? I have a question about the development of wholesome mind states. I have read that the mind is always in a concentrated state wherever it arises. If that is so, how is it that meditation exercises and the practice of awareness can gather and raise the energies of the conscious mind?
A. Your question is based on the study of Abhidhamma, in which it is stated that one of the factors always present in consciousness is concentration. It might be helpful to first make a distinction by thinking that there are states of mind which are conducive to awakening, and states of mind which are not. (The texts frequently say that in order to learn a truth, you begin with an apparent error.) So, although one of the factors of mind that is always present is concentration, you should ask: upon what is it concentrated? Is the mind involved in something that promotes the development of the being or in something that retards or obscures the development of the being?
It is true that psychic powers, for example, are not in themselves indicative of either a wholesome or an unwholesome mental state. They are a manifestation of energy which could be used for good or bad purposes, something like electricity. In order for psychic powers—or any other attribute of the concentrated mind—to be used wholesomely, they should be aligned with love. Every wholesome moment of consciousness contains love. You may not be meditating on love; you might be playing joyously in the fields, experiencing a happy state of mind. But that state has, as one factor, Mettā or love present.
So, too, if you are well-concentrated with a clear mind in a wholesome study of some sort, that consciousness also contains the factor of love. The nature of love is to gather together. It is a unifying principle. It tends not to break up a being, but to bring someone together. So when concentration is conjoined with love, it has the effect of not allowing the mind to be all over the place, to be involved in a rapid series of scattered activities. It produces a gathering in and augmentation of that concentrative power. Love gathers, and concentration raises the energy. At that point, you might even speak of concentrated concentration.
I suggest that you study the ‘Abhidhammattha Sangaha’ and learn the factors of mind that are present in wholesome and unwholesome states. To raise the energy you need a wholesome aspiration, you must desire to go somewhere ‘good’. When there is a gathering force, and when that is concentrated, one can experience something like a door opening into a wider chamber, from which there can be another gathering and deepening of concentration which will open a door to an even vaster chamber. You can go from room to room, but before you become adept at that process there must first be a gathering or binding of the energies. This is accomplished by the factor of mind called Mettā, or love.
? As you were speaking, I remembered a being who was involved in unwholesome acts of concentration—say, a lustful act, or an act of cruelty. That person seemed to be very concentrated on what he was doing. There was a great deal of energy behind the action, but at a certain point that act would have to stop. It would run out of power; it could no longer concentrate and bind. What would be the way to describe the breaking point for such actions?
A. Basically, the key is love. One can certainly say that such actions are very concentrated; the crude force is there. But not the raising force. The power of the mind must link up with the love factor; that is how you should work. All the factors that are common to consciousness, including Jīvitindriya, are of the lower man. (By lower man, I mean the diencephalon, the instinctual base.) All discriminations of love, hate, good, and bad belong to the higher man, the cortex. Divisions are born from the ego-consciousness, or from the awareness of awareness.
By working with Mahāmudrā techniques you can use the passions, the energy of hatred, lust, and so forth. Link that with the aspiration/love principle and transmute it through the total awakening, the total breakthrough. If a being is subject to passionate outbursts, if there is a great lust for life, this is a sign that energy is present. The problem—or the question—is how to transmute that, not how to deny that!
I much prefer to see someone who is capable of some manifestation of energy rather than the grey ghosts that drift without expression through the streets of most cities. Show me a being with passion, however misdirected, and, from the standpoint of the teaching process, in that being half of the steps toward awakening have already been taken. A teacher is capable of pointing out the direction in which that person should move so that their passion can truly be fulfilled. Real thirst can only be quenched by the totally beautiful, the completely satisfying, the transcendental.
A being caught by the crude manifestations of energy who has not developed the love factor becomes dissipated. The energies dissipate, so that instead of the raising of being, he or she enters a weakened period. There will be a burst of energy followed by a drained state of consciousness. During the drained state a slow build-up of energy again occurs. These manic-depressive states are usually followed by a depletion, rather like what one experiences after orgasm.
It is not uncommon in any group of people to meet one or two beings who burst in on the group activities from time to time with great displays of aggression, if not destruction. All of their dialogue is a form of violent confrontation, and then they go away in a drained state to work themselves back up, slowly, to another outburst. The waters build up, the dam bursts – there is drainage. Usually during the drainage period they retire into narcissism to brood. And they wonder where the drainage is coming from.
The drained energy state is coming from this pattern, but until such a being is willing to acknowledge that this is so, it will go on and on and on. Generally speaking, they will blame it on the outer in some way or another instead of understanding that they are totally lacking in development of the love principle, or of the Pāramīs. Development of Pāramī, of love, is the only truly unifying process.
You will see this pattern working even within your own being. You don’t have to look outside to watch this process occur; you don’t have to examine it in another. Let us, for a moment, think that there are two ‘yous’—if not more! One ‘you’, one stream of consciousness, very much moves with this build-up/outburst/drain pattern. I think many of you will agree that this is a fairly frequent occurrence.
It is not difficult to tell the days when you are building up to an outburst: you go around with a ‘pickle face’, lines of tension form because the skin of the balloon is stretched to the breaking point. Then it’s only a question of getting out of your way. If a teacher is wise, he will just wander off. He gets out of the way for a while and then after you’ve had your outburst and you are in the drained period, he comes back.
At that point it might be possible to soothe you, to speak to you about love. But if you were able to speak to yourself about love at the time when the storm is gathering, and if you were able to practice Mahāmudrā with that force, you could use it to attain Path moment.
Don’t bring that crude energy state through to completion in an outburst directed at oneself or at others. Have the mind open the door of Awakening. Open to the light. Do you have a question about this?
? Although the energy is rising in the body, and I’m aware of that, it seems difficult to bring the body into a relaxed, non-restless state. The energy seems to be connected to a lot of bodily turbulence.
In that particular case, you might practice Mudrās to express the states of mind. By bringing the body into union with the mental processes of unfoldment you can overcome that split. Then you may feel that tension of rising energy expressing itself physically—if you are aware, you will! I would suggest that you transmute that expression into Mudrā.
In the early stages of this exploration, allow the body to participate without you directing it – just see what Mudrās spontaneously arise. Do you stomp like Mahākāla, or dance like Dorje Palmo? What kind of Mudrā would the body perform without your conscious direction? As you become more conscious of patterns emerging, and as you receive more direction in this study directly from the lama, you will – in addition to directing the mind consciously – be able to direct the body consciously whilst these energies are up.
? I’m confused about the love factor. Up to now, I’ve tended to believe that love is one of those attributes that is common to all minds.
A. It is common to all minds, but it is not common to all minds at every moment. It is a variable.
? So then it has to be present in both the conscious mind and in the cells of the body?
A. If it is present in the conscious mind, it will be present in the cells, but not necessarily vice versa. I’m speaking about actually experiencing love. It is a psychosomatic process. The mind is the forerunner, and if the mind is in a state of love it brings the cellular consciousness into a harmonious vibration.
Body is formed by mind. There is a discriminating sense of love by the conscious mind or ego, and there is the crude energy realm of the diencephalon, of the lower man. By the way, this distinction is being made by the cortex, by the thinking mind. In the realm of the conscious mind there is a directing of that crude energy, in a sense, a refinement of that energy into love or hatred, acceptance or rejection of that which is focussed on. The conscious mind discriminates—to its own advantage, hopefully.
? When Jung talks about the union of the shadow with the conscious ego, I presume he means that one should get the crude energies of the lower aspect of being together with the higher aspect in order to heal neurotic splits and become whole.
A. That is likely. In reference to the shadow – and particularly in reference to what so many people consider to be their sins – I would like to say that it is the source of much interest. Don’t you agree that there’s much more energy and interest, much more crude energy expended on the forbidden, on the taboos? But the shadow doesn’t represent the crude energy so much as the crude obsessions, the obsessional levels of interest which are not allowed to come through to consciousness. Usually, the shadow is the rejected part of the ego. I don’t think I would treat it as the subconscious or as the instinctual drive only. It is more the counter-image of the ego.
Let us say that you have an ego-image of yourself as a revolutionary, an iconoclast. Every situation that you meet, you criticize in a negative way – you are somewhat of a cynic. All people might have that characteristic to some degree, but let us suppose that that is how you generally function. We could call such a being the bad child. But, in the depths, there is an aspiration to be a good child all sweet and serene – maybe even a little nauseatingly pure – with long ringlets falling from the head like little Lord Fauntleroy. Some image of yourself which you do not accept, do not operate by, lies imprisoned in the darks of the mind.
The process of coming to terms with the shadow, whether it be the good or the bad child, involves letting that aspect of consciousness have its say in life, giving voice to the rejected aspects of the ego.
I would not think that the shadow represents the energies of consciousness so much as it represents the divisions of consciousness. To have a shadow there must be a division, and that takes you into the realm of the ego, into things like image and persona. For example, you might have great difficulty reconciling the desire to visit prostitutes with an image of yourself as the being who is always true to his wife. When you make such distinctions for yourself, you also make them for other people; you cast others within images and you don’t allow them a shadow either. This is seen very often in daily life, especially on the sexual plane, this non-allowance of the shadow of another being. Sometimes you will meet someone who cannot make love to their girl or boyfriend because that person must be somehow virgin pure – he or she can only be turned on by the sleazier manifestations of sexuality.
? If there is repression of a shadow desire that is of a negative bent, is it likely that that person will some day run amok, kill someone or something like that? Does the repression increase the energy thrust in this direction?
A. I would put it the other way. First, I’d like to say that such a being is split. When there is this type of two-fold desire, you might have a drain of energy from the conscious ego plane and an augmentation of energy for the shadow desire. But if you come to terms with the shadow in your being, more energy is available for you in your daily life. If you don’t come to terms with the shadow, you split your energies and after a period of time the shadow aspects drain the energy from the persona being. At that point there may well be a sort of running amok.
What is very beautiful about the Vajrayana teachings – particularly as put forward in many of the Tibetan meditations – is that through various practices with sensual deities, wrathful deities and so forth, one is brought to terms with the shadow so that it can be ‘re-linked’ consciously. You enter into and reincorporate the shadow aspects in a clear, aware state of mind when you do these practices. The important point to understand here is that when you are mature enough to allow the repressed aspects of the psyche a little breathing room in consciousness, the result will be that there is more clear energy available for your daily life. If a being is walking around in a flat state of mind, it means that much of the energy is being used to keep the shadow aspects of consciousness out of the picture.
One of the main tasks of the seed of awakening that is in each being – the Bodhicitta – is to come to ‘love thyself’. You can only love yourself through knowing yourself. This means that you must do the work of integrating the shadow aspects of your being. In the process of that work these aspects will be transmuted. The good child and the bad child can be found in every being. You must give them room and you must skilfully direct them. Bad to me implies non-awareness, all that of which you are not aware. You split off from aspects of your being – you refuse to accept certain desires as part of your being, so you don’t love yourself. You have ‘schizophrenized’ yourself.
We do this in the interest of trying to live up to false ego ideals, in an attempt to ‘behave’ rather than to love, to know and to transmute. If you loved and knew your being, it might just be that the so-called negatives would naturally transmute, by and of their own nature. Your being might work itself out to the awakening because that is the true desire. It is because this is so that one of your major spiritual tasks is to come to terms with the shadowy aspects of your being.
If you don’t give room to the good and the bad child in your being, you will have the mad child. The path of Vajrayana is a way of integrating all the different dancers in the psyche, all the different members of the drama of life in your being. By doing this work you can become a perfect mandala of consciousness. The meditations are designed for that. The perfect Maṇḍala of the mind is formed through the integration of all the players in your being – good, bad, and mad…