the 12 links of causation, which is a kind of dynamic picture of existence. And in conjunction with these 12, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. These 12 are like 12 different ways to sort of understand a moment of existence. So what you do is you take an existence, a moment of existence, just like right now, and then you think about it from these 12 ways, or you feel it in these 12 ways, or you intuit or sense in these 12 ways.

[01:11]

And then another way of, the other kind of psychology which we haven't talked about, alluded to, is a static, a static analytic way of looking at a moment's existence. And it's more or less a dynamic, interpenetrating way of looking at it. And the static, analytic way, one of the ways, the main way, is in terms of five aggregates. of something called by . You could also say by wounds, or feet, or piles, or mumps.

[02:25]

Oftentimes, in some important zente things, they pick up a moment of existence as the mountain. So this is a static way of looking at a moment of existence. And then a moment of existence is one that has been looked at, cut up into five categories. And five categories will account for any kind of experience. And this dynamic view is to look at the five skandhas from the point of view of ignorance, from the point of view of formations, from the point of view of consciousness, in the sense that each one of these refers to the same thing. And in each one of these links, there's five skandhas being dealt with at the topic in each of these categories. So if you will, these are 12 meditations on those five aggregates.

[03:36]

And these meditations on those five aggregates show how the five aggregates interrelate with each other. So by meditating on these 12 links, in some sense, you're meditating on all the different ways that these elements of existence can interact with each other. In some sense, the five-strand is a kind of a warm-up for this one. Even though I started with this one, in a sense, exercising going over the analytical and static model to warm up to looking directly at this ungraspable, interpenetrating, dynamic reality, it's kind of a warm up to get you into it.

[04:50]

But I presented this one first in this class, which I usually wouldn't do in a class on Buddhist psychology because, well, why do you think I wound up presenting this one first instead of later in this class? Any ideas? Kind of a historical consciousness type of work. Any ideas? I have one in mind, but it's not the only one, I'm sure. You understand my question in the sense I'm saying, why do you think I introduced the dynamic and interpenetrating and difficult to grasp one before presenting the analytical and static one, easier one to understand, which is usually a prerequisite for entering into this meditation? Why do you think I introduced the more advanced meditation before the more basic one? Yes? That's why, yeah.

[05:56]

Because somehow we talked about why is this Buddhist psychology? And the funny thing about it is that, not funny thing, but one of the things about it that makes it Buddhist psychology is that it's the psychology of Buddha. It actually starts from, the thing that makes it this way is the enlightenment of the Buddha. That's what makes this kind of a certain type or a special kind of psychology. So we talked about the Buddhist, the psychological experience of the Buddha at the time of enlightenment. So we started with enlightenment. We started by presenting the enlightened mind right away, which is not so easy to grasp. And now, backing up, we find out a more basic way, which is a way that Buddha came to later When Buddha first was asked to teach, I think what he taught was right out of here. He talked from the dynamic, ungraspable, simultaneous world of reality.

[07:05]

And people couldn't grasp it. So then he shifted to this other teaching of the five skandhas. and people could understand this, and then gradually he worked them back to this vision again in later parts of his teaching. It's actually a circle, but anyway, that's why I found him with this one, because we actually have been introduced to the Enlightened Mind right away. And then you realize that you don't understand it. And then you maybe find the five standards would be helpful to you. And actually being skillful at it. They say that being skillful at handling these five little, you know, you could think of them like little balls that you can juggle or something. Five little items to become skillful with. To me, it sounds surprising. It sounds somewhat mechanical to me to think or to suggest that

[08:08]

that the skill at handling categories would be connected or would lead to total freedom. It seems a little kind of technical or hard-edged or something kind of mind that I feel is necessary in order to think about things this way. Does that make sense to anybody? You know what I mean? No? Well, let me give you another example. It says in the Heart Sutra that when the bodhisattva of great compassion was practicing deeply in wisdom beyond wisdom, he perceived or she perceived that all these aggregates, these five aggregates, were empty and were saved from suffering.

[09:15]

So this great enlightening being was relieved from suffering upon meditating on these five aggregates. And to me, at certain points in my life, I thought, gee, that's kind of strange. I wouldn't think, you know, I look at these pictures of these big bodhisattvas, you know, these gorgeous... radiant beings of celestial benevolence and inconceivable compassion. And then to think that they'd be sitting around thinking about the five skandhas, it seems kind of petty or something. Do you know what I mean? Why would they be thinking of that? Why wouldn't they be thinking about, you know, maybe the faces of infinite beings, infinite suffering beings that face their faces? or their hearts, or why would they be thinking of love? How could it be that love would be meditating on the five skandhas? You know what I mean? Does that surprise anybody? Somebody called the Heartless Sutra.

[10:20]

I just sort of, I wonder how, do you know what, does anybody understand what I'm talking about? I mean, does that make sense that, what do you mean by rationality? Well, that's all there is to it. What? That's all there is to it. Right. There isn't anything else. That's all you can meditate on, right. But calling sort of experience and saying that, Just saying five categories or five things, it just seems so surprising to me to talk about it that way. But really, it's just talking about what you have to look at and just saying it comes in five categories. Which one would love be if you preferred that they had no love? Which one of those kind would it be? Well, I would say that love would be the five standards. looked at in these 12 ways, that would be love. Well, love doesn't have form, does it?

[11:29]

Yes, but it's not separate from form, though, right? It's not just floating out in midair. It connects to a body, right? So the five aggregates are form, feelings, perceptions, formations, various kinds of mental formations, and consciousness. We can go over this repeatedly. But before I go any further, I just want to say that I suggest that right away we start, well, this isn't a suggestion.

[12:40]

This may be too difficult. But I would suggest that right away we start doing, start actually turning around right now and looking at our experience. I'm talking to you right now, but I'm also actually trying to turn the light around and look back, so to speak, at the experience I'm having more than think about what I'm going to talk about. So I'm talking about five skandhas, but what I'm talking about is your experience right now. So I just want to stop there for a second and see if that makes any sense. Does that work? What I'm talking about is your experience right now.

[13:43]

Now, can you entertain that your experience, that thinking of your experience in five ways, what about that? Does that seem stiff or comfortable? attractive or repulsive. Yeah. Well, we are working in five ways, 12 ways, or whatever. It's all basic. We go to do the intellectual ,, whatever exam, whatever exam breaks. It seems to be events of the, uh, all that stuff that Michael is going... Just to get you to examine? No, more than that. Pardon me, now. Um, it's almost a weapon against itself. Um, it seems to be inflectual formations.

[14:44]

I'm sorry, I'm not performing it. Um, but it's like, you know, two damn things supposed to be realized, but they think they're nothing here. That's what I thought. Yeah. How do you feel about that kind of inquiry? Other people enjoy it, or does anybody find it difficult? Because I think that maybe is sort of part of what we're talking about here, is that kind of work. Maybe we should settle um, settle with this issue right off because if we do, I think, then we go on with a certain understanding about what we're going to do with this material. Does that make sense? No? Does that? Does that? Does that? Yeah. Does that? Okay.

[15:44]

Uh... I mean, if you get sick and you do this kind of thing, then it should be, it should be where that this kind of thing can be made out of Yeah, right. Right. Or you may be doing it sort of off to the side a little bit, maybe not have quite the right attitude about it. So I'm just saying that I feel that if you enjoy it or not enjoy it, either one of those, not enjoying it may be an indication of... Not that you should go ahead and do it anyway, but at least maybe you should bring up the fact that you're uncomfortable with it rather than just sort of like be uncomfortable with it and say, well, I'm not going to do it. Or I don't understand it even though I haven't tried it yet. So if I have some resistance to this, if I admit it, then I might be able to go ahead and do it, even though I don't want to. But if I don't admit that I'm resisting trying this type of meditation on, then I won't have so much confidence in it because it won't work until I actually try it on.

[16:53]

So if you don't understand this material, or if I don't understand this material, it may have something to do with the fact that we have some resistance to it. But I actually personally feel some resistance to it in the sense I feel a conflict between certain ways of being sometimes. And I think being analytical like this, I actually shy away from it in a way. To actually do it, actually look at the experience that way, rather than just listen to the idea, to actually apply it. Yes? I have a question. I'm not sure it's exactly relevant, Depending on your answer, is it that this sort of type thing is to get rid of intellectual concept and self-destruct, like you mentioned, or is it to get rid of the one intellectual construct of the self? In other words, what I'm suggesting is there's nothing wrong with intellectual conception if you can deal with it from the standpoint of selfless.

[17:57]

OK. And so if you realize that, well, anyway, that helps somewhat that the point of this is to some degree is to affect your sense of yourself. It's a main point, I think, and if it's not doing that, you're not doing it, then if you're hesitant about it, that might make it a little more inviting. But it promises it's a change since it's not possible. When I went to university, I didn't even get to put it out. I didn't know how to use it. I didn't feel like it. And when I'd sit, I didn't want to think about it, but the system, I think about it more when I'm with Sue and when I'm with Mary or when I'm at work.

[18:58]

But it was a little piece of it at one point, but Mary and I, it was an experience, but whatever. So I just might say a little bit about, I think if I was to count this for example, If you turn around and look at your experience now and you try this, just turn around and look at it and see if you see any scoundrels there. See anything that belongs to one of those heaps? You see a form? Is there a form there? Is there a feeling? Are there emotions? Are there memories?

[20:01]

Are there attitudes? Is there consciousness? Are there concepts? All this stuff is swirling around. Or is it? Anybody? What's happening now when you look back there? What do you see? Anybody, what have you found? Yeah. We've only seen one at a time. Yeah. You can't see all five at once. That's right. You can't even see two at once. That's right. That's right. You can see one at once. So you can kind of see one thing at a time. Anybody can see two things at a time? I was thinking about when I did the political argument with someone, the idea and emotion

[21:02]

I'd be an emotion. I'd be an emotion. What? I see them. Yes. I'd be able to actually see them. to have the ability to see the same thing separately would be, it's more difficult than putting it together all at once. I think it's easier to see all of it putting together now, rather than clearly seeing each other. Because I can't understand what I'd like to see, you know, but to actually break it down and see each other all at once, But we expect our items to... looking at the table, the glass, the people in the class, and the sound outside, it's all kind of jumbled with my mind.

[22:09]

If not, I'm able to speak with each moment. I'd rather want to put them all together in some sort of picture, which is easier to do than to see you spend the same time. But I think seeing which is going to be safer than experiencing the moment is what this is about because Yep. But that's what the analytic, static type of meditation will teach you. So there it has this recommendation that it provides a way to, in some sense, just stop your mind. Take little photographs of it, like, oh, there's . But actually, it's all just kind of like ungraspably complex and dynamic and ungraspable whirling, interpenetrating worlds where everything's mutually including everything else.

[23:20]

But somehow I can relate to that more easily, some sort of a sense of... of a continual flow, a complex flow, and that it somehow feels better when I don't try so hard to keep things connected or something, more the sense of seeing all of experience as a big pile of stuff. But then I can't, and that seems helpful in some sense, but trying to divide it up into 12 categories, you divide it up into four categories, rather than seeing it as infinite stuff, or just lots of stuff interacting in this sort of nice... What's the... What is the point of going... of analyzing, you know, in 12 nice, neat little categories? Let's see, well... I feel that the purpose of the two meditations is different, that...

[24:26]

Depending on what realm you're coming into, if you're coming into this realm here, this is actually just the realm of our experience. And then try to impose these 12 things on it would be all right. But you might have trouble placing it because you wouldn't have anything concrete to place it on. These are kind of like 12 ways of looking at something. And the five help you sort of just settle into it. You don't have to do it that way. That's why I say look at your experience and see if you come up with some alternative. It doesn't have to be these five, but what do you have there? And if you can apply these five, What you then can do is then look at these 5 by these 12 waves. You don't have to do it that way.

[25:36]

But I think it's saying something about that although nothing's fixed, also things have structure. There's structure even though it's a swirling dynamic world that also has a structure. There's a structure in space. It is structured in the ungraspable nature of reality. You can't get a hold of it, but it has a structure. This part of the structure is that this existence, in its true sense, has a structure, and it can come at it in these 12 ways. There's other ways to do it, but he chose 12. There's something useful about that number. It has to do with It's kind of a biological number. It has to do with, say, the development of physical matter and things like that. And 12 disciples, and it's a sacred number, 12. So apparently, number 12 has something, some structural relationship to existence.

[26:48]

in the context of un-graph-ability, in the context of emptiness, in the context of complete unhindered, enlightened consciousness. Yes? Unhindered ? The cultural background? Yes. And even if I do or not, there's something out of the definitive culture The last thing is they want to solve things the way I do it. We can go out and do what we know how to do. There's a certain amount of road that needs to be run down. Yeah, I think this is a meditation on relativity.

[27:52]

This is a meditation on getting 12 different views on existence and realizing how relative it all is. What I mean is a native American. Yes. Right, exactly. 12 is one possibility. You can also have two. You can look at the five standards from the point of two, two different points of view, and looking at it. Or you can do four different points of view, or 12, or infinite points of view. 12 and even less than 12 are really, two is actually indicating infinite. There's two, there's no n. The two's enough already, but 12 is just, For some reason or other, his cultural conditioning, sitting under that particular tree at that time in history, he just happened to see 12s there. In his mind, he saw 12.

[28:54]

Now, he could... I don't mean to be disrespectful when I say this, but he could have actually had a situation where there was 12 and there were 18 and there were 68 and there were... an infinite number of ways of taking views on this experience. It might have been an infinite number. But then later when he talked about it, he just sort of said 12. And that he just chose 12 because he thought it was a good number in terms of explaining what he saw because of whatever. There's 12 hours in a cycle of the day, right? Maybe it has something to do with that. Egyptian. Yeah. They counted like 12. But as Jeffrey said, if he's an American Indian, it might have been an entirely different way.

[30:02]

They might have looked at it as a series of animals. The bear way of looking at it. The fox way of looking at it. The deer way of looking at it. The antelope way of looking at it. The turtle way of looking at it. The snake way of looking at it. The buffalo way of looking at it. All the different ways of looking at what? At five skandhas. But they didn't call them five skandhas. They called them earth, water, air, fire, space. You know? That's another way of looking at it. The point is, anyway, a lot of these systems, what they're doing is they're trying to initiate us into reality, the reality of our experience. But the way they do it at first is by getting us something concrete to work on, something analytical and static that we can sort of veer in on, and then take that static thing and look at it from many angles until you are comfortable

[31:10]

comfortable with the ungraspable, inconceivable practice of liberation. So these meditations are kind of warm ups or auxiliary practices to going, in some sense, through a great transformation into being someone who can comfortably and consistently work for the benefit of all beings. Yes? I think I'm just missing something. We have to understand how limited and quite aggregate. We can understand our current use of 12 steps, but how many of them are in here? Sure.

[32:17]

Also, 12 steps, right? 12-step program. It could be 10 steps. It could be 10. Or it could be a three-step program. Or it could be a 94-step program because it's a 12. So I think 12-step is an interesting way of looking at it because it's like 12 steps around the five skandhas. You have five skandhas, 12 steps around them. Okay? And... This is a circle, OK? A circle, all right? OK. And so one way to look at this, oh, by the way, I brought you a little article on the 12. Some of you get that already? Did anybody get it?

[33:21]

Probably people got it already. Well, anyway, if other people who are in the class, not the visitors, hands off, scriptures. Regular members can come up and get their copy of that. In that thing, He points out that one way to look at these, there's 12, right? And 12 ways of looking at, I'll just say the five scoundrels, OK? 12 ways of looking at the five scoundrels, all right? And one way to look at it is as though these 12 were taking place simultaneously in the present in one moment. Another way is to think of it as three different lives, OK? After you have these 12 ways of looking, you also now have different ways of thinking about the way these 12 operate.

[34:22]

And one way would be to start right about at this point, you start looking at this point. Name and form. At that point, you start tuning in on the five skandhas. And then you can see this as referring, basically, and quite directly, over . But they all do. This one is kind of like literal, more literally, . Because name and form means . in the form nama-rupa.

[35:23]

Nama-rupa really is equals five adjectives. So you could change the name if you want to. for your own meditational work, it changes to five skandhas. You start number four, you start with five skandhas. Okay? Got that? No, you don't have it? You didn't have it? Make sense? I kind of don't know if you're getting this or not. I'm saying something and you're kind of going... So I wonder, is that what it looks like when you understand? Is that it? It got simple all of a sudden?

[36:27]

You got suspicious? Yeah, so one way to do it is to get into the circle. is to start at number four, because it means five skandhas. And five skandhas means your experience right now. So you start with your experience. This is the first step. You start with your experience. All right? Peggy? Yeah. OK, so in the 12-step program, you start with your experience. What is your experience when you start? How do you look? Powerlessness. One ounce. Is that five skandhas, powerlessness? Huh? Yeah, right. They start there with name and form. And this nama, which is name, means four aggregates, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness.

[37:36]

And rupa is the form. Also, it's nice to remember that the one word, nama-rupa, is one word. It's not nama and rupa. It's nama-rupa. So this is what a name form is a name for one thing, called an experience, called life. You start with life. You start with experience. You start with... I think it was helplessness. Start there. Yes. Right. Unless it's supposed to radiate .

[38:43]

Well, it might also be, you could see it as a paying homage to the kind of magical, mysterious, function of words, of names, in this whole thing we're doing. In the beginning of the word? Yeah. And the word, in fact, is poor aggregates. That word somehow embraces the mind in a very big way. So maybe that's why they say name. If you walk out in the mountains, the mountains actually don't say, you know, Chicago, or this is true, right? There's no word. The body doesn't say good, bad, or happy, or sad, right?

[39:50]

The mind says the words, doesn't it? Except if we write it on a piece of paper, then the mind to the hand writes on a piece of paper. But in nature, in people's bodies and baby poop, there's no words in there, except in alphabet soup. You understand what I'm saying? So words are really important, and the greatest miracle of Buddha is Buddha talks. I mean, Buddha's greatest miracle is the Buddhist speech. So words enchant us, and words release us. So you can actually think of it that way. Think of the world as just the material world and then words. And the psychological components which give rise to words are fourfold. To make words, you have consciousness, perceptions, feelings, and then you have this formations aggregate.

[40:57]

And the formations aggregate is all kinds of stuff little mental functions that make little packages and make little words and make phrases and make sentences. There's a special little device in there for doing that. But it's not actually a mental phenomenon. It's more like a structural formation of the, it's sort of like a structural law of the consciousness. that it can make these little sound things, these little phonemes, make these little words and phrases. It can do that. And it's actually considered to be not a mental thing that you can experience, but can experience the effects of it. So name and form, words and form. And then the next one is six doors. Six doors means that this whole thing, this experience thing, has these six doors.

[42:02]

The first one, in some sense, is just saying, OK, you want to look at your experience? Well, here's how you look at your experience. Look at your experience as physical experience and as words. Start looking at your experience in that way, as words, as an ocean of words and physical experiences. The next step, not necessarily deeper, but the next step into the analysis is in this ocean of words, seasoned with physicality. These words, which are always associated with some location. Words are not floating in midair. They're always associated with a location, with a person, with a with a body. Words always are near bodies. Have you noticed that? It's very rare to find a word to sort of pop in the mid-air. It usually comes from a body. A human body? A human body, yeah. Or some animals maybe speak words.

[43:12]

I'm not sure how you use the word body. Like your body. Like right now, you and I are making these sounds. These words are coming out of us. I never noticed that. You never noticed the words? No, they're associated with the body. You asked that question? Yeah. Which words have you been noticing? I don't know. I don't have the answer. All right. Let's take another question. Well, but just that idea, word associated with body. Yeah. You hadn't thought of that before? Well, me neither. That's the first time I said it. Oh. But to me also, when I first got the idea from somebody that consciousness was a biological phenomenon, I thought, well, wait a minute. Hold on. That's not consciousness, a biological phenomenon? Consciousness is something that just sort of popped up out of a mass of poop? Living goop gives rise to consciousness. But then I thought about it.

[44:16]

I thought, hey, that's OK. But that is a different way of looking at it. And then the more I thought about it, the more I thought, yeah, in fact, consciousness is this funny thing. It's mental, but it's always biological. It's always coming up out of this goo. There's this protoplasm, and out of this protoplasm Consciousness arises, which isn't exactly... It's something beyond it, and yet it's always connected to it. It's not in that place. You can't get a hold of it. But it's always in association with some biological mass. And it took me quite a while to sort of get cozy with that idea. And then words also come with the mind, not with the mass. Dissociate those two. But also you can see the words coming out of the mass. So if you have a word, you always have this body, this mass, this protoplasm, this storehouse right nearby.

[45:17]

Or it's connected there anyway. It had the point of departure from that mass of flesh. So flesh is kind of like the experience has flesh, has protoplasm. Consciousness has a body. So you're saying all the words in my consciousness are associated with my body. Right. And yet, that's physicality. I said that words are peppered with physicality. What is physicality? Physicality is that there are other beings out there. And they are having different experiences. So physicality is actually how you find out about how other beings are seeing things. So you're living in a world of words, peppered by your own bodily experience, but also physical experience of how other people see differently.

[46:22]

Living in a world of words and there's a seasoning in it, a physical seasoning to the world of words. And the physical seasoning is to some extent the way other people are, the way they see. And also your own physical bodily experiences are seasoning this It's otherwise world of concepts and words, the mental world. And when the living being picks this information up from other people and from his or her own body, at that time that they're getting this information, they are flying around here. And if you squeeze your fingers out here, you might kind of feel it on your skin or something.

[47:34]

But if you mess around in here, you will have a big effect on my visual consciousness. So my visual consciousness, in a sense, is associated with it. It touches. It touches. a place that sends a chip to light. It doesn't really touch it, but light touches it. So these doors, thinking about this kind of thing, in this realm of names, okay, in this realm of names, you start looking for the places where the mind seems to touch these locations. Locations means places where there is light. Places where there is light affecting some light-sensitive tissue, some flesh. There's some flesh that this biological mass has a part that's very sensitive, sufficiently sensitive to light.

[48:46]

that sort of consciousness will arise out of that sensitivity. So again, if I say, look over your experience, which is words and this physical stuff coming in, and particularly at the physical stuff, look. and see that the physical stuff you can see. You can't see the organ like the light, or you can't see the ear. But since the ear is located and the eye is located, in a sense, the mind touches the object right here. The mind, or another way to look at it is that when the light touches this area, a consciousness arises.

[49:52]

And it happens sort of in association with this place. So in a sense, you can almost see it here. You can almost see it arrive. Or you can almost feel it arrive at this place by virtue of these interactions. But for starters, you can just simply look at the six doors, which means look at the functioning of the eye. Watch, meditate, observe, be aware of the function of the eye organ. Or you can try out the ear. Just practice awareness of the function of the ear and also at its location.

[50:59]

So you can choose a particular location, like the eye, or the eye area, the eye location, or the ear location, and you can just sort of camp out there. And then let's... You know, when you say that, at the location, you mean like, let's say you pick the door up, One would be bring awareness to this location. Another one could be bring awareness to the outlets. being that you become aware of the object.

[52:25]

And that's usually what awareness is, right? It's awareness of the object. Would it shoot the object, you know, and it would shoot the thing even higher up, you know, or something, you know, . Oh, no, I didn't mean to switch dimensions. Could you stay close to the occasion for the ear? I mean, they have to be, they have to feel weird when someone moves down the road. Correct. But that doesn't involve a random location for the organ.

[53:29]

Right. That's it. In other words, again, this surprises me if I think about it, that consciousness is something that's born out of a particular location. Not, you know, that it happens right here in a sense. It doesn't really happen here, but it's as though it happens here. as though it's born right here. Now, it's also born by the light out there, but it's not born by the light out there. It's born by the light out there when the light comes along here. You think it's out there, but what you're responding to is when the light touches. It's the actual touching of electromagnetic radiation to the flesh, to the biological flesh touched by electromagnetic radiation. And because of when that energy comes into and stimulates this tissue, this different type of, this more subtle form of matter. If I think of the matter as the sense fields, the light, the sound, the smell, the taste, and the tangible, those are the gross material.

[54:37]

The subtle material is this flesh in these six ways. eye and so on, ear. They're flesh, but they're more subtle. They're more, in a sense, more sensitive and responsive type of materiality. And from that more sensitive materiality being stimulated or prompted or energized or whatever by this grosser form, this kind of chemical interaction or whatever produces this thing called consciousness. Yes. What occurs to me, although the form of I object, et cetera, are different, that structurally the experience In other words, consciousness is the same and really takes different objects.

[55:50]

Yet, it can fight back a bit, which made me believe that essentially all the unconscious type of consciousness are essentially one. Yet, though, we're spot-blind, you know, cheating on people very often, which made me find it hard to believe that consciousness can help. Only at this point did I know it should. If I understand you, what you're saying, possibly that they, um, something that Ryan and I didn't have. But, um, and it's in my experience, and to me, I'll live by it. I think I understand the objection. I think I do, yeah. So, um, uh, by you bringing this up, we now, um, maybe put another layer into the conversation. And that is, see what I said was, you're meditating on this world, the basic world of words.

[56:59]

And within this world of words, and the world of words is, Well, I can't remember what to say. There's a world of words in its physical location, these physical events happening. And so those physical events, as you look at them in this world of words, They take you, in some sense, down to another world, which sort of is the basement or something of the world we start with. In the basement, there's no words. And there's also no knowledge. There's no knowing there. And in that situation is where the actual impact occurs. where the extra biological impact occurs, which gives rise to the consciousness.

[58:06]

The consciousness is born down at that level. When it gets up to this level, it's already pre-existent. And at this level, there's words again, and there's knowledge. So in terms of the experience, of most of your experiences, words. And in that realm, consciousness is pre-existent. There's a simultaneous consciousness which is there for all these different senses. There's eye sense, there's ear sense, there's nose sense, there's tongue sense. The same consciousness is there for all those. That's the same one. But down here, this one is not really there. This knowing one is not there. Down here, it's more actually on the level of these physical impacts which give rise to consciousness. And then built on that is this consciousness, this mind consciousness, which can embrace all of them, all the time. And that leads to further implications and further photoplasmic enlightenments down here at this other level, which then leads again to this other level where consciousness is pre-existent.

[59:15]

But we don't know anything down there. It's not the realm of knowledge. But also down there, you see the different organs which give rise to slightly different kinds of consciousness. There's nobody in there to say that these are different. So they're connected. The answer is the same. So that's like a lie, but it's also just the perceptual level. The perceptual level has been used to be perpetrated. You make the percept then, the percept of the arising of an I consciousness that predates the percept that is that event is then translated into a concept which then can be known. children, very young children, that actually see a table that they've got to work on. So the realm that I was describing, it's kind of like, again, it's like you have this layer here, like a layer of word.

[60:34]

the layer of conceptual experience. But it has this funny thing in it that it has these little pepperonis on it or something. And little pepperonis are these locations in a huge pizza of your experience. Or if you bring your attention to these little locations here, which happen to be like your eye organ, ear organ, if you bring your mind to these places, you can kind of drill down through these places into this realm down here. And down here, Tomato sauce. It's tomato sauce, yeah. And we deliver, yeah. And they deliver right back out. So when you tune into this huge, amorphous, turbulent pizza here, you can drill down below it into a level of sort of more substantial realm where things are different. And there you can watch and see the birth of consciousness, which is very helpful.

[61:42]

Well, I'm a little puzzled by this because Are you saying that this is, if you look at it, this is the way you will experience things? Because, I mean, there are people who experience exactly the opposite of what you're saying, in the sense that they might be puzzled by the same thing as you are, but they're puzzled by how consciousness could degrade itself into materiality. It's not that a spirituality of your mind gets born out. In other words, you're putting forth a naturalistic point of view. Consciousness emerges. out of the physical plane, the physical level, whereas, say, for instance, Christian theology obviously builds that consciousness is something out of which materiality is produced. God creates the world. He creates materiality and et cetera. Same here. But I was just talking about the next phase. It's a circle. Materiality interacts and produces consciousness.

[62:45]

Consciousness produces material. Right. Well, in Buddhism. It isn't just that there's spirituality creating form. It's that form gives rise to consciousness. Consciousness, when it becomes enlightened in terms of spirituality, spirituality then produces form. But if consciousness doesn't produce enlightenment, it still produces more materiality. So that's birth and death. There is conscious life here now. this will lead to materiality. And it's also leading to materiality moment by moment. The materiality of your life has been produced by and is sponsored by your past consciousness. So spirituality or consciousness produces materiality. Materiality produces consciousness and spirituality. Where would they go? In Buddhism. In Christianity, it's just that one.

[63:46]

But I'm not saying exactly this is the way it is either. I'm not saying this is the way you do experience. I'm saying this is telling you, not telling you how to experience, but telling you a way to bring your being down to your experience in a way that might kind of like, in a sense, perforate through it and give you a really different point of view on the whole thing. not to destroy the way you've been looking at it, but are really penetrating, penetrating through the illusions of your ordinary enchantment with words down to this level. And again, you may not be able to see the birth of consciousness here, but anyway, you're bringing yourself down into a certain realm. There's a poem about this, I feel, a poem about this, many poems about this, but there's one poem about this by a Sufi named Rumi.

[64:50]

May I recite it? The breeze at dawn has secrets to teach you. Don't go back to sleep. People are walking back and forth at the threshold where the two worlds meet. Don't go back to sleep. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. Does that make sense, that that's about the same thing?

[66:00]

Does it to you, Joe? Does it to you, Tom? No? So, one way to see it... Go ahead. I didn't follow how that corresponded to what you've been talking about. In a sense, you go into the place where the two worlds meet. What are the two worlds? Well, one two worlds are the world of light and the centauric. Another one would be the world where The doorway, the doorway where the consciousness arrived, the place where the consciousness arrived, at that place. Look, it said actually, the breeze at dawn. What is the dawn?

[67:03]

Dawn is the birth, is the arising of this consciousness. The breeze at the arising of consciousness. has secrets to tell you, don't go back to sleep. So where do you look? Where does the consciousness arise? People are walking back and forth at the threshold where the two worlds meet. So bring your attention to the doorway where the two worlds meet and don't go back to sleep. And at this doorway, at these six doorways, the breeze of dawn will rise. So we go to these places and stay alert, try not to fall asleep. Now, at the birth of consciousness, now they're going to give you some hints about how to catch the birth of consciousness. One hint is that there will be this moment called contact.

[68:05]

There will be a moment of contact when the organ, the object in the consciousness, will kind of like touch. And that contact happens every moment between those three. Every moment, consciousness arises and goes away. Another one arises. And when it arises, these three, like touch, ding, this kind of symbiotic thing between these two kinds of materiality, this coarse energy type of materiality, this energy which is located meeting this tissue. And then consciousness is born. Then looking at this consciousness, the place it's born is the place it arose, is at the organ.

[69:08]

So we look into there. Yes? Seeing? What exactly do I mean by seeing? Oh yeah, I guess I don't mean seeing somehow. Like up my eyes. What do I mean by seeing? Oh, I forgot again. I guess I would be, it would be, you know, you could come and you could think of it in many different ways, but one way to think of it would be like a feeling that, you have a feeling that somehow like, you feel like, hey, something arose. You feel that way. Or you might notice, but the way you might notice could be a feeling, or it could be

[70:16]

a word, or it could be a sensation, or it could be an intuition. You don't know why. You just feel like something was born. It could come to you in various ways, that sense that something like that had happened. You know what we're doing here. Pardon? You know what we're doing here. Yeah. You know what we're doing here. Yeah. Well, yeah. But it's also just as, yeah, all right. And then at that point, when you sense that that arising has happened, maybe you can also somehow sense or somehow intuit or somehow conceive or somehow feel, sense somehow that these are like touching each other. And if you can get a feeling for that or a concept of that or an inkling of that or a taste for that, then you might be able to notice that right at that place, this thing happens called feeling.

[71:20]

You have consciousness. You have these two kinds of materiality interacting. And you have them all touching. And at that touching, a feeling comes up. Now, again, this is not that you should see things this way, but look at what's happening and see if you can see it that way, not that you should be this way or this is the way you're already doing it even maybe, but can you see it this way? Can you bring your attention to the mind, to find the organs, to look at the organs, to see them interact in a sense or experience their interaction and experience or intuit the birth of consciousness, and then can you sense a contact between those three at its birth? Can you feel that all three were like touching, like the birth of consciousness was this boom of those things? Can you feel that there and can you sense that contact and that feeling born at that time?

[72:26]

Can you actually notice then the feeling or feel the feeling very much associated with this event and this location. Can you do that? Yeah. When you say feeling, are you meaning like this combination, like positive, negative? Yes, it is an evaluation. See if you can experience that at the birth of consciousness there, there's an evaluation, a criticism, in a sense, of this as being positive, negative, or neutral. Can you do that? So it's saying, look in that way. And then is there something called desire or thirst or craving in relationship to these feelings? And there we come into kind of the focal energy now in terms of this liberating process becomes

[73:30]

very intense now, that you start to look to see if you can see the birth of craving around or right there at the feeling. So you're looking at the five skandhas and you're looking at it in these different ways, but also by looking at these different ways you're actually coming into more and more focusing on some crucial aspect of this experience. Namely, you're coming down to the place in the experience, there's a lot of things going on, but you're coming down to the section of the experience where the craving happens. And this will be then the place where clinging happens. And the place then where misery is spaced. So it's like this vision is looking over the ocean of our experience, finding certain entry points in it, following those entry points down into the part of the experience, not the truth of the experience, not the best place in the experience, not the whole picture of the experience, but the place in the experience where the clean develops.

[74:49]

We go to the sticking point in the experience, the place of the clinging. We go to the V. This meditation is taking you, just in terms of basic life, starts off by saying, okay, you got life, okay, now let's go right down to where this whole thing starts, and let's find out where the problem starts. And so you get, you may not know it, but as soon as you get to At number eight, you start to get in trouble. Before that, there's no problem, really. You're just observing the functioning of the mind, how it's born, how it goes away, how there's feelings associated with these forms. You're just seeing the basic organic consciousness. But at number eight, we start coming into the area of our difficulty. so that leads then the grasping leads to existence which leads to birth old age death misery lamentation and all that stuff and as a result of that getting getting bounced around in that top area there for many many times

[76:14]

many many times being smashed to smithereens by birth and ripped to shreds by death over and over those effects have made us ignorant which leads us then into further birth and then to after ignoring because of our past difficulties and births and deaths we ignore what's happening and by ignoring what's happening we in accordance with our past ignorance, take formation. And out of that formation comes consciousness, which then goes through this process. So this could be seen as a past life, that this is the beginning of our life here, and this is a past life. But also, in the actual dynamic present of ways of looking, at the five skandhas. Another way to look at the five skandhas is as ignorance.

[77:16]

Just remember all the time you're looking at ignorance. What you see is ignorance, is illusion, and so on. But it's time to stop.

[77:32]

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