The Drama of Timeless Awareness In Time Is Essence of Dzogchen

The Drama of Timeless Awareness in Time. The Essence of   Dzogchen: a Phenomenological Ontological View

By Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. A.B.P.P.

The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and The International Center For Existential And Phenomenological Consultation.

Timeless Awareness is the Essence of Dzogchen. The great 14th century Master of Dzogchen Longchenpa focused dramatically on the Four Time Dimensions as essential for the understanding the Directly Liberating and Profoundly Luminous Experiential Nature of Dzogchen.

Timeless Awareness and The Four Dimensions of Time

There are Four Dimensions of Time in Dzogchen, just as there are Four Dimensions of Time in Contemporary Heideggerian Ontological Phenomenology!

The Three Time Base Dimensions of Time

There are the Three Time Based Dimensions of Time. There is The Present Dimension of Time, The Past Dimension of Time and the Future Dimension of Time. These Three Dimensions of Time are experienced by   human beings. Persons lived within the experience of the past, persons live within the experience of the present and persons live within the experience of the Future Time Dimension. Persons are often waiting for the Future Time Dimension to appear in actuality. Within this contained and containing view of Time Dimensions, there is often pleasure and pain and suffering and happiness through this endless Experiential Containment of Time, Waiting and Contained in Time we are!

Timeless Awareness is The Fourth Dimension of Time

Now there are some talented and fortunate persons who actually   experience the Fourth Dimension of Time which is Timeless Awareness. And most Importantly, with some praxis, persons can experience Timeless Awareness actually in Time. They can be in Timeless Awareness and in Time simultaneously at the same Time. This Union of Timeless Awareness in Time is the Luminating Power of our Self Liberating Experience. Being in Timeless Awareness and simultaneously Being in the Dimension of Time such as the Dimension of Present Time is the Existential and Mystical Drama of Self Liberation. This Amazing Magical Union of Being in Timeless Awareness and simultaneously Being in Time brings forth the amazing   and Beatific Experience of Self Liberation for everyone and anyone. This is creatively simple.

This Fourth Dimension of Timeless Awareness is the most Mysterious most Pervasive and most Beatific Dimension of Ontological Time. Time and Being are intimately related. Time is the self-manifestation of Timeless Being full Awareness. This profoundly experiential praxis is available for everyone. This profoundly experiential praxis can be taught to everyone. Self-Liberation is not only for the Special Ones, the Advanced Ones, and   the Royal Holy Ones as many Religions would love for you to believe.

The idea or requirement of being a Special One or the Advanced One is a Religious Institutional Distortion of the Actuality of Equality Consciousness. It is a subtle form of the master slave relationship so intrinsic to Religion and to Yogic praxis.  Dzogchen intrinsically cannot be institutionalized. Although there are constant attempts to institutionalize and reify the dramatic Dzogchen experiential understanding of personal self-liberation.

There are great teachers of Dzogchen and teachers of Kashmir Shavism who have consistently spoken about this Existential Democratic Creative Drama of Equality Consciousness. Dzogchen is not Spiritual Royalty or a Hierarchal Royal Drama. In truth, whoever has authentic desire can practice and become embodied within their own innermost personal awareness in this life drama of self-liberation.

The Fourth Dimension of Time in Timelessness in Time

This Fourth Dimension of Time is Timelessness and Timelessness is the Ground of Being as Pure Being fullness. This Fourth Dimension of Timeless Awareness is Primordial Source. Timeless Awareness is the Primordial Source of Self manifestation of Being and Being fullness. Pure Timeless Being Self-manifest as Being and as the Being fullness of our Being.

Timeless Awareness Is Timeless Consciousness

This Fourth Dimension of Timeless Awareness is infinitely pervasive and infinite in its horizons. Timeless Awareness is Timeless Consciousness vast and infinite in its horizons. To experience Timeless Awareness is to experience Timeless Consciousness as Infinity and the Pure Beingness of Beings.  Timeless Consciousness is Being full Bliss and Timeless Awareness is our Blissful Personification of Being. This Personification of Being is not a form of it ness or thingness, but rather the profound sense of Our Direct Experiential Non Conceptual Being full Personal Knowingness as our own Subjectivity as our own innermost awareness.

A person does not experience the Fourth Dimension of Timeless Awareness as outside of their self, outside or external to their own innermost awareness. A person does not view the Experience of Timeless Awareness as Otherness. Rather our Personal Innermost experience is Being Timeless Awareness as our very self. The person’s own Innermost Awareness becomes Timeless Awareness. Your own personal Being full Primordial Awareness self-manifest as Timeless Awareness vast and infinite in its horizons.

There may be the further unfolding and deepening of our experience as Timeless Awareness wherein we completely and fully experience ourselves as Timeless Awareness in Time. And you can as Timeless Awareness experience the other dimensions of Time. As Timeless Awareness you can experience the times of The Past within Timeless Awareness, and you can as Timeless Awareness integrate the Present Time and Present Situation into Timeless Awareness. You can even as Timeless Awareness, integrate the Future Time Dimension of Time within your experience of Timeless Awareness in Time.

You can experience the past events within Timeless Awareness, and you can experience present events within Timeless Awareness, and you can experience future events within the unbound knowingness of Timeless Awareness. You can experience the unfolding power of Timeless Awareness as Time. You can profoundly and completely experience Timeless Awareness and Time at the same time.  You can directly and knowingly experience mysteries of the times of the Past; You can also experience the mysteries of the Present times and the mysteries of the Future times. And moreover, within Timeless Awareness and from within the power of Timeless Awareness you may influence your experience of the Three Times with the Luminous Timeless Energy of the Being fullness of Time.

Timeless awareness allows you and empowers you to use Dzogchen actions such as Trekcho and Vajra Kalaya practices.  Within the agency of Timeless awareness, you will be able to Cut through phenomena and you will be able to free you self from obstacles and people who are obstacles. The power of Timeless Awareness empowers your power of cutting through obstacles and dissolving phenomena that are destructive for you. The many Dzogchen archetypal Sambhogakaya texts which are empowered by being in timeless awareness. And the power of transmission of compassionate protective energy is also a function of your capacity to access Timeless Awareness in Time.

This of course is not often spoken about in Dzogchen Praxis.

This Being full Knowingness is the profound sense of our Who-ness as Direct Personal Knowingness. This Direct Experiential Non-Conceptual Pre-reflective Knowingness is our Profound Sense of Personhood, the profound sense of our Personal Being fullness. This is the Heart essence Tradition of Dzogchen. The Source of Personal Who-ness is Personal Consciousness infinite in its horizons, vast and multidimensional.

There are some fortunate and skillful persons who even live continuously   within the Fourth Dimension of Time most of the Time. They live within this Beatific Field of Being full Non-Dualistic Timeless Awareness in Time. They live within the Infinite Vastness of Luminous Timeless Awareness, and they also live within Timeless Awareness in the Present Time. Some Persons   live simultaneously in Time and In Timelessness awareness. This capacity, to live simultaneously in Timelessness and Time simultaneously is the complete Dzogchen path of Immediate Self Liberation.

Timeless Awareness and the Power of Compassionate Transmission

In Timeless Awareness a person will have the power of Transmission of Awareness within the Field of Awareness within Time. This Power of transmission can infuse the Past Time, infuse the Present Time and infuse the Future Times. This power of the transmission of awareness can transmit the power of awareness into another person or persons. Yang Tang Rinpoche, the great Dzogchen teacher describes this transmission as True Compassion. This power of transmission of primordial awareness into others is intrinsic to our embodiment of the Field of Awareness.

Yes! You can live in Timeless Awareness and in Time simultaneously, you can live embodied within Timeless Awareness in Time.  This embodied living in Timeless Awareness in Time is not the detached dissociated disembodied Schizoid Beingless State of Eternal Absence and Endless Voidness and Endless Emptiness. Let us not forget the dreary experience of Endless Nothingness, endless Being lessness.

Dzogchen is not the Simplistic Making the Best out of endless voidness and endless emptiness and endless Being-lessness and endless Absence. Timeless Awareness in Time is not an illusion or delusion. Timeless Awareness in Time is Actuality. Timeless Awareness in Time is being in Time life after life and death after death. This is not the existential ontological depression of many eastern meditative traditions and western traditions of Dissociative Spirituality.

This wonderful Luminous Foundational Primal Primordial Timeless Awareness is the Creative Essence of our Human Consciousness. To experience Timeless Awareness, and to experientially live within Timeless Awareness in Time is to experience our natural unfolding of Luminous Beatific Experience of Being full Self Liberation as Radiance, As Energy, As Openness, As Pervasive, as Compassionate Self -Manifestation, as Love.

To experience Timeless Awareness and to experience our Timeless Awareness in Time is the essence of Our Creative Self Liberation as   Dzogchen. In a realistic way living in Timeless awareness in Time is simply a Metaphorical expression called Dzogchen. Dzogchen here means the Experience of Great Perfection or Great Completion of Embodied Being fullness.

Dzogchen is not a thing or an institution. Dzogchen is not a Religion. Dzogchen is not Buddhism or Hinduism. Dzogchen is not Christian and Dzogchen is not Islamic. Dzogchen is not an is an Institution. Dzogchen does not institutionalize anything or anyone.

Dzogchen is not a Cultural Event. The word Dzogchen is a Metaphor of our Experiential Being full Completeness. No One owns Dzogchen. Dzogchen is not a club, Dzogchen is not even a group, or church or society. Anybody anywhere can experience Dzogchen. The word Dzogchen is simply a metaphor. There is no Dzogchen Hierarchy. There is no one in charge of Dzogchen. Dzogchen does not actually exist as an entity, a social psychological entity.

As Namkai Norbu Rinpoche, the great contemporary master of Dzogchen, said Dzogchen does not really belong to any tradition or any particular   culture or any particular country. He would then say is Dzogchen is Galactic or Cosmological. He would also say Dzogchen is our Real Condition of Existence. Dzogchen is the Reality of Being full Actuality. Dzogchen is not endless illusion and delusion of Buddhism. Dzogchen is not the schizoid experience of Voidness, Emptiness and Being lessness and Nothingness.

Dzogchen is a metaphor of our Creative Capacity of our Human Timeless Awareness in Time. Timeless Consciousness is in and of itself and in Time as Timelessness Awareness simultaneously and continuously.

To live In Timeless Awareness in the various Durations of Time is possible for all human beings.  An ordinary person can experience the Past Dimension of Time in Timeless Awareness. An ordinary person can experience The Present Dimension of Time In Timeless Awareness.  And an ordinary person can experience within Timeless Awareness the Future Dimensions of Time. And an ordinary person can experience the Past Time within Timeless Awareness in Time, Actually Dzogchen is a simply     metaphor for Living in Timeless Awareness within Time. You are living within your own timeless awareness within your own time of the present time, and you own experience of your past time and your own experience of your own future time.

Dzogchen is not the drama of Sainthood or Sacrificial Self Martyrdom. Dzogchen is not the Drama of endlessly earning merit or having nasty sins forgiven. This Dzogchen is your ontological nature of your own Being full Givenness and your own Being full Self Manifestation. This is not the endless super ego drama of being unworthy or ontologically Bad. Oh Lord I am not worthy. There is no Original Sin Here. This is not liberation through self-torture. God or the God’s are not Entities that require endless placation.

This is not the realm of the Divine Master Slave Relationship. This is the Existential Ontological Experience of Equality Consciousness. No above and No Below. Dzogchen is not a Religion or Even a Spiritual Path. Dzogchen is a Metaphor of Human Consciousness which is Luminous Consciousness itself which is within everyone just as they are.

Some ordinary persons can experience within Timeless Awareness all Three times simultaneously. This is an amazing capacity.  The actuality   of self-liberation is completely natural and self-liberation is experienced within the complexity of our different Time perspectives. Some gifted people can experience awareness as the present, as the past and as the future simultaneously. Time and the Events of Time all   exist within the Dimension of Primordial Timeless Awareness.

Mediums and Medium Ship

There are people who authentically call themselves Mediums who live in Timeless Awareness in the medium of the present moment, who live in Timeless Awareness in the medium of Future Time Perspective and who live in Timeless awareness as the medium of Past Time Experience. In this way medium ship is the naturalness of our direct Perception or Gnosis or Jnana taking place within in the different Time dimensions of Being and Being fullness. Yes, some mediums have direct ontological perception of events, and persons of Being who are no longer in this dimension of Being. There is infinite dimension of Being,

Many mediums enter into Timeless Awareness in order to enter the three times of the past time, the present time and the future time. In Timeless Awareness as the Fourth Time, we can enter any Time Dimension of the past, present or future and experience the Being of beings in those dimensions of Time, In Dzogchen there is no ontological death as going from Being to Being lessness, as going from existence to non- existence as never was and never will be.

Heidegger and Longchenpa

Longchenpa, who had natural expertise in the Dzogchen Experience wrote about this great secret of the Four Dimensions of Time in the 14th century. Amazingly, Martin Heidegger also wrote about the Four Time Dimensions and Timeless Awareness in Time. He wrote about Time and Timelessness in the Context of his Contemporary Phenomenology of Being and Being fullness  in this 20th century. His book was Being and Time.

Both Heidegger and Longchenpa focused on the nature of their lived experience and articulated the phenomena of their lived experience. Both Heidegger and Longchenpa were phenomenologists of lived experience.

Heidegger described Timeless Awareness and the Four Dimensions of Time in this 20th Century in his Great Text Being and Time. His phenomenological ontological philosophical work has profoundly influenced   contemporary phenomenology and has profoundly influenced contemporary Existential Psychotherapy as well as deepening the experiential understanding the Natural Phenomenological being full Nature of Human Mysticisms. Eugene Gendlin’s work has translated Heidegger’s work into a contemporary experiential methodology for the phenomenological study of experiential consciousness.

What is actually sad and realistically sad, is that in many contemporary meditation traditions, and many contemporary eastern meditative and western meditative traditions view the process of Self Liberation as a Drama of Submission to the various would be Spiritual Patriarchal Leaders who present themselves as having Absolute Knowledge. This is not Dzogchen which is liberation through Equality Consciousness.

There is also the Social Collective requirement to experience submission to the Contextual Law of the Collective Human Monastic Moralistic Oriented Social Systems. Self-liberation then becomes locked in the context of good and evil, and better and best and truth and falsity and right and wrong. Religion easily reifies self-liberation as an Exoteric experience. Self-Liberation is an esoteric ontological experience of the luminous nature of our Being and Being fullness.

Self-liberation often becomes a monastic solipsistic process of Empty Being lessness and Detached Voidness where in some one is earning merit to Gain Blessings through some form of Self Deprivation. Also, the person can or should be begging for forgiveness forever and ever. Self-Liberation becomes a Moralistic Super Ego Drama of Judgment and Punishment.

For so, so many, their God is their internalized God of Judgement which is their own Internalized Superego of Everlasting Judgement. We can actually see this Superego everywhere and within everyone. Self-Liberation involves the metabolization of the Superego.

As Swami Mutkananda the Kashmir Shavite teacher once said to me, You Must Get Beyond Right and Wrong, you must Get Beyond Good and Evil and You must Get Beyond Better and Best and You even Must get Beyond Truth and Falsity.

He paused and then he said and then you will live life after life and death after death in the Bliss of Being.

Metabolization

Timeless Awareness in Time has The Amazing Power of Metabolization of Traumatic Experience and Unbearable Experience. The Vast unbound luminous Power of Timeless Awareness enters Time, whether as Present Time, or Past Time or Future Time there is this luminous Power of Luminous Energetic Metabolization of Painful and Traumatic experience.

Timeless Awareness is both the creative manifestation of time and is moreover, the destructive metabolizing liberating element of Timelessness. Time both manifest experience and Time also Destroys Experience. Timeless awareness in Time frees us from the horrors of Time filled Events and Time Bound Experience. There is this wonderful power of the Great Compassion to transmit Timeless Awareness into another person and the power of Timeless Awareness in Time to metabolize the Terror states of our own innermost lived experience. This is our person drama of self-liberation.

This metabolization capacity is the very nature of Timeless Awareness in Time. Present Time, Past Time and Future Time when brought into Timeless Awareness is the power of destruction and metabolization of unbearable states of Suffering be they in past time, present time or future time.

This is Not the Power of Our Mind Alone

This is the profound nature of human Consciousness, of human Awareness. This is not the power of our mind. Again, this is not the Power of our mind. Our mind’s capacity to metabolize experience is minimal compared to the power of Primordial Awareness to metabolize and transform experience to Beatific Energy and Beatific Light.

Knowing the Profound difference between our field of innate awareness and the field of our mind is of most importance. Without knowing this difference, the Power of Self Liberation might not take place.

In Dzogchen all experience and all appearance are Divinity. In Dzogchen there are no Entities who are Gods. God is Being itself; Consciousness is Being itself.  Pure Being itself is within all manifestations as the manifestation. God is not a guy and God is not a Big Being Entity. God is not a Phallic Drama as some traditions like to think.  Being is Consciousness and Consciousness is Innate Awareness of Continuity of Being and Being fullness.

Being is Divinity and the beings of Being are divinity and the Being of the Universe is Divinity. There is this great experience of self-liberation and that is that all appearance is Divinity, and all experience is Divine.

In the detached dissociative Traditions, there is no sense whatsoever of the Purity of our own Ontological Awareness and the Luminous manifestation and transmission of this Pure being full Awareness from one person to another person.

In the living metaphor of Dzogchen, one must metabolize their distorted judgmental cultural superego in order to go beyond evil and goodness, truth and falsity and better and best, and right and wrong, to go beyond binary thinking and binary judgmental- ness allows for Direct Perception and Direct Gnosis to Manifest Completely and Intrinsically.

Binary thinking and binary judgmental- ness blocks and hide and contains and minimizes our Direct Knowingness and our Direct Timeless Awareness in Time. Our Direct Experiential Non-Conceptual Knowingness is Gnosis and Jnana.

Many philosophical and religious approaches to self-liberation become obsessive compulsive fixations on Deified leaders and Deified Praxis and Deified Entities that are Things or Thing- like.  The meditation leader of meditation as Guru or Master becomes the ONE who knows absolutely invoking many ancient forms of the Master Slave relationship. In truth the Guru is within our own Being as our own innate being full Luminous Awareness. The Guru is our own innate innermost luminous Awareness. The Guru is not a Momma or a Dad.

Even in the Dzogchen metaphorical context, many Dzogchen meditation groups and meditation systems hide and keep secret the self-liberating drama of the experience of Timeless Awareness in Time. As this self-liberating understanding Timeless Awareness in Time is not mentioned and is often forgotten and is the hidden secret of meditative awareness.

Often meditation is elaborated as manifesting within the context of a fixedness of mind or as a transcendental emptiness or transcendental absence or transcendental Being lessness. Also, at times there is the implicit domination of the Master in the master slave relationship of Obedience and Submission and Domination. Many eastern traditions are traditions of herd like discipline and herd like domination and are reflective   of sadistic/masochistic cultures or clubs.

This Spiritual or Religious Master Slave relationship is so beautifully described by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit. And of course, everything is understood in the binary context that sustains exoteric reality. Going beyond the binary contextualization of experience opens the esoteric actuality of Being and Being fullness forever and ever in the esoteric non duality of One Being. The Mystery of the Oneness of Being of all beings is forever present. Again, the Mystery of the Oneness of Being of all beings is forever present.

Contemporary Psychological Science and Neuropsychology of Time and Timelessness

In the contemporary psychological experiential study of Time and Time Perspective of our human Time bound experience, the Ontological Drama of Timeless Awareness in Time is not mentioned and is hopelessly   foreclosed. This happens in spite of Martin Heidegger’s great Phenomenological Study   of Timeless Awareness in Time. Even in the European Institutes of Time perspective Timeless Awareness and Time is not thought about or studied.  And so, Timeless Awareness in Time is not psychological experientially understood by those who think they know about consciousness.

In most meditations systems either of the west or of the east Timeless Awareness and Timeless Awareness in Time is foreclosed. Rather Ancient Dissociative and Detached Transcendental methods are desperately attached to as true ancient knowledge of dissociation and detachment and transcendence and thus studied neuropsychologically.

It is interesting and also sad that Timeless Awareness in Time is foreclosed and not studied by Western Neuro Psychology. And Even in the many   Dzogchen Teaching Seminars Timeless Awareness and Timeless Awareness in Time is often not known or taught. Timeless being full Awareness in Time is at times Foreclosed or at times Forgotten.

It is interesting to note that even in the neuropsychology study of Consciousness, Timeless Awareness in Time is not conceptualized to be studied. And neither can the Compassionate Transmission of Timeless Awareness from One Person into another person cannot be conceived or studied neuropsychologically or psychologically.  This is not the study of wisdom Gnosis.

Now Vipassana and other limited concrete forms of dissociative and detached transcendental knowing is eagerly studied endlessly. Dissociation and Detachment and the Transcendental Mentalistic forms of   Objectification continues to be the neuropsychological path of would-be   study of endless minutia of tiny behavioral experience and not the drama of self-liberation and embodied awareness. There is no study of the transmission of profound awareness experience from one person to another person or from one collective of people to another collective of people. Yang Tang Rinpoche the great Dzogchen Master describes the Transmission of Awareness as the Great Compassion. The Great Compassion is our capacity to transmit this luminous energy of awareness into each other. As Dudjom Rinpoche would say stop begging for help and take the power into your own hands.

Within the context of Neuropsychological Systemic understanding, it   seems that the Concretized Exoteric Operational practice of neuropsychology   concretizes Exoteric Mind in our concretized Psychology of Mind Science, So the luminous Esoteric reality of Being and Primordial Consciousness cannot neuro- psychologically be conceived and cannot be experimentally studied. The experience of Emptiness or Absence can be studied but the Non-Duality of Being within Duality of beings this ontological   phenomenon cannot be studied. In Dzogchen language this is the experiential absence of knowledge which results in our Ignorance of Being and our self- manifestation of Being.

What seems to be conceived and studied neuropsychologically is the primitive psychology of dissociation and detachment and endless absence of Embodiment of our sense of Being and Being fullness. The meditation models seem to be reflective mostly of the early 6th century BC Praxis as taught by Guatama. Namely, phenomena as Beingless and emptiness.

The drama of Beingless Emptiness and Transcendental Disappearance and absence of embodied self (Anatman Philosophy) is often an empty focus since there is in no sense of embodied self who is Embodied Being and is truly There. There is this beloved   endless absence of self and lack of continuity of self.  There is this endless Absence of Who-ness, there is no one there or no one here. There is this absence of Being and Being fullness. This is another illusionary, delusionary, endless Beingless moment of anatman thinking of early Buddhism. This view is Schizoid, and the results of such studies will be of schizoid context.

Even luminous events like Compassion as Energetic Transmission from one person to another does not seem to be understood by the neuro psychologist of meditation. The neuropsychologist of meditation and consciousness tend to be preoccupied with the fantasy of psychosomatic dissolution, the fantasy of ego dissolution as their only doorway into, into What? Why of course Into emptiness and voidness and absence.  The neuropsychologist has found a one-way path into voidness or emptiness or absence.  The basis of this kind of existential Absence is Schizoid Being lessness. Yes, Liberation through Being lessness is the focus of study. “Quod non habet non dabet”..as St. Thomas Aquinas  says “what you do not have you cannot give.”

Mystic Humanism

Dzogchen is an Ancient Form of Mystic Humanism that came into Being around the 7th Century AD. Dzogchen arose in the context of Ancient Indian Buddhism and was foundationally grounded in the actuality of Lived Experience.

The Mystic Padmasambhava was requested to bring Indian Buddhism to Tibet. Existentially this Mystical Padmasambhava brought this Existential Experientially based Timeless Awareness understanding of Dzogchen to Tibet. He describes his ontological expression of Self Liberation as the path Through the Intensity of Lived Experiential Timeless Awareness,  “Just as we are.”  His dramatic experiential teaching was profoundly experiential and profoundly Being full rather than Beingless.

Namkai Norbu Rinpoche described this Dzogchen Experience of Self Liberation as not belonging to any tradition, as being our real condition, as not belonging to any culture and Being Galactic or Cosmological.

Herbert Gunther’s great text on Padmasambhava is most useful in understanding this ontological Experiential foundation nature of Dzogchen. Jim Valby’s translation of  is also most useful in understanding the unfolding ontological self-liberating experience of Dzogchen.

The Dzogchen Experience makes the essential distinction between Mind (sems)and Primordial Awareness (Semde). This essential distinction between our mind of awareness and our primordial awareness of ontological awareness is completely blurred by many of the would be American Buddhist teachings of meditation.

The Dudjom Lineage is so complete and so clear in its teaching and complete in understanding of Dzogchen. Fortunately, most of the Great Lamas I have studied with have been members of the Dudjom Lineage. Dzogchen does not belong to Dudjom Lineage.

  American Meditation experience and practice is preoccupied with Transcendental Dissociative Mentalistic Schizoid base of relational and being full Absence. This is a kind of no one at home drama. This is the Anatman Drama. There is no who-ness or self and there is a continuous elaboration of the Anatman Distortions of non- personalism and non- who-ism.

Longchenpa speaks about this Absence of Authorship or Self Agency in his introductory works on Dzogchen. Ultimately, American meditation is preoccupied with the group requiring submission to the wise leaders. Of course, there is no authorship of self-manifestation or self-agency. Of course, there is Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit describing the master slave relationship with the Leader who has would be absolute knowing.

Thus, there is no place for the Dzogchen Metaphor of Completeness in many would be Buddhist traditions and in most religious traditions there is endless Patriarchal preoccupations. I have had the good fortune and Luminous experience to study with great teachers and Masters of Dzogchen and Kashmir Shaivism. They all taught directly and experientially the power of Timeless Awareness in Time.

NOW The Necessary Distinction Between Mind and Awareness in Dzogchen. This is the most important and most necessary distinction.

Our representational conceptual mind knows phenomena and our non-conceptual Primordial Timeless Non-Conceptual Awareness directly and experientially knows Being. Primordial Timeless Awareness is Being knowing Being. Thus, in the union of our mind within Primordial Timeless Awareness and so we can directly experience the Non-Duality of Being within the Duality of Phenomena. By the Integration our mind within the field of Timeless awareness, we can experientially know phenomena and the Being of phenomena simultaneously.

This Important distinction between mind and Timeless awareness opens the door of understanding that within our personal experience a person can be located in mind alone and become locked in time. Many, many Dzogchen practitioners do not know the difference between the awareness of mind knowing phenomena and Awareness of Timeless Awareness knowing Being and Beingness of Being. ,

The Four Dimensions of Time

There are four Dimensions of Time. There is the dimension of Present Time, and there is the Dimension of Past Time and there is the Dimension of Future Time. Our mind knows time and the different Temporal   dimensions of Time. Our mind is Time Based. Our mind is locked into Time. Some persons are locked into the past time, some persons are locked into the future time, and some persons are even locked into the present time. Most of us are sealed in Time and the contained experience of Time. This is not the opening and vast unbound experience of Timeless Awareness in Time

As a person shifts from being located in mind alone (mindfulness) and goes beyond mind alone (mindfulness), the person can become aware of their own Awareness, their own field of awareness, their own field of Being and Being fullness. As we focus our awareness on our own innermost awareness, the vast experiential dimensions of Timeless Awareness begin to open and self- reveal the profound self-liberating experience of Timeless Awareness infinite in its horizons and vast and multidimensional.

Our Awareness as our own innermost awareness is a multidimensional experience and this awareness is infinite and vast in its horizons. This Awareness, this Consciousness is Timeless. Timeless Awareness is Ontological Cosmological and Galactic as Namkai Norbu Rinpoche, the great contemporary Dzogchen Master would so often say.

Namkai Norbu would always say at the beginning of a lecture, Dzogchen does not belong to any Tradition. (religions). He would then say Dzogchen does not belong to any Culture. (Tibet). He would then say Dzogchen IS OUR REAL CONDITION. This condition is not illusionary unreality and imaginary delusionary experience. And then he would say Dzogchen is Galactic and Cosmological and Dzogchen is practiced in many planetary systems within the universe.

The innate qualities of primordial awareness are innate experience of infinite spaciousness or infinite openness of infinite Being and Being fullness.  Dzogchen is not Being lessness.  Being permeates Phenomena and Being; Being Self- Manifests phenomena as Being and beings. Dzogchen is not Absence as Longchepa articulates.   Our primordial awareness is luminous Radiance, luminous Light and our is awareness is luminous Energy. Our consciousness and our Being and Being fullness is   luminous, creative Energy. And this pervasive personal awareness is   Beatific. Awareness is Alive and is both Vast stillness and Unceasing movement.

The Union of Mind and Awareness

When a person is able to experience the union of their conceptual representation mind and their open primordial awareness as being full   Consciousness, then the person has a simultaneous experience of Being in time and Being simultaneously in Timeless Awareness. The Mind is the place of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination and the mind is the mode of knowing singularity and difference in the world. This is the realm of ordinary knowingness, and this is the realm of the experience of   Duality of phenomena. Our mind is the realm of Time. This Time Bound knowing is the knowing of you and I, us and them, this or that in time and in place.

Primordial Awareness Knows Being

And when our awareness knows awareness then awareness knows Being and Knows the field of Being. Ultimately as Parmenides pointed out thousand years ago, that Awareness and Being are identical. So, the field of primordial awareness as spaciousness, energy, light manifests all phenomena. Awareness knows itself as the field of Non- Dualistic Being. Awareness knows indivisibleness, awareness knows oneness. Awareness knows Being and Awareness knows the Being-ness of beings. This Field of Primordial Creative Awareness is also the Primordial Source of all Phenomena and is manifested in all beings as all Beings. This field of Awareness is manifested in us as our own Personal Innermost Awareness, our own Subjectivity. As Husserl the father of phenomenology would say “what is the Wonder of all wonders, Pure Awareness and the doorway is our own subjectivity.”

The Direct Experiential Knowing Duality of Phenomena within Non-Duality of Being

And so, when a person has the Union of mind within the field of awareness, when a person has integrated their mind into their field of awareness. There is the Awakened Capacity for one to know the experience of Non-Duality of Being within Duality of Phenomena and experiences the Duality of Phenomena simultaneously within the Non-Duality of Being and Being fullness.

A person experiences both difference and indivisibility within themselves and within otherness. Most amazingly such a person can experience Time and Timelessness Awareness simultaneously. The Innermost luminous depth of Primordial Awareness is Pure Unbound Timeless Awareness. The depth of mind is the sense of Dimensional Time, Time as Past, Time as Present Time Dimension and Time as Future Time Dimension.

Awareness As the Field of Being: Being is the Ontological Field.

As a person becomes aware of their own innermost awareness, one   begins to experience that their awareness is not simply a contained state of spaciousness, energy and light, and actually Awareness is a field vast and infinite in it horizon and is multidimensional.

As the person remains within Awareness in time, and as a person experiences the nature and qualities of awareness, awareness begins to open and self-manifest its different Time Dimensions. Dzogchen calls these Dimensions kayas. There is the dimension of our ordinary life world as Nirmanakaya; there is the Sambhogakaya dimension of Archetypal Energies and Consciousness in self- manifestation of Ordinary life world; and there is the Ground of Being, Dharmakaya self- manifesting the different dimensions of Being and Being fullness.

Awareness unfolds as the dimension of Flesh to use Merleau Ponty’s language of embodiment. This is the field of Phenomenological Being Embodied within us and beyond us. Within us this field of Primordial Awareness is the Phenomena of Being full Openness, Being full Radiance and the Being full Energy as Direct Knowingness. And around us, this field of Being infuses all phenomena.   The phenomena of Being has the qualities of innate lucidity and innate energy and open spaciousness within the form of appearances and within appearances’ substance. The external phenomena are physical and material. This is the realm of thingness and the realm of Being fullness.

Awareness as the Kayas of Being and As Four Dimensions of Time

So, within awareness knowing phenomena there is the experience of mutual lucidity and mutual energy and mutual spaciousness. This is the dimension of time yet there is within this dimension of the flesh the beginning of the opening of Timelessness. Dzogchen call this field dimension Nirmanakaya the realm of ordinary life of ordinary human experience.

As Primordial Awareness continues to unfold, awareness begins to manifest as the archetypal dimension of human experience. Dzogchen calls this dimension Sambhogakaya. This is the primal realm of the luminous energies and luminous spaciousness and luminous vortices of the elemental energies.  Radiance has become everything and anything. This is the intermediate area of experiencing, wherein awareness manifests as the apparitional dimension.

This is the dimension of the archetypal manifestations of configurations of primordial elemental energetic qualities. Here the primordial awareness field opens and manifests the archetypal dimension of human experience. This dimension is one of vast stillness and movement. There is within this luminous, energetic, elemental dimension the deepening the sense of Timelessness within Time, Timelessness within movement and stillness.

Embodied awareness ultimately opens as the Primordial Dimension of Pure Ground Awareness, Pure being full Source. The dimensional realm of pure potentiality manifests everything and including the Sambhogakaya (archetypal) and Nirmanakaya (ordinary life world) dimensions. Dzogchen is a metaphor for the foundational real or reality or realistic condition of human experience. This is Pure Timeless being full Awareness manifesting with the actuality and reality of Time.  And Dzogchen calls this dimension Ground Awareness or Source. Dzogchen is not a illusionary delusionary imaginary non- existing existence. Dzogchen is not delusionary illusionary Buddhism. Dzogchen is its own realistic phenomena.

As Our Awareness Becomes Aware of our Awareness, we become open to the Profound Experience of Timelessness Awareness in Time. In Becoming Aware of our own innermost ontological awareness, we can become open to our primordial awareness of Timeless Awareness. The nature of awareness is Timeless Awareness infinite in its horizons, vast and infinite in its horizons and multidimensional.

Primordial Timeless Awareness manifests in Time. Primordial Timeless Awareness manifests everything and anything within time and as time. In the tradition of Dzogchen and Heideggerian Phenomenology, the Depth and Breathe of our innermost personal awareness intrinsically opens to the Timelessness Dimension of Primordial Awareness.  This was Longchenpa great contribution to the Dzogchen understanding of the profound Timeless Awareness in Time.

Summary

Through the Deepening Opening Experience of our own innermost awareness, we dramatically experience that there are Four Time Dimensions within our experience of multidimensional awareness.  There is the Time Dimension of the Presence of Present Moment, the Time Dimension of the presence of the Past and the Time Dimension of the Future presence.

There is the amazing foundational unbound source of Fourth time Dimension of Awareness which is Timeless Awareness Infinite in its horizons vast and multidimensional.

There are Four Dimensions of Time in Dzogchen and Heideggerian Phenomenology

This understanding of the Four Time Dimensions is also given expression in Contemporary Heideggerian Phenomenology. For Heidegger, Being and the manifestation of being as being full Awareness is related to Time. There is the Time of ‘Presencing’ in the present.

And there is the time of ‘presencing’ as having already happened in the past, and there is the time of ‘presencing’ that will happen in future time. And then there is the fourth time which is Timeless Awareness in Time. Timeless Awareness is Ontological Awareness as Pure Potentiality, the Actuality of Pure Potentiality.

If we live in Timeless Awareness in Time, there are some who can access the other times. At times, some who are in Timeless Awareness in Time they can access the other times. For some who are in Timeless Awareness in time, and they can enter the Time Dimension of the past, For some the Time Dimension of the Present and for some the Time Dimension of the Future.

Mediumship

Many Mediums have this capacity of being in Timeless Awareness in time Dimensions and can enter the past Time dimension and some can enter the Future Time Dimension. They can experientially directly know the events and experience of the Past Time Dimension, of the Future Time dimension. From Timeless Awareness they can enter the other Dimensions of Time.

From Time Bound to Unbound Timelessness

So, in becoming Awareness of Awareness, the Range of Awareness unfolds from Time Bound Awareness to Timelessness Awareness in Time. Timeless Awareness is vast and infinite in its horizons, and in its vast depth and breathe in the non-dualistic experience of Being and Being fullness.

Moreover, within this non-dual experience of Awareness, action may arise and enter into Time Bound Duality, the Duality of Time Bound Relatedness. There can be this unfolding movement of invocation from the spaciousness of Non-Dual Timeless Awareness into the Time Space continuum of Duality. Time bound knowingness is a function of mind alone which is Dualistic Knowing and is subject object knowing. Timeless Awareness is a function of Primordial Awareness which is non-dual unbound direct gnosis, or direct jnana and Direct Experiential Timeless Knowingness.

Time and Timelessness Simultaneously Experienced

When a person experiences duality within time as the present momentum and simultaneously experience non-dual relatedness in Timeless Awareness, then the person can experience simultaneously duality within time and non-duality as Timeless Awareness in Time.

This is an amazing and self-liberating experience. Whatever is experienced within Timeless Awareness is Self- Liberated. Whatever circumstances of dualistic experience is experienced within Timeless Awareness as non-duality, such experience is self-liberated. Self-liberated means an experience dissolves into awareness field of light and is now experienced as Timeless Awareness in Time.

The Power of Extending Timeless Awareness into Time

Master Yang Tang Rinpoche the great Dzogchen Master suggests that the Absolute Compassion is actually the great capacity of a person to extend and self-manifest the light of awareness into another person’s present, and into a person’s past and into a person’s future.

There is transmission that is beyond words and letters and that does not belong to any tradition and It is the very nature of human awareness.  This is the Bodhicitta. This root of this luminous   capacity of awareness to extend the light of awareness and the energy of awareness into a person’s past, present and future is a function of the Dimension of Timeless Awareness manifesting in time and through the time.

A person in Timeless Awareness is able to manifest from within Timeless Awareness into the Dimension of Time. Dharmakaya awareness is the Timeless Dimension of Awareness. This Dimension of Timeless Awareness is beyond time and yet enters time.

Timeless Being Manifesting the Field of Timelessness and the Dimensions of Time Simultaneously.

In the Dzogchen Experience, Duality of phenomena is experienced within Non-duality of Being, and Non-Duality of Being experienced within duality of Phenomena, this is the living experience of Dzogchen. There is continuum of the field of Being manifesting as the continuum of time. There the ‘Dzogchen View’ of Timeless Awareness is seen in its pervasiveness, as permeating simultaneously the three dimensions of past, present and future time perspective.

The Fourth Time as the Indeterminacy of Timeless Potential Space

Timeless awareness which is the Fourth time is the timelessness of creativity and indeterminacy. Time itself is the determination and manifestation of Being as Being, The power of indeterminacy is Pure Potentiality or Pure Virtual-ness. From within this Timeless Space of Potentiality the power of invocation arises as the power of manifestation.  From Timeless Awareness Self-manifested being full action moves into time as Time. The invocation of the archetypal configurations can be manifested in the configurations of Nirmanakaya.  Archetypal configurations can become manifested energetically in ordinary life.

Indeterminacy as Timelessness and Determination as Time

When a person can live simultaneously in time and in timelessness then they are empowered to experience duality within non-duality and within non-duality being able to experience duality. One can live the life of non- dual indivisibleness and yet in the world of difference. A person can live in the space of indeterminacy and determinacy in time at the same time

Timeless awareness holds infinite paradoxes such as: time and timelessness, singularity and potentiality, duality and non-duality, movement within stillness, stillness within movement, and indeterminateness and determinateness.

To Experience Timelessness within Time is Self-Liberation

As a person experiences time within timelessness and timelessness within time, freedom and self-liberation can be experienced within the person’s life. Uncontained by mind alone, uncontained by time bound circumstance the sense of liberation forms and is experientially formulated. Whatever event is experienced through timeless awareness, in time is liberated. Timeless awareness frees us from being possessed by circumstances, frees us from being contained in mind alone and free us from demonic like inner and outer obscurations and compelling darkness. Timeless awareness can metabolize all experience that is time bound. Timeless awareness is the potentiality of spacious radiance.  Timeless awareness is the nature of Trans lucidity of experience and action.

Timeless Awareness is both Stillness and Movement

Within the Timeless Space of Awareness, and within the Radiance of Awareness, stillness is experienced within movement and movement is experienced within vast stillness. Within the oneness of Timeless Awareness, vast stillness is experienced as well as movement simultaneously. This is the experience of Dzogchen.

Deathless Awareness is Timeless Awareness Experienced within Time

By experiencing time within Timeless Awareness and Timeless awareness within time there arises the sense of deathlessness. This is a most amazing and liberating experience. By experiencing this deathless Timeless Awareness the foundational human terror of annihilation dissipates and dissolves. The anxiety of death dissolves. Annihilation Anxiety Dissolves. Ontological Anxiety Disappears.

This Deathless Awareness is an experience of the essence of Timeless Awareness in Time which is Deathlessness. Deathless Awareness is beyond birth and beyond death. The sense of deathlessness is   being beyond time and being beyond being born and being beyond dying. Deathless awareness is the sense of the indestructibility of Primordial Timeless Awareness in Time manifesting as our own innermost Personal awareness.

Timeless Awareness in Time manifests the experience of Deathless Awareness and is Deathless awareness. Deathless Awareness is Unborn and Undying.  Timeless Awareness is beyond birth and beyond death. Timeless Awareness is beyond coming and beyond going. Timeless awareness is beyond beginning and beyond ending. Timeless awareness is beyond time. Nonetheless Timeless Awareness can be experienced within Time. Timeless Awareness is the Ground of Being. Ground of Being is Ontological Source.

Deathless Awareness is experienced within life and in life deathless awareness is experienced. This deathless awareness is the experience of Dzogchen. Action, self-arising from within Timeless Awareness, and manifesting in time is the drama of Dzogchen. Time and Timeless   Awareness in Non- Duality is the Drama of Dzogchen.

Timeless Awareness in Time is the Power of No Thingness

Primordial Timeless Awareness in Time is no Thingness and from within this Timelessness, no thingness of everything and anything can come into Being. Timeless Awareness manifests the very being of our own embodied self in time. We experience in time from within our own personal sense of Timeless Awareness that which is both the Timeless base and Timeless Source of Time within our own self. Things and events can be manifested in time by our own self-agency. Things can be thought and imagined, and events can be created and brought forth as actuality. From within our own self-awareness as Timeless Awareness, self-agency can bring forth events and things in the actuality of time. This is the creativity of something arising   from no thingness of Timeless Awareness.

As a person lives within Timeless Awareness and participates within Timeless Awareness, Timeless Awareness manifests the being of the person’s own self in time. Then from within the person’s sense of Timeless Awareness and from within Timeless Awareness self-agency manifest actuality in time and space. Timeless Awareness in Time is the Esoteric Dimension of Being fullness.

Manifestation arises through the different dimensions of awareness in its unfolding in time. Action manifesting from within the Timeless stillness of potential space unfolds as the Sambhogakaya or the archetypal manifestation, and then there is the manifestation of archetypal configurations becoming Time as Nirmanakaya (Ordinary Life).

Deathless awareness is experienced in life, and life is experienced within deathless awareness and is an experience of Dzogchen. Action, self-arising from within Timeless awareness and manifesting in time is the Drama of Dzogchen. Time and Timelessness in the non-duality of Being and Being fullness is the Drama of Dzogchen.

Living in Being as Being

Dzogchen is an ancient form of Mystical Humanism. We use the phrase Mystical Humanism because as a person becomes aware of Timeless Awareness, the Field of Awareness manifests itself as the Field of Being.  And the field of Being is manifesting as Spaciousness, Energy, Light and Oneness. The experienced of Vast Spaciousness, the Luminous Energy and the Trans- Lucidity of Being and the Unbound Indivisibleness is Naturalistic Mysticism.

The Mysticism of Dzogchen is the Mysticism of Timeless Awareness being manifest in Time. This manifestation in Time opens for everyone the experience of Duality within Phenomena experienced within Non-Duality of Being and the Non-Duality of Being experienced within Duality of Phenomena. This is Self- Liberation is Life after of Life and Death after Death.

Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, ABPP

The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies

The International Center for Existential Phenomenological Consultation

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