In both the empirical and the metaphysical approaches, as well as in the much more numerous cases of their mixture, it can be observed that the a priori which directs the induction and the deduction is a type of mystical experience. Whether it is "being-itself" (Scholastics) or the "universal substance" (Spinoza), whether it is "beyond subjectivity and objectivity" (James) or the "identity of spirit and nature" (Schelling), whether it is "universe" (Schleiermacher) or "cosmic whole" (Hock- ing), whether it is "value creating process"(Whitehead) or "progressive integration" (Wieman), whether it is "absolute spirit" (Hegel) or "cosmic person" (Brightman) —each of these concepts is based on an immediate experience of something ultimate in value and being of which one can become intuitively aware.
-Paul Tillich
Today’s Theme
In the interplay between concepts and experiences, a rich tapestry of exploration and evolution unfolds before us, urging us to delve deeply into the essence of perception and consciousness. As we explore the divine and the ineffable, we must embrace the fluidity and interconnection of our ideas and lived realities. And further, there is a kind of beckoning, which call us to partake in that dialogue between the mental architectures and the enigmas of our innermost selves.
In the spectrum of the imaginal, the manifold dimensions embedded in all objects and beings, prompt us to perceive the world through diverse prisms and contemplate the sanctity that saturates every facet of existence. Whether we opt to interpret the cacophony of life as mere noise or as the celestial symphony of the cosmos, the onus is on us, shaping our perceptions and experiences in profound ways.
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In speaking about concepts of the divine, of God, how we might relate to that kind of concept, I think it’s important to really say a bit more and emphasize something about how we relate to talking and hearing about these concepts. In other words, how we are holding and conceiving of the whole relationship with concepts, and with these concepts in particular. Again, my intention here is certainly not to build or outline some kind of rigid, complete, and final explanation of everything to do with the divine; some conceptual framework that’s watertight and will last forever. But rather, wanting to offer something in the way of conceptual structures, conceptual frameworks, logoi in the Greek, that can feed in, support, open up our experiences, our meditative experiences, meditative exploration, and then the meditative experiences and explorations of course feed back into the conceptual frameworks, offer something there. So there’s this mutual feeding, nourishing, supporting, shaping, in ways that encourage, deepen, open, enrich the soulfulness, etc. So wanting to offer, build conceptual frameworks, talk about possible conceptual frameworks, ways things might work conceptually, that open up the whole field of exploration, inquiry, and experience – that do not close it down. So that’s important. In that or with that, maybe it all doesn’t fit together quite, and it’s a bit clunky at the edges. Maybe parts of a conceptual structure or the whole thing or the framework is vague. We’ll come back to this later. That’s, I think, especially possible and probable, in fact, here in this area, when we’re talking about the divine and God and those kind of things, those kind of concepts and words and experiences, partly because of the nature of that material: that the divine, almost by definition, cannot be contained in concepts. Almost as a starting point, we’re acknowledging the infinite nature of the divine. Whatever we say will not contain it. Whatever structure of concepts or ideation will not contain it, will not be enough. I’m going to say more about this as we go on. It’s in the nature of that material, of this material. Paul Tillich, a very renowned theologian and philosopher of the twentieth century said, “Every understanding of spiritual things (Geisteswissenschaft) is circular.”1 There’s a lot here to acknowledge, if we’re going to bring concepts in, and for the sake of the opening and the soulfulness, the support of inquiry and investigation, the adventure of meditation and practice, the adventure of life, really, in terms of opening the experience. If we’re going to bring concepts in, we have to acknowledge something about circularity, about infinity, about the impossibility of containing and arriving at some neat, final, complete structure that explains everything. That is not a problem; it’s just something to acknowledge there, because it helps the experience and because it opens the soulfulness, etc. So there’s a different relationship here with all this. Also, some of this, if it doesn’t fit together, it’s just due to my energy levels and situation at present, and time constraints from various angles with all that. But also, another dimension of this, or a part of what I said just before, is that I feel very much like all this is a work in progress for me. I think I mentioned in another talk, another retreat, a different style of teaching, rather than – sometimes it’s appropriate that I sit at the front and give you or disseminate a sort of complete package: “This is it, and it’s finished, and it’s all very neat and clear.” That has its place. And then there are other styles of teaching, this more what I was calling ‘hermetic’ in that other retreat, this more open-ended, in a way, collaboration of exploration between so-called teacher and so-called student. So this is work in progress for me. Ideas, concepts feeding into experience, experience shaping concepts, etc. There’s no problem in that. There’s something, for me, beautiful in that, in the openness of it, the creativity, the creation, the adventure, the discovery of all that. So there’s a kind of dance, if you like, between concepts and experience; between conceiving, conceptual frameworks, and the opening of experience and new experience. They are mutually feeding, shaping, nourishing, deepening, opening each other. That dance evolves. It evolves over time, even for one [person]. There are personality differences here, hugely, in relation to all this: in relation to how okay people are with conceptual structures not being taken seriously; how okay they are with conceptual structures being quite loose, with them evolving; how okay they are with even thinking at all, or entertaining consciously conceptual structures (a conceptual structure is always entertained unconsciously). So there are personality differences, but even over time for one person, there’s evolution, there’s ebb and flow. There will be times for some people on this kind of adventure and this kind of exploration where it’s really okay that there’s very little conceptual framework holding the exploration at a certain time. Other times, we need a structure. It really helps support and guide and direct exploration. And yet, as I’ve mentioned in several talks elsewhere, there is this, in the Lurianic Kabbalah, what they call the breaking of the vessels, Shevirat ha-Kelim. The structures will break, all kinds of structures in our life, as they are filled, if you like, from that perspective, from the light of God, but really as we grow, as the psyche grows, as things expand and get fertilized. Social structures, ideational structures, relationship structures – they will break. They will shatter. A shattering of the vessels. So in terms of conceptual structures, yes, we need structures at certain points. We establish them, we build them carefully, and then they break. Then we form or new ones are formed, different ones, and they evolve. There’s a whole evolution to this. So to me, there’s a beauty in that dance, between conceptual frameworks and experience, and the dynamic of that, the evolution of that. I’ll come back to this later. We could say, “I don’t want to dance. I don’t want this dance between the evolution of the conceptual framework and the evolution of experience.” Or we could say, “I don’t want to enter into that, because I don’t want to dance. I won’t consciously entertain conceptual frameworks. I refuse. I don’t want to dance.” Or what happens is we cling to one conceptual framework. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re clinging; it’s operating unconsciously, or consciously we just keep clinging to something. It’s static, and we try and hold that as a kind of rigid, literalized explanation of everything that remains static. Anyway, I think it’s really important to know something about the nature of perception and the nature of mind: there is always conceiving. Conceiving and perception, experience, shape and inform and structure each other. They influence each other anyway. We cannot get away from this. Though very popular, the idea of non-conceptual experience, etc., it’s a myth in the worst sense of the word. It’s an illusion. We have to understand something: at the subtlest levels of perception, consciousness, experience, mind, subtle conceiving and perceiving are totally woven into each other, and inform, shape, structure each other, at all levels – from the subtlest to the grossest. Just to recognize that. Now, in exploring imaginal practice, as a person goes deeper into all this, more fully into all this, and in exploring experiences of theophany and cosmopoesis as we’ve alluded to, one sense that can emerge as a sense but also as a conceptual framework – the two going together, those aspects of the same gestalt, if you like – one sense is the sense of, if you like, the multiplicity of dimensions in the nature of an object, of any object (so a person or a thing or imaginal figure). When we see imaginally, there is a sense that we can pick up on, that can emerge for us through practice that we can pick up on, that whatever it is that I’m looking at, this object, this person, this thing, this world, has multiple dimensions to it. Its nature is to have multiple dimensions. So I want to, very tentatively, give the label ‘the vertical spectrum of the imaginal.’ I’ll explain later why that labelling is so tentative; I’m not very good at coining phrases and labels for things. But the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, tentatively, let’s call that. It’s this sense of the multiple dimensions that comprise an object, or that pertain to an object. I’m saying something a little more specifically here than just that it’s possible to perceive selves, things, others, world, in different ways – which of course is very much part of the teaching about fabrication and emptiness of perception. This morning, I think, there was an enormous hullabaloo outside the window, a racket, shouting and screaming and yelling and whooping and arguing. I’m pretty sure it was a school hiking tour or something, just stopping for a while outside the door, outside the window. Right there, I can hear it through the lens of a certain social perspective about “kids today,” and hear it as a racket, expressing maybe inconsideration and that kind of thing. Obviously wrapped up with that is some aversion, some reactivity. I can hear it in the mode of bare attention: it’s just sound. Also possible to hear it, as they say in tantra teachings, “to hear all things as mantra,” as holy speech, as the sound of divinity, and to just, in the meditation, as meditation, to just hear it differently – not a racket, not even just sound; it’s an expression of the divine, the sound of the divine, the music of the divine, the speech of the divine, the holy speech. What does that mean? It’s vague. Do we need to fill it out? I’ll come back to this. We could say that’s just an example of the flexibility, the malleability of perception that’s possible, to perceive things in different ways. But I want to say something a little bit more than that here, in relation to this vertical spectrum of the imaginal, what I’m calling that tentatively. I look at my friend, someone I’ve known for a long time and I love very much, and I can, of course, see her as flesh and blood, aware of the – as much as I know about the physical processes that make up her body, her mental or biological processes in the brain, all this. I could see her in terms of I know her personal historical background, her upbringing, her woundedness, her trajectories of growth, where she gets hung up, the particular things she’s strong at, her characteristics. I could see her in the ordinary sense of self, and as we talked about in the other talk, this kind of modernist sense of self. Of course I can see her that way. And yet, as I’m looking at her, and meditating imaginally on her in front of me or in my mind’s eye, I can also see her, I also get the sense, that she is or that she expresses, if you like, the feminine aspect of God. She is a face. She is a theophany. At a certain level of perception, a level of imaginal perception, she appears to me as one of the feminine aspects of the divine. She appears to me as angel, as ḍākinī or deva, if you prefer the Buddhist words. There is a theophany there. It might be really quite particular, or a little bit vague. It might even be that at the same time, I am aware of the ordinary sort of modernist way of seeing her; of course I’m aware of that. And I’m aware of this other level. I may be aware of other levels too. I may also be aware of a kind of more universal expression of the divine coming through. But this particular one, of the feminine aspect of the divine, is very particular to her. It’s in and through her personhood, her particularity, and it’s expressing an aspect of the divine that has to do with the personhood of the divine, or a personhood of the divine. It might even be that I’m aware of several of these kind of more personal and particular expressions, manifestations, or different levels at the same time as I look at her, as I meditate imaginally on her, eyes open or eyes closed, looking at her. There can be a sense that there’s a kind of a spectrum here. It’s as if one could tune the attention to different levels here. Maybe one stands out and almost calls the attention to tune into it. Maybe there’s a kind of multiplicity, and then one can deliberately tune the attention that way. But this sense that can emerge for practitioners, it’s both a perceptual sense and a conception. They’re woven into each other. This conception may emerge quite loosely, and then influence and support the perception, and so the soulfulness and the soulmaking. Perception, experience, appearance will be influenced, supported, and will influence and support the conception. It’s mutual. In all of that, there’s a deepening, an opening, an enrichening and nourishing of the soulfulness and the soulmaking. This, what I’m wanting tentatively to call the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, it’s hard to define. A spectrum, if you like, of theophanies. A spectrum of faces of the divine. Really, really want to emphasize it’s a spectrum of perception. We’re placing the perception, the whole way of construing Dharma and imaginal practice and all that – perception is central, whether it’s non-imaginal or imaginal. Placing perception and the fabrication of perception as almost like the core concept, the central concept, the hinge concept, the basis concept on which everything is structured and built. So really emphasizing, if I talk about this vertical spectrum of the imaginal, we’re talking about a spectrum of perception. It’s not separate from the citta, from the mind, the heart, the conceiving. But it’s a spectrum of, you might say, the faces of the divine, and it comprises in this spectrum all kinds of manifestations or expressions of a sense of utter sacredness all the way down, we could say, to non-sacredness. More specifically, we could say that this sense of this vertical dimension of the imaginal is the sense and the conceiving that selves, things, and world, have in and through their particularity – that’s very important, in and through their particularity – have their roots in, they originate in, they mirror or reflect, they possess or are comprised of, dimensions other than just the commonly agreed-upon dimension of materiality or self as we tend to view it, conceive it, sense it in the paradigm of modernist culture. I’ll say that again. This vertical dimension, as a concept, is the sense and the concept that selves, things, and world, have, in and through their particularities, through their personhood, if you like, they have their roots in, they originate in, they mirror or reflect, they possess or are comprised of dimensions other than just the commonly agreed-upon dimension of materiality or of, for instance, self as modern culture construes and views it. How might we recognize that? Well, in a way, it’s already there in the word. Just to make one thing clear, it’s not a spectrum of solidity versus ethereality, what we were talking about some days ago. It’s not a spectrum of the octave or register, so to speak, of the image, like very, very refined and light compared to more ‘bassy’ and solid. That’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s really that the imaginal sense is imbued with a sense of the sacred, through the sense of comprising or expressing more than the modernist sense of ego, of self, of person, or just matter. This ‘more’ – comprising more, expressing more, the multiplicity, the spectrum there of manifestations, of faces, of theophanies – this ‘more’ is not horizontal only. We mentioned this earlier. So for example, we talked about the interconnectedness of physical objects, interconnectedness at a physical level. I can look at my friend and see interconnection between us: we’re breathing the same air if we’re in the same room; we’re built of the same stuff that emerged from the same supernova explosion that formed the earth and built earth and air and fire and water, if you use the Buddhist elements. This interconnectedness at a physical level is also a kind of ‘more,’ because usually I see her contained, just there; her body stops at the edges of her skin. When I look through the lens of interconnectedness at a physical level, there’s ‘more,’ but it’s a horizontal spreading, at the level of physicality. Or if I think in terms of the causes and conditions, when we usually talk in those terms, the causes and conditions that give rise to this self, or this object, or this world or environment, usually, again, that interconnectedness, or the inclusion of the web, the net of causes and conditions, is also a ‘more.’ It’s expanding the view from a tight, bounded object, ‘more,’ but it’s expanding it horizontally. It’s talking about interconnectedness and feeding in and expanding the limits of this person or object or thing that I’m looking at, but it’s all horizontal. It’s all on the same level, what’s feeding in there, and what’s being acknowledged as being ‘more’ is on the same level. It’s horizontal. What I really want to emphasize is something that’s not horizontal, something of other dimensions, other levels, if you like, of being or existence – but again, really perception; everything hinges on perception, that that is there, available in the perception. So the vertical spectrum of the imaginal, in a way, it’s a sense, it’s a perception. We get that sense. But as I said, it is, by its nature, a conceptual framework. It’s a logos. So the sense of it, the perception of this, includes the logos, the conception of it. This is something I want to stress: I do not have to, you do not have to, believe this as something real. There is no credo here you have to sign up to. I’m going to return to this; it’s so important. That’s one thing. And it might be that the whole conception of this vertical spectrum is relatively vague. For me, actually, I certainly don’t believe it as some kind of literal, concretized, fixed reality that I’m assuming has inherent existence, and it’s still quite vague. But it can still be extremely powerful. I really want to emphasize this and come back to this. It can still function so beautifully and potently in terms of soulmaking and nourishing and opening soulfulness. Don’t have to subscribe to a belief. And it might be relatively vague. It might not be. We’ll return to those points, because it’s very, very crucial to emphasize. It is, to an extent, a sense, a perception. It is also a conceptual framework, a logos. But what’s important then is that the conceptual framework, the logos, needs to be loose enough, or big enough, if you like
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Meditation Practice
Stage 7: Exclusive Attention and Unifying the Mind
When more sub-minds actively engage during significant events, one’s depth of understanding is remarkably amplified. This collective cognitive effort allows for a richer analysis and a more nuanced grasp of the situation, ensuring that key insights and intricate details are thoroughly explored and integrated.
Today’s Intention
Embrace the diversity of perceptions that enrich your awareness
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Systematic Theology
Systematic Theology