, more human, more divine than our ordinary perspective. For a long time, looking for these spiritual ultimates powers the drive for enlightenment. And the ultimate can shift to a greater ultimate, a deeper ultimate, a more primordial ultimate.

At some point, though, those ultimates also need to be questioned; otherwise, we are not seeing the truth of reality. It’s not that the experiences of ultimate realization are not true or do not exist; it’s more that they turn out to be temporary. We can come to a place where we say, “The heck with it! Who cares about the ultimate!” When the idea of ultimate realization loses its usefulness, reality begins to deconstruct its own conceptualization, leaving itself and us wide open to whatever comes next.

11

THE NATURE OF TRUE NATURE

SO WHAT is the philosophers’ stone? I’ve said it is our true nature. But what is true nature? It is not easy to find out or say what true nature is. This reminds me of the story of the Zen Master who presents an apple to a High Lama and asks him, “What is this?” The Lama answers, “It’s an apple.” Unsatisfied with the answer, the Zen Master persists, “What is this?” And the Lama keeps responding, “It’s an apple.” After a few rounds of this, the Lama finally exclaims, “This guy has never seen an apple before?!”

As I understand it, for the Lama true nature is clarity and emptiness that is everywhere, including the apple, the Lama, the Master, and all of reality. For the Zen Master, the apple itself is all of reality. Even though everything that the Lama is seeing is there in the apple, the Master and the Lama don’t see eye to eye, because they are looking at the situation differently. This happens a lot; people don’t understand each other because they use different languages and metaphors and they have different backgrounds and history, but also because they have different views of reality. The Lama would have to study Zen for years to understand how the Zen Master was talking and what he was intending. The Zen Master would have to study Vajrayana for some time to understand how that tradition conceives true nature. All this would be necessary for them to actually communicate with each other. Both of them are right, in their own way, about true nature.

What I mean is that true nature doesn’t have only one way of presenting itself. You can experience it as a crystal or a stone, which is how the alchemists talked about it. And you can experience this stone as either outside of you or inside of you. When outside of you as the ground that contains you, the stone seems to be the magical divine hermaphrodite—creating all possibilities—that carries the secrets of all existence. Inside you, the stone feels like you awakened to yourself.

But true nature can also manifest as warm compassion—tenderness that affects you, impacts you in such a way that you are aware of other people and feel inclined to do what you can to be of service. It can manifest compassion with an emerald-green hue or with no color at all. True nature can expand, appearing as compassion of the heart or compassion that pervades everything. True nature can also appear as a diamond-like form in the center of your forehead that allows you to perceive and understand everything clearly and precisely. Or true nature can appear along your spine as a platinum column that supports you to be yourself. And true nature can even appear as an apple in the hand of a Zen Master.

All the ways that true nature manifests itself are one thing. And we can think this is odd or paradoxical or mysterious: How can all this variety be the same thing? We might say they are all qualities of light or presence and that this light or presence has many different aspects that it can manifest. This is a good way of seeing it, and I sometimes talk about it in this way.

True nature, however, can also manifest as total spaciousness, total emptiness, no presence or light, nothing at all. The question then remains, “What is it?” Is true nature something? Is it something that is manifesting different things, or is it something that changes into different shapes? And if it is something, how can it appear in so many places in so many different ways? Are there many true natures or are all these manifestations the same true nature? And if it is the same true nature, how can one thing appear differently in different people at the same time? Or is this difference simply people’s subjective, relative experience? And if there actually is the experience of awakening to reality, what does it mean, then, if this awakening is subjective experience? Is subjective, relative experience even related to reality? And if awakening is waking up to reality, waking up to how things are, how can there be so many kinds of awakening, so many different possibilities?

If true nature is something, it seems that either there are many of them or this something is not like other somethings. We’ve already seen that true nature is a particular, in the sense that when we experience will, for example, its solidity and purity are obviously different from thoughts and feelings. True nature is a particular in its distinctness from ordinary experience. But it is not a particular like our body, because if we further explore the particular that is appearing as will, we see that even though it is solid, there is nothing there. When we experience that nothing is there, then we realize that will is everywhere; it is not only appearing in our belly. In this boundless experience of will, we see that will appears in all locations. It can appear as a local phenomenon and it can appear everywhere. And it can appear these different ways in different people at the same time.

It confounds our mind when we try to find out what true nature is. The question “What is it?” implies both the what and the that: that true nature is a what—a something—and that it is. It assumes that true nature is a something that exists. But is it something that exists? We know that true nature can appear as pure existence—solid, complete, and certain, like molybdenum. This pure existence—immense, powerful, and the nature of all and everything in the universe—is absolute is-ness, more solid than anything else in the whole material world.

But we can also experience true nature as pure nonexistence, as pure nonbeing. And the truth that appeared as much more solid than the physical universe can suddenly appear ephemeral and phantasmagoric because its nature is nonbeing. When we experience this nonbeingness, it is spacious, open and transparent to everything. The transparency can become fluid like air or it can appear crystalline, faceted, and precise.

We see that true nature can be both existence and nonexistence at once. And many teachings agree that it is inseparably both being and nonbeing, both presence and absence. And more than simple presence or absence, we can experience true nature as boundless love or awareness or dynamism. It can be all of these and also empty. So even though true nature is what makes everything exist, we cannot say that it exists. And although true nature does not exist as an object, we can nevertheless experience it more palpably than any of the forms of the material or spiritual world.

So the question “What is it?” is itself in question. Who said true nature is an it? Philosophers tend to use the word “it” to try to refer to true nature. Most spiritual practitioners prefer the word “I”: “I am reality . . . I am truth . . . I am love.” But does “I” apply to it? “I am reality” means I is something being something else called reality. So even though true nature is a particular, it appears as the particular that pervades everything and that is everything. It is something, in the sense that it is a particular that is different from all other particulars and yet, at the same time, it is all other particulars. It is a particular that pervades all particulars, transcending them as it appears as them. How can it be a particular something that, at the same time, is everything? How can it be everything and still nothing?

And true nature is also what we are. It is what we are regardless of how we experience ourselves—whether as pure presence or as pure awareness or as pure emptiness or as essential identity or as personal presence. So when I say that we are true nature, I mean that we continue to be the individual we are and that we are also this mysterious philosophers’ stone that can be everything at one time or another. This language is tricky because when I say that we as individuals are this stone that can take any of these forms or formlessnesses, it seems to imply that true nature is something that exists on its own. But it doesn’t actually exist apart from an individual. That is to say, it doesn’t exist apart from the thing that it is the nature of, because it is its true nature, the nature of everything. Is true nature something on its own? Is there true nature apart from all the things that true nature is the nature of? If we eliminate all manifestation, would there still be true nature?

This is an elusive question. Many teachings say no and think of true nature as the luminosity of the universe or the emptiness of the universe. And other teachings consider true nature something that is beyond all these manifestations. And it’s true that we can experience ourselves as true nature beyond all phenomena. We can experience ourselves as a vastness where all the universe is within us, and the universe can even become a little bubble and we are beyond all of that. It can appear as if the universe bubble could burst and there would be nothing. But if the universe burst, there would be nothing to perceive and no experience. When there is no experience, is there still true nature?

Asking “What is it?” is suspect not only because it presumes the whatness and thatness of true nature, but also because the question implies that we can find an answer. Who says we can find out what true nature is? Who says we can pin down true nature? And yet, we do discover true nature again and again—as love, as awareness, as emptiness, as beingness, as will, as peace, as stillness. And when it is stillness, it is true nature completely. When it is emptiness, it is true nature completely. When it is will, it is true nature completely. True nature is so fearless that when it presents itself, it always does so wholeheartedly and completely. So when it is love, true nature is being all of itself. When it is awareness, it is being all of itself. It is not as if some of it is held in reserve someplace else. True nature is as it is. When it is beingness, that is it. There is no remainder. When it is peace, that is it. There is nothing hidden somewhere else.

Each aspect, quality, or dimension of being reveals true nature in one of its possibilities, yet without ever exhausting or defining true nature. Although true nature takes each form completely, it is never trapped or fixed in any form or kind of realization, enlightenment, or awakening. It is each of them and all of them and none of them completely at once.

In some sense, true nature is innately indeterminate without being either vague or amorphous. It is definitely clarity and stillness and awareness without definitively being any of them. It is clarity without being only clarity, without being always clarity. But it is also not clarity, because it can be something altogether different.

What is it that can be something different? Is there something actually beyond clarity that can be something different? Does this nature have anything besides faces? Philosophers and mystics have been searching for eons for what true nature is. We know this face, we know that face, but what is it truly? We are trying to find out what it is. Some say it is unfindable. Others say it is unknowable. But to say it is unfindable and unknowable makes it into a something, a something apart from what we are and apart from the world. But it is the nature of the world and the nature of us, so how can it be apart from it and from us?

What does it mean to be in a condition of total indeterminacy without being vague? Because it is the mysterious nature of everything, true nature makes everything appear and shows us everything—about reality, about ourselves, about what are we. When we say true nature is crystalline emptiness or spaciousness, that is realization and awakening. But then, if we continue and see that it is, in fact, nothing, then the spaciousness of reality no longer makes sense, because spaciousness implies something extended or something big. Does that mean that true nature has a size? How large is it? Is it thirteen billion light years wide like the known universe? Some people say it is bigger than the universe. Well, how much bigger? But if we think of true nature in this way, it already means that true nature is some kind of space that the universe is in.

Many spiritual teachings say that true nature is beyond time and space. What does that mean? Often it means that true nature is vast and timeless. But “vast and timeless” is not truly beyond time and space. Timeless is merely the opposite of time, and vast is simply extended space. What is this philosophers’ stone that is truly beyond time and space? What does being beyond time and space do to our experience of time and space? The world is a world of time and space, but its nature is beyond time and space. What does that do to our perception of reality?

The philosophers’ stone is the whole universe and, not just the whole universe, it is the whole universe at all times. If it were not the whole universe at all times, then it would not be beyond time. And if it did not contain the whole universe, regardless of the size of the universe, then it would not be beyond space. What is amazing about the philosophers’ stone is that it is the total being of all time and all space, but this Total Being of all time and all space can manifest as any particular at any space-time coordinates. True nature is the whole that is, at the same time, each particular that is completely the whole without losing particularity and form.

What really matters is that we as individual human beings are this mysterious philosophers’ stone. As we explore it, it reveals itself to us because it is our nature, the nature of reality. It reveals to us the secrets of reality—what we are, what reality is, what the meaning of life is. True nature is the answer to our deepest questions: “What are we? Why are we here? Why is there something instead of nothing?” We can know the answers to these questions even if we cannot write them down or speak them aloud.

Although we are talking about what is holy and sacred, what we revere and love, true nature is also us; it is everything. What makes it fun is that even though it is everything, it is nothing. It is none of it and, at the same time, it is all of it. It is you when there is no you. It is you completely. When you realize true nature, you realize that is what you are, but there is nothing and nobody there. So what does it mean, then, that that is what you are? And you are certain you are completely being yourself, and people look at you and say, “This guy is really there,” but your experience is that there is nothing and nobody there.

So the mystery is compounded. This is called mystery to the nth degree. It’s like mystery squared or mystery cubed, but this is to the unending nth degree: mystery upon mystery to no end. And pursuing this mystery keeps adding more certainty—more certainty about what we are and how to live our life. The more we know true nature, the less we know it. The more we know true nature, the more we know our self, the more we know what to do in the world, the more we are certain, the more we are sure-footed—and, at the same time, we realize how much we don’t know. And the mystery bursts with delight and excitement, recognizing that regardless of how much we know, we know very little.

This is one reason why I like to study other traditions and perspectives, because each one of them teaches me something about true nature. In many cases, it took true nature thousands of years to reveal itself in a particular teaching, and tasting the flavor of any one perspective can open us to the inherent ignorance in our mind, the ignorance that means that it is possible for us to know further and to discover further and to experience further.

True nature is not like the unknown or the unknowable God of the monotheistic traditions. It’s more like the God that knows that it doesn’t know itself completely, is always in the process of knowing itself, is delighting in knowing itself, and is happy that it doesn’t know itself completely. The mind wants closure; it wants to know. But the mind, when it is impacted by true nature, can come to the place where it is happy that it doesn’t know. It is delighted that it doesn’t have all the answers. In the beginning, we want all the answers. We want the keys to all the secret compartments. But the mind, at some point, becomes much more intoxicated when it realizes, “I opened a million doors, and there are trillions more . . . Wow!”

You may have noticed that I have asked more questions than I have answered. I am presenting the magic show that is true nature, the magic show that is you and that is reality. The philosophers’ stone here reveals its nature as the mind intoxicated with knowing and the heart delighted with loving. The philosophers’ stone, which is our true nature, is ceaselessly knowable because its knowing cannot be exhausted. Freedom is then simply being the philosophers’ stone in whichever way it is revealing itself. We are what we are fully and totally, without ever exhausting the ways in which we know ourselves.

12

ENLIGHTENMENT

WE HAVE BEEN exploring the mechanics of illumination, awakening, and realization, and although I have been using these words interchangeably, there are differences between them. By considering these differences and understanding them, they can reveal our experience and our reality more clearly.

By “illumination” I mean any understanding, whether it is of our personal issues or our process or something about true nature. An illumination is when the meaning or significance of something that we are encountering or experiencing is revealed in a clear way. So an illumination is any experience of further understanding, including insight, awakening, realization, and enlightenment. These experiences are illuminations because in all of them the spiritual light is illuminating something, whether it is illuminating itself or illuminating one of its manifestations. So “illumination” is a more general term.

“Awakening” refers to our experience—in one form or another—of true nature, of whatever way in which true nature is illuminated in the moment. It is when we are encountering the purity of reality, the purity at the heart of reality, directly, whether it is as a close encounter of the third kind or as nondual experience. This brings up the distinction between awakening and realization, terms that I have been using interchangeably so far. From what I understand, many people use the words “awakening,” “realization,” and “enlightenment” interchangeably, but each of these words actually refers to a distinct experience.

“Awakening,” as we have seen in our exploration of necessary and primary awakening, the expressions I’m using to convey some of the factors that are useful for essential activation, means recognizing true nature. In necessary awakening, we are awakening to true nature or spirit or truth in a way that shows how radically different it is from ordinary egoic experience. When we awaken to what we are, when we recognize what we are in its essential nature, in its true nature, we are experiencing realization. For me, realization equates with being: We are not only aware of true nature, but we are aware that true nature is what we are. Awakening is the simple awareness of true nature, without our necessarily experiencing true nature as what we are.

Realization, in other words, is the movement from necessary awakening to primary awakening. It means not only realizing that true nature is what we are but also living that realization in our expressions and communication, in our actions and life. We can come to realize that true nature is what lives, is what communicates. So in realization, the center of gravity moves from the ego self to true nature itself. And here true nature can assume any form or manifestation—bounded, boundless, or even something other than that dichotomy. We recognize in realization that we are not the usual self, the ordinary self, or what is sometimes called the small self or the ego self.

But this still leaves the term “enlightenment.” I usually don’t talk about enlightenment, partly because it is not relevant for most people and partly because it carries all kinds of baggage acquired through long and varied usage. Also, not all teachings use the concept of enlightenment or, for that matter, even those of awakening and realization. Speaking of the spiritual path in terms of awakening, realization, and enlightenment originates in the Eastern traditions. The Western traditions don’t typically use these terms. We wouldn’t hear a Christian mystic or a Sufi talking about being awakened; rather, they speak of spiritual transport in terms of union or illumination.

So although these terms are prevalent in our culture and are useful in referring to various spiritual experiences, I want to make clear that not all traditions use these words because they do not convey how those traditions view reality. If you believe that reality has to do with union and dissolving in divine being, the word “awakening” does not make much sense, because it is not your being but God’s being. We, however, do employ these terms in this teaching, and we use them to refer to specific and distinct experiences of true nature.

The word “enlightenment,” which often means the end of a spiritual process, frequently connotes not only awakening to true nature or realizing the true nature of what we are, but doing so in a way that is irreversible. The exact nature of enlightenment—what this irreversible awakening is, what it is that is awakened, and what the truth is that becomes established—is defined and understood differently by various teachings.

Originating from a Hindu metaphysical worldview that looks at human life as one karmic incarnation among many, the term “enlightenment” basically refers to the condition in which one’s karma is exhausted. Enlightenment means that there is no more karma that determines our life and that we do not form any new karma. In this way, the past has no trace and our present experience leaves no trace in our consciousness. For these traditions, enlightenment is the end of the cycle of reincarnation. Although they may disagree about which condition indicates enlightenment, many Hindu and Buddhist teachings still see enlightenment in this way.

So if we take enlightenment to be an irreversible primary awakening to true nature, an irreversible realization, it means being, and functioning from, true nature in a continuous manner. Often enlightenment entails awakening—either suddenly or through a process—to what reality is. For most teachings, enlightenment includes not only awakening to true nature but also realizing the absolute dimension of true nature, which means realizing ourselves as the ultimate true nature or the ultimate truth or the absolute truth of reality. So enlightenment basically means an irreversible realization of the ultimate truth of reality, the exact nature of which is a point of contention among the various traditions.

The view of enlightenment as an irreversible realization of absolute truth is similar to our understanding of the boundless or nondual dimensions of true nature. Our understanding in this teaching of the nondual dimensions of experience can be seen as a progression that ends in the absorption of everything into absolute truth, which is the most primordial way that we can know true nature as the nature of everything. So it is possible that enlightenment is simply the irreversible realization of this nondual, deeply mysterious, empty clarity of true nature.

But that is more the classical or Eastern view of enlightenment. In this path, we don’t think of enlightenment in that sense, because we are aware that different teachings have different ultimates. According to these traditions, anyone who has realized one of these ultimate conditions is enlightened in the sense that he is being true nature and is free of the ego self. We also don’t view enlightenment in the classical sense, because essential activation reveals to us that true nature is inherently dynamic, always transforming and manifesting itself in different ways. How true nature manifests depends on the circumstances, the individual, the needs of the particular environment, and the culture and psychology of the times. Because of this creative, inexorable, unending dynamism of true nature, thinking of enlightenment as any one final and continuous condition limits what is actually possible.

When essence is ignited, our process and the experience of our illumination has reached a point where it is spontaneously free—spontaneously effulging in a way in which it continues to open up and to open up further and to reveal and illuminate in different ways both itself and whatever is happening. We can see these illuminations hierarchically, as we do in the first and second turnings. And it is true that as we experience true nature more fully, these illuminations can seem like deeper or subtler or simpler dimensions of true nature. This can lead to seeing enlightenment as the final attainment in some kind of spiritual progression. Enlightenment can be the realization of the ultimate self, where we see that this ultimate truth is what we are; or it can be the realization of no-self, where the ultimate truth reveals that there is in it no self of any kind.

But there are also realizations of true nature that have nothing to do with the question of whether there is a self or not. The fourth turning of the teaching reveals the perspective of nonhierarchy, where there is the enlightenment of self, the enlightenment of no-self, and the enlightenment that has nothing to do with self or no-self. There is also the enlightenment of nonduality, the enlightenment of duality, the enlightenment of divinity, the enlightenment of humanity, the enlightenment of enlightenment, and the enlightenment of no-enlightenment. This is what I mean by essential activation: Our experience is activated in such a way that it continually transforms so that what we experience as our being or the being of reality reveals itself endlessly in different ways.

This essential activation, depending on whether it is an awakening or a realization, is what I call either runaway unfoldment or runaway realization. When it is runaway unfoldment, our process is naturally unfolding and opening up, exposing and working through obstacles, and revealing true nature and reality in different ways. Runaway unfoldment allows us to experience true nature in all kinds of ways.

Realization means that we have the certainty and recognition that we are true nature and that our being is true nature. We know that what perceives and experiences and what understands and knows is true nature. So there is a freedom from the usual sense of self. When essential activation is this free, it is runaway realization. Runaway realization is the closest thing in this teaching to what is considered enlightenment. Our experience has become runaway realization when realization keeps changing and morphing into other realizations. True nature continues to reveal different faces of itself, and in each face what we are is true nature. Enlightenment becomes a dynamic illumination that comprises both the illuminating dynamic and the dynamically illuminated. True nature is both the revealing light and the revealed truth of enlightenment.

Enlightenment can mean that we wake up to the light that is our true nature, that is illuminated and illuminating. We don’t need to get stuck on the idea of light, though, which basically refers to a recognition or an understanding about what we are and what reality is. Light is one of the ways that we can experience true nature, but it is not the only way. We can also experience true nature as presence, as awareness, as mystery, as love—all of which can also be seen as manifestations of light.

In runaway realization, enlightenment is not a fixed condition but an open, dynamic reality, because true nature reveals itself as infinite possibilities and cannot be constrained and defined by one ultimate or another. This does not mean that we are not enlightened if we realize true nature in only one way. If we realize Brahman or the Dharmakaya or the Divine Essence, that is enlightenment.

What I am saying is that there are different kinds of enlightenment. We see that enlightenment can be dynamic and can reveal what we are in different ways. These different ways can be seen hierarchically or nonhierarchically. When we look at reality from the nonhierarchical point of view, what we see and what we are as enlightenment, as the ultimate, changes meaning. From the perspective of nonhierarchy, the word “ultimate” doesn’t make much sense, because this view does not participate in the dichotomies of high and low, more and less, absolute and relative, deeper than and not so deep, or subtle and superficial. These are elements of the hierarchical point of view, which is a useful and important part of our work in the first and second turnings of the teaching.

Although we can experience awakening, realization, and even enlightenment within the perspective of hierarchy, we see that enlightenment is constrained if we limit ourselves to only those possibilities. But if we really allow and experience the condition of enlightenment or realization without taking any point of view about it—without feeling that it is the ultimate or what needs to happen or what needs to continue to happen—it naturally, spontaneously, and dynamically reveals itself in other ways. True nature reveals the faces of reality until we recognize the possibility of seeing realization or enlightenment that is not related to the question of ultimate or no-ultimate.

This point is illustrated in Buddhism by the saying, “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, and then there is a mountain.” The usual understanding of this is centered on the wisdom of the nondual realization of presence, awareness, and emptiness. “First there is a mountain” refers to looking from the perspective of the individual, where regardless of whether we experience ourselves in a spiritual way or not, we perceive that there is a mountain. When we recognize “there is no mountain,” we are seeing the real nature of the mountain and of reality as emptiness. The mountain could be anything or reality as a whole; it could be replaced with your body, your thoughts, an apple, or the totality of the universe. This second phase means that we are seeing true nature as a simple emptiness. That is what is real and the mountain is an ephemeral mirage.

The third phase, “and then there is a mountain,” refers to a mountain that is different from the first one because it is integrated into true nature. Here we perceive it as an empty mountain, a mountain of luminosity where the manifest and unmanifest are completely inseparable. In the second phase where there is no mountain, there is only true nature, and we are seeing the truth of true nature in its emptiness and transparency. In this progression, the mountain that then appears is true nature appearing as a mountain.

As I said, this is the usual understanding of this koan from the perspective of the second turning of the wheel. But from the fourth turning of the wheel, from the perspective of totality, there are realizations that reveal a different understanding of this saying. We can experience the second mountain as something different from an expression of true nature. We can see the second mountain exactly like we see the first mountain. It is simply a mountain, and the question of whether it is true nature or not does not occur to us. The only difference here between the first mountain and the second mountain is that in the perception of the first mountain, there was somebody experiencing the mountain, and in the third phase, there is nobody experiencing the mountain. There isn’t even the sense of perception of the mountain. There is just the mountain. And the concepts of true nature, awareness, luminosity, or emptiness become totally irrelevant.

This is the realization of the world or of reality or of whatever as itself. The mountain is just the mountain, and there is no more need for commentary and elaboration, because things are just what they are. Enlightenment that is runaway realization allows all these possibilities: an ordinary mountain, a mountain that is an expression of true nature, a mountain that is transparent to the emptiness of true nature, and a mountain that is just a mountain with nobody there to say whether it is or is not true nature.

In this realization that I am describing, reality is just being reality and your body is just being your body. This reminds me of the well-known verse from the Heart Sutra that says, “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” This again conveys the understanding of the second turning, meaning that when we see the mountain, we see it is form, but we also see that it is a form that is inseparable from the formlessness, which is the emptiness of true nature. True nature has no shape and has no form. And form and emptiness are one because a mountain is a form even as it is emptiness at the same time.

But many people don’t know that the verse goes on to say, “Form is form, emptiness is emptiness.” What does it mean that form is form? I understand this to point to some of the realizations possible in the fourth turning, where a mountain is simply a mountain. Form is not emptiness, form is form. A mountain is a mountain, and emptiness is emptiness. Emptiness and form are two particulars, and each one is itself completely. I am using these examples of mountains and forms to distinguish the classical enlightenment that can happen in the second turning from the dynamic enlightenment that can happen in the fourth turning, which reveals different ways of experiencing true nature and reality.

You might notice that as I am discussing enlightenment, I am not limiting it to the realization of true nature. I am also including our experience of reality. The mountain is reality, and enlightenment includes the truth of everything we experience—how things appear, what they are, what they mean. When a mountain is a mountain without it being true nature or not, then enlightenment is a kind of simplicity that introduces the nonhierarchical view. A mountain is light, a mountain is love, a mountain is emptiness, a mountain is awareness, a mountain is physical, a mountain is spiritual, and a mountain is neither spiritual nor physical. What is it then? It’s just a mountain without anyone left to ponder what it is.

All sorts of possibilities can emerge in this simplicity, freeing our experience from the hierarchical point of view. We can experience enlightenment as an enlightenment that has left no trace of enlightenment. Many teachings think of traceless enlightenment as enlightenment that has happened to the degree that there is no more thinking or recognition that something called enlightenment has happened, because it becomes an ordinary fact. This is the enlightenment of enlightenment, meaning that enlightenment enlightens itself to the point that it forgets itself. And what remains is simply living in enlightenment, which is nothing but true nature itself living as true nature.

The fourth turning can reveal yet another meaning of traceless enlightenment, where it’s not that there is enlightenment with no trace of enlightenment but that there is enlightenment with no trace of true nature. The notion of true nature itself is not in view; it is not a concept that the mind uses. Reality simply is reality. Even saying “reality” introduces something superfluous. There is merely simplicity, and life lives itself. And as life lives itself, true nature reveals itself without the usual dichotomies. For a long time, true nature reveals itself through conceptual dichotomies—the high and low, the subtle and gross, the profound and superficial—because all of these are needed for the human mind to recognize that there are differences in the ways we live, in the ways we experience things, and in the ways reality manifests itself.

But true nature itself does not need to look at itself through only these conceptual dichotomies. It has infinite ways of looking at and experiencing itself. Many of them I haven’t mentioned and many of them I don’t know. Some of them I probably will know at some point, and some of them probably you know and I don’t know. What I am saying is that true nature is totally free from having to look at itself through any lens—whether that be the lens of any teaching, the lens of any experience, the lens of any realization or awakening or enlightenment. All of these are truly the expression of true nature; they are truly awakening, truly realization, and truly enlightenment.

True nature, however, is much freer than all of that. True nature cannot be exhausted or defined by any of these experiences, no matter how lofty or how total they are. True nature is not limited to any one of its faces. We cannot hold fast one face of true nature and say that is true nature. We can, of course, say that face is true nature completely, but we cannot say that it is true nature exclusively. Because of its dynamism, because of its property of red sulfur, true nature can never be pinned down to only one of its faces.

From the perspective of nonhierarchy, we see that everything can get simpler and more ordinary and, as that happens, there is no need for an ultimate condition. There being no need for it, though, does not mean it doesn’t happen. Many people still conceive and experience ultimates as part of their process, and these other ways of experiencing reality that I am mentioning often necessitate working through the hierarchical view. I don’t know if everybody has to experience hierarchy. It’s possible that we can awaken in the nonhierarchical view without going through the hierarchical order, but then we might not know all the different ways in which other people experience life.

We see that even enlightenment is a dynamic flow moving from one thing to another. Living enlightenment is an expression of being where we are, and seeing where we are, and allowing where we are to move. So being where we are, fully experiencing it, and fully understanding it allows experience to dynamically move through all the possibilities reality has to offer, regardless of whether it is illumination, awakening, realization, or enlightenment.

As the heart ripens, the freedom of nonhierarchy can appear as a divine indifference, a disinterested enthusiasm for the truth. Our consciousness is not interested in having anything in particular happen. We are so free of the orientations of time and space that we are not focused on getting anywhere, on being anywhere. What is happening right now, whatever it is, is reality, and we are not comparing it with anything that happened in the past or could happen in the future.

We simply continue to be with what arises and, if we do this wholeheartedly, we can recognize that it simply is what arises. That is to say, we see there is no being with what arises, because there is only what is arising in the moment. What is arising in the moment is not observed by anybody, not experienced by anybody, and not perceived by anybody. It is just simply what arises. Even the concept of arising can drop: It is simply so. When the heart is this free, when the love of truth is this total, enlightenment is the dynamic and open-ended unfoldment of true nature and of reality.

13

REALITY

WHOEVER HAS the philosophers’ stone can unlock the secrets of the universe. We have been exploring how I am using the philosophers’ stone to mean the true nature of what we are and the true nature of everything. What does it mean that it is the true nature of what we are and the true nature of everything? What does that say about everything? What does it show us about everything? We have discussed true nature as manifesting itself in various qualities, forms, and dimensions, and in many other ways, all of which are how we experience any kind of spiritual experience, awakening, or enlightenment.

We have seen true nature as the light that illuminates and the light that we awaken to. When we experience enlightenment in terms of waking up to the light that lights up everything, we can begin to notice how we see everything: ourselves and others and the world and reality as a whole. When we are experiencing true nature in a localized way, meaning in a localized form as a particular quality in our experience, we are usually experiencing ourselves as a human being in the world who is experiencing spirituality in ourselves or is aware of it in some form in manifestation. We are aware of a manifest world and a manifest reality, and we are beings navigating that world, beings who exist and live in a world full of all kinds of things.

At some point, as we recognize this light or illumination or presence, we come to see that it is not just something that we experience, it is our very being. This is the primary awakening, when we begin to see something about what we are and what the world is apart from the perspective of being an individual who is having a spiritual experience, who is experiencing spirit or true nature in one way or another. We begin to realize that we as individuals are simply experiencing the beingness that we are and, by experiencing the beingness that we are, we are experiencing our nature in the sense that we know what we are. We know what we are fundamentally, apart from the fact that we are individuals and we are human beings and we are bodies and we are minds and we are hearts.

That is to say, we recognize the nature of all of these. We recognize that true nature, even though it is radically other than our ordinary experience, is the nature of all things. It is the beingness of these things. It is what makes these things be, what makes them appear and makes them available to experience. And our realization can open further so that we realize that true nature is not only the being of these things but also everything about these things. True nature, by being the nature of our body, is our body. By being the nature of our thoughts, it is the body of our thoughts. By being the nature of our feelings, it is the body of our feelings. There are no feelings, no thoughts, and no sensations apart from true nature. As we move to boundless awakening and nondual realization, we realize that the true nature that is our being is the being of everything. And it is not only the being of everything, it is the everything of everything.

The concept of being has quite a complex history in Western metaphysics and understanding. When I talk about being, I mean what it is that gives our awareness and consciousness its factness, its thatness, its I-am-ness. It is the experience of beingness that gives us and everything its thatness. Beingness is the ground and the truth that underlies everything, not in the sense that everything sits on top of it, but in the sense that it is what makes everything be and be what it is. Just as true nature is what makes us be what we are, it is also what makes everything be what it is. This means making everything be and making everything be what it is—both the thatness and the whatness of everything.

Because of the various properties of true nature, we don’t only recognize true nature as our beingness, as what makes us be what we are. True nature also reveals itself as the awareness and luminosity and goodness of what we are, as the openness and lovingness and kindness of what we are. We see heart in a pure way, and mind in a pure way, and existence in a pure way. We can see them as the nature of everything; we can see everything as love or everything as awareness or everything as existence. Everything has the characteristic of being more transparent than we thought. Even the physical, the emotional, and the mental things that we experience appear as spiritual manifestations. This experience of spirit is not outside of the physical, mental, or emotional realm of experience. When we recognize that true nature is what gives everything being, all these things begin to show what they really are, begin to show that they are all manifestations of the same truth, of the same reality.

As everything becomes transparent and luminous, full of beauty and grace, we can see that nothing is separate from anything else. This is the classical mystical experience of the unity of being, where we recognize that everything we see, because it is all the manifestation of the same reality and truth, is not only not separate from anything else but is also unified as one whole. We can even recognize ourselves as that oneness of everything. And if we recognize that we are true nature, we can see that we are also beyond the oneness of everything because we are the purity that is the nature of everything. We are everything and we are also true nature, the purity that is beyond everything at the same time.

The totality of being usually first appears as the totality of our individuation, the totality of our individual consciousness. We are an individual consciousness that has thoughts and feelings and history and memories and faculties and mind and even spiritual experiences. When we experience ourselves as the unity of all things, then the totality of being is appearing as the totality of the whole universe. And when we experience ourselves as beyond even that, then the totality of being is everything plus something beyond everything. Simultaneously we are an individual who is experiencing unity, we are the unity of all things, and we are beyond the unity of all things.

So we can be aware of our individual being, or we can be aware of ourselves as the unified being of the whole universe, or we can be aware of ourselves as something beyond the universe, generating the whole universe and, at the same time, appearing as an individual being. And interesting things begin to happen when we inquire into what it is that is beyond everything, what it is that we are when we are beyond everything. As we recognize what that is, how does that affect our perception of everything? In the classical experience of nondual unity, which is part of the second turning of the wheel, we recognize true nature as beyond everything, as a kind of mysterious awareness or presence that is being and nonbeing at the same time. Because it is presence, everything is; and because it is nothing, everything changes. And as we explore what it means when we say that true nature is being and nothing at the same time, we recognize that there is no one particular way of experiencing and knowing that. There are many different ways of experiencing the purity of reality as being and as nonbeing.

We realize that even though we can consider true nature both being and nothingness, it is inherently far more mysterious than that. For example, because it is the nature of everything and also beyond everything, true nature is beyond the spatial and temporal dimensions of the world. I am pointing to something different from what some people call the “timeless now,” which is an experience of presence as a nowness in which everything is simply what it is in the moment. Since everything is just the beingness of it now, the immediacy of it now, the question of time—of the past and the future—disappears, and with it the influences of the past and the pulls of the future. We are simply being what being is at the moment.

But recognizing true nature as a timeless now is only the beginning. We can delve more deeply into our experience of time and space. The more we are this true nature that we have always been but haven’t fully recognized, the more we understand what it means that it is beyond time and space. It’s not only that true nature is everything, but because it is outside of everything at the same time as it is everything, it makes possible certain kinds of unexpected relationships between things.

Because we ordinarily experience ourselves as beings in the world of objects and other beings, the issues around separateness are central to being human. When we arrive at the experience of unity, the experience of nonduality, the question of being separate or not separate moves to the foreground. Not being separate is equated with awakening, and being separate is a marker of duality and the experience of the ego self. But as we become more familiar with true nature, we recognize that separateness or not separateness is not relevant to true nature. That question is relevant to individuals who experience separateness and then the erasure of separateness. From the perspective of true nature, all manifestations of reality are neither separate nor not separate from each other.

What, then, is the relationship of one thing to another? Given that we are all one, what does that mean about our relationships with each other? The oneness or the unity generally brings in a great deal of love and openness, a great deal of relatedness that we see is possible because the oneness does not destroy the differentiation. The oneness is the oneness of many things. We can see the world either from the perspective of boundaries, where there are things separate or not separate from one another, or the question of boundaries can altogether disappear. When the concept of separateness disappears, then things are neither separate nor not separate from each other. Being the individual that we are at the same time as being the true nature that is beyond time and space, we realize we are not other than anything else. The experience of oneness can change from unity to singularity.

Since time and space do not exist for true nature or, put another way, since true nature is the nature of all phenomena in all times and all space, it reveals different relationships between phenomena. Singularity shows how all forms and phenomena, because of the emptiness of true nature and because of its being beyond time and space, totally pervade each other. They are all one and also many. They are all identical and also different. And their oneness and identity does not rely on their sharing a common source or being extensions of the same vastness, as is the case in classical nondual unity. The oneness and identity of all phenomena, without the patterning of the concepts of time and space, reveals a singleness that does not erase multiplicity.

I am mentioning this to demonstrate that our experience of everything, of what we call reality, changes depending on how we experience or understand our true nature. How we experience true nature, because it is the true nature of everything we encounter—in both our inner and outer experience—automatically changes our perception of everything.

So far I have differentiated true nature from Total Being. I have been using true nature to refer to the purity of reality, its secret nature that remains hidden until it awakens to itself. Total Being, on the other hand, means anything and everything. Total Being is not only the experience of being; it also includes all the things we see, all the things we experience, all the things that exist—people, lives, events, everything. And as we experience the unity of being, we realize that all these things are not only Total Being but are unified. And when we understand that everything is unified also beyond time and space, we realize that Total Being is everything that is and also everything that was and everything that will be.

Total Being is everything at all times and all places because true nature is outside of time, not patterned by time even though it does not negate time. Being outside of time and space means that true nature is all time and is all space while also being beyond all time and all space. And because true nature is what we are, we are all time, all space, and beyond time and space.

The meaning of Total Being expands as our experience of true nature reveals more and more of itself. Total Being can shift from being the totality of the individual to the total being of the whole universe to the mysterious total being beyond time and space. True nature allows us to perceive everything in a new light. We recognize that where we are in the moment is not other than anything else. Everything else is within us, and not only everything else but everything else at all other times and places. When we are not experiencing ourselves this way, then we are experiencing ourselves only as the individual and not the unilocal nature of the individual. It’s true that as an individual, we are in time and space. But we are also the true nature of the individual that interpenetrates all time and all space, bringing everything in time and space to one singular point.

How we perceive Total Being depends on where we are and what we are experiencing as our totality. Where does our sense of being rest? Is it as the individual? Is it as the oneness? Or is it as the beyond that contains everything, penetrates everything, and is everything that is, was, and ever will be?

The more that we understand true nature, the more that we are awakened and certain that that is what we are, the more there is a relaxation, a letting go, and an ease that allows true nature to continue to evolve. We come to recognize that it is its nature to reveal more of its possibilities, more of its faces, and we can be at ease with that. At the beginning of spiritual work, we go through various deaths and rebirths as we move from one stage to another, from one face of true nature to another but, at some point, we can recognize that the deaths and rebirths are nothing but wormholes. True nature simply is morphing and shifting, and we are moving through some kind of dimensionless reality that reveals another face of itself. Our immediate experience is the wormhole that takes us from this universe to some other universe, some other parallel or vertical universe.

The effect of relaxing into the recognition of true nature is that it erodes the sense of self and self-centeredness. And as the sense of self and self-centeredness wears away, our experience of the otherness of true nature disappears little by little until true nature becomes an ordinary thing. When true nature becomes ordinary, we are certain that we are true nature. We don’t need to think about it, we don’t need to remember it, and we don’t even need to experience it, because we know what we are. When we don’t experience true nature in one way, we still know that is true nature manifesting in another way, even if it is manifesting the dualistic situation of being an individual relating to another individual. What else could that be? What else could be manifesting it?

This sense of the ordinariness of true nature is a kind of freedom that in time becomes traceless enlightenment. When enlightenment doesn’t leave a trace, it means that there is nobody there thinking about it and feeling liberated. We don’t feel liberated, because the question of being liberated is irrelevant for true nature. And when we are not concerned about whether we are enlightened or not, we are not concerned about whether other people are enlightened or not. Everybody is who they are, and we relate to them naturally, freely, and spontaneously.

From this understanding, we can see how true nature is Total Being. When we are experiencing it in the conventional way—the normal egoic or dualistic way—Total Being seems to be different from true nature. Total Being is everything, with lots of elements that we would not consider to be the purity of true nature. We see hatred and destruction, violence and ignorance, all of which are included in Total Being; but true nature appears as this purity, this awareness, this emptiness, this openness, this compassion, this love that is at the heart of reality. So it seems to us that there is a distinction between the totality of reality and true nature. This persists in our experience until we realize we are true nature. When we realize we are true nature, we realize that true nature is not only the nature of everything—including the good, the bad, and the ugly—but it is those things. There is nothing other than true nature.

When true nature awakens to itself in enlightenment, whatever form that enlightenment might take, we see that true nature is not only the nature of everything and the being of everything, but it also is everything. True nature is the surface and the depth of everything, and all that lies in between too. As we recognize this identity of true nature and everything, we see that true nature is Total Being, even though in ordinary experience there is a difference.

So are they the same or are they different? Is Total Being really true nature? True nature and Total Being are both one and two, depending on how we are experiencing it. We can experience reality in such a way that there is everything and true nature pops up one way or another, in one person or another, in one location or another of Total Being. Or we can experience Total Being as true nature because there is nothing but true nature.

And what is reality then? I use the word “reality” in many senses. I use it in the usual sense to refer to whatever we experience, whatever we see, whatever the world is, whatever it is that we perceive. But when we are experiencing the unity of being in the nondual dimensions, reality appears not just as this physical world with everything in it but as a luminous world of beingness, of presence or awareness, as a scintillating kind of mysterious emptiness. And when we experience reality from the perspective of true nature beyond all time and all space, we realize that reality is not only the totality of what is here, however we may experience that, but reality includes all time and all space.

When we awaken to reality, we see that reality is the identity of Total Being and true nature. Reality is total being that cannot be separated from true nature. And because of the mysterious properties of true nature, reality includes not only the unity of everything but also the recognition that everything, each single thing, is reality and always has been reality. From this, we can see that each experience, each form, each phenomenon is the expression of reality and is all of reality. Each thing is everything. Each thing contains the totality of true nature without leaving any remainder. Each thing is all things of all times and all space.

Reality, true nature, and Total Being intersect in many ways. Reality refers most broadly to everything available to perception and experience. True nature is the underlying heart of this reality. And Total Being is everything that is, throughout all times and all space. These can be three distinct ways of experiencing who and what we are, or we can recognize that they are identical. Taken separately, each of them is useful for referring to something specific in our experience. And their intersection is the beginning of a life of ordinary simplicity. This kind of traceless awakening and realization is reality. There is no sense of enlightenment, no sense that anything has happened, and no sense that anything needs to happen.

The more we understand true nature and are comfortable with it, which means there is certainty that we are true nature, reality will simply continue to unfold and manifest new possibilities. We can become less self-reflective, not concerned with our state nor with anyone else’s. We naturally respect ourselves and others regardless of what state anyone is in. The usual issues of wanting to be seen or appreciated, of being special or not, disappear from our mental universe. Instead, our lives become the natural discourse, the natural expression, of true nature in human relationship.

Whoever holds the philosophers’ stone can unlock the secrets of reality. The philosophers’ stone is our true nature, the nature of everything. There is only one philosophers’ stone. If we recognize that is what we are, if we love it and revere it and plumb its depths, it will take us through its wormholes to various aspects of reality. When the heart is open, we see that all reality is an organ for true nature to reveal its possibilities. For thousands of years, alchemists looked in all the corners of the universe for the philosophers’ stone, but they neglected to look in the heart of human beings.

14

FREEDOM

WE ARE LEARNING and, as we are learning, we’re penetrating the secrets of reality by studying the philosophers’ stone, which is the true nature of reality. This study is lighthearted and carefree, yet has the utmost seriousness in its implications, for it involves all of reality.

Reality is, in some sense, always dependent on the view we have of it, and there are many views and many ways that reality manifests. These are views we individually have that at the same time originate in Total Being. All these views of reality are the ways that Total Being manifests itself. So Total Being can present itself within one view or another. Total Being also has a view of totality, which is a view that includes all known and all possible views of reality. Teachings, philosophies, and different fields of knowledge are different views of reality; each one of them is a presentation of Total Being.

As individuals, we can have the view of totality only if we have some realization of Total Being, because the view of totality is not simply a mental view but the very openness at the heart of Total Being. We cannot hold or embody the view of totality if our realization is limited to nondual truth, or to unilocal unity, or of course if we have no realization at all.

Because Total Being is free to manifest any view, whichever face it presents is what we typically then call reality. We don’t usually know this kind of freedom, we don’t even ordinarily expect it, because most of us are caught in a particular view, and we believe that is the only way reality can be. We mostly live within the dualistic view, until we recognize or realize the true nature of reality. Because of this, for most of us the realizations that tend to happen most readily are within the nondual view; sometimes we might even experience realization within the unilocal view, but rarely do we encounter the view of totality.

When we recognize the freedom of Total Being, it is because true nature—the philosophers’ stone, the elixir, the indefinable spirit—is freedom. This freedom is true nature itself, is the expression of true nature. So freedom is a state of being that is also an affect but, at the same time, freedom cannot be defined by any single state of true nature, even though all states of true nature express the freedom of true nature. In other words, freedom cannot be limited to any particular state or condition. It is free from having to be contrasted with any concept or experience, free from being seen either as within or outside any context. The freedom of true nature has neither comparison nor opposite. Freedom can even go beyond the concept of true nature, for this concept is a human way of knowing the purity at the heart of reality.

So whichever way we experience true nature, awaken to it, or realize it, is realization of freedom. We are free when we realize presence. We are free when we realize the vastness of absolute emptiness. We are free when we realize the transparency of pure awareness. We are free when we realize the luminosity of love. We are free when we realize our essential personhood. And we are free when we realize our body as body and our thoughts as thoughts.

As we realize the true nature of Total Being, which is the true nature of reality, which is our true nature, we realize that freedom is expressed in the pure qualities that true nature manifests, but is also characteristic of all things. Freedom is implicit in all things and explicit in true nature. When our realization has sufficiently penetrated the secrets of reality, we see that reality can be many ways. This is the understanding of Total Being: that reality can be many ways because there is a living being that lives by dynamically manifesting itself. It lives by manifesting different realities and different views. And from this perspective, our freedom then is the freedom of not having to stick to one view or another, not having to live in one reality or another.

Each reality, each way we experience reality, is an experience of the manifestation of Total Being. We can say that Total Being is like a quantum wave. A quantum wave has infinite quantum states, and whatever we experience becomes reality because that is when the quantum curve collapses and becomes what we call reality. When we make an observation, it fixes what reality is. Before this, we don’t know what reality is. This is how quantum theory in physics views reality. When we understand Total Being, we arrive at something like the quantum view of realization, in terms of what we experience as reality. So whatever we perceive, and the view through which we perceive it, becomes what we call reality.

This means that reality, including spiritual or mystical truth, is not as set or determined as most of us would like, nor as fixed as most teachings theorize. Truth can lead us to freedom, which is altogether different from anything that we can call absolute or ultimate reality. Understanding Total Being, and the quantum character of its revelations, means freedom loses all bounds and is not dependent on or associated with any one particular realization or ultimate truth. The freedom of Total Being means that we can experience all available realities, can travel through all possible realizations, and not be constrained by any view.

This is not at all analogous to the postmodern view that reality is simply construction or narrative and therefore wholly dependent on individual consciousness, circumstances, and culture. The reality in true realization is not contingent; each realization is the true revelation of Total Being, dependent on neither history nor culture even though it manifests in ways that consider them. Because there is no actual realization in postmodern thought, only negation and deconstruction, there can be no true freedom.

The mystery of the philosophers’ stone is that it is the true nature of reality—the nature of Total Being, which is reality in all its possibilities in all times and all spaces—and, at the same time, it is nothing in particular. It is the purity and the freedom of Total Being to manifest all these realities and to live as all these realities. And we experience this life of Total Being as our personal life, as the preciousness of human life. True nature is freedom, is what frees, and is what we are, and yet we cannot narrow it down to anything in particular. To be free, we have to live in fundamental innocence.

In this teaching, the hierarchical view of learning the qualities and dimensions of being all the way to the realization of absolute reality and its integration with life is a self-consistent view. And this self-consistency contains its practice and makes it possible for awakening, realization, and enlightenment to happen. This is akin to classical notions of nondual enlightenment, and there is great freedom in this realization.

The self-consistency of the teaching in the first and second turnings always reminds me of Gödel’s proof, usually referred to as the incompleteness theorems, which states that if there is any system of true statements that is self-consistent, it cannot be complete. In other words, if you have self-consistent principles for your statements of truth, you will find that there are other statements of truth outside of these principles that cannot be derived from those principles. Many spiritual teachings are consistent, and they take their self-consistency as a mark of completeness. But Gödel proved that consistency, at least for mathematical—particularly algebraic—systems, implies incompleteness.

I’ve always wondered how his incompleteness theorems apply to other fields, and this is one way I look at the turns of this teaching. This is not to claim that I or anybody else has proved the theorems in such general application, but I tend to think, based on personal observations, that it can apply to many systems of a nonalgebraic character. And because the systems I have studied most are spiritual teachings, I can see its relevance for the teachings of this path.

The first and second turnings, which culminate in the enlightenment of nonduality, are consistent but incomplete insofar as they do not include, for instance, unilocal unity or the realization of not being anything. As I discussed in Runaway Realization, there are many subtle concepts—of self, of time, of space, of causation, of emptiness—that persist in the classical enlightenment of unity or nonduality, and these preclude other experiences of reality. The view of totality, in the fourth turning, begins to address this incompleteness by including all possible views of reality.

Because the view of totality is complete, in the sense that any view can be held, any way of experiencing reality can be included, it can easily accommodate inconsistencies between one view and another. The completeness of the view of totality is an expression of total openness rather than of self-consistency. We don’t even actually need to assert that the view of totality implies completeness; we only need to see that it is more complete than the self-consistent views of reality.

Even though each view might be self-consistent, the differences between one view and another do not need to be reconciled in the view of totality. Rather than erasing inconsistencies, the view of totality allows us to understand them by revealing the relationship of one view to another and, in this way, ignites the dynamism of reality to disclose even more of its possibilities.

The fourth turning of the wheel basically is freedom in a different kind of realization, in some sense in a different kind of world, a different kind of universe. The view of totality is even outside the notion of world or universe, for it is pure openness, absolutely nothing in particular. We don’t need ourselves or reality to be any way in particular for there to be freedom. We are free to experience any realization, and our life is constituted by these realizations, but there is no attachment to any of them and no need to deem any one as ultimate.

This kind of freedom is the hallmark of living our enlightenment, living our realization, living the awakening realization of our true nature, of the philosophers’ stone. Enlightenment is the theme that pervades the second turning of the wheel, which has to do with the realization of the boundlessness or nonduality of true nature. While the main theme of the first two turnings of the wheel is illumination, realization, or enlightenment, when we come to the fourth turning, the main theme is freedom. It is no longer a question of enlightened or not enlightened. If what we are interested in is being enlightened, we don’t need anything beyond the second turning. We can recognize that true nature is and realize that it is what we are and what everything is, and we can stop there.

The fourth turning is for those of us who enjoy discovery, who are turned on by finding out what more truths are possible. This turning has to do with the life of enlightenment: When there is enlightenment, there is awakening, there is realization, and we live that. In other words, after realization or enlightenment, reality does not become static; the ground of truth does not stay static. Instead, everything is much more dynamic and free.

There is life after enlightenment, and it is not simply about continuously experiencing what we call our enlightenment. Partly our inclination, partly circumstance, but mostly destiny—or, more accurately, the force of Total Being—determines whether we remain in this enlightened condition or our understanding of reality evolves as we live. Total Being can manifest different views and different realizations, including the nonhierarchical view that makes it possible for us to see that we are free no matter what our experience happens to be. We are free when we are presence, we are free when we are boundless, we are free when we are a body, we are free when we are not anything. This freedom does not require a particular condition.

The philosophers’ stone is nonconditional freedom. This freedom is not conditioned by a particular state, by a particular view, or by a particular realization. In this freedom, we can be anything, everything, nothing, and not even that. We can be dual, we can be nondual, we can be nonlocal, and we can be none of these; we can also not be at all. Each one of us is a human individual—a particular manifestation of Total Being—but as we awaken to true nature and explore reality from the perspective of true nature, we realize that we are also Total Being. We are always Total Being because everything is Total Being. Total Being is everything, and it is each particular thing, and each particular thing is everything. And we are the particular thing that can know all this. The particular is simply the other side of the whole, a truth that does not arise in nondual realization, but rather from realization of unilocal unity.

We are free regardless of what we experience because each experience is nothing but reality, nothing but the expression of Total Being, nothing but the activity of true nature. And each experience is equally true nature, equally the totality of true nature. When we recognize this truth, we see that there is no need to seek anything and no need to find anything. This place of not-seeking and not-finding is like coming full circle back to the simplicity of human life. We are simply human beings living normal lives, but now expressing the qualities of true nature—sensitivity and love and awareness, compassion and appreciation, recognizing the preciousness of life and the preciousness of human beings and the preciousness of our environment and the preciousness of all being. We seek until we don’t need to. We keep finding and finding until we realize the point is not a matter of finding anything in particular, because it is all reality.

We see that any experience, regardless of how simple or mundane, is a finding of reality. Any experience is freedom, as long as we do not need to mentally elaborate on its meaning or make associations about its significance. We simply live it. We simply live. Living is in all situations but does not depend on any of them. That is to say, even though living completely pervades all situations and experiences, it is neither defined by nor does it need any of them. When we simply live, our minds teem with insight and our being brims with life. This continual bursting is the red sulfur, the ongoing generation of novelty in a way that is an enhancement of one’s life, and the life of all. No true freedom is self-centered or only for oneself. In its abundance of love and joy, freedom naturally opens to the freedom of any and all.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AS WITH ALL OF MY BOOKS, this one would not have been possible without the invaluable help of several dedicated individuals.

Zarina Maiwandi continued her fine editing work from Runaway Realization in this companion book. Her recognition of and loyalty to the indeterminate dynamism of the material provided a unique contribution in bringing my spoken words to a place of permanence on the page. She was vigilant about not letting the desire for consistency and elucidation obscure the mysterious and paradoxical terrain I explore here. I feel much appreciation for her skill and capacity in shepherding to completion this book about the unending mysteries of reality.

Once again Byron Brown, our editor in chief, capably oversaw the finalizing of the text in conjunction with Elianne Obadia, our copy editor. And Liz Shaw, Shambhala’s editor, has lovingly guided the manuscript through all the stages of production leading up to publication.

INDEX

Note: Index entries from the print edition of this book have been included for use as search terms. They can be located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

absolute

creative dynamism and

enlightenment and

nondual realization

true nature manifesting as

absolutely pervasive particular

Advaita Vedanta

alchemy

anima and animus

awakening

compared with realization

endless

meaning of

primary awakening as central to

to purity of true nature

as self-illuminating process

transformation and

See also enlightenment; necessary awakening; primary

awakening; realization

being/beingness of all beings

essence and

knowing and

totality of

true nature and

See also Total Being

boundless dimensions

boundless love

boundlessness

one taste and

realizing

of true nature

See also nondual realization nonduality

Brahman

Brilliant Moon: The Autobiography of Dilgo Khyentse

Buddha nature

Buddhism

certainty

essential activation and

primary awakening and

Christ

Christianity

clarity

intelligence and

true nature as

compassion

intelligence and

as source of compassion

true nature and

conceptual dichotomies, true nature and

consciousness

awakening the essence of

radical otherness and

See also human consciousness; individual consciousness

conventional worldview, seeking respite from

delusion

of appropriating liberating power

cognitive

of dual and nondual views

emotional obstacles

human consciousness as

illumination of

as manifestation of reality

as obstruction to realization

shattering of

development, transformation as

devotion

expressing true nature through

as reverence of reality

See also reverence

Dharmakaya

Diamond Approach

Dilgo Khyentse

discriminating intelligence

development of

obstacles to

true nature and

Divine Essence

divine indifference

dual experience

as enlightenment

as impediment to self-illumination

as manifestation of reality

reverence and

of true nature

true nature appearing and practicing as

view of totality and

dualistic self

awakening as truly giving up on

delusions of

dissolving of

hierarchical view and

realization of true nature

See also individual consciousness; self

dynamism

absolute and

of enlightenment

of individual consciousness

of living realization

red sulfur and

self-creation and

stability vs.

of true nature

Eastern traditions

ego identification. See also dualistic self; self

Ein Sof

elixir

of enlightenment

as magic agent

emotional obstacles

emptiness

primary awakening and

true nature as

encounters of third kind

awakening as

clarification of consciousness and

as dualistic

essential activation and

necessary awakening and

radical otherness and

enlightenment

different views of

as duality and nonduality

dynamism of

as illumination

as irreversible realization

liberation of

life after

meaning of

nonduality and

runaway realization and

traceless

true nature and

true nature awakening to

ultimate truth and

as without limit

See also realization; true nature

enlightenment drive

essential activation and

maturing and ripening of

purity of being and

as unstoppable unfoldment

equalness

particulars and

of true nature

essence, being and

essential activation

clarifying individual consciousness and

encounters of third kind and

enlightenment drive and

freedom of continual realization and

important factors for

living realization and

necessary awakening and

obstructions to

penetrating intelligence and

philosophers’ stone and

primary awakening and

red sulfur and

reverence and

as third juncture

unrestrained revelation of truth and

as unstoppable unfoldment

view of totality and

essential presence

essential strength, self-creation of

evolution

of enlightenment

true nature and

existence

point of

secrets of

true nature as

first turning of wheel

fourth turning of wheel

absolute nondual realization and

on dual and nondual views

dynamism of

enlightenment drive in

freedom of

nonhierarchical view of

vantage points and

view of totality and

freedom

of continual realization

living realization and

as never-ending unfoldment

nonconditional

from particular views

simplicity and

state-independent

view of totality and

God

fear of

runaway realization and

as source of grace

as unknowable

Gödel, Kurt

Gurdjieff, G.I.

heart

engaging teachings with

impact of true nature on

Heart Sutra

hierarchical view

of enlightenment

of realization

self-consistency and

suffering and

as teaching approach

transformation and

Hinduism

holographic view, of true nature

human consciousness

as alchemical laboratory

delusional nature of

illumination and transformation of

otherness of true nature and

See also individual consciousness

humility, reverence and

illumination

of being yourself

delusion of appropriation of

enlightenment and

meaning of

obstacles and

of ordinary self

of primary awakening

true nature and

incompleteness theorems

individual consciousness

appropriation of liberating power

as being true nature

empowering of

feelings of incapacity

innate tendency to reify

offering up

responsibility to practice and

subjectivity and

totality of being and

transformation of

true nature’s self-expression through

unique role as organ of realization

unity with true nature

working with structures and limitations of

See also dualistic self; human consciousness; self

individuation

inner spiritual body

instinctual drives

Kabbalah

karma

lapis philosophorum

living realization

essential activation and

evolution of

freedom and

as never-ending unfoldment

open inclusiveness of

role of transformation in

as unstoppable activation

See also realization

luminosity

of absolute realization

pure awareness arising as

of true nature

See also illumination

monotheism

mysterious depth, realization of

narcissism

primary awakening and

necessary awakening

encounters of third kind and

essential activation and

as first juncture

narcissistic abyss and

primary awakening vs.

radical otherness and

to true nature

nonbeing, true nature as

nondoing

nondual realization

absolute

different experiences of

enlightenment and

incompleteness and

reverence and

nonduality

boundlessness and

as coexisting with duality

inner spiritual body and

limitations of

one taste and

oneness and unity of

primary awakening and

of second turning

view of totality and

nonhierarchical view

different kinds of realizations and

of enlightenment

essential activation and

as experiential

freedom of

meaning of

obstacles to

range of experience in

of self

of true nature

ultimate truth and

wisdom of

nonthinking

objectification and reification

mind’s innate tendency for

sidestepping process of

of true nature

one taste

oneness and unity

of being and everything

different guises of

omnidirectional

as oneness of many things

of practice and realization

singularity and

of Total Being

of true nature

openness

in fourth turning

of heart

of nonhierarchical view

of view of totality

otherness

monotheism and

true nature as non

true nature as radical

ultimate view of realization and

Parabrahman

particulars

equalness and

importance of

true nature as distinct

true nature as pervasive

personal presence

pervasiveness

nondual unity and

true nature and

philosophers’ stone

collapsing all ultimates into

discovery of

dynamism and

essential activation and

and the heart of human beings

as hermaphrodite

as nonconditioned freedom

as protector of practice

secrets of existence and

total practice and

true nature as

two truths of

as whole universe

postmodern view

practice

before and after enlightenment

being where we are in

continual

dialectic with realization

grace as inseparable from

individual responsibility to

and nondoing

opening to subtle teachings in

relationship with awakening

reverence and

self-expressing true nature and

tail of the devil and

total

as true nature practicing

primary awakening

being and knowing in

as central to awakening

certainty and

essential activation and

many realizations of

narcissism and

necessary awakening vs.

as second juncture

to true nature

progressive view. See also hierarchical view

pure awareness

inner body of

primary awakening and

realization of

self-creation of

true nature and

pure presence

purity, of true nature

quiddity

reality

as beyond space and time

as dependent on view

different views of

meaning of

precise intelligence of

self-illumination of

true nature as heart of

truth of

as unconstructed

understanding nature of

reality mode, true nature and

realization

as act of true nature

of all things

attachment to

catalyzing process of endless

“clean ordinary”

compared with awakening

completeness of

dialectic with practice

different kinds of nonhierarchical

dilemma of presupposing

dynamic of

enlightenment as irreversible

establishing a particular

freedom of continual

hierarchy of

holographic view of

meaning of nonhierarchical

as other than duality and non-duality

perspective of dynamic of

potency and completeness of

primary awakening as central to

quantum view of

runaway

as simple freedom

transformation and

as ultimate truth

unique role of individual in

without seeking and searching

See also enlightenment; true nature

red sulfur

dynamism of

as liberating combustion

reification. See objectification and reification revelation

revelation

as expression of realization

living realization as continual

true nature and

unrestrained, of truth

reverence

expressing true nature through

for true nature

of true nature

obstacles to

runaway realization

Runaway Realization (Almaas)

runaway unfoldment

sameness

nondual unity and

of particulars

true nature and

second turning of wheel

self

attachment to ultimate view

becoming free of

inquiry into narcissism of

nonhierarchical views of

otherness of true nature and

process of reification and

separateness and

true nature’s challenges to

view of little

See also dualistic self; individual consciousness

self-centeredness

discriminating intelligence and

liberation from

self-consistency

awakening and

incompleteness and

openness vs.

self-creation, true nature and

self-expression, of true nature

self-illumination, of true nature. See also illumination

self-realization

meaning of

progression of

of true nature

self-recognition

separateness

of human beings

nondual view of

sexual drive

sexual tantra

Shiva

Shunyata

simplicity

of living realization

of nonhierarchical view

of ordinary experience

of traceless enlightenment

true nature and

singularity, oneness and

space, true nature as beyond

spaciousness, of true nature

spiritual activation

living realization and

purity of true nature and

as unstoppable

See also essential activation

spiritual experiences

enlightenment drive and

infinite possibilities of

as self-expression of true nature

spiritual activation vs.

true nature as source of

spiritual inquiry

into basis of self

discriminating intelligence and

as nondoing

spiritual traditions

realizations of different

views of enlightenment and

subjectivity

absence of

discriminating intelligence and

suffering

dual experience and

hierarchical view and

Sufism

Tao

teacher

discriminating intelligence and

as inner guide

reverence and

true nature as only

teaching wheel, four turnings of. See also specific turnings

thatness

third turning of wheel

time, true nature as beyond

timeless now

Total Being

as everything

experiential recognition of

meaning of

numerous expressions of

quantum character of

recognizing freedom of

self-illumination and

true nature as

total practice

totality, view of

of being

being where we are and

dual and nondual views in

essential activation and

freedom and

as multiple views

nonhierarchical view and

radical openness of

shifting vantage points and

Total Being and

transformation from

traceless enlightenment

transformation

as clarification

essential presence and

horizontal

of individual consciousness

as process of development

realization and

true nature and

view of totality and

true nature

as absolutely non-other

as absolutely pervasive particular

awakening as encountering

awakening to itself

as being and nonbeing

as being of everything

as beyond space and time

different faces of

discriminating intelligence of

as distinct particular

dynamism of

encounters of third kind and

enlightenment and

existence of

experience of totality of being and

freedom and

as ground of everything

as heart of reality

holographic view of

identity of all manifestations of

illuminating power of

as incorruptible

innate indeterminacy of

innate reverence of

as miraculous

mysterious nature of

nature of

as nature of everything

nature of reality and

necessary awakening to

nonexistence of

nonhierarchical view of

objectification of

as only teacher

ordinariness of

as philosophers’ stone

as practicing through us

primary awakening to

as pure spirit

as purity of Total Being

as radical otherness

self-creation and

self-expression of

separateness and

simplicity of

singleness of

as source of all experiences

as spaciousness

as spirit

thatness and whatness of

transformation and

ultimate truth

attachment to

as dynamic

enlightenment and

freedom independent of

nonhierarchical view and

as not being totality

otherness and

realization as

unilocal unity

unity. See oneness and unity

Vajrayana Buddhism

vantage points, living without fixed

view of totality. See totality, view of

whatness

wheel of truth

Zen Buddhism

BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Essence with The Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization

Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas

The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment The Power of Divine Eros: The Illuminating Force of Love in

Everyday Life (with Karen Johnson) Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery

DIAMOND MIND SERIES

Volume 1. The Void: Inner Spaciousness and Ego Structure

Volume 2. The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being: An Object Relations Approach

Volume 3. The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization

DIAMOND HEART SERIES

Book One. Elements of the Real in Man Book Two. The Freedom to Be

Book Three. Being and the Meaning of Life

Book Four. Indestructible Innocence Book Five. Inexhaustible Mystery

DIAMOND BODY SERIES

Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey Brilliancy: The Essence of Intelligence

The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the

Practice of Presence

For more information on A. H. Almaas and all of his publications, please go to www.ahalmaas.com.

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