We have two, now we have people from, that have been studying chapter 3 and chapter 2 and chapter 1 for about, some people have been studying for a few years and some people have been studying for a quarter or two. And people who were studying In the introductory Abhidharma before, I was studying Chapter 3, is that right? When you were studying Pratichya Samudhapada, right? How much did you do? Did you finish it? Did you finish it? I didn't finish Chapter 3, but did you finish the section on Patite Samutvara?

[01:04]

I mean, how far did you go? Patite Samutvara. So do you... And the people who are taking the introductory course and some have gone... They started in the middle of the chapter. They studied... Started around chapter 20, right?

[02:11]

In chapter 3? Chapter 18? The people in the intermediate class... I studied chapter 1 up to almost 18. So the people in the intermediate class know about the Buddhist idea of the universe. And they studied the various realms and how you go from one to another. They study realms of being, different kinds, different ways of being.

[03:13]

Do any of you that were in the introductory class study the first 18 carcass? You just skip them? Karikas. Karikas, the verses. In chapter 3. Did you study the first 18? So we have this situation of about half the people in the class have some fluency with the way of thinking about experience in terms of the basic ways, basic types of being.

[04:27]

And I don't know how much how much we can talk about that, because that's sort of a vocabulary that's going on here. I don't know how much of that you can pick up in the process. I would suggest that the people who are joining this class from the introductory class Study the first 18 karakas. Or I should say the first 18 karakas and their commentaries. No, you don't have a copy of Chapter 3, do you? So you need that. But everyone else has a copy of Chapter 3? You need a copy of chapter three?

[05:42]

Okay. You need a copy of chapter three? So you need the first pages. I don't think it's possible for you to skip this material that we've been studying.

[06:46]

First 18 characters, I think you have to learn it. The question is how to learn it. The people who have been in the class, I don't think want to go over it again. Too much, a little bit that we have to go over it. How can you learn it? Can you learn it from reading about it? I don't know. Do you read it enough? You could learn it by reading it, but certain things that aren't said that... The things that aren't said in this chapter are the antidotes to... to various ways of misunderstanding the text itself. If you read this text, it's possible to misunderstand it, and there's no antidotes there to catch your particular variety of misunderstanding.

[07:53]

But these do come out in class if we talk about things. It says it, but doesn't say enough. For example, not for example, but the main... The main teaching, in a sense, of the first 18 pages is teaching about what we call the triple world. Now, do people in the introductory class know what the triple world is? You don't? Okay. The triple world is... which means, kama means,

[09:13]

basically sex, or concupiscence. Datu means realm, or sphere, or element. And rupa means basic form, or fine, or subtle material. Arupya means no form, formless. And in these three categories, all mundane experience can find its place. No mundane experience cannot be categorized here. And super mundane experience is not someplace else. It's just that it's not really categorized here. It's free of the situation. Within these three worlds, there are six, five or six types of being.

[10:35]

These six types of being are, I think you've heard already, they are human, animal, hell, and fighting spirits or power freaks and gods or devas, heavenly forms of being. Now what took a lot of time For the people who've been studying this, what has taken a lot of time is to understand what these three realms and these six, they're also called six destinies.

[11:44]

These six destinies are six ways of being. It's taken a long time to understand them and not misconstrue them. Once you get it straight, you understand a lot about Buddhism. And there's various little karakas or little verses in this first 18 pages that are very powerful summaries of Buddhist teaching about the mundane world. 18 characters are just telling you, they're not telling you anything about practice. They're telling you about illusion. They're telling you about the world. Not about the path, not about meditation, not about liberation, not about understanding, but about the world.

[12:54]

However, they're telling you about the world in a way that when you start thinking about the world in this way, you start becoming liberated. So the description of the world here is a liberating description, even though what it's describing is the world. Another characteristic of these first 18 pages is that the description is not carried on at a dharmic level. In a sense, the description is not abhidharmic. Very seldom in the first 18 pages of chapter 3 do you have people to have a discussion about any of the 75 dharmas of the Savastavadan system.

[14:01]

Vocabulary is not dharmic vocabulary. However, we can always say what the dharmas they're talking about are. So chapter 3, particularly the beginning, and actually the whole of chapter 3, is a chapter in some sense that a person who doesn't know anything about Abhidharma can start with. You can start with chapter 3 without knowing anything about dharmas. But your understanding will be quite different from someone who has studied chapter 1 and chapter 2. If you study chapter one and chapter two thoroughly, you will notice that it's not talking about dharmas. And some of the people in the intermediate class, after studying chapter three for quite a long time, had still not recognized that dharmas weren't being talked about.

[15:12]

Because they hadn't studied chapter one and chapter two long enough so that they started to think in terms of dharmas. Once you start thinking in terms of dharmas, if you're reading Abhidharma, you immediately notice that you're not talking, that the language has changed, and you're not working with your old tools anymore. After a while, when people talk to you about experience, when you're studying Abhidharma, after a while, when people bring up an experience, you immediately sort of go to your Abhidharma toolbox and start pulling out dharmas to figure out what's going on. Or if you're reading Abhi Dhamma, you notice that they're already talking about the tools. The discussion is in the realm of what the Abhi Dhamma tools are. But in Chapter 3, it's not the case. So not only is it talking about the world of experience, but it's talking about it on a gross or somewhat gross or...

[16:21]

it's talking about the world in a more illusory or common fashion than the first two chapters did. So, in the Buddhist hierarchy of of realities that maybe a fundamental one is emptiness. The next level is the world of dharmas. And the next level is maybe the world of chapter three. And the next level is totally common misconception about what's going on. We worked on things like trying to pound it into our heads that hell, heaven, hungry ghost, animal realm, these are not places but states of being.

[17:55]

We also try to understand how it is that human beings, human beings like us, can experience all six realms. And however that we were born into, or our center of gravity, is the human realm. Any of us can sit in this room without moving a muscle and enter all six realms. You don't have to go anywhere to enter these realms. They are ways of being wherever you are. You will have to move mental muscles, though.

[19:30]

You'll have to do some karmic activity in order to move. The other point, which takes a long time to settle in and feel comfortable with, is that life is not just these destinies. There's these six ways of being There's six ways of being, but these ways of being are destinies. And that means that they are what? Karmically speaking, result. In Sanskrit we say... Kama Vipaka?

[20:36]

What? Vipaka Pala. Vipaka Pala. Do people in the introductory class know what Vipaka Pala means? You familiar with that word? Did you study the sixth? The sixth etude? You didn't? Agapa. Vipaka means, V means what? What? Vipaka means fruit or maturing. So different maturing in Pala means all fruit. So it's a fruit that has a different maturing. The result that matures differently from what? cause. So there's many kinds of results, but one kind of result is called this different maturing result.

[21:43]

Some kind of results are like the cause. This kind of result is different from the cause. It's different from the cause because the cause is all active, and the result is called neutral or passive. There's six other causes, five other causes, five other haytudes. This is one of the haytudes. One of the haytudes is called bithaka haytudes. Bithaka haytudes leads to bithaka pala. There's six other haytudes. But some of the other haytudes lead to results, which are also active. Sometimes you have active cause, we need active results. An active karmic state produces another active karmic state. This is an active karmic state, an active cause which produces a passive cause.

[22:46]

The path that causes a passive result. The path that results, these vipakapala, are called retribution. And these are the karmic characteristic, or this is the characteristic of these states of being. Life is not just these six worlds, these six worlds are the six destinies, the six ways of being. But you might say there's other ways of becoming. So in between and in among these states of being are these states of becoming, or active karmic states. So experience is composed of active karmic states. that have a definite trust and these states of being, which aren't going anywhere, which are just ways of being. One way of being is the human way.

[23:52]

Another way is the hell way. Another way is the heavenly way. These are the three main different ways. The human way is characterized by when you pick up a cup of water. It's just not quite what you're expecting. Yeah, that's the human world right there. Not that bad, though, either. I mean, it's not, you know, poisonous. It's not burning my tongue. But also, it's not, you know, it didn't turn out to be ambrosia, either. In heavenly realm, when I drink this water, it's very, very delicious. Drinking it is bliss. And in hell, well, I won't go into it, but this water is really bad.

[24:58]

In hungry ghost realm, this water is a tremendous frustration. because I have a great desire for it to be delicious and it's really unsatisfying. And in animal realm, I'm characterized by kind of dull fear as I drink it. These ways of being in every moment as you receive experience, these basic ways of receiving experience, which are not as basic as the Dharma, Vedana, which is really the basic way of receiving things, these ways of receiving things are retribution. And these are the destinies within the three worlds. And these destinies are distributed in these three worlds in a particular way.

[26:07]

Just as a little, give me some feeling for what you might know before you hear about it. Somebody in the introductory class, what do you think the distribution of these three ways of being would be in these three worlds? Would all six be in all three, do you think? Or all six in one and one in the other? Or what would you guess? What do you think? Nobody guesses anything? Someone have two or three? Uh-huh. Not all fits with being one. Okay, that's a good guess. Yes. Right, most in the Kamadatu, in the world of five senses, you'll find, if there's six realms, you'll find five and six 27ths of them.

[27:38]

There's 27 divine abodes, and six of them are in the Kamadatu. So most of the ways of being, a mundane being, are in the Kamadattu. In the Rupadattu and our Rupadattu, you only have divine abodes. Or divine destiny, as you said. Now, if you think about this and work with this, it tells you a great deal about your experience. It tells you a lot about what yoga does or doesn't do. Now, these states of being are not places.

[28:42]

So, you can be and there's two ways of being in these states of being. This is another point that's rather subtle. One way to be in a state of being is to be incarnated in the state of being. For example, you take incarnation as a human being. It is also possible to actually incarnate in these other realms, but none of us in this room are incarnated in these other realms. We are incarnated human but we can experience the other realms. If you're incarnated as a Deva, you can experience hell.

[29:49]

I said that, is that true? What? Yeah, you might imply that. That doesn't make sense, according to Gabby Dharma. So maybe I better not say that if incarnated in heaven, you can experience hell. Or that if incarnated in hell, you can experience heaven. I know some things that would contradict that. But let's just say that maybe that's one of the great advantages of being a human being, is that we can do that.

[31:12]

We can be incarnated in this type of body, and yet we can experience the other four or five realms. depending on how you can't. Yes? Could you say that again, please? It's possible that it's possible Well, that's possible to talk that way, but once again, how are we thinking about it? This is, again, the part that's hard to get.

[32:16]

You have a body of a certain type, and inheriting this body of a certain type predisposes you to a certain type of center of gravity. Having this type of body, your center of gravity, is this rather fortunate way of experiencing things. It's rather fortunate. Namely, it's fortunate that when you pick up some item or you relate to some object, you get this low-level frustration as characteristic of your experience. This low-level frustration, it's fortunate in two senses. One is, it's fortunate in the sense that it just happens to be characteristic of where you're at. It's always fortunate to experience what's appropriate to you.

[33:20]

In the other sense that it's fortunate, it's fortunate because it shows you that there needs to be some work or some study of the situation in order for things to work out very well. That's a positive attitude, of course. Some people might think, well, this low-level frustration shows you that basically the situation is hopeless. And that's part of the feeling, maybe, of human life. You sometimes feel it's basically hopeless. Namely, it's basically... a kind of unsatisfactory situation. And there's not much hope for it. But that conclusion is actually quite beneficial because it shows you that your way of looking at it, namely your human way of looking at it, is somehow not quite good enough. It's not going to work. You're going to have to understand more deeply. And to see things that way is quite an encouragement, actually, to actual Buddhist study. Because it's exactly set up on that base.

[34:24]

So a human way of looking at things could say, in one sense, Buddhism is, what do you say, a self-fulfilling prophecy of the human way of thinking. Namely, the human situation is one of this not-too-heavy nauseating frustration level. And Buddhism starts by saying, that's the way things are. So for humans, they say when they hear about what Buddha says, when a human being, when a human body is in the human realm of being, is experiencing the human realm, the human way of being, when they hear the first truth of Buddhism, they say, yeah, that's right. Sounds like this person is talking to me, to my experience. When a human being, in the sense of having a human body, is in the heavenly realm, and they hear the first noble truth, they say, could it be true?

[35:34]

If they're in hell, they say, I wish it were true. When they're hungry ghosts, they say, that doesn't satisfy me. When they're animals, they say, oh God, it can't... What if that's so? When you're a human realm, you say, that's right. So Buddhism is directed to these people at the basic level. Other Buddhism can be transmuted into another form so that it will speak to people who are in these other realms. You can put it in a way, not the Four Noble Truths way, but you can put it in another way. You can talk in another way so that it will appeal to people who are to human beings or other beings that are experiencing these other ways of being. So you can talk to hell beings and you can encourage them or interest them in Buddhism even while they're in hell. And you can talk to heavenly beings and teach them too.

[36:38]

But Four Noble Truths isn't so attracted to these other realms. It's either a sort of a come down or it's actually kind of too wonderful to apply to them. And therefore, it's useless to them. It's too subtle. To us, it doesn't seem so subtle. To us, it seems like kind of, it's not such great news to find out that the world's suffering. We don't usually, people when they first hear that, they don't usually feel elated by it. But that's the point about it. That message is just sort of at one with where you're at if you're a human. It doesn't push you around. It just says, it just sounds right. It's authentic. It's talking to what's happening rather than what you might be someday. However, it does say the next truth and the next truth say that although it's that way, things can improve. There can be an end to this suffering. And the way to end is through this practice, which is very much just turning around and contemplating the situation, this human situation.

[37:48]

And the real... The center of gravity of human life is human way of being, and the center of gravity of Buddhist teaching is for human beings. Most Buddhist practices are for human beings in this state we're talking about, where things just don't quite make it. However, we human beings, in the sense of having a human body, can experience non-human being And we can sometimes pick up cups and we experience boundless beliefs. We can have heavenly experiences as a result of yogic practice. And sometimes we can pick up this cup and have these other woeful states too. However, the picking up of the cup is not

[38:49]

human realm. It's not deva realm. It's not hell realm. Picking up a cup is not an experience, an action. And that action is not one of the destinies. It's an active karma. And the way you pick the cup up produces a state of being. If you pick up the cup angrily, you project yourself into a hell state. If you pick up the cup with tremendous concentration, you can project yourself into a heavenly state. If you pick up the cup with some sense of aggrandizing your pleasure of it, you project yourself into a hungry ghost drone. If you pick up the cup with some deceitful intention, you project yourself into the realm of animal fears.

[39:58]

These various ways of picking up the cup, oh, I should say, and if you pick up this cup not quite knowing what it is, and in the midst of greed, hate, and delusion, you stay right where you are if you're human. And if you keep staying in that situation and examining it, you free yourself of your human way of being. But the actual act is not, the karmic thrust is not a destiny. So our life, the totality of our existence, through the combination of active karma and experience of that karma. Or states that are really non-comparative and states that are comparative.

[41:12]

Perhaps I shouldn't say non-comparative, but I should say... do not depend for their essence on comparing to other states in the past. The states of experience are dominated by comparison with other states. And that's how you arrive at their quality. For example, hell be determined by comparing it with heaven. and heaven you determine by comparing with hell. Human realm you determine by comparing with the others four or others five. And that's one of the things that human realms like in some sense. One way to, another way, so I think this is actually a good way for you to think of what human realms like.

[42:17]

Human realm is like comparing yourself to all the other worlds of being. Whereas the other realms of being are like comparing yourself, I guess also to the other realms of being. But you'll see how different it is to feel that way. For example, if you're in heaven, your feeling of heaven is to a great extent because of all the other realms you're not in. You're not in hell. You're not in human realm. You're not in animal realm. You're not in hungry ghost realm. But you can imagine, you can actually imagine it right now. If you think of not being in those realms, that's what heaven's like. And hell, also, you're not in heaven. You're not in heaven. That's pretty bad. But you're not even in the fighting demon realm. You're not even in the human realm. You're not even in the animal realm. You're not even in the hungry ghost realm. It's not even that good.

[43:18]

That's how bad hell is. And human realm is that... You're not in hell. It's not really that bad. You're not in heaven. It's not really that good. And you're not even fighting your way into heaven. It's not really that good. And you're not really afraid. It's not really that bad. And you're not really insatiable. It's not really that bad. You can see all those sort of exaggerated situations, ways of being, all those ways of comparing your present experience with others such to come out with a good verdict or a bad verdict, none of them work. Can you see? That's a very good way to see human realm. You mean, Antra Baba? That you mean? You mean between realms? In the Antra Baba, you still can make these comparisons, but you don't feel like you're in any of them.

[44:26]

And that's what antra bhava is like. So that's a good way to do it. Now we have this other realm called intermediate being, which we've been talking a lot about, which is called bardo in Tibetan Book of the Dead. Intermediate state between various lives. And once again, this intermediate existence happens between this body and the next body. One incarnation and the next incarnation. But it also happens in between every state of being, in between every destiny. So in this today, all of us will go through a large number of what we call intermediate states of being. Maybe not all of us. Someone in this class might stay in the human realm all day long. But most people wobble a little bit. for a few seconds here and there, a great number of times in a day.

[45:30]

Most people do. It's pretty hard not to. Even if you're a good yogi, it's pretty hard not to slip occasionally, commit an act of great concentration, and project yourself into a state of bliss for a few seconds. So, every time you go from one realm of being into another, you go through this intermediate state. And when you change incarnations, you also go into it. So now, in terms of what we're talking about, the way to feel this bardo, or this intermediate state, is that it's like the human realm in a sense, in a sense that you're looking over all these realms, except that also you're looking at the human realm, you're not being there. In the human realm, you really feel, you have this kind of suffocated sense, you feel somewhat suffocated. In the other realms, you feel suffocated too, but at least you've got... Like if you're in hell, it's terrible. You're completely oppressed and suffocated by the suffering.

[46:33]

But at least it's very kind of, you know, it's really terrible. You don't lack emotion at all. You're really into heavy stuff. In heaven too, it's quite heavy. It's light, but it's heavy. In the human realm, you've got plenty of emotions. but they're all sort of at counter purposes to each other. You're not just completely miserable or completely happy. It's just a big kind of hodgepodge of conflicting emotion. Because in one sense, you're very depressed because you're not in bliss. But also, you're very fortunate that you're not in hell. In one sense, you want to go do something so that you'll be in bliss, but you know if you do that, you go to hell. In another sense, you know that if you're good little boys and girls, you go to heaven. But also, that's not very interesting. If you're diligent and do your work, that will produce various states of worldly bliss.

[47:35]

And if you not only do good works, but also do good concentration, you'll have really high bliss. But if you deal with that intention, you go to hell. A hungry ghost. So there's all this ambivalence and contradiction in human realm. So you're somewhat suffocated there. And part of the ambivalence is that you feel trapped, but also you're quite safe here. And you know that right around the edges that heaven is safe, but if you try to get there, you get in trouble. And hell is terrible. But, you know, if you get into that, then you'll stay in the human realm too. Then the way you can get into hell is sort of not pay attention to that. And as soon as you don't pay attention to hell and heaven and all that all works, you'll slip right out of the human realm. So it's a confined... kind of feeling whereas intermediate realm you're not stuck in the human realm you're sort of fully free-floating you're not committed to anything so you have a lot of flexibility and you're rather light so it's kind of like heaven realm with flexibility in a way yes I'll be down if you're speaking

[48:51]

If you meditate on this business very thoroughly, you realize that every round, what we just discovered, is that every round depends on every other round. That in some ways, the best definition, which I never thought of before today, the best definition of each round is the awareness of the others. So, if you... If that's so, and I think that's really a good definition, when you think of the main characteristics of each realm and you realize that those characteristics are determined by comparisons with the other main characteristics or the realms, the other realms' main characteristics, that you're not in those and what's left. What's left is what it's like, basically, to think about those So each realm, although you can only experience one in a moment, that one is totally conditioned by the others.

[49:54]

So as you meditate on that, pretty soon you'll find out you're never in any realm. And when you see that, you're liberated from whatever realm you're in. However, it turns out that human beings are about the only realm that you can make that kind of... where you can meditate that way. It's so delightful in heaven, and it's so miserable in hell that you can't quite... You can't quite get around to seeing that fact. It's pretty difficult. Easier in heaven than it is in hell, though. Yes? They weren't physically on physical places.

[51:21]

Yeah, it does. That's what we have to be careful of. Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, well. Well, you said something like you said, the human realm is not what we think it is, but it's not what people's popular conception of it is.

[52:39]

However, it is what you think it is. So every realm you're in is what you think it is. Or you think yourself into every realm you get into. And let me say now, something I didn't say before, and that is there's two big breakdowns in this circle world. One is what's called pajama loka. And I tend to put, instead of putting it in half, I tend to put pajama loka on the outside because it's, in a sense, it's not some not so central. It's produced. The central ground, the outside ground, the physical ground is called ... ...

[53:47]

The Dhamma Loka and Sat Pakya. The Dhamma Loka is a physical world, and Sat Pakya is the world of beef. Okay? Now, what does it mean to be incarnated as a human being? Anybody? What does that mean? Be attached to organs. Yes? Yeah. Well, what's happening in a body, though? But what's happening in a human body? It's eye, ears, nose. But you touch your nose and your ear. Is that what you mean? Anybody want to comment on that some more? You can't touch the ear. Yeah, it's what it means.

[55:07]

What? Yeah. But there's no body. Human birth is not body. Okay? Nothing is hard to get. To be incarnated as a human being is not to get a body like Will. This body is not. This body is an object. This body is pajamas. This is a physical, external physical event, this body. It's external to me, too. This body is an external thing. It's not internal to me. What's internal to me? Yeah, the sense of touch. Nobody in this room feels this. I feel that this feeling is internal.

[56:12]

The sense of touch is internal. But this body is not my body. We say it is, but this is external to me. It is external to me as it is to you. And your bodies are as external to you as they are to me. These bodies are not what we mean by a human body. These bodies are just like chairs and tables. They belong in this world of physical, external physical reality. To be born of the human, incarnate of the human, means that you choose to have five sensors of the human type, what you call eye. But if not, you cannot touch the eyeball. I mean, you cannot touch the eye or [...] It doesn't have location, but not the eyeball. It is locatable, but it's not what you see.

[57:15]

It's a subtle form of matter. If you look at it, you see through it. When light hits it, it responds. But if you look at it and you don't see the capacity, you see light hitting it and coming back in the irrespective faculty. Choosing a birth is choosing a certain way to be hooked up in terms of sensory equipment. That's what choosing a birth is. Choosing a halberd is being hooked up in one way so that the way you're hooked up is that everything to your end is practically terrible. Be hooked up as one we go, and so on. So when you choose incarnation, it's different than, like now, we have made this decision, we call it a human life, which lasts about 700 years.

[58:20]

And during that time, we have this particular set of coordinates that we are attached to. And that's our incarnation. We constantly come back to the center of gravity. of comma dot to these kinds of organs that we have around here. Because you can project yourself into realms where these organs don't even operate. Within this lifespan, you can experience other realms, but you don't take the organs of those beings. But you experience the way you can. And that's why antirabhava, the antirabhava, these intermediate beings, beings in the bardo, if you look at their behavior, they have various psychic powers or perceptual and sense powers that we don't have.

[59:33]

The reason why they have these powers is because they have not yet, you'd say, limited themselves to a particular set of centuries. When you become a human being, you say, I'm only going to state certain ways. You close down your perceptual field into a great subset. I mean, a very tiny subset of what is possible to know. But you wish to do that. You want to do that. Because you want to have this human sexism. In order to have human sex experience, you have to limit your experience. You know, you can't have global awareness. You have to be consolidated. When babies are first born, you know how global their perceptual sense is supposed to be. But they've chosen a birth, a human birth with human equipment, so that when that equipment mature, their sexuality becomes very concentrated.

[60:40]

And so there's this great hubbub about arranging things for this concentrated activity. Babies don't have to do it. They don't have to date. They don't have to dance or drive their life in order to have those sexual activities. It's all over the place. But that's because the organs are immature. When the organs are fully developed, then these human beings must make all these sexual arrangements. or they get in big trouble. But that's exactly what they wanted to do. That's why they were born. That's why they chose to be born as human, because they thought that particular kind of concentrated, limited activity was really a specialized thing, highly specialized in the total realm of the experience. And they thought that was interesting. So they chose to do it, and it all worked out, and now there it is.

[61:42]

You can do it. But it's a tremendous limitation. The Antara Bhava has not yet chosen. So they can have this wide view. So they can see all of the plate. They can experience various rounds. Antara Bhava has a lot of advantages. And that's part of the wonder of this whole thing, to be a chance to have it often. It aerates your life, these under the public. They lend a lot of perspective to your human existence. It's possible during a day to have lots of moments where you don't have a limited sense of what's going on. Where you're not particularly attached to having a limited view, sensory view. And those moments, those moments, you know, you're free.

[62:44]

You're free of your usual sexual choice. I say sexual in the sense that sexual is the pivotal decision to be born, the sexual decision. Other forms of being have other forms of sex, but it's, you know, reproduction is a big part of the whole thing. Reproduction. So animals have sensor organs that we don't have yet. So what incarnation means is to take on these sensor organs. Well, you don't expect me exactly the same way that they do.

[64:09]

It's not exactly the same. You don't have, because you don't have the same equipment. In other words, to be at Dennis and I'm having a different type of experience. No, you do experience, and you do really experience them. but you don't experience them with the body it will be. In other words, you're visiting, you feel like you're visiting that realm. Rather than that you're, you know, you know in some sense that you're still aware, at least after visiting several times, you'd be aware that this realm is not your center of gravity and that you return to your usual sense organs. or rather you'll return to the state of being or just characteristic of beings that have your sense of order.

[65:21]

No, because we're talking about those realms right now, and some people are not in it. I'm talking about hell, but I don't think anybody in this class is really in it. And we're talking about... We can talk about, but I appreciate nobody in this party didn't repeat it. No, I think I'm talking about a tremendous blitz that you only would attain in conjunction with that very quite advanced yogic techniques we can actually experience as human beings. But when the project power of the yogic meditation sees it, you fall back in the regular human realm, which is characterized in the way we were talking about before.

[66:33]

But it really is an experience. And human beings, I think, and maybe you don't know this, but a lot of human beings know what hell is like. A real sense of being crushed. Just completely suffocated by tone. And it's not like a knowledge of the potential of it. It's actual spirit. However, you feel like, you know, you know you're still a human. But you very much have experience of hell. In that case, a healthy human possess the same order as a human. But there are, you see, we don't cross the possibility there being beings who are at their center of gravity. There's actually beings like that that have incarnated in that realm. And that's where they are most of the time.

[67:34]

And we say this because you can actually go to those realms and get incarnated in them. So watch out. It's not just like you're a human being forever, and you're going to go to hell for an afternoon. No. If you're not careful, when you die, when you disincarnate this B sento again, point of death, you can actually reincarnate as a hell being. For the reality of the bond, and just for a sample of them, you can go check them out anytime you want. As a human being, particularly if you'd like to try them for 500 years or whatever. you can actually get a sample of it. If you couldn't, you might think you're up for it. But just start off on that. If you don't know how to get into hell, if you really don't know how, I can tell you. It's pretty easy. Just do all kinds of bad things to yourself.

[68:38]

Oh, you know, for example, go murder a few people. That'll put you in hell right away. And then after that happens, then see if you'd like to do that some more, you know, forever feel like you do after that happens. That's what it would be like to be in hell, the way people that murderers feel. You ever met a murderer? Do you have any idea what they feel like? I've met people who do things like I don't know, steal somebody else's mail, open somebody's letter or something, throw it in a whisper basket. I've seen what happens to them. Imagine if you murder somebody. So, anyway, you can, as a human being, you can get a sample of what it's like, and it's really real, it really is an experience, and you still have a human body, human sense organs.

[69:43]

But if you do too much of that kind of stuff and have too much of experience and you don't not mind it, then you're going to go there. Because obviously that's what you want. So you can be actually born and somehow beings are actually born into that. That is possible. The mind is very powerful. You can choose another kind of body. This is not just... This is not just... Yeah, it is just talk, too. But talk and thought are very powerful. They've created this. They've created this whole situation. This whole world has been created by talk and thought. You can make another one. Some people feel like, are those real? Is that talk of those hell realms? Is that real? Is this real? This isn't real, and they aren't real. But you can go to another realm that is real as this. But the walls are red hot. And these people are slicing you up all the day and then they heal you at night and they slice you the next day.

[70:45]

They're such realms. Because you can think of them. And all over the world people think of them. So if you can make this world, you can make those world. And you will if you make it in this world enough. You'll reincarnate in those realms. This mind is a very powerful item. It can transform universes. That's why we're talking about this, because it's really powerful material. Yes? Are there other kinds of values for agile contact? I don't quite. We'll just say it tomorrow. That's the question we made.

[71:48]

Then you're not in a destiny. But you are doing something. You see, the destiny is quite different from the act. Because the destiny is a way of experiencing an act. It's actually powerful, initiatory karma. So... But there is a relationship between them, except that one's just sort of passive and the other's very active. So in that way they're quite different. But in fact, the heaven, the hungry, the demon round, in the sense of demonic power and near bliss through power, the actions which lead to that are like the result. So for example, One of my favorite examples for Asuras, or these fighting demons, are generals. Generals or multimillionaires.

[72:52]

And certain... I don't know, these kind of people, generals and multimillionaires, are a good example. People that have this kind of power. And they enjoy it so much. It's almost blissful for them. But the bliss that the result in bliss is not at all like the work that they do to produce it. As they sit around in their mansions with their servants and everybody brings in their trophies and stuff like that and claps for them and all that kind of stuff, which is mainly what we call fame and wealth. that's not like what they did. But it's connected. And what they did is actually, in some sense, oftentimes good karma, but it's painted by power-hungerness.

[73:54]

And they actually would even like to have even greater bliss. But they're going the wrong route. They need to be manipulating the pajama loka. They're concentrating activities on the pajama loka. Whereas the yogi is working on sajama loka. So they get a higher quality bliss. But fighting spirits, they're actually into quite good karma. They have to be in order to elevate themselves even, in some sense, they're more powerful than right as human beings. But once you're in that realm, you're not any longer striving. You're just sitting, you're collecting your dividends. But you're not quite settling. You would like to have a better kind, but you took the wrong route, so you don't know how to get in the other door. In a chart, you often see a picture of this. You go from human up to Deva, and you go from human into fighting spirit, but fighting spirit can't get into heaven. The only way for fighting spirit to get into heaven is to come back down to human and go back up the other way.

[74:59]

You have to come back to regular human situation and meditate on it in order to get into heaven. The reason why I take it badly is because the habit which got them into the power is somewhat off. They're into manipulating their environment rather than studying themselves. So they always run into a dead end. And also, both heaven and power both have the problem in that what people do to get into heaven, what people do to get into powerful situations, is good, actually, in both cases.

[76:03]

But they often tend to become attached to those situations. And then when the situation is always temporary, and then once the situations start to deteriorate, they resort to different methods than they use to attain the state. So they used good karmic methods to get into heaven or to get into powerful positions. But when they deteriorate, they resort to methods which they didn't use to get into the situations and which will now send them into hell. And whereas human beings, the human situation is more beneficial or better because when the human situation changes... and you start to lose it, you don't tend to try to grasp it again. The human state, the human being, human way of being, is one that when it changes, you're usually quite happy about it.

[77:07]

In a sense, you're happy, because you didn't like it in the first place. But the thing is, you get another one just as bad. So the human realm is also a realm, if you stay in it, where you can let things be impermanent. You can leave things alone. And the good karma which produces a human birth and human state, that karma will, you know, you won't give up that karma when you stay in the, if you see the human realm coming to an end, you won't give up that karma. I'm not that clear. In other words, every state of being is impermanent. They only last a moment. Okay? And then they change. But sometimes one heavenly state, one state of bliss leads to another state of bliss, leads to another state of bliss, leads to another state of bliss, leads to another state of bliss. Sometimes you have these big strings of state of bliss as a result of yogic meditation or good works. But every time it ends, it may not be another one.

[78:10]

So sometimes they end and they don't happen again. At that point, the person who has projected them into this state of bliss, seeing that it's come to an end, instead of resorting to the yogi meditation, which projected them back into it, may resort to certain angry states due to the frustration of coming down from that lofty state back to the human realm. That, of course, does not send them back to heaven and does not leave them in the human realm. It sends them to hell. Okay? Human realms are the same. It's also impermanent. But it goes from one state of mild dissatisfaction or mild frustration or nauseation to another state. When they end, you don't resort to methods to bring it back. Because you don't care if it comes back. You resort to the same kind of method that got you there, which are good karmic methods. Because you're not attached to it.

[79:14]

So human realm is closer to the real way of being. And that's why it's very fortunate to stay there if you can. However, we do recommend that people start sometimes to expand their repertoire upward as an experiment occasionally. All right? We do recommend sometimes for certain people minor excursions into the heavenly realms just to see if they can do it without slipping. Those who are clear can do and come back without making a mistake. Those who are not clear will go to heaven, become angry when they come back down and go to hell. So those people should not probably do these meditations. But a little bit of expanding upward will develop some flexibility in the field. And once you can go up and come back without becoming attached, when you can do that cycle, then you can go down

[80:18]

and come back without being attached. And that's necessary for bodhisattvas or any Buddhist. You should be able to move within these realms without being fooled by them and still resort to the correct methods. So just to be safe, we go upward to start with. Upward is, you know, it's all safer, considerably safer. Any human realm? I don't think so.

[81:19]

The reason for going up is that up is more energetic to start with, to go up. If you go down, you can go down just by using your wrist. established habits, you can go down. But you have to develop skill to go up. And the yogic skill is a kind of guardian. Still hardly, you should go up with a teacher. Because if you just go up on your own, you may get off, and then you go to hell. So it's a very tricky business of doing these elevating meditation But if you can go in them without being fooled by them and without being attached to them, you develop a kind of flexibility across realms. And then you can go down and go into hell state and come back. And then you can meet all beings, whatever.

[82:27]

That's the only kind of beings that we have is these six. If you can go through them all with ease and... equanimity and not being worried about them or attached to them, then you can meet any kind of a person, enter their state, be with them, and let go of it to show the example, which they need to see the example of it, because where they're hanging out, they don't see the example. You need to show them this example. I would suggest to the people who, we still haven't finished studying Antara Bhava. I'd like to study that some more. And so I would suggest to everyone that they familiarize themselves with the first 18 chapters, 18 carcass, and particularly with this material on intermediate realm. The next time, we're going to study some more about intermediate realm. And eventually, there will be some discussion of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So you might want to look at that some, too.

[83:28]

Yes? No, there's six Hetus and five fruits. The teaching of the six Hetus and five fruits and four conditions is taught in Chapter 2 of the Agdamha Kosha. Chapter 2 between Karaka 49 and 73. And one possible route that we can take is we can study We can finish this material on antarabhava. And then we can go on to either study... What you did before is you studied Prachitya Samudhapada first. So I would suggest going back and studying Hetu Pratyaya first. And then study Prachitya Samudhapada.

[84:32]

And then karma. Karma is the Hetu Pratyaya system. It's set up at the end of chapter two, the Abhidhis Kachit Samapada in the middle of chapter three, and then chapter four, which is a huge chapter, is on karma. And so all three of those are in causation. And we're talking about causation now in terms of how you move within realms of being. It's also causation. Yes? Rebirth in a destiny is the Apocopala. It's safe? Yes, it's quite safe to say that. No, the results don't tell you. The results are your destiny. So all destinies are the Apocopala. Destinies are a karmic result, and destinies are undefiled neutral.

[85:38]

That's another important point to remember, is that hell, the experience of hell, is not bad karma. The experience of hell and the experience of heaven is not good karma. And the experience of the human realm, as an experience, is not good or bad karma. Okay? These are all neutral. Not only are they neutral, but they're undefiled. It's very important to keep that in mind. Otherwise you start thinking that hell's bad. held inactive in the sense that it doesn't have a clear direction. It's got plenty of emotion. But just torment is not active karma. That's what we mean. If you think torment is active, that's not what's meant here. It's just being tortured by your experience. Torturous experience. Neutral. However, it's produced by a very strong, negative, angry type of karma.

[86:41]

And hungry ghost realm is neutral and undefiled, but it's produced by very strong clinging and greed. In the realm itself, you don't. When you're in that state of being, you don't do any good karma or bad karma. But within a human birth, as a human body, during a day, some of the day, you're in human realm also. You have a human body, a human organ, and you have human experiences. But that may not be all day long. It won't be all day long. During that day, you may experience human realm, and then do some good karma, and then do some bad karma, and then do some good karma and some bad karma, and then you experience human realm again, do some good karma and some bad karma, then some hell realm, to some good karma and some bad karma, all these different possibilities, not all of them are possible.

[87:46]

That's another thing which we can see is that some of them aren't possible. And that's which ones are possible and which ones aren't possible, which sequences are possible and which sequences aren't possible, is taught at the end of chapter 2, chapter 66 to 72. So the causation goes from 49 to 66 and 66 to 73. And chapter two teaches you the possible sequences of these events. So that'll teach you, if you check there, you'll be able to see how it can be that you can do good karma, and then intermediate round, and then intermediate round, and then some burry, and then it'll tell you the karmic patterns that are possible. Some aren't, some are. And it'll tell you how you can move around in the realms. You can jump some ways from around in here, other ways you can't. It's all laid out there. And we spent some time on this here before, talking about how you move around these realms and why you can go one way and not another.

[88:48]

Across these realms, Only meditation can fend you into these realms. But within the Kama Dattu, you can go up and down by good and bad works. In the Kama Dattu, there are heavens. And you can get in them by doing good works and meditation. But these states can only be reached by your meditation. So, next time we'll study some more Antra Bhava. So please, if you can, read the first 18 karakas and particularly concentrate on the Antara Bulbas section.

[89:46]

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