The Power of the Metabolization of Phenomenological Experience
Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. A.B.P.P.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies
Within the Being of human beings there is this powerful realm of awareness which is an experiential field of Energy and Light. This realm of awareness is also our Direct Knowingness of Being. Dzogchen calls this direct knowing of Being gnosis or jnana. This knowingness directly experiences the Being of our own being, and this direct knowingness experiences the Being of Phenomena. The Being of phenomena is the phenomena of persons, the phenomena of places, the phenomena of everything and anything. When a person becomes aware of their own awareness (Rigpa) they enter this transitional space of openness, of spaciousness, and a deeply felt sense of Energy and Luminosity. This awareness is our openness to knowing Being. Heidegger called this awareness Da-Sein. Our field of awareness can experience the ongoing continuity of Being within our self and within others. This experience of our primordial and foundational awareness is not a belief in some form of theoretical ideation. This ongoing experience of our field of innermost awareness reflects a phenomenological felt sense of the actuality of Being. This knowingness reflects a direct experiential knowing of Being, and the Beingness of beings. This experiential field of primordial awareness is described in many different philosophical, psychological, and spiritual traditions. Our focus here is on our Existential Phenomenological understanding of our experiential Field of Vibrational Energy and Luminosity and the wonderful power of our metabolization of lived phenomenological experience. In the Tantric traditions of Kashmir Shavism and Dzogchen there are elaborations of this embodied experiential realm of Energetic Spanda (movement) and Luminous Vibrational power of Our Being’s selfillumination and self- liberation, and self-manifestation in this world of Being. This is the experiential realm of the Matrika Shakti to use the Language of Kashmir Shavism. In the language of Dzogchen this realm is the realm of Prajna which is the Energetic Luminous Vibrational dimension of Being. This Prajna is the dynamic energy of Rigpa. Rigpa is the power of our luminous Primordial and Foundational Awareness. Prajna and Matrika: Creative Vibrational Luminous Energy of The Field of Being as Our own Awareness The Matrika Shakti and Prajna reflects the creative energy of our primordial luminous vibrational vital ontological energy that manifests phenomenological experience and phenomenological reality. This Matrika Shakti and Prajna are the luminous vital energy manifestations within our own embodied Being as the power of our metabolization of our phenomenological experience. We experientially digest our phenomenological experience and our phenomenological events of experience. The Prajna and Matrika Shakti reflects the creative force of the luminosity and radiance of Being manifesting both the archetypal realm which in turn manifest the realm of our ordinary life world and manifesting our personal experience of our ordinary life world. This life world which is often described in the tantras as having the polarity of the burial ground and/ or a palace. Both sides are present in this life world. The metaphor of burial ground and palace symbolizes our ordinary life world as the interplay of beauty and terror. As we metabolize our ongoing experience of beauty and terror of the unfolding events of our lived experience, we embody more radiance and more energy of the embodied field of primordial awareness. This field of energy and light is the field of Being and the Energy of Being. We embody the Prajna and we embody the Matrika Shakti. We embody this Luminous creative energy of metabolization of our phenomenological lived experience. The Prajna and the Matrika Shakti is the luminous force of self-liberation and the luminous metabolization of phenomenological experience. The metabolization of phenomenological experiences brings forth a metamorphosis of our metabolization and digestion of phenomenological experience into the radiant light and radiant energy. This Prajna is the primordial creative force within the Who-ness of our Being. This Prajna, in Dzogchen, is considered to be the dynamic power of Rigpa. Rigpa is the drama of awareness becoming aware of Awareness, awareness is the power and dynamic creative energy of Being. The Ground of Being is the Primordial Field of Being Indwelling within us as awareness manifests as a profound sense of Who-ness within our Being. This Who-ness is not the I ness of our mind, or the I ness of our conceptual mind. This Who-ness is our open knowingness of Being as our own Indwelling of Being. This Pure Being of our Awareness is the Pure Being of Who-ness. This indwelling of primordial awareness as Longchenpa describes is the Indwelling of the Ground of our Being as our own Being of Awareness, as our own Who-ness. Longchenpa was the great 14th century literary master of Dzogchen. Metabolization of Phenomenological Experience Our phenomenological experience is metabolized within our luminous awareness which is our luminous field of Open Beingness. Phenomena and our phenomenological experience of the phenomena is dissolved and metabolized by the luminous Energy of our field of Being and so what remains after metabolism is the Luminous Energy of the Radiant Vital Being of the phenomena. And also, what remains is our Trans-lucidity of the Being of our field of Awareness. What remains is light and more energy embodied within us. Yes. We embody the Trans-lucidity of Being through ongoing metabolization of phenomenological experience within the field of our luminous Awareness as Gnosis or as Jnana. Our digestive and metabolizing process of experience does not depend on or upon our reflective knowledge and reflective understanding. This metabolization process is enhanced by reflective and skillful means of knowledge that works within the context of this unfolding process of luminous Being. We become our living embodied Presence of our Pure Awareness. This process is creatively enhanced by our learning to be in the field of awareness, and sustaining our Being in the field of awareness. We sustain Being in our awareness within the lived experience of the field of events, during the unfolding of our life events, and during the unfolding of our life circumstances. This transformative experience is the power of our metabolization of our lived experience by and through our innate luminous field of awareness transmitted and absorbed into our field of our luminous embodied Being as the Flesh to use Merleau Ponty’s language. Our awareness embodies and assimilates the luminosity and energy of our phenomenological experience of Being into our Embodied field of luminous Pure Beingness. We experience Being and Being self- manifesting through the forms of our life events and the forms of our life circumstances. We digest experience and we metabolize the forms of experience. What remains is more energy and light, and more power of the field of awareness. The metabolization of experience and range of experience results in a stronger more powerful luminous experience of the field of awareness which is the Field of Our luminous Being. Our field of awareness grows and increases and intensifies through our metabolization of experience and through our metabolization of the infinite forms of our lived experience. And when we simply sit in awareness of awareness, enter the field of Being and the intensity of Being, we enter into the metabolization process of deepening and intensifying and enriching our embodied power of awareness, our embodied power of Being, our embodied power of selfawareness intensifies. This is the focal understanding both of Dzogchen and the Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shavism. This is also the understanding of contemporary Continental Phenomenology. This is our Phenomenological understanding of the unfolding power of the awakened awareness process in the metabolization of phenomenological experience becoming transformed into our experiential embodiment of the Trans- lucidity of Being. This TransLucidity of our phenomenological experience of our phenomenological Being is transmuted into the luminous Trans- lucidity of our own ontological primordial Awareness field of Being. This is the Power of the Tantra of awareness and this is the Power of the Tantra of Who-ness. Our Who-ness is not simply a psychological phenomenon but is the Profoundness of our Being’s Ontological Translucid Knowing of Being infinite in its horizons and vast and multidimensional. Our experience of primordial awareness is ontological and not simply psychological or ideational or affective. This experiential Drama is important to know if we are to understand the metabolization process of own primordial field of Being as primordial awareness. By our luminous metabolizing of our experience of the events and circumstances of our life, we assimilate, and we embody light and more energy of the luminous field of Being as a human being. This embodiment of light and energy is the unfolding of natural self- liberation. When we live in the field of awareness, we have the power of invoking and entering into our phenomenological ontological field of awareness of our field of Being as our ordinary life world. And when we live in the field of awareness, we have the power of invoking and entering into the phenomenological ontological awareness dimension of our field of Being within, as the Archetypal dimension of our Being. This archetypal dimension is called the Sambhogakaya dimension of Being. We can bring forth and enter into the ordinary dimension of our life world experiencing the power of the metabolization of phenomenological experiences of our ordinary life world. We also have the experiential power of the metabolization of our phenomenological experience of the archetypal dimension of our experiencing the archetypal luminous energies and luminous powers of Being that infuse our personal psychology with the vital archetypal ontological life force and direct knowing (Gnosis, Jnana) and the assimilation of our experience of the Pure Being of the Archetypal Phenomena that reflect the personification of the Sambhogakaya or Archetypal dimension of our living experience of Being. We experientially understand that the experience of the vital life force and translucid luminous direct knowing of Being is not simply a psychological experience nor a psychological event but rather the unfolding process of self-liberation within the field of Being as the Ground of Being of our primordial personal ontological awareness. Our mind is psychological knowing and our awareness is ontological knowingness. The Ground of Being is profoundly powerful in its dissolving and metabolizing of phenomenological experience into the radiance of light and the energy of light and the force of light. In the dissolving of and metabolization of phenomenological experience what remains is pure vibrational energy and pure vibrational luminosity. What remains is Pure Luminous Living Vibrational Presence of the radiance of Being. This Energy and Luminosity is assimilated into our Embodied field of Being, assimilated into our embodied field of awareness. With our assimilation of Luminous energy and Vibrational light of Presence, the embodied field of awareness becomes stronger and more intense and intensely more subtle and more intensely vast in the expansion in Depth and Breadth of unbound ontological openness. As Padmashambhava describes this use of Vibrational Luminous Energy of Pure Being is self-liberation within the context of our human Life of Intensity and Desire, and Beauty and Terror. The Infiniteness of The Ground of Being is embodied within our field of personal awareness. Our awareness which is our field of Being becomes ever more luminous, ever more powerful ever more direct and ever more intense and even more vast and ever more unbounded Openness. The great text Dzogchen text of the All-Creative Source infuses us and compels us to go further and deeper into the infinity of our Ground of Being as our very own innermost awareness as Who-ness. This infiniteness of our Ground of Pure Being is Unceasing Creativity, and is the Pure Radiance of Timeless Luminosity of our primordial awareness as ontological Beingness. The luminous Ground of Being is Primordial Pervasive Source. Primordial Source is Primordial Who-ness, Primordial Spaciousness, Primordial Knowingness, Primordial Luminosity and the Primordial metabolization of the Being of Being as luminous Beingness. The Ground of Being self- manifests within us as our own innermost field of Awareness which is our own inner most field of who-ness. Personal Existence is profoundly Personal. Reality is Profoundly Personal. Most of all Self Liberation is Profoundly Personal and is Profoundly within the power of our own Who-ness of Being as Being. This infinity is not only the spaciousness and the vastness of manifestation, but is subtle and most subtle and infinitely subtle. The more subtle the luminous energy the more powerful the embodied field of the Being of awareness. Our Who-ness of awareness metabolizes and dissolves the most subtle phenomenological experience of luminous knowingness and luminous experience. Metabolization of Experience Within the Art of Existential Psychotherapy The experience of metabolization process has been deeply explored in contemporary Psychotherapy. Both Heideggerian phenomenology as well as the phenomenology of perception of Maurice Merleau Ponty explore this experiential metabolization process of Being. Contemporary phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapist such as Eugene Gendlin and the Existential Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott elaborate the experiential metabolization process. The major focus of Existential Gestalt Psychotherapy is a focus on the experiential metabolization of frozen states of experience. The process of psychoanalytic mentalization process is also a process of the metabolization of primitive experience into assimilated symbolic forms of knowingness. Psychoanalytic mentalization is a phenomenological metabolization of primitive experience and affective states becoming understandable and communicable. In the metabolization of experience, the experiential symbolization, the experiential articulation of experiential felt sense, the experiential felt meaning is intrinsic to the process of metabolization by awareness and within awareness. The experiential unconsciousness is subtle and powerful organizing experience that is experienced but not explicitly known and not articulated meaningfully, and not symbolized meaningfully. Christopher Bollas calls this implicit experience, the unthought but known. Without a strong experiential awareness metabolization does not and cannot take place. The field of awareness not only becomes stronger and more powerful, but the traumatic cumulative experience and frozen fixated states of experience becomes dissolved and metabolized. Many psychotherapies that focus on healing trauma also focus on the metabolization of experience such as the psychotherapy of EMDR. Hypnotherapy such as created by Milton Erikson also focused on the metabolization of experience. Most forms of experiential psychotherapy focus on the metabolization of experience and the metabolization of the saturation of and by traumatic experience. The beautiful work of experiential focusing by Eugene Gendlin reflects the explicit metabolization of experience into explicit knowing and assimilated understanding. One of the earliest phenomenological psychotherapists was Carl Rogers and his entire client centered therapy focuses on a person’s assimilation and metabolization of their own experience in the supportive company of another person. His work was also based upon our awareness of our experience of experience. In Existential psychotherapy the metabolization of experience means the dissolving of fixated states of our experience of mind, and the unfolding of the transformation of states of experience by and through the experiential symbolization of creative states of experiential knowing. In the Zollikon seminar mentored for ten years by Menard Boss and Martin Heidegger, this unfolding seminar on phenomenological ontology expressed and illuminated the metabolization power of our ontological Being. It clarified how our ontological knowing of Being metabolizes our experience of thinking, of feeling, of sensation, of memory and of phantasy. Our mind metabolizes experience and using the language of Piaget we cognitively and emotionally assimilate experience and then we accommodate to the assimilated knowingness. To learn from and through lived experience, the experience must be assimilated and metabolized experientially. Our personal cognitive style organizes what we can assimilate and accommodate. Our existential phenomenological ontological knowingness expands metabolization beyond our mind alone into our field of awareness which is our Being’s knowingness. Our Being metabolizes our phenomenological experience is much more profound and powerful manner then the metabolization process of our mind alone. The psychoanalytic understanding of Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, Harry Guntrip, Michael Eigen, R.D. Lang, Austin Deslaurier among many others had this profound interest in the Beingness of our lived experience of Embodied Being. They also had corresponding interest in our embodied field of awareness and metabolizing of inner experience and states of mind. The unfolding of archetypal understanding of Carl Jung profoundly opened this archetypal ontological dimension of human experience to contemporary psychology and psychoanalysis. Initially Jung thought the symbolic archetypal dimension was simply psychological and simply a form of collective memory and in his gradual articulation of the Red Book came eventually to the understanding that our archetypal experience was ontological in essence and an expression of Being and the Archetypal dimension of Being. The Experience of Timeless Awareness as The Essence of Ontological Who-ness Our experience of the profound Ground of Being is reflected in our profound experience of Timeless Awareness. The nature of infinity of Being as Who-ness is reflected in our experience of Timeless Awareness manifesting in time. Our innermost Who-ness is Timeless awareness, and our own experience of Who-ness is the unfolding of Timeless awareness in time. Timeless awareness and our experience of Timelessness awareness is Primordial Who-ness self-manifesting as Timeless awareness within time. This is the same essential understanding is embodied in Dzogchen and in Kashmir Shavism and in Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. This experience of Timeless awareness in time is the Dramatic mystery of the Immanence of Who-ness and the Oneness of Who-ness and the ontological transformative power of Who-ness. This is the Profound mystery of the intrinsic infinity of Who-ness as Primordial Source and the mystery of the Oneness of Being and the Sameness of Being throughout all beings. This oneness of Being and the sameness of Being Duns Scotus would call Univocity. This is the mystery of Duality within non-Duality and non-Duality within Duality. This is the mystery of Dualistic being within the Non- Duality of Being and the Non- Duality of Being within the duality of dualistic beings. This is the drama of Oneness and Separateness. Who-ness as Our Own Awareness Within the Unbound luminous Openness of embodied awareness there is the wonderful mysterious felt sense of our Who-ness of Being as infinite openness. Who-ness is not an entity, who-ness is not personality. Whoness is our own personal awareness. Who-ness is not our psychology of mind. Awareness is not our psychology of our mind. Who-ness is the very nature of our vast forever unfolding knowingness of Being as Being that we are. Who-ness is the nature of Gnosis, direct knowingness and direct perception. Who-ness is Jnana. We do not have Jnana, we are intrinsically Jnana. We do not have Gnosis, we are Gnosis. Who-ness is Yeshe - Wisdom Knowingness. Who-ness is the very nature of Pure Beingness and Pure Beingness is Who-ness. You and I are Who-ness. Who-ness is the Indwelling Ground of Being as us, as you. Who-ness is the Indwelling Ground of Being as Us, as you. The Guru as Our Own Ontological Innermost Who-ness The Primordial Guru is Profound Who-ness. To experience Who-ness and to live within Who-ness in and of itself is self-liberation. Self-liberation is that close, that direct and that immediate. The experiential Presence of the Guru is within us as our Innermost Being as our Who-ness, as our innermost awareness knowingness, just as we are. There is no distance between us and our Indwelling of the Ground of Being as Who-ness. The Guru is the Ground of Being in self-revelation. If we are only located in our mind and our “I” ness of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and fantasy the unbound sense of Who-ness may not be experienced. We have two modes of knowing and experiencing. With our knowing of mind, we know phenomena and the actually of phenomena and the essence of phenomenological experience. Within our awareness which is our Beings knowingness of Being we know Being. Our own Being directly knows Being. Our own Being directly experiences itself as Being. Our own Being knows our Who-ness of Being as Being. Our own Being is the manifestation of the Ground of Being. The knowing of mind knows witness consciousness and the view from witnessing experience and witnessing phenomenological presentations. The knowing of mind may know the essence of phenomena. The Ground of Being metabolizes the essence of phenomenological experience and phenomenological events and phenomenological sensations, phenomenological experience, and our memory of experience. Metabolized experience dissolves into luminous energy. And the luminous energy is further dissolved into our embodied luminous field of Beingness. The knowing of awareness knows the Being of phenomena. The intrinsic knowing of our field of awareness is the profound Who-ness of our indwelling Being. The Who-ness of awareness is the Who-ness of the Being of our own being. The Who-ness of Being is the Who-ness of the Guru. Reality is Profoundly Personal. Being is profoundly Personal. The Personalness of Being is Primordial Who-ness as us. Rudolph Bauer, Ph. D The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and The Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Reference Bauer, R. The Absence of Self: An Existential Phenomenological View of the Anatman Experience. The Journal of Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 13. Issue 28, Fall, 2019 Bauer, R. The Experience of Presence in Dzogchen: A Phenomenology Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol. 9.2019 Bauer, R. Ontological Experience and The Ontic Ontological Human Being: Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field, Vol. 20.2020 Bauer, R. A Gestalt Approach to Internal Objects. Psychotherapy, Research and Practice Vol. 13, Fall 1976. Bauer, R. Ontological Experience and The Ontic- Ontological Human Being. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol. 20, 2020, Bauer, R. The Timeless Interface of Dzogchen and Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field Vol. 20. 2021. Bauer, R. Transitional Space: a Opening of The Experiential Realm Beyond The Mind. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field, April, 2017. Bauer, R. The Nature of Awareness As Tantra: A Phenomenology Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol, 2020. Bauer, R. Mind as The Knower of Forms and Awareness as The Knower of Being, A Phenomenological View. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol 7.2016. Bauer, R. The Direct Experience of Our Ontological Sense of Being as Self. The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol. 8, 2017. Bauer, R. The Phenomenological Epoche and Phenomenological Reduction in Dzogchen and Continental Phenomenology. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol. 21. 2021 Bauer, R. Transitional Space: An Opening of the Experiential Realm Beyond the Mind. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol. 20. 2021. Bauer, R. The Direct Experience of Our Ontological Sense of Being as Self. Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field. Vol .8.2017. Bollas, Christorpher, Being a Character, 1992. Hill and Wang. New York. Capobianco, Richard (2014), Heidegger’s Way of Being, University of Toronto Press. Boss, Menard. Editor of Martin Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars. North Western University Press. Evanston, Ill, 2001. Higgs, David. On the Dzogchen Distinction between mind (sems) and primordial knowing (yeshe). Clarification and Transcendental Arguments. Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, vol 2. 2016 pp. 23-54. Koppel, H. (2008). Establishing Appearance as Divine. Snow Lion Press. Lingpa, Dudjom The Vadra Essence. Wisdom Publications, 2015. Translated by Allan Wallace. Longchen Rabjam. Precious Treasury of Genuine Meaning, Berotsana Publications. Ashland Oregon. 2015. Translated by Lama Chonam and Sangye Khandro. Muller-Ortega, Paul. The Triadic Heart of Shiva. State University Press of New York Press 1989. Muktananda, From the Finite to the Infinite SYDA Foundation 1988 Fonagy, Peter Affect Regulation, Mentalization., and The Development of the Self. Other Press. 2002.