To truly appreciate the view of totality, one needs to also be acquainted with some of my previous books. Reading The Unfolding Now or The Inner Journey Home would provide such preparation.
I go over some of the realizations and transformations necessary for such unexpected openness. Second, I discuss some of what becomes possible when such openness is available—illuminations and understandings of enlightenment that seem esoteric only when looked at from the perspective of nondual realization.
This third thread reveals in a direct way how all the complexity and richness of the spiritual journey expresses kinds of simplicity that are difficult to appreciate because of how ordinary they seem to the inexperienced traveler. This book does not exhaust the matter, but discusses some of its highlights.
We find ourselves playing hide-and-seek with the purity that is at the heart of all reality and all spiritual transformation. This wily true nature is neither hidden nor can it be caught. Our experience of it is unmistakable—whether as awareness, love, truth, or consciousness—and yet we cannot say finally what it is. It pervades everything and yet is nothing in particular. This true nature appears in many ways, and even though each form of true nature is all of it, true nature can never be exhausted.
Taking up where he left off in Runaway Realization, A. H. Almaas explores what it is that makes anything and everything and nothing happen: the central element, the spiritual prima materia, the true nature of experience and reality.
Most obvious is its expression in the individual consciousness as what Almaas calls “red sulfur,” an unstoppable quickening that becomes the fuel for runaway realization, where realization lives through revealing further awakenings and mysteries of reality. This inner combustion—different from and rarer than any particular realization—orients the individual consciousness toward greater opening, toward manifesting more of what it means to be human.
Probing the paradoxes of true nature reveals more questions than answers. We can know directly in our experience its dynamism, its purity, its tremendous liberating force, but can we know exactly what it is? Is true nature anything apart from the forms it takes? How can it be the central element of everything and yet nothing in particular? How can it be the agent of all change and also what it is that changes? Is it the source of everything or is it everything? Is it me or is it my nature? Our sincere love to know what is true can lead us not to final answers but to freedom from our usual habits of mind, to a kind of openness with discernment and a kind of readiness without motivation. We can encounter a reality innocent of our usual assumptions and preferences and postures, a reality innocent of us. In this simple openness, reality becomes free to manifest any possibility. The philosophers’ stone can so polish our minds and hearts and bodies that we are free no matter what we are experiencing. We can be as free staring at our smartphone as we are free swimming in emptiness. Our experience of true nature can become so total, our love and interest so absolute, that the idea—and even the experience—of true nature can fall away altogether, leaving an ordinary simplicity, a freedom without condition, including that of true nature itself.
Our sincere love to know what is true can lead us not to final answers but to freedom from our usual habits of mind, to a kind of openness with discernment and a kind of readiness without motivation. We can encounter a reality innocent of our usual assumptions and preferences and postures, a reality innocent of us. In this simple openness, reality becomes free to manifest any possibility. The philosophers’ stone can so polish our minds and hearts and bodies that we are free no matter what we are experiencing.
Our experience of true nature can become so total, our love and interest so absolute, that the idea—and even the experience—of true nature can fall away altogether, leaving an ordinary simplicity, a freedom without condition, including that of true nature itself.
TRUE NATURE, the fundamental nature of what we are—and of everything—is what matters most when it comes to spiritual transformation. It is the single most important element for liberation. The more we understand it, the more we realize that it is not simply the most important element; in fact, it is the only element because it is inherent to all the other elements that are necessary along the way. True nature, when we experientially and sufficiently understand it, is every single thing—every event, every place, all and everything. And all and everything does not have to be sublime; it can be ordinary and still it is true nature. However, it seems that to be able to accept this simplicity and to live a normal life with this kind of freedom, we most often have to go through a spiritual journey. We have to go through the various stages, the deaths and rebirths, the discoveries and awakenings, the enlightenments and illuminations. We have to experience all the subtleties and mysteries of reality. The teaching stream from which this book is written, the Diamond Approach, contains both this kind of hierarchical view of the spiritual journey, with progressive stages of experience and realization, and also a nonhierarchical view of reality, which expresses the singleness of true nature.
The first turning involves the realization and development of what I refer to as the individual consciousness, which is sometimes equated with the Western notion of soul.
As the individual consciousness’s experience of true nature deepens, she realizes, in the second turning of the wheel, the boundless nature of being. What is in the foreground here is the experience of the unity, oneness, and nonduality of reality.
Realizing true nature as our identity, waking up to the unity of existence, and learning to integrate these experiences into our daily life constitute, for a long time, the bulk of our inner work.
The second turning of the teaching culminates in the transformation of the individual consciousness into an indestructible inner body of consciousness that can express and live nondual realization. This inner body of pure awareness, of the purity of true nature, becomes the fulcrum of the third turning. The third and fourth turnings of the wheel are related to this fulcrum, which heralds possibilities beyond the nondual unity of reality.
Each one of us in every instant is reality revealing itself.
the fourth turning discloses the wisdom of nonhierarchy and the pure simplicity of reality expressing itself however it wants.
wants. And the way to this simplicity is to recognize the centrality and the significance of true nature. Whether we recognize it as presence or awareness or emptiness, true nature is crucial to the process of awakening, realization, enlightenment, and liberation. It is the source of all spiritual experiences, insights, and transformations. There is no other source. Nothing can happen without it. All our various experiences are nothing but true nature manifesting in one way or another. This is one of the most important wisdoms that arises in the third and fourth turnings of the wheel.
Whether we recognize it as presence or awareness or emptiness, true nature is crucial to the process of awakening, realization, enlightenment, and liberation. It is the source of all spiritual experiences, insights, and transformations. There is no other source. Nothing can happen without it.
But, in this book, we are not going to focus specifically on any of these experiences because, from this perspective, the content of the experience doesn’t really matter. True nature is true nature, whether we experience it as strength, love, clarity, blissful consciousness, pure awareness, absolute emptiness, or something else entirely. No matter how it appears, it is always the same nature. Our mind and the situation determine what form it takes, what color and flavor it manifests on a given day, but it is always one truth. There are not many true natures. To recognize this requires a great deal of maturity and realization and, in fact, many kinds of enlightenments. Only then does it dawn on us that true nature is the Alpha and the Omega of the spiritual quest. It is the central element in the beginning, the central element in the middle, and the central element in the end, which is an endless end. And the fourth turning reveals to us that there is no beginning, no middle, and no end of the spiritual quest.
True nature is true nature, whether we experience it as strength, love, clarity, blissful consciousness, pure awareness, absolute emptiness, or something else entirely. No matter how it appears, it is always the same nature. Our mind and the situation determine what form it takes, what color and flavor it manifests on a given day, but it is always one truth.
happen—is the truth and presence of the purely spiritual element. That is the elixir of enlightenment; that is what transforms and reveals everything. When this elixir—a transformative agent full of presence, energy, and aliveness—appears as the nature of everything, we call it true nature. We can experience true nature as light, as illumination, as love, as emptiness, as presence, as awareness, as consciousness, as truth. In fact, there is no one way of experiencing true nature, and that is one of the secrets that is revealed in the fourth turning of the teaching. There is no final or ultimately definitive experience of true nature.
When true nature has not only force and power and energy and presence but also contains understanding and illuminated cognition, then it attains a diamond-like quality, experienced as objectivity, clarity, and precision. This is what I call the philosophers’ stone, the lapis philosophorum of the alchemists. They thought that whoever found the philosophers’ stone would be able to unlock all the secrets of existence. The stone has all the qualities and faculties necessary to illuminate and discriminate reality, to distinguish what is false and what is true.
There is also a deeper truth about why I’m not restricting the philosophers’ stone to any one form or view of true nature, a deeper truth that connects all its forms and experiences, whether diamond-like, liquid, gaseous, empty, spacious, or altogether formless. We will further explore this truth as we go on.
Without it, the transformation of human consciousness is not possible. Without it, we would continue living as semiconscious animals, as brutes, as clods of consciousness.
First of all, true nature is inherently incorruptible. The philosophers’ stone cannot be corrupted; it cannot be destroyed; it cannot be distorted. It retains its purity regardless of what our experience is and what is happening. Whenever we discover it, we recognize it as a purity that is totally unmarred. The second truth of true nature is its illuminating and liberating power. It is the power of illumination, the power of liberation, the power of enlightenment, the power of discrimination and intelligence, the power of creative revelation, the power of consciousness and awareness.
The second truth of true nature is its illuminating and liberating power. It is the power of illumination, the power of liberation, the power of enlightenment, the power of discrimination and intelligence, the power of creative revelation, the power of consciousness and awareness.
We would be living eternally in the conventional perspective, which is neither good nor bad but simply limited. For real transformation to happen, for our consciousness to become free, to become realized and enlightened, to become open to all the possibilities of reality—which means we can begin to explore reality, discover its secrets, and live and express them—we definitely need the help of true nature.
Reality is not designed for individual human beings to liberate themselves. Reality is designed for true nature to manifest itself in a way that human beings call liberation. Part of the secret of the philosophers’ stone is that it reveals itself by liberating itself from the shackles that it experiences through whatever human being it is experiencing itself as. And you could say, “It is my nature, my light, my intelligence.” But the situation is tricky: Is it yours or are you its?
it is experiencing itself as. And you could say, “It is my nature, my light, my intelligence.” But the situation is tricky: Is it yours or are you its? When we are experiencing ourselves as true nature, we realize that a human being is really the alchemical laboratory. The human being, the human consciousness, the human body is the laboratory where alchemy happens, where the philosophers’ stone does its work. The human consciousness, the human mind, the human heart are the instruments through which the magician works. So it’s true that our mind functions, our heart functions, and our body functions, but they all function simply as conduits. The more we recognize them as instruments and conduits, the more the elixir flows through the veins of the human consciousness revealing the light that illuminates itself by illuminating the obstacles in its way. And by illuminating itself, this light—which is our nature, which is what
When we are experiencing ourselves as true nature, we realize that a human being is really…
The human consciousness, the human mind, the human heart are the instruments through which the magician works. So it’s true that our mind functions, our heart functions, and our body functions, but they all function simply as conduits. The more we recognize them as instruments and conduits, the more the elixir flows through the veins of the human…
The philosophers’ stone or true nature is pure spirit, but we will see as we go on that spirit is also everything. It is every single thing and all things. It is every single thing among all other single things, and it is all things as the unity of the collection of every single thing. And it is also every single thing as all…
Because at the beginning of inner work our understanding is limited, we need many different manifestations of true nature to address precisely the complexity of our proclivities, issues, obscurations, and delusions. But in this book, I am collapsing all spiritual notions—Buddha nature, the Tao, God the Father, Christ, Allah, truth—in the understanding of the philosophers’ stone because there can’t be many true natures. Otherwise, they would be in competition. We can only know this kind of oneness in our direct experience. Even though…
In my experience, as long as we feel it and are in touch with it, as long as we are devoted to it and respect it, it doesn’t matter what the mind does in terms of its delusions. The stone will expose and shatter all our delusions. The human mind cannot think precisely enough, the human heart cannot be courageous enough, the human belly cannot persevere enough. It is true nature that does everything. It is the true guide, the real self, and the no-self; it is the enlightenment, the…
is true nature that does everything. It is the true guide, the real self, and the no-self; it is the enlightenment, the nonconceptuality, and the freedom. The more we recognize this truth and are devoted to it, the more true nature will impact and transform us.
problematic. Is true nature the nature of what I am or is it me? They are not the same thing. To say “true nature” means it is the true nature of something. It means there is something that true nature is the nature of. Are you one thing and your true nature something else? Or are you true nature? Is it both or neither? Or is there another possibility altogether? We will be playing with words and meaning in this way, not as a form of mental acrobatics but as an…
true nature the nature of what I am or is it me? They are not the same thing. To say “true nature” means it is the true nature of something. It means there is something that true nature is the nature of.
This teaching takes us into the bowels of reality and reveals the most sublime light in the midst of that—not only in…
Part One ELEMENTS NECESSARY FOR…
1 Necessary…
Any particular form, any particular event, any particular experience is completely itself and also a complete expression of reality.
This is one of the many paradoxes of true nature: It is a particular and it is everything at the same time. If true nature were not a particular, we could not talk about it or point it out. We couldn’t even refer to it as true nature. When we call it true nature, we recognize that it is a particular. And yet, it is a particular that absolutely pervades every other particular without ceding its own particularity.
I can remember that many years ago, I experienced myself as an individual with a subjectivity, as the subject of various kinds of inner and outer experiences. What I recognized in the freedom of the fourth turning is that there isn’t a subjectivity; there isn’t a subject that experiences things inside itself in relation to other things that are outside itself. The terrain changes completely. There is still self-reflection and thinking and feeling, but when that happens, it is at the periphery of experience. The dominant experience, the dominant center, is simply true nature itself, and everything else appears as manifestations of true nature. In an attempt to refer here to a kind of freedom, the term “true nature” is still an approximation; I am still using language in a conventional manner. There is nothing out of the ordinary in this condition of simple freedom. Even to call it “a condition of realization” is an approximation.
The terrain changes completely. There is still self-reflection and thinking and feeling, but when that happens, it is at the periphery of experience.
Sometimes I refer to it as “reality mode,” as reality manifesting itself and perceiving itself from a particular location. This way of living reality is simple and free, with no traces of enlightenment and no traces of true nature. In other words, there is no feeling in it of “I am experiencing true nature,” or “this is the realization of true nature.” It is simply reality living itself. Now this might sound strange and is, in fact, quite mysterious. Some traditions call it “traceless enlightenment,” which refers to freedom that has no traces of enlightenment. You don’t think of it as enlightenment, and you don’t feel it as enlightenment; enlightenment actually becomes an irrelevant word.
Freedom requires all these things. They are significant in terms of revealing the simplicity of just what is, of just what is happening—a simplicity that neither has nor needs any commentary. What matters most on the path is not any particular experience or realization, but more the recognition and experiencing of spiritual activation, the lived experience that our being is activated, is set aflame, is turned on. The essence of consciousness is awakened, and the soul of being is afire, turned on in such a way that life becomes a continual revelation, a continual awakening, a continual enlightenment—moving from one realization to another, one illumination to another, one discovery to another. This is the spontaneous freedom of spirit to reveal its treasures.
What matters most on the path is not any particular experience or realization, but more the recognition and experiencing of spiritual activation, the lived experience that our being is activated, is set aflame, is turned on. The essence of consciousness
is awakened, and the soul of being is afire, turned on in such a way that life becomes a continual revelation, a continual awakening, a continual enlightenment—moving from one realization to another, one illumination to another, one discovery to another. This is the spontaneous freedom of spirit to reveal its treasures.
This unfoldment of realization and discovery has its own inherent and unstoppable momentum. A combustion begins that has no end except the end of all things, the realization of all things.
You can’t rest because there is something you are aspiring to, whether it appears as a seeking or as a natural impulse. But when this essential activation is foreground, God is after you. Reality is chasing you, and it is not going to leave you alone.
But when this essential activation is foreground, God is after you. Reality is chasing you, and it is not going to leave you alone. When this occurs, it happens regardless of you, regardless of your resistances and delusions. It can’t help but confront and challenge whatever obstructs the way. This quickening has its own momentum independent of your mind, your resistances, your history, your influences, and even your practices. It is independent of position and view, regardless of whether the view is owned by a self or not owned at all. It doesn’t matter what you do. Even if you try to forget, it knocks on the door, and it keeps waking you up and keeps showing you what it is. It can’t help but keep revealing itself, keep stripping itself right in front of you, over and over again. More accurately, at this point, it is actually stripping itself to itself and not to an identified entity.
More accurately, at this point, it is actually stripping itself to itself and not to an identified entity.
But from the perspective of essential activation, living our realization is not a matter of bringing our particular mode of realization into our life or of integrating our life into it. It is more that realization itself can’t help but continue to live however it wants.
And when God takes over, the possibilities never end. God is full of life and is not going to finally rest in any one place. God will play and will turn reality upside down, creating all sorts of mischief. This reveals a kind of freedom that is indefinable because it is not dependent on any particular state. It is a state-free freedom, a state-independent freedom.
God will play and will turn reality upside down, creating all sorts of mischief. This reveals a kind of freedom that is indefinable because it is not dependent on any particular state. It is a state-free freedom, a state-independent freedom.
it is not dependent on any particular state. It is a state-free freedom, a state-independent freedom.
When spirit is loose, nothing can constrain or stop it. This is very different from having an experience of a certain condition that persists or is always there. When spirit is loose, reality is continuing to reveal more, continuing to transform, continuing to surprise itself because, basically, at some point, you are not there.
For essential activation to happen, we need to have a clear encounter of the third kind with true nature, and it needs to be as complete as possible and happen as many times as possible.
Reality is not a construction of the mind. It is not an emotion or reaction of the heart. It is not a sensation of the body. Even though true nature is independent of all mind, heart, and body, it expresses itself through them, maturing them by utilizing them. An encounter of the third kind is the experiential recognition of spirit as spirit—experientially knowing that spirit is and knowing spirit in its purity. We will leave aside for the moment what spirit is, whether God or Buddha nature or something else. For this kind of direct encounter, it is simply enough that we recognize that spirit is, that we can experience spirit without an intermediary.
The activation of the life of being, this irrepressible, unstoppable dynamism, is not possible without this necessary awakening to true nature, awakening to spirit.
Recognizing that true nature is from another world, from another dimension or realm of reality is a significant part of necessary awakening. If we have an experience of true nature and simply think, “Oh, that was nice. It felt good. That must have been an experience of pleasure or some kind of love and sweetness,” we might mistake it for a continuation of our usual experience and not see that it is a quantum break with reality as we have known it.
because all forms are basically one truth manifesting in different ways. What is important is that you recognize the underlying purity and otherness of true nature regardless of what form it takes.
When I had the experience of encountering true nature many years ago, I recognized a dynamic presence and fullness that was amazing and so different from anything I had ever known. Even though that was only the beginning, even though it hadn’t unfolded yet to reveal its manifold possibilities, even in its simple form, the effect on me was feeling that “I could die tomorrow and I would be content.” What I encountered fulfilled something so deep and so profound that I recognized it as the most central and miraculous element of reality. By emphasizing the radical and miraculous otherness of true nature, I am pointing to the quantum leap in consciousness and awareness that it makes possible.
form, the effect on me was feeling that “I could die tomorrow and I would be content.” What I encountered fulfilled something so deep and so profound that I recognized it as the most central and miraculous element of reality.
And if you encounter it truly, if you recognize its purity and its otherness, you cannot forget it. It leaves an indelible and living impression, an impact that is necessary for the essential activation of the life of being.
2 Primary Awakening
Our inquiry is mostly a matter of challenging various positions and beliefs that obscure our view of reality and our understanding of reality.
When I say that true nature, as the philosophers’ stone, is central for spiritual life, is the essence of spiritual life, is the force of spiritual life, I am exposing and challenging various positions and attitudes that we have about reality. Some of these are gross and others quite subtle.
This is not unusual in the history of the world. Some of us turn to spirituality as an escape because we don’t want to face the difficulties of life. Others of us turn to it because we are resigned to the idea that not much can be done about these difficulties anyway.
am not implying that spirituality is different or divorced from everyday life. Spiritual life means experiencing and living life in its completeness, which includes its hidden truths.
We are simply driven to know reality and to see the truth. It is like being in love. We can’t help it. We have to be close to reality, to see reality, to be one with reality. Most of us are motivated by all these reasons at one time or another. But if we don’t have the drive that comes from the purity of being—meaning that the enlightenment drive is activated and working—we can’t penetrate the delusions that obstruct the life of realization.
It is in the first turning that we recognize and experience true nature as a particular, different from other particulars and outside the known world of particulars. The radical otherness of true nature points to the fact that it is outside the purview of the world of conventional experience. The second turning of the wheel reveals the other side of true nature: that it is not only a particular but an absolutely pervasive particular. It pervades and constitutes everything, in a way that makes apparent the oneness, unity, and nonduality that is the hallmark of mystical experience. From the perspective of nondual experience, the encounter of the third kind with true nature is still dualistic because, even though in that encounter we recognize the radical otherness of spirit or God or whatever, there is still an “I” experiencing a true nature, regardless of whether we experience it as inside or outside of the self.
This is often what everybody wishes for at the beginning of the path, and some teachings say that it is actually possible for the whole world to live like this. But from the nondual perspective, such a life appears impossible. From the perspective of the oneness of reality, strife and suffering seem inherent to the dual perspective because of the existence of the self and the transitory nature of all forms. The fourth turning of the teaching shows us that dual and nondual are different views of reality, each of them disclosing something different about how reality can manifest. Reality can appear as a discrete self navigating an external world and can also manifest as an indivisible unity. The nondual view is emphasized in so many teachings because it is a useful and effective antidote to the dualistic view. It challenges the prevailing assumptions of duality and makes it possible to get beyond these limitations to something that has the possibility of greater freedom and fulfillment. But we should not forget that there are teachings that reveal that fulfillment is also possible in the dualistic view—the fulfillment of a human being as an individual with self-determination. Even though both views are valid, we can see, from the view of totality, that both dual and nondual understandings still harbor delusions about reality. One of the main delusions shared by both views, and many others too, is revealed in the Sufi saying, “When I say this is true, I don’t mean only this is true.” Both perspectives adhere to the delusion of being categorical. Those who subscribe to either view believe, “This is it, this is all of reality, and only this is true.” Nondual practitioners can no more easily admit the reality of the world of suffering than secularists can admit the underlying divine oneness of reality. Both camps posit their own version of the ultimate condition of reality as definitive.
What we see is that there are other ways of looking at reality and true nature apart from the Aristotelian logic of finding out what the ultimate or final constituent of reality is. Many paths of enlightenment focus on finding the ultimate and realizing the ultimate as reality, but the fourth turning reveals this as only one point of view, only one way of looking at reality.
So when I mentioned collapsing all ultimates—Brahman, Shunyata, Christ, Ein Sof, Tao, and others—into the philosophers’ stone, I didn’t mean to imply that there are no differences between them. Brahman is not the same thing as Shunyata, and Shunyata is not the same thing as the universal Christ, and Christ is not the same thing as Ein Sof, and Ein Sof is not the same thing as the Tao. Each is a different way of experiencing true nature and each gives rise to a different experience of reality. By collapsing them all in the philosophers’ stone, I am saying that from the perspective of the fourth turning, each is a different face of true nature.
In the fourth turning, the sense is more that each thing in itself is an equally valid manifestation of reality. Just imagine the freedom you’d gain from the superego if you really recognized and realized this. The fourth turning of the wheel is the direct experience, the realization, the recognition, the vision, the thinking, and the creativity of a different kind of equalness of all manifestation. This is an equalness in which the particulars do not lose their difference, uniqueness, and significance. The equality of forms in the second turning levels the playing field, where each particular is simply another manifestation of the ground and thereby equal in significance to any other particular. The important wisdom is that of sameness, of all particulars having the same nature. In the fourth turning, equalness is not because of sameness or shared ground; each particular in itself is equal to all others. And yet, they are all of one nature, albeit a more mysterious nature than that revealed in nondual realization. This recognition hits you and impacts you at all levels. Nothing is excluded; everything is included in the view of living reality. It opens up the whole of reality all at once.
So when you encounter a delusion, reality says, “In this moment, reality is appearing as a delusion.” And the delusion turns into a window, into another way of experiencing reality and enlightenment. Each of you is a big window, but this window, you will notice, has a frame around it. The fourth turning of the wheel removes the frame. Every time a frame is removed, reality exposes another way that it can be. That is what I mean by saying that by challenging positions and beliefs in our view of understanding reality, we allow other possibilities to emerge—new possibilities and also familiar possibilities seen anew. All the qualities and dimensions of being that we have explored can become more accessible and gain a different meaning and a different kind of utility as we behold them from this more total view.
freedom is the never-ending unfoldment of reality to reveal true nature in all its possible faces, in all its manifestations. This means that the life of realization is a life of discovery, a never-ending growth and unfoldment and evolution.
This is the kind of freedom that is made possible by essential activation: Our being, or reality in our location, is activated to the extent that its unfoldment is unstoppable. Reality itself is compelled toward further realization. Its movement is unrestrained, not because it doesn’t like how things are now but because it is full of potential that is bursting and can’t help but push toward the edges of what is known. This means that the enlightenment drive has been liberated to the extent that it is free from any view or perspective of reality.
When you are engaged in foreplay, you can stop at any time. If the phone rings, you can stop and answer it. But if foreplay progresses beyond a certain degree, you cannot stop. You have to go to consummation. That feeling that the movement is unstoppable, that it has taken over your rational mind and your voluntary actions, that you are no longer in control of what is happening, when seen in terms of the dynamism of being, is what I mean by essential activation. This means that the enlightenment drive has reached the kind of freedom where it takes on a life and momentum of its own. It is relentless; it has to keep bursting and moving toward the frontiers of reality.
This is also how the enlightenment drive appears in the fourth turning of the wheel. You are not interested in getting to realization; you are not looking for something; you are just living fully and realization simply happens.
When we move in that direction, we see that living our realization changes our realization. In the beginning, we think we have realization and need to work out how to express it in our lives. But as we go on, we realize that realization itself changes in order to express itself.
Instead, essential activation means that the unfoldment is happening and that realization is occurring in a way that is free and unstoppable. Seeking has ceased, has come to an end, and further revelations are simply the expression of realization. This unstoppable dynamism is unsettling for many of us because we want to find a place to land. We need to have some place that we think of as reality, as a home base that we can come back to. In the dual perspective of the first turning, even though we experience true nature, we tend to settle in the ego identity. The home base in the second turning of the wheel is the boundlessness of true nature, the nondual condition. The fourth turning of the wheel offers no refuge. There is no fixed home base. The freedom of the fourth turning comes with absolute insecurity. There is no security in the sense of stability. Dynamism becomes more important than stability.
The dynamism of the fourth turning knows no end. It is not only that realization is open and open-ended, but also that the openness is open and the open-endedness is open and the endlessness is open. These are some of the wisdoms that emerge in the fourth turning. We could fill countless books with all that the fourth turning reveals.
We know spirit not only through faith, belief, hearsay, intuition, or flashes of experience but by full, continuous encounter. We come to know true nature directly—that it is, that it is not constructed, that it is not part of our mind or heart or body or nervous system, and not part of somebody’s concept or idea. We come to know true nature is its own thing. We come to know that this is what spirit means.
But for most people, there is a wide and deep chasm between necessary awakening and primary awakening. This is the gulf that we try to bridge by working on the narcissistic abyss. This is the gap between encountering true nature and being true nature, between recognizing that spirit is and recognizing that spirit is what you are. It is a movement from a dual encounter with true nature to a nondual one. It is also the movement from experience to realization.
is not only discovering our essential identity and learning our true nature. The point is to recognize that true nature is what we are.
The important shift that happens in primary realization is recognizing, “I am not only fully encountering true nature, I am fully being true nature.” This means that there is a realization here that the that and the what are the same thing: “What I am is that I am, and that I am is what I am.” In primary awakening, the encounter with true nature, with spirit, is so full and so complete that there is no longer any separate you or it. You and true nature are the same thing. You realize that what you have encountered is not alien but your spirit. True nature becomes both your that and your what. It is your being and your essence. Most of the time, being and essence are seen as two things. The being of something reflects the fact that it is. The essence of something is its true character, what it truly is. The usual word for it is “quiddity”—the inherent essence of something. Sufis call it mahiya, a variant of the sacred syllable hu, which refers to true nature and literally means “that.” “Mahiya” means “what that is,” what true nature is, what its essence
The fullness of primary awakening has two sides: You are both being yourself and knowing what being yourself is. There is the fullness of nonduality, in which you realize, “I am completely it. There is no me and no it. I and it are eliminated in the illuminating light that recognizes itself.” This is the fullness of nonduality and the totalness of immediacy, but there is also the fullness of knowing that this is the case. You not only experience “I am true nature,” but you know it. There is cognition and insight. So the illumination of primary awakening is not simply in the transformation of identity but also in the transformation of the knowing of identity.
And the incompleteness of self-realization will appear as a limitation of the certainty that true nature is what you are, is that you are, and is knowing that and what you are. The more complete the primary realization is, the more certainty and knowledge we have of what we are, and this certainty relieves us of the mental need for assurance. It relieves us from self-doubt and from questioning the reality of our experience.
Primary awakening is not only an experience of freedom but also an experience of understanding and discriminating what this freedom is. We see that what we are has changed, that what we are is something fundamental, something miraculous, and we know what this miracle is and we know that we are this miracle.
We see that what we are has changed, that what we are is something fundamental, something miraculous, and we know what this miracle is and we know that we are this miracle.
We recognize “true nature is what I am,” where “I” is a figure of speech. There is no “I”; it is true nature recognizing itself. True nature sheds the garment of the self and recognizes itself with its own light, with its own luminosity. And by recognizing this, we see that not only does true nature make possible the existence of everything but that without true nature, there would be no experience, no awareness, no consciousness, because true nature is the source of pure light, pure awareness, and pure consciousness.
It’s important to understand that primary awakening is not limited to the realization of any one particular way that our true nature manifests. The experience of primary realization can be of any form of true nature—absolute emptiness or pure presence or pure awareness or nondual awareness. In the second turning of this teaching, there is a progression of self-realization to subtler dimensions until there is the realization of what I call the absolute, followed by the integration of all dimensions into the absolute. We call this absolute nondual realization. By absolute, I mean something similar to how this term is conceived by other teachings, such as the Parabrahman of Advaita Vedanta, the Dharmakaya of Mahayana Buddhism, or the Divine Essence of Sufism.
By absolute, I mean something similar to how this term is conceived by other teachings, such as the Parabrahman of Advaita Vedanta, the Dharmakaya of Mahayana Buddhism, or the Divine Essence of Sufism.
When we move from necessary awakening to primary awakening, true nature shifts from being radically other to becoming absolutely non-other. We recognize that true nature is not only not other, but that it is the opposite of other. It is what we are—fundamentally, essentially, and absolutely—through and through.
As long as the primary awakening of self-realization is incomplete and uncertain, we will continue to search and to seek. The certainty of realization does not mean there will be no more issues to work through. The certainty means that when the issues arise, you recognize they are issues; when vulnerabilities arise, you recognize they are vulnerabilities.
When our self-realization is certain, life will continue to flow with discoveries, not because we are searching for them, but because that is how life expresses its joy and fullness—by spontaneously manifesting new revelations. In primary awakening, reality is awake to its primordial nature. If we recognize, respect, and heed this awakening, it will keep unfurling itself to disclose more and more of reality. All other awakenings, realizations, and enlightenments are a matter of seeing the further implications of this primary awakening. Living this awakening is lively and fun, it is profound and liberating, and it is endless.
3 The Nonhierarchical View Of The Path
WE ARE EXPLORING a particular activation of our being—the turning on of a switch—that animates our being with a kind of life that is powerful enough to continue combusting and to continue blazing in a way that not only continues its form but also transforms itself, revealing further possibilities spontaneously and without restraint. This does not mean actualizing a particular state or arriving at a particular understanding, although both of these can happen. This essential activation is the freedom of being, of our true nature, to manifest its myriad possibilities and move us through various awakenings and realizations.
Necessary awakening is the direct experience and recognition of true nature as the unique, radically different, and miraculous truth that it is. And primary awakening is more than this kind of close encounter of the third kind with true nature; it is realizing true nature by experiencing and knowing that it is what we are. We realize true nature as both our being and our essence.
Proceeding in this way makes it easier for us to tolerate the experiences of true nature, to open to them, and to relate to them. It also makes it easier for the self to let go because of the holding and support that happens when we work in a progressive way. As we work gradually and thoroughly through our immediate experiences, our understanding and recognition that there is something else—something beyond the ego view—grows steadily. And we are increasingly able to trust this something else and trust reality because we recognize from our immediate experience the purity at the heart of all of reality, the clarity that is pure goodness, pure light, and pure illumination.
What we learn in the fourth turning, the insight that arises, is that however we experience true nature—whether as personal presence or absolute nonbeing—it is a single truth, one truth appearing in different guises. We recognize that true nature is strength and compassion, clarity and intelligence; it is truth and it is love. True nature is equally will and presence, being and nonbeing, spaciousness and awareness. True nature is the inseparability of emptiness and presence. All of these are simply faces of one truth, manifestations and appearances of one reality.
This is different from the experience of the oneness and unity of nonduality, which is based on the principles of sameness and pervasiveness. The oneness and singleness of the fourth turning does not come at the expense of particularity and difference. And it addresses a different matter, a different question—one that points to an omnidirectional unity, where directionality does not suggest extension in time and space.
Experiencing the emptiness of everything is not more important, more significant, or more powerful than experiencing the joy of being human. We see that there is no hierarchy in true nature.
So when I say that experiencing compassion or clarity or presence is the same thing as realizing the absolute nature of everything, it can seem rather far fetched. The absolute is so immense, so deep, so profound, and so much at the bottom of everything that spiritual forms appear to emanate from it. But it is actually true nature that is manifesting itself as the absolute emanating the qualities. The absolute does not emanate any qualities; it is always and only true nature doing that.
True nature is the mystery that is simultaneously and equally everything and nothing, every single thing, one thing, and no thing at all. In a sense, the mind can be reformatted so that it does not think hierarchically. You first have to close all the open windows and shut off all the ongoing processes before you can start up again in a new way. Then, after you reformat the hard drive, you have to restart the computer. That is what happens in the fourth turning of the teaching.
If we take seriously the nonhierarchical view, it means there is no comparison, no lower and higher, no beginning and end. Even realization does not have hierarchy—there is no lower or higher realization. Each realization is valid, complete, and a true manifestation of reality.
The nonhierarchical view shows us that if we stay with where we are and understand it, everything can be revealed. Our direct and immediate experience is the philosophers’ stone that holds the key to all secrets and all possibilities because true nature is all possibilities and it is what we are.
This dynamism is usually referred to in alchemical literature as “red sulfur.” Sulfur is yellow, so what is red sulfur? It doesn’t exist in nature, and the term was used by alchemists to designate the combination of two elements that represent two sides of reality. The union of these two elements, their merging, is what creates red sulfur. In chemical terms, these two elements are sulfur and mercury, and their combination causes a chemical reaction that creates red sulfur. According to the literature, sulfur is fiery, combustive, active, and masculine; and mercury is flowing, receptive, changeable, and feminine. Red sulfur is the marriage of masculine and feminine, active and receptive, which creates an unusual dynamism.
We come close to understanding the indefinable truth of true nature when we understand that it is self-creative. So, for example, when essential strength arises, essential strength is creating itself. Something else is not creating it. It is not as if there is a Godhead someplace that is creating essential strength in the moment. Rather, the quality is self-creating. It does not have a source outside of itself. There is no true nature separate from essential strength that is creating this quality. Essential strength is true nature creating itself as essential strength. This goes for all spiritual manifestations. When pure awareness arises as the luminosity that makes up everything, true nature is creating itself as that.
You might be thinking, “And what is it that it is creating itself from?” There is nothing in particular that it is creating itself from. It is self-creating. It arises from itself as itself. There is not anything else but it. You won’t find anything underneath or behind true nature. It is what it is completely. Each quality is what it is. We are way beyond the notion of creatio ex nihilo, in which God creates the universe out of nothing.
We recognize here that the source and the sourced are one. Compassion is the source of compassion. The absolute is the source of the absolute. The nondual is the source of the nondual. The dual is the source of the dual. All of them are the self-creation of true nature.
Recognizing these truths—that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature, that each manifestation of true nature is all of true nature creating itself as that manifestation, that each manifestation of true nature can spark endless realization—is another factor involved in essential activation.
This shows us that another element needed for activation is the experience and recognition that each form of true nature—every spiritual experience—is a manifestation of one truth and that each of them is all of them and contains all of them. This means that if we are truly practicing inquiry, if we are really letting ourselves be where we are and we understand the implications of our experience, reality itself will naturally reveal whatever is possible for us to see.
What I am specifically addressing here is hierarchy and nonhierarchy on the spiritual path. Both views have their place and their uses. Seeing the nonhierarchy of true nature also has the effect of allowing our usual, hierarchical way of working to become more liberated and more open. Once essential activation has happened, the quality of red sulfur—both active and receptive, both combustive and changeable, both masculine and feminine—can begin to infuse the usual, hierarchical way we work. The dimensions, states, and qualities that we encounter in the hierarchical approach can become more available and easier to access because our inquiry is powered with the force of activation.
So the nonhierarchical view does not negate the hierarchical view; it simply adds to it.
This perspective brings not only freedom but also immense energy and aliveness.
Red sulfur reveals the catalytic quality of true nature, its unstoppable combustion and flow.
Seeking ceases and liberated living is continual discovery. When the essence of our consciousness is activated, it reveals not only the forms and dimensions of true nature but also everything about true nature, all the secrets of reality. This unfoldment is the runaway process of realization realizing further realization, the process of endless, and finally traceless, enlightenment.
4 Endless Awakening
When we feel longing and desire, yearning for liberation or true nature or God, that is not yet essential activation.
But essential activation has to do with the unrestrained revelation of truth that doesn’t have anything to do with our seeking. It has to do with reality expressing itself in an unfettered way, and in a way that makes it clear to us that it is reality expressing itself.
Until the nonhierarchical view is actually available to us experientially, it is more useful for us to work within the hierarchical view of reality. The view of totality makes this possible because it does not discard or negate one view in favor of another.
Whereas you encounter true nature in the first juncture, in the second juncture of the path, you realize true nature or, put another way, true nature realizes itself as and through you.
It’s like throwing a dinner party: It’s necessary and useful to cook the meal and pick out good music and invite dear friends, but none of that guarantees that it will be a lively party. In addition to the factors I’ve mentioned, activation might require other things. For instance, the completeness and certainty of our awakening is another important factor. The more established we are in necessary and primary awakening, the more fully we have integrated them, the greater the possibility that reality will reveal further mysteries.
True nature manifests itself in ways that reveal more of its secrets, allowing us to perceive reality in new ways. For example, we can experience and realize reality in a holographic way. Although science has understood some things about the holographic universe as a projection of information, I am talking about an actual experience of reality that is different from both the dual and the nondual views.
This experience of unity is quite different from the nondual perception of sameness, which has a sense of unity that extends through space.
The nondual perspective of reality shows the unity and the luminosity and the beauty of reality by shifting the vantage point from the self to various boundless dimensions of true nature.
When I say that the vantage point of experiencing reality can change, I mean we can experience reality from the vantage point of love, for instance, or from the vantage point of awareness or from the vantage point of emptiness. And we can also experience reality without any vantage point. This brings us back full circle to the simplicity of everyday experience—what Zen Buddhism refers to as the way of nonthinking, as opposed to the ways of thinking or not thinking.
This brings us back full circle to the simplicity of everyday experience—what Zen Buddhism refers to as the way of nonthinking, as opposed to the ways of thinking or not thinking.
This is what makes all of this relevant for you and your life. This recognition brings an unimaginable freedom, a freedom to be exactly where you are without any concern or worry about your realization or lack thereof. Both enlightenment and delusion are manifestations of reality. And because you recognize everything as a manifestation of reality, nothing can ruffle your feathers. So the simple physical act of drinking your jasmine green tea is equal to experiencing the emptiness of all forms or seeing the luminosity of reality or experiencing the love that is creating the whole universe.
Any experience of any kind can be experienced as ultimate without being experienced as the totality of true nature. All experience is simply reality doing its thing in one way or another.
Indifference doesn’t mean you don’t feel joy or love or anger; it means that it doesn’t matter what you feel or experience. It doesn’t matter in the sense that you are not invested in reality being one way or another; you are not trying to skew your experience one way or another. You are naturally at ease with yourself and with reality. Reality rejoices at this kind of indifference, this total openness and surrender, and expresses this joy by revealing more of its secrets.
5 The Reverence Of True Nature
Being where we are—allowing it and exploring it—is the central tenet of our practice of inquiry all along the path.
Wherever we are, wherever we happen to find ourselves, is a manifestation of true nature and contains all of reality. There is no point in striving to be anywhere else. So even if this shift in the teaching seems inaccessible, even if it seems improbable or outlandish, from the perspective of totality, all you need to do is be where you are. You can receive the benefit of this wisdom simply by allowing yourself—your heart and your mind and your body—to be impacted by this teaching.
When first receiving a subtle teaching, it’s important to listen with your heart and with your being. If the mind understands the teaching, that can help open up your experience, but the openness and receptivity of the heart is foremost. Should you feel that these ideas are over your head or are too radical to accept, you can let that be and allow yourself to simply feel whatever is here.
Years ago I listened to various teachers and most of the time understood little of what was being taught. This is the norm in spiritual teachings—most people do not understand much of what is being communicated by the teacher. There are various reasons for this, but most importantly it shows us that learning is not just a matter of conceptual understanding; in fact, it is primarily a matter of transformation and awakening and realization, all of which are experiential.
This frees us from being caught in any particular view or being stuck in any particular experience that we think is good or valuable or right. We can be liberated from all kinds of judgments, comparisons, seeking, and effort because wherever we are is fine, wherever we are is simply what it is.
Without true nature, we are hopeless as human beings; we are lost in an intractable sort of way. Without the light or the guidance or the presence of true nature, we are unconscious and asleep—“fodder for the moon” as Gurdjieff put it. That is to say, without true nature, we are basically serving the perpetuation of life, the perpetuation of the universe. Instead of being the universe that is self-manifesting—what he called “the trogoautoegocrat”—we become food for evolution and don’t actively participate in the actual creative effulgence of life.
Seeing the role of true nature in illuminating the dire situation we find ourselves in impacts our heart and our soul, and it transforms our relationship to true nature and everything that expresses it. The more we recognize and encounter true nature, the more the heart is touched. True nature touches the heart in a way that nothing else does. When we realize how exquisite true nature is, we become stunned. How can it be? How can there be such a thing? How can there be such an energy, such a power, that is compassionate and strong at the same time, that is precise and loving at the same time, that is the nature of everything and creating everything at the same time?
It is like a luminosity whose action is pure love and pure goodness. The more it touches us, the more we feel real and satisfied, and the more meaningful our life becomes. Our sense of awe is not only full of wonder, appreciation, and love but is also imbued with a deep respect for the truth and power of true nature. This respect can develop naturally into a profound reverence for true nature; in this way it becomes a factor useful for essential activation. This reverence—a mix of love, joy, delight, respect, and awe—is both a feature and an expression of that activation.
The more that we have this attitude of love, respect, and reverence, the more possible it is for essential activation to occur. And as essential activation happens, this reverence only intensifies. This kind of reverence is a certain attitude of the heart, a certain attitude of the soul—humble, prayerful, and offering up whatever is left of our individual consciousness.
Some people think that if there is nondual realization of true nature—if you realize true nature as what you are and as what everything is—then it doesn’t make any sense to feel reverence and devotion because that implies dualism. They think that being prayerful or loving or adoring or supplicating implies there is a you separate from true nature. But we only need to study the great masters of the nondual condition to see that they constantly pray to true nature—crying, remembering, and supplicating—even though they fully know that there is no separation between them and true nature.
When we explore it further, we might see that it is the reverence of true nature itself, that it is true nature waking up to itself and being awestruck by its own magnificence. It reveres and adores the truth. It rejoices in its own majesty without taking ownership of it. As individuals, we often take ownership when we feel “this magnificence is me.” But, in reality, it is only true nature that can say that.
We recognize that true nature is what we are, and yet we continue to practice with an attitude of devotion and reverence without the one who is practicing becoming separate from true nature. This reverence is neither an idealization nor a product of our imagination, both of which will distort our experience of true nature.
Because we are at once the totality and an individual—inseparably but distinctly—it is possible for true nature to feel reverence toward itself without resorting to the dual view. But usually we can express this only in a relational way, which makes it appear dualistic.
The way I understand this now is that it’s not so much about being afraid of God’s anger and punishment as it is the recognition of a natural law. If you are not living according to the truth, you are going to be in conflict with reality, and your life will be a mess. You will be in hell. Although this does make some sense, it’s better not to think of reverence in terms of fearing God. Some people do feel that what is powerful and scary commands respect because they have to heed it and submit to it. But the feeling of reverence toward true nature comes not from fear but from appreciation. We feel humble and grateful when faced with how exquisite and miraculous true nature is. We can’t help but feel love and devotion as our heart bows in prayer to its majesty.
If we don’t experience this kind of reverence, a door is closed. It means that our heart and our soul are not open in a way that can allow us to be touched by the goodness of true nature.
In our work, we don’t ritualize the attitude of reverence. We simply need to recognize and experience it in our attitude and in our conduct, in the way we feel and in the way we practice.
whenever Dilgo Khyentse came face to face with the reincarnation of his teacher, who was still a young boy, maybe six or seven years old, he would always prostrate himself all the way to the ground with tears streaming down his cheeks. Even though his teacher was a boy who hadn’t yet learned much, and even though Dilgo Khyentse was himself fully realized, the attitude of devoted reverence did not waver.
When we feel this kind of awed devotion, it is the reverence of reality itself, of its essence and nature, of its mystery and magic. We can’t help but bow our heads in humility. We can’t help but love its purity and goodness and generosity. And as our heart opens in this way, true nature responds by revealing more of itself. This only intensifies our gratitude, which in turn elicits an even greater outpouring of true nature.
Freedom is so realized and being is so freely activated that knowing everything as nondual consciousness or awareness is simply one way that reality manifests. And that way of knowing reality is, in fact, only the beginning of enlightenment, not its end. There is no enlightenment with a capital E. The more we are devoted to true nature and the more we live the attitude of reverence, the greater is the possibility that the self-creative dynamism of reality will continue to reveal further secrets of existence.
Part Two EXPRESSIONS OF AWAKENING
6 Self-Illuminating True Nature
All of our ignorance and delusions are connected with structures, with set patterns that involve feelings of fear and dread and anger and hatred and pain. If our practice is going to be experiential, if it is concerned with true awakening, with a true encounter with reality, we can’t work on the cognitive delusions without also dealing with the emotional obstacles.
Its particularity and its difference give rise to the possibility of setting it apart; and by setting it apart, we objectify it, which begins a process of reification that feeds our sense of being an isolated self. As we objectify true nature, we both misconstrue it and support a sense of self that is disconnected from it. This tends to solidify the shell of the self, which means that we don’t recognize that true nature is what we are.
Anytime we think, “I am experiencing personal presence” or “I’ve realized boundless love,” we are making true nature a something. Our language does this all the time. Some of us use spiritual lingo as if we were talking about our grocery list of kale and orange juice and organic granola. We tend to talk about our spiritual life in the same way that we talk about the rest of our life—what we’ve got, what we need, who’s got what, what’s next. It’s good to recognize that this happens and also how it can lead to the objectification and reification of true nature.
So we become hypercautious or use practices that avoid or sidestep the process of reification. Many of the Eastern yogic practices—those that employ concentration techniques, visualization, chanting, and so on—and some Western ones too, fall within this category of sidestepping the process of reification instead of going through it. Those practices can actually be effective in sidestepping the issue, but they don’t…
This is yet another delusion because the mind, for the most part, cannot function without reifying. The ordinary mind is itself a process of…
This is a built-in mechanism of the mind. Our neural networks are completely set this way. We can’t try to not reify, because it is impossible to…
The ordinary mind doesn’t have enough luminosity to even notice reification, let alone try to avoid it. Without the illuminating power of true nature, the ordinary mind faced with reification will…
Seeing everything as the same reality, the same truth, the same light, helps us understand how the illumination of these obstacles can happen. I’ve never tried to avoid reification, objectification, or delusion, because I never thought I could. It has always been clear to me that it is not possible. And I have never been afraid of these…
However, if we continue to be in touch with true nature regardless of how it appears—whether as essential presence or nondual awareness or some other way—when the issue of objectification becomes an obstacle as we inquire into experience, true nature itself will reveal what is necessary to see through the reifications. The light of true nature can attain a certain kind of subtlety or discrimination…
And it uses the mind and the intellect; it uses the heart; it uses the will. But we need to have faith in it, not in the mind or heart or will. They are the servants, the channels through which the light functions; without the light, they function in the dark. We cannot avoid reification…
As we begin to inquire, we notice various structures, obstacles, and issues, and the understanding of them frequently occurs in tandem with the arising of true nature in one form or another. So in some sense, true nature functions by way of illuminating delusions, illusions, and obscurations; and through the illumination of what is darkened, it reveals its secrets. That is what self-illumination means. True nature illuminates obstacles by manifesting certain powers and in doing so recognizes something about…
Thinking that realization happens because “I am stepping aside” is the same thing as thinking that realization happens because “I am meditating.” Both positions take awakening and illumination to be a result of something we are doing. This becomes problematic because it prevents reality from revealing the fact that true nature is always the illuminator. It is the light that illuminates. It is the awareness that discerns. It is the knowledge that knows.
When we recognize the self-illumination of reality, we see that as we practice—inquire, meditate, understand—it is Total Being that is practicing.
When we see that awakening is the self-illumination of true nature, this doesn’t mean that we should stop practicing. It doesn’t mean that we get a free pass and can be lazy and simply rely on true nature to do the job. It means that in our practice, what we have faith in is not the mind or the heart or the body but true nature and its truth and love and power. This trust is similar to how the monotheistic traditions talk about faith in God, except here it is not faith in an other. True nature is not something outside of us or other than us. We completely trust the truth of true nature, and we have unwavering faith in its loving and illuminating and liberating power. The only thing left for us to do in the light of this kind of faith is to stay oriented toward true nature. We continue whatever practice we are doing without believing that we are making any illuminations happen, without believing that our practice or our capacities are what make awakening occur. This is a subtle and controversial point, one that takes a great deal of experience and wisdom to understand. This is why nondoing, which is the core of inquiry, is such an important part of our practice. When we inquire, we are not trying to do something to our experience; we are simply interested in letting it be and understanding it so it can reveal itself as fully as possible. In some sense, we could say that reality, because of its pure heart—its true nature—appears in a dualistic way so that we can practice, so that we can begin to inquire into and investigate who and what we are, whether we do that individually, dialectically, or in groups.
The usual self that we ordinarily tend to take ourselves to be can’t do anything. And as we experience how helpless and incapable we are, true nature is waking up—its light is getting more intense and more brilliant. If we read about the lives of enlightened masters or mystics, we see that often their enlightenment or realization happens when they hit bottom, when they get to the point of being completely helpless and hopeless and incapable. They throw in the towel and completely and truly give up. You can’t fake this; it really has to happen. You have to exhaust all your capacities and truly give up, not out of cynicism or despair but out of the simple recognition that you can’t do anything.
True nature wakes up by revealing to itself the delusion that it is this little self that is trying to practice and get somewhere. And when it sees this, it does not put its energy into the functioning of that little self.
So when the little self feels that it can’t do anything, that it is poor in capacity, it is in fact recognizing the power of true nature. Illumination further reveals that appropriating the liberating power of true nature is not our fault. Delusion is no more a matter of individual fault than awakening is a matter of individual effort. Being deluded, thinking we can do anything—including stepping aside—is an objective fact of being human. And it is one step toward unveiling true illumination. It’s fine to think of it as letting go or surrendering when we are still identified with the view of the little self. But from another perspective, we can see that it is actually true nature illuminating its field, its organ of perception, lighting it up so that it wakes up and sees itself. We continue to see reality through the eyes of identification with a self until the illumination becomes so intense that we cannot help but recognize the truth. And what that truth is can be revealed on any level.
Every single time we experience and understand something about reality, it is true nature illuminating itself. When this illumination happens in a more total way, we call it awakening or realization or enlightenment.
We are appropriating the light of true nature, its intelligence and clarity and awareness.
Because some theistic traditions consider God, the source of grace, as something absolutely other, we can come to assume that there is a me and a God and that grace always comes from God, from the outside. This view can hinder the possibility of self-realization. We can recognize grace and expansion and surrender, and we can also see, “That is what reality is; that is what I am,” without the “I” referring to the usual sense of self.
But we might remember Gödel’s famous incompleteness theorems, which state that if a system is self-consistent, it cannot be complete. Gödel wasn’t dealing with spiritual systems but with a simple arithmetical system or logical statements. He proved that any self-consistent set or group or system cannot be complete, because there will be truths and statements in it that are not derived from that system. This is relevant to what I am saying because it is related to the shift from the hierarchical view of this teaching to its nonhierarchical view.
In the fourth turning, true nature illuminates even more of its possibilities. We see that true nature is beyond space and time. Because it is beyond space, it does not have a size or shape; because it is beyond time, it does not have duration. When people think of true nature as outside of time, they usually think of true nature as a ground through which all time passes; so it is outside of time and yet present in all times. But to think of true nature as present in all times is to include it in time. True nature has no extension in time or in space. Seeing this reveals that reality can appear as unities that are different from the classical unity of nonduality, which is based on extension through space and time. When reality is truly beyond space and time, it can reveal the unity of singularity.
Singularity is when the infinity of reality appears in a single point. All spatial and temporal infinity manifests as one point. All space and all time are one point, where the point is all space and all time without any sense of spatial extension or temporal duration.
When we appropriate the power of true nature, we put the brakes on the acceleration of its dynamism and we dampen the fiery combustion that ignites runaway realization. But when this self-illuminating light becomes natural and spontaneous and free, we begin to see how reality lives and plays.
Runaway realization is the ride of the enlightened gods, the exhilarating joy of divinity and its royal heirs, the orgasmic play of the free mind and the free heart.
7 Self-Expressing True Nature
We can come to recognize that realization happens as a dialectic between individual practice and the self-revelation of true nature as Total Being. This dynamic of realization reveals the inner workings of reality. True nature, the unsullied purity at the heart of Total Being, which is all of reality, is pure illumination, is the light that illuminates and the goodness that loves. And it acts and functions through individuals, through what we ordinarily believe is our intelligence, our heart, and our will. But when we say “our will,” the point is to distinguish it from another person’s will, not to distinguish it from the will of true nature.
This is part of our human error: In order to distinguish our uniqueness from another uniqueness, we end up disconnecting ourselves from the ground of all our capacities. We need to be extra subtle here because this language can be misleading. When I say it is “our human error,” I do not mean that there are actually separate human beings making errors; it is always Total Being, which appears in this case as human beings.
We still need to practice and to exercise the intelligence, the heart, and the will that true nature is expressing through our consciousness. We do this not to get somewhere but because true nature as Total Being practices through us as individuals practicing, meditating, and inquiring. We can’t loaf around and idly wait for true nature to bestow her gifts. That attitude doesn’t express the purity of true nature. True nature expresses its purity when we are in the mode of practice and the attitude of practice. This means that we are experiencing and expressing true nature through the three centers: as commitment to continual practice through the belly, as love, devotion, and reverence through the heart, and as discriminating intelligence through the mind. The dynamic of realization—the dance of practice and awakening—is a dialectic that combines the dual and the nondual views in an inextricable and indescribable way. We inquire as an individual who is exerting, who is endeavoring and is fully engaged, fully interested, fully committed, and fully devoted. And yet, being fully engaged and devoted means that it is true nature expressing itself in those ways, and its purity is expressed as the practice of an individual consciousness. This is how grace is inseparable from practice, from our own activity—or, at least, what we consider to be our own individual actions, orientations, and attitudes. How else is true nature going to express itself as Total Being? How is it going to reveal itself, illuminate itself, liberate itself, and wake itself up, except through the individual? The individual is both its organ of perception and its organ of…
True nature expresses its purity when we are in the mode of practice and the attitude of practice. This means that we are experiencing and expressing true nature through the three centers: as commitment to continual practice through the belly, as love, devotion, and reverence through the heart, and as discriminating intelligence through the mind. The dynamic of realization—the dance of practice and awakening—is a dialectic that combines the dual and the nondual views in an inextricable and indescribable way. We inquire as an individual who is exerting, who is endeavoring and is fully engaged, fully interested, fully committed, and fully devoted. And yet, being fully engaged and devoted means that it is true nature expressing itself in those ways, and its purity is expressed as the practice of an individual consciousness. This is how grace is inseparable from practice, from our own activity—or, at least, what we consider to be our own individual actions, orientations, and attitudes. How else is true nature going to express itself as Total Being? How is it going to reveal itself, illuminate itself, liberate itself, and wake itself up, except through the individual? The individual is both its organ of perception and its organ of action, the lens through which it perceives and the instrument through which it operates. The dialectic between individual practice and realization—the fulcrum of the path—reveals the mystery of two that are one and one that expresses itself as two. Practice and realization are not separate, yet they are distinct. Neither practice nor realization subsumes or displaces the other, and yet they are inextricably one.
When we consider everything that is happening in the world, we see that Total Being can express itself in all kinds of ways. But practice is when true nature is expressing its purity, and it becomes total practice when it marshals everything we’ve got—our devotion, our understanding, and our action. Total practice means that the totality of who and what we are is practicing. There are many degrees of recognizing what this totality is. It can be the totality of our present experience, the totality of the individual, the totality of being, the totality of all and everything in all times and all space.
This is one truth looked at from two sides: the side of the individual and the side of Total Being. And this is different from the oneness of classical nondual experience, which is a unity that subsumes difference in sameness, subsumes the individual in transcendent reality.
At some point, it might be possible for us to recognize that the individual and the totality of all that is are exactly one and the same. But even though they are one and the same, they are also distinctly two. When we gather and practice in groups, our work gains power and intensity because it is the same true nature practicing, one true nature expressed through the collected total practice of all its organs as the totality of the field.
For now, it is important for us to recognize that the attitude of continual practice—the application of our commitment and devotion and intelligence to practice—is true nature expressing itself in its purity. Practice is true nature expressing itself because its nature is self-expressive. True nature expresses itself in our individual experience as practice. It expresses itself in our individual experience in a way that is intimate, personal, and relevant to us individually. And we can recognize that our experience is Total Being, is true nature expressed as Total Being. We can even come to see that our experience, realization, and understanding are the whole universe expressing itself in ways that are relevant for our individual life.
When we recognize this fluidity of view, this radical openness of the view of totality, our practice becomes liberated from various delusions of self-centeredness, and our attitude and orientation align with an expanded view of reality.
8 The Transformer
This teaching comes from a place of simplicity, so simple that it is not even the opposite of complex. It’s a simplicity that allows complexity and richness.
This simplicity makes it possible to view reality without hierarchy, and although doing so is simple and liberating and freeing, it is also quite challenging. It can bring up all the structures, the unfinished material, the identifications, the positions and delusions that are challenged by the dimensions of the hierarchical view.
This recognition means that we cannot do: We cannot do this, we cannot do that, we cannot do anything. We are incapable in one way or another, and usually when we first encounter this feeling of incapacity, we experience it as a lack, as a deficiency, as an emptiness, as a castration, as a denudement, as a poverty, as a loss. It evokes all kinds of resistances and structures, all kinds of boundaries and ego identities, all
For us, realization and transformation are two interacting threads, intertwined in a dialectic of mutual influence. We don’t see it as a chronological sequence where an awakening emerges in life by transforming the individual consciousness or a transformation opens the individual consciousness to an enlightenment or awakening.
The process of the transformation of individual consciousness has two sides: the kenotic side and the developmental side. Kenotic means a clarification of consciousness, an emptying of the structures, rigidities, and identifications that support and constitute the sense of self. Much of the transformation that is needed is the clarification of the individual consciousness, which is occluded by all kinds of beliefs and ideas and worldviews, all kinds of delusions and concepts and reifications that don’t completely disappear just because we are enlightened or awakened to true nature.
Here we need to recognize that these are our qualities; we need to see that this is my compassion, my strength, my will. “Yes, I can do it! Yes, I have the will to do it!” This sense needs to develop because in the beginning there is a need for empowering the individual consciousness. As we are first learning about our true nature, our consciousness still does not have the certainty that it is true nature and it needs that kind of empowerment.
But as our consciousness shifts to the second turning—the awakening to the boundlessness of true nature—our appropriation becomes obvious, and we see that these qualities don’t belong to an individual self; they belong to something far more mysterious, far more formless—what we call true nature or the purity or heart of reality. This clarification of the individual consciousness involves an emptying, a letting go, and a dissolving of the occlusion and the thickness of the sense of self. The structures and history that support the ordinary sense of individuality are understood and digested. And as these are understood, the individual consciousness becomes empty, becomes more and more transparent, which means true nature is more free to express itself through that consciousness. The more transparent and pliable our consciousness is, the more true nature is able to express its infinite possibilities. Our consciousness can return to an original state of transparency, now with the addition of being awakened to the condition of true nature. The other side of the transformation of individual consciousness is its development. Our consciousness is not only clarified, but it is actually a growing organism. It’s an organism that evolves. Its capacity for experience, feeling, and responsiveness, and its perceptual capacities keep developing and maturing. And the various qualities, forms, and dimensions of true nature are instrumental in developing those capacities and faculties that we need not only for further realization but also for the expression of the realization we already have attained. The process of transformation is a maturing of individual consciousness that expands the capacities we already have and also develops new faculties that we never had, or had only in a germinal way.
These capacities to both understand experience and communicate it—which most people either don’t have or have to a limited degree—begin to develop as the individual consciousness develops. The same goes for our relational capacity, our ability to interact with and be responsive to others and the world.
In all of this, essential presence is the elixir, the red sulfur, that both awakens and transforms. It clarifies and develops the individual consciousness, the mind, and the heart. It matures the capacity for action. It ripens our faculties and imbues them with all the qualities we need to live and express our realization.
In the dance of transformation and awakening, in the play of hierarchy and nonhierarchy, our life becomes a practice that both illuminates and expresses. By expressing ourselves, our totality, we are illuminating what we experience, and as we illuminate reality, we develop capacities as our realization comes into contact with life, with our relationships and our work. Our realization is truly tested by coming into contact with life because it will reveal how much we can express it, how completely Total Being can express that realization. To express it, we have to express it in life, and that means in real-life situations. Grappling with these situations will bring up the structures that still need to be understood.
Awakening is the discovery of the truth of what we are and what reality is. Transformation means the clarification and development of the organ, the instrument, so that it has enough lenses, enough limbs, to express and live that realization.
At this point, you might be thinking that there is something called an individual consciousness that goes through something else called a process of transformation and results in another thing called a mature human being. And although this is true from one perspective, from the view of totality, we see that true nature is the transformer, the transformed, and the transformation. It is the catalyst for transformation, it is what is transformed, and it is the resulting transformation.
The individual consciousness is the organ through which true nature expresses and realizes itself. As individual consciousness transforms, it develops its own sense of individuation as a personal presence, which is the sense of being a person of true nature, a person that expresses true nature in the world. But there is more to the development of human consciousness than individuation. It can develop in terms of its realization, as well as its capacities of discernment, of freedom, of dynamism. In this path, the full development and maturation of individual consciousness is the metamorphosis into the indestructible inner spiritual body of freedom. This is the full realization of being an individual human being and being the totality of being as two sides of one reality; they are no longer experienced as two at all.
9 The Only Teacher
TRUE NATURE is always the only truth that we wake up to, even though it has many faces and guises. It is also the light that illuminates that truth and reveals the truth of our obscurations, as well as the practice that expresses that truth. True nature is the guide that leads us to the truth. It is the teacher that points to the truth, that inspires us to appreciate it and to practice, and that supports us in the process of discovery, awakening, and transformation. True nature, the philosophers’ stone that opens all the secrets of existence, is the teacher, the guide, the truth, and the light.
It’s true that human consciousness can transform without the presence of true nature, but that is more of a horizontal transformation: Throughout our life, we can increase our knowledge or expand our emotional range or learn new skills. But the individual consciousness cannot grow spiritually, cannot awaken to itself and express that awakening, without the presence of true nature. As the transformer, true nature transforms itself from one guise to another; that is what a transformer does. Sometimes it is the truth, sometimes it is the light, sometimes it is a form, sometimes it is a teacher, and sometimes it is a student.
The inner teacher is one facet, one face, of true nature. True nature is the truth and it is also the teacher of truth. It is also the teacher of how to recognize the truth and how to discern the truth. Teaching and guiding in an explicit way is the same as the revealing and unveiling function of true nature, which is implicit in all manifestations of true nature because each manifestation of true nature, each form of true nature, as we have seen, is all of true nature.
This discriminating intelligence is characterized primarily by its precise clarity, by its penetrating insight, and by its compassionate sensitivity. The precise intelligence of reality has a fluid and free balance between analysis and synthesis of all the content of experience. It takes into consideration clearly and exactly the whole of our experience. Analysis means that we discriminate, we see differences, and we see the relationships between things; and synthesis means we see the picture that connects all these discriminations together. The dialectic of analysis and synthesis opens up the revelation of “Oh, this is what it means!” and that becomes a new truth we haven’t seen before.
Guidance is implicit in all the qualities and dimensions of true nature. All the variegated experiences of true nature recognize, discern, and reveal the truth of true nature. That is to say, there is guidance and teaching in every experience of true nature. But when the discriminating intelligence of true nature manifests explicitly, the function of guidance is foreground, much more comprehensive, full-bodied, and powerful.
If the teacher has not awakened to the capacity of discriminating intelligence, his knowing of true nature tends to be general and intuitive more than direct and insightful.
Guidance arises as a living and intelligent response to the situation.
The intelligence of reality is engaged as a direct response to an actual need that is arising in the situation. It is not motivated by the need to discover something new or be creative in some way. It only responds to loving the truth for its own sake, and its responsiveness is attuned and sensitive to what the situation actually is. It is in this sense that this intelligence functions as a research tool—fueled by the love of the truth and finely calibrated to the situation at hand.
The functioning of this intelligence often has the sense that, “If I put my mind and heart into something, I will find out.” There is a confidence that we are going to find the relevant information regardless of what we are exploring. This intelligence has the capacity to integrate all the knowledge of the past with the present situation
When human beings engage this capacity of being, we are pure scientists, meaning we want to know the truth simply because we love it and want to see what the truth is. We are pure scientists with heart, with sensitivity that considers our actual experience. We are not theoretical scientists. We are not even experimental scientists. We are both, together with an aesthetic sense alive with heartful sensitivity—thinking, doing, and responding with utmost clarity, precision, and compassion. The sensitivity and precision of this discriminating intelligence is what gives inquiry its power. The more that our inquiry embodies these capacities, the more powerful our inquiry is. The functioning of the penetrating intelligence of true nature both contributes to essential activation and is one of its expressions. The presence of this guidance of being opens the possibility for essential activation because it is already a response to the selfless love of truth for its own sake.
Some of us still have things to clarify and some of us still need to develop in various ways. That is to say, the individual consciousness needs to mature and ripen for this intelligence to function in a full way.
True nature will not manifest its discriminating capacity as long as we have our self-centered interest or opinions about how we want things to happen.
But being at our command does not mean we own it. It means that there is a selflessness that allows it to operate freely. It is actually at the command of true nature. Even though we cannot appropriate it, it nevertheless functions as our capacity. It feels like what we are, and with no self to hinder it or appropriate it, it can function with the entirety of what we are. It doesn’t belong to the individual, but it has at its disposal all the capacities of the individual. In this sense, the discriminating intelligence is the functioning of our higher intellect, our divine intellect. Imbued by the discerning capacity of true nature, this intelligence can operate on all dimensions at the same time.
Part Three ILLUMINATIONS OF AWAKENING
What makes it possible for this teaching to speak to this entire range of experience is the nonhierarchical view, which allows us to be wherever we are without trying to change our condition to one that is higher or deeper or more realized. But there is a paradox here too. Although it is true that all conditions are reality, that does not relieve us of the responsibility of learning—of actualizing our potential and furthering our realization—because reality has its own momentum to go that way. If we don’t go along with it, we create all kinds of trouble for ourselves.
Spirit is so mysterious that we can’t even say that it exists or does not exist; and yet, it manifests itself as existence and nonexistence and all sorts of other possibilities too.
This might leave us wondering, “What does it mean for realization to be complete when it can move to another realization?” When I say that a realization can be complete, I mean that our experience and recognition and understanding of that one facet of reality is full and thoroughgoing; I don’t mean that it is complete in the sense that it is final and it is all there is to know about reality.
And yet, our friend sitting beside us is at the same time realizing that everything is pure, transparent awareness. Reality is radiant, empty awareness, and everybody and everything is only that. The experience of love or no love does not even arise in this condition. Pure awareness is also completely free and doesn’t need anything else. And both experiences are nondual in the sense that there is no separation between one thing and another. Everything is an effervescent radiance and none of it exists in any substantial way; everything is the empty luminosity manifesting everything as love or as awareness.
This depth has a sense of rest and unspeakable stillness, a sense of arriving home. Here too we feel free and see that there is no need for anything more.
We don’t establish realization by thinking about it, concentrating on it, or doing practices that always evoke it. Our work is more about seeing the obstacles to realization, making them transparent by recognizing and understanding each one of them.
True nature doesn’t make comparisons. For true nature, each realization is reality, each one is ultimate. But the self perceives a progression and a hierarchy of realization and, as the subtler aspects or positions or concepts of the self are seen, recognized, and understood, further realizations and different dimensions of reality will arise.
What is this need to find an ultimate truth? Why do we need to take our true experience of awakening to be final? Even when our realization moves to further awakenings, we tend to see them as different aspects or different facets of the same awakening. The hierarchical view of realization tends to orient toward what is final, what is most transcendent, what is most fundamental, what is primordial. And there is nothing wrong with that. That is one way awakening, realization, and enlightenment can happen. We find a primordial condition and we abide there. And we believe that is it and nothing else needs to happen, which is true. But what we discover, which does not become clear until the third and fourth turnings of the wheel, is that we are attached to the ultimate.
Every time we are relaxed, every time we are at ease, we find ourselves in this condition. But at some point, we become attached: Reality has to be this way and only this way. And if we don’t find that experience, we freak out. “Oh no, where is home? I lost my home. It is in foreclosure!”
When I say that these realizations—whose experiential universe and wisdoms are all different—are freedom and all faces of one truth, I am not saying that all paths lead to the same place. That is not, in fact, true. Rather, each path leads to different realizations, all of which are true. Some people think that it is the same reality seen by different people through different perspectives. But reality actually can present itself in different ways.
Although I understand all spiritual realization to be different faces of one truth, each one of them is the truth completely while, at the same time, each is different from the other.
The view of totality allows all views—all realizations and teachings—to be valid and true. Each one of them reveals something about liberation, enlightenment, and awakening. And we can abide in one realization forever, but we don’t have to. Just because a particular realization is true does not mean only that is true.
The dual view perceives a separation between subject and object, between one thing and another. And the nondual view sees no separation, sees everything as the manifestation of the same reality. But we can realize a condition in which we recognize that separation is itself a concept that gives rise to the polar opposites of dual and nondual. We begin to see both duality and nonduality as conceptual points of view that frame reality in different ways. From the perspective of this kind of realization, we don’t see things as separate or not separate. The concept of separateness is not present and not perceived.
This realization that each quality, each form of true nature, has in it all of true nature turns out to be a characteristic of reality as a whole. This means that your body, because its nature is true nature, which is truly beyond time and space, contains all bodies and contains the totality of the universe. Don’t worry, you won’t feel overcrowded, because this realization usually occurs by understanding the spaciousness of true nature. That spaciousness is simply a reflection of the mystery of beyond-space.
Rather than asking “What is the final ground of reality?” we want to know “What is reality?” Here we find that one of the things that true nature reveals about reality is that it is a hall of mirrors, or that it is a hologram.
It’s not that the ultimate has changed; it’s that the concept of ultimate ceases to function. In fact, one way to understand the holographic realization is to see that each form and every experience is the ultimate experience, in the sense that it is reality in its entirety.
As we have seen, this is not to deny the usefulness of the hierarchical view. The question of ultimate realization is a useful and important part of spiritual practice. We do need to recognize and realize those dimensions of reality; we need to establish those awakenings and experience them as ultimate reality. In a sense, we can see this teaching as first giving us all kinds of places to land, places that are more expanded, more open, more beautiful and good, more human, more divine than our ordinary perspective. For a long time, looking for these spiritual ultimates powers the drive for enlightenment. And the ultimate can shift to a greater ultimate, a deeper ultimate, a more primordial ultimate. At some point, though, those ultimates also need to be questioned; otherwise, we are not seeing the truth of reality. It’s not that the experiences of ultimate realization are not true or do not exist; it’s more that they turn out to be temporary. We can come to a place where we say, “The heck with it! Who cares about the ultimate!” When the idea of ultimate realization loses its usefulness, reality begins to deconstruct its own conceptualization, leaving itself and us wide open to whatever comes next.
11 The Nature Of True Nature
realize that will is everywhere; it is not only appearing in our belly. In this boundless experience of will, we see that will appears in all locations. It can appear as a local phenomenon and it can appear everywhere. And it can appear these different ways in different people at the same time. It confounds our mind when we try to find out what true nature is. The question “What is it?” implies both the what and the that: that true nature is a what—a something—and that it is. It assumes that true nature is a something that exists. But is it something that exists? We know that true nature can appear as pure existence—solid, complete, and certain, like molybdenum. This pure existence—immense, powerful, and the nature of all and everything in the universe—is absolute is-ness, more solid than anything else in the whole material world.
So the question “What is it?” is itself in question. Who said true nature is an it? Philosophers tend to use the word “it” to try to refer to true nature. Most spiritual practitioners prefer the word “I”: “I am reality… I am truth… I am love.” But does “I” apply to it? “I am reality” means I is something being something else called reality. So even though true nature is a particular, it appears as the particular that pervades everything and that is everything.
But it doesn’t actually exist apart from an individual. That is to say, it doesn’t exist apart from the thing that it is the nature of, because it is its true nature, the nature of everything. Is true nature something on its own? Is there true nature apart from all the things that true nature is the nature of? If we eliminate all manifestation, would there still be true nature?
Asking “What is it?” is suspect not only because it presumes the whatness and thatness of true nature, but also because the question implies that we can find an answer. Who says we can find out what true nature is? Who says we can pin down true nature? And yet, we do discover true nature again and again—as love, as awareness, as emptiness, as beingness, as will, as peace, as stillness. And when it is stillness, it is true nature completely. When it is emptiness, it is true nature completely. When it is will, it is true nature completely. True nature is so fearless that when it presents itself, it always does so wholeheartedly and completely. So when it is love, true nature is being all of itself. When it is awareness, it is being all of itself. It is not as if some of it is held in reserve someplace else. True nature is as it is. When it is beingness, that is it. There is no remainder. When it is peace, that is it. There is nothing hidden somewhere else. Each aspect, quality, or dimension of being reveals true nature in one of its possibilities, yet without ever exhausting or defining true nature. Although true nature takes each form completely, it is never trapped or fixed in any form or kind of realization, enlightenment, or awakening. It is each of them and all of them and none of them completely at once.
The philosophers’ stone is the whole universe and, not just the whole universe, it is the whole universe at all times. If it were not the whole universe at all times, then it would not be beyond time.
True nature is the whole that is, at the same time, each particular that is completely the whole without losing particularity and form.
What really matters is that we as individual human beings are this mysterious philosophers’ stone. As we explore it, it reveals itself to us because it is our nature, the nature of reality. It reveals to us the secrets of reality—what we are, what reality is, what the meaning of life is. True nature is the answer to our deepest questions: “What are we? Why are we here? Why is there something instead of…
WE ARE LEARNING and, as we are learning, we’re penetrating the secrets of reality by studying the philosophers’ stone, which is the true nature of reality. This study is lighthearted and carefree, yet has the utmost seriousness in its implications, for it involves all of reality. Reality is, in some sense, always dependent on the view we have of it, and there are many views and many ways that reality manifests.