The Great Perfection of Being The Direct Knowing of Being and The Metabolization of Experience

The Great Perfection of Being a Human Being :  The Direct Knowing of Being and The Metabolization of Experience

Rudolph Bauer,Ph.D. Diplomate In Clinical Psychology,A.B.P.P.

The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies, The Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential  Consultation.

Rongzom Zangpo, the brilliant  Dzogchen Master of the 11 th century Tibet taught that All Human Beings are the profound  field of awakening. All Human Beings are the profound field of Being and Beingfullness. All Human beings are manifestations of the field of Being as the field of Being in Singular Expression. I am and you are a manifestation of the field of Being as the field of Being in our own form of Singularity. In this phenomenology of immanence, the manifestation and the manifesting are the same. The Great Dzogchen invocation declares “May I realize that all phenomena are the Dharmakaya.” This is an explicit declaration of philosophical immanence. May I realize that All Phenomena are The Ground of Being and Beingfullness.

The Meaning of Awakening

Rongzom Zangpo  taught that Awakening means  our  Direct knowing of Being. Awakening is our Non Conceptual experiencing of the luminous  openness of our awareness, and awakening  means our direct knowing of our non conceptual experience of the radiant  illumination of the Being of our awareness. And our  Awakening  furthermore means  our direct non conceptual knowing experience of the continuous unfolding of  the “Presence “of Being as Beings. Awakening is our direct experience of Being and is  not a mere belief about Being.

As Cardinal John Henry Newman describes in his text Grammer of Ascent belief is an intellectual ascent to ideation. Belief is a function of our mind. Belief is an intellectual experience. Awakening is a direct non conceptual  experiential knowing of Being, an unthought knowing  to be thought in time and articulated in Time. Thought itself is not the mental ideation  about a belief. Thought  reflects the direct experiential knowing of the Being of Phenomena  and our direct experiential knowing of the Phenomena of Being. Our direct knowing of Phenomena and  the Being of Phenomena  reflects  the union and integration of our mind within our field of our Being of  awareness.

Awakening is the opening of our Being’s perception of Being. Awakening is the experiential opening of our direct  knowingness of Being. Our  Awareness knows Being and our Awareness knows  the Being of beings. Awakening is the awakening of our awareness of the field of Being within us and the field of Being pervading us and surrounding us and encompassing us and manifesting us. Our deepest awakening is unfolding experiencing that  we are the field of Being which is infinite in its horizons, vast and multidimensional.

In becoming aware of our own innate innermost field of awareness , we  experience Being that is  manifesting within us and around us. Being is always manifesting beings. Being is always manifesting the Being of beings. True awakening is simply the lively experiencing of the  field of Being which is always present in its manifestation and manifesting. The  manifestation and manifesting of Being as beings  is  both experiential and ontological oneness. This oneness is the sameness of Being in all the beings and as all beings.This is the experience of Una Voce that Dun Scotus, Spinosa, Deleuze ,Meister Ehrhart  and so many others have elaborated through time.

In Dzogchen tradition Dudjom Lingpa  elaborated the  same oneness and same purity of the Being  of all human beings. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa “You and I are indivisible.” In Dudjom Lingpa’s tradition  self-liberation is the experience of Equality Consciousness. In the Kashmir Shavism of Swami Muktananda self liberation is the experience of Equality Consciousness. Self Liberation is nothe  tgrandiose illusion of omniscience and omnipotence.

All human  Beings  are fields of awakening, fields of luminous knowing. Knowing the fields of Being is essential to humanness. Humanness is our foundational opening to Being. Knowing the multidimensional fields of Being is the greatness of human knowingness. Knowing the field of Being as human beings is natural mysticism. Human Beingness is awakened and human beings are the field of Being and Human Beings are the field of Being’s direct knowingness of Being and Beingfullness.  Our Direct Open Luminous  Knowing is  our own  Being  knowing the field of Being. Our mind knows form and our awareness knows Being. Awareness is our Being knowing Being. Our Mind is ontic and Our Awareness is ontological. Human beings are ontic ontological beings. Our sense of self is an ontic ontological sense of self, a sense of embodied Beingness and Beingfullness.

Humans beings are the field of Being. Human Beings  are a field of Gnosis.  Gnosis or Jnana is the Direct knowing of Being.  Our gnosis or jnana is our  direct knowingness knowing  of Being. Our  Beings knowing of Being is Gnosis or Jnana. This is profound knowing because Being is  not  understood by our mind. The experience of Being is difficult to conceptualized and difficult to language. The experience of Being is difficult to think or experientially language. Our mind   experientially knows Phenomena and our mind in union with our  Being knows the Being of Phenomena and the Phenomena of Being.Our mind can think about Being. Our mind thinks about Being as a metaphysics. If you are in mind alone and absent of awareness you will experience Beinglessness and the Beinglessness of Phenomena. Beinglessness is profound suffering. Beinglessness is life empty of Being. Experiencing Beinglessness in the 5th century bc Guatama declared “all life is suffering.”

Gnosis We Are!

You and I  do not have gnosis  but actually we are gnosis. Babies do not have gnosis they are gnosis. Babies are the direct knowing of Being through the embodiment of the Being of their mothering. In time our developing mind covers gnosis, contains gnosis, obscures gnosis. Our mind contextualizes and hides gnosis. Our mind obscures  gnosis.

Human beings are Gnosis, human beings are Jnana.  Most often human beings do not know they are direct knowingness of Being. Often Human beings think they only know form. Human beings think they are only their mind. They think Being is only  a philosophical ideation and not the experiential actuality that manifest them  and the world within which they live in and they are. The rationalistic mind devalues direct knowing. The person who is located only in their rationalistic mind dissociates from the primordial field of direct knowing. This is the most basic dissociation of human beings,  the dissociation of mind from our direct awareness of Being. This is a lost of the ground of  Beingness.

Phenomenological philosophers  such as Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heideger and existential psychoanalyst  such as Rollo May , Donald Winnicott, Menard Boss experientially  describe that we are ontic ontological Beings. We are ontic as mind and body and we are ontological as Being as embodied Being. Our sense of self is our sense of our embodied Being.

Rongzompa  describes how All the  domains of our experience, all the locations of our experience , all the locations of the place of our experience are  understood as the naturally occurring self appearing gnosis. Self appearing of gnosis is the direct perception of Being and the perception of the Being of forms. All domains of experience contain the sixth sense fields of human beings within the field of awareness, the field of direct knowing, the field of Gnosis. Gnosis or Jnana  or  Direct Perception  is the naturally occurring  field of direct knowing which contain and holds the human sense fields and contain the sense fields of the embodied mind and body. The field of direct knowing moves directly into Being and the field of direct knowing also moves  directly through the instruments of the mind into the blended knowing of the Being of embodied forms and the forms of embodied Being.

Natural Union

There is a natural union between the embodied field of Being and the embodied mind knowing embodied forms of Being. This is the ontic ontological union of the Being of a human being. This simultaneous union of mind and awareness  allows the one knower to know the forms of Being and the Being of the forms. This union allows the One Knower to live their life in the Sea of Being through the Being of human and animate forms. This intertwined union of mind and awareness allows the One Knower to know the Non duality of Being within the Duality of beings, and to know the Duality of beings within the Non duality of Being. This is the natural path of self liberation. The experience of the non duality of Being within the duality of beings and the duality of beings within the non duality of Being. This is the liberating experience of oneness within difference and difference within oneness. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa “You and I are indivisible.”

Our Field of Awareness both supports and can permeate the field of the embodied mind. Gnosis can be without mind and gnosis can be with mind. Mind can be within Gnosis. Mind can also be alone  and dissociated from the base of Gnosis, the Base of awareness. The most primary dissociation is the dissociation of mind from the innate field of primordial awareness. This is a dissociation of mind from the field of Being.

Mind in union with Gnosis is the power of knowing the forms of Being and the Being of forms simultaneously. This intertwined  union of mind and awareness brings forth the liberating experience of Duality of beings within the Non Duality of Being. And within the Non duality of Being we experience simultaneously the Duality of beings. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa  “ You and I are indivisible”.

Phenomenologically, we can become absent of the sense of Being, we can become Beingless. Beinglessness  is an unbearable source of human suffering.  Becoming  Beingless is experiencing the empty voidness of being and  the life of  forms without the base of Being. The experience of the  Beinglessness  of form is the unbearableness of falling ,falling in the abyss of voidness. Without the experience of the Being of human beings, equality consciousness disappears.

We can become directly aware of  the field of Being by becoming directly aware of our field of awareness since  our awareness is our field of Being knowing Being. Our awareness is Beings knowingness as us and through us. Mind alone does not know Being, does not experience the field of Being, does not experience the fullness of Being. Mind alone is empty of Being.

We can become aware of Being as this field of Being, and we can be living in natural sea of Being of all the human beings. There is an unfolding developmental progression of our embodying the field of  Being. In the beginning, we  can experientially hold the  field of Being within us. Then we can move further and be in the field of Being and  the field of Being  surrounds us and permeates us. The field of Being is infinite in its horizons,vast, and multidimensional. Then we can still move deeper and we become the field of Being. We become what we are , we are the field of Being.

The power and actuality  of the field of Being becomes our own ongoing continuity of the experience of being  Being.This ongoing continuity of Being continues through life after life and  death after death.  Being a being within the  Sea of Being  our own Being  is described in Dzogchen as unborn and undying. Being is formless awareness. Formless awareness  is the nature of our experience of Being.

A Phenomenological Meditation

There is the  phenomenological meditation of Becoming aware of awareness and in becoming aware of awareness we  come to know the Beingness of our Being.And through the cumulative use of this phenomenological meditation we more deeply and completely embody the Beingness of our Being. This form of phenomenological Meditation is a process of the experiential unfolding of the embodiment of awareness that is our becoming embodied Being. Our Meditative absorption of awareness becoming aware of awareness  is naturally occurring gnosis, is the naturally occurring  direct knowing of Being. This direct knowing of awareness is Knowing Being within our own being and Knowing Being within the Being of other beings. This Gnosis , the Jnana  is self liberation. Dzogchen invokes the direct knowing of Being as Rigpa.

The first step of this phenomenological meditation is to pause or suspend our mind. Then within this brief pause and suspension of mind, we turn our awareness from being focuses on our mind and the functions of our mind. We are going beyond mindfulness and so we turn our focus of our awareness on to awareness itself. In becoming aware of our awareness we become aware of Being. Awareness is Being’s knowingness. Awareness is Being’s knowingness of Being.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Our experience of our Being is  multidimensional ,since Being is multidimensional and infinite in its horizons. Our experience of our ordinary life world  is Being in its self manifestation of and as the ordinary life world. Dzogchen calls this ordinary reality dimension of Being ‘s manifestation Nirmanakaya.

Then our experience of the ordinary life world, unfolds and opens into subtle existential dimension of our subtle luminous experience which is cosmological and archetypal. This is the dimension of luminous vortextual intensity. Within this dimension there is spheres of archetypal energies and luminousity. This dimension of primal and primordial energies can be integrated into our ordinary life world. Dzogchen calls this Archetypal dimension Sambogakaya.

Then there is the foundational dimension of the  source or Ground of Being. Dzogchen calls this dimension the Dharmakaya.The Dharmakaya is naturally occurring Pure  Being . Dharmakaya is the source of the field of Being, but Dharmakaya is not a being. Being is not a being. Being which is not a being , is the source of infinite beings.Being manifest beings by self manifesting Being within beings as Being.

Ordinary conscious awareness is luminous by nature. Naturally arising gnosis is the nature of Being. You can know gnosis and yet not be able to language gnosis.You can know gnosis  and yet  not think or conceptualized gnosis. Knowing gnosis is a non conceptual knowing, an unthought known. Gnosis is our direct knowing of Being within us and within the world of phenomena.

Rongzompa describes how All phenomena are seen to be manifestations of Being within the single vast sphere of Bodhicitta. Bodhichitta is  the nature of awareness as compassion and compassion is the primordial manifestation of luminous Beingness within our self and within others. Bodichitta is the experience of awareness within ourself and others as Pure Being and as the manifestation of Pure Being.In our manifestation of Bodichitta we have the power to transmit and manifest our experiencing of Being into other human beings. We transmit and manifest compassion into the world, we transmit pure  Being into the world. We can transmit Pure field of Being into the past of a person, we can manifest the pure field of being into the present moment of a person and we can transmit pure being into the future time of a person.

Timeless Awareness In Time

Compassion is the manifestation of  Timeless Awareness. Compassion is Timeless awareness manifesting in time. Compassion is our capacity to be in Timeless Awareness and in time simultaneously. Timeless awareness is the fourth time. Timeless awareness is the power of self manifestation of our Timeless  Awareness Field into Time and intoother human beings and situations. There are Four Times. The Dimension of the Present, The Dimension of The Future and The Fourth Dimension which Timeless Awareness which is both  The Ground of Being and The Source of Self Liberation.

Longchenpa considered Timeless Awareness to be the essence of Dzogchen. To experience Time within Timeless Awareness is the path of self liberation. We can experience the Nowness of Time in Timeless Awareness. Timeless Awareness is the  primordial power of the metabolization of experience both the beautiful and the horrific into energy and light and our embodiment of Energy and Light into Timeless Awareness.  Timeless awareness is profound Knowingness of Being and Beingfullness within and as all phenomena. Timeless Awareness is true Gnosis and true Jnana. Timeless Awareness penetrates the three times or three dimensions of time. The Present Time Dimension, The Past Time Dimension and The Future Time Dimension.. Timeless Awareness can metabolize the experience of our the three times . Timeless Awareness is infinite in its horizons, vast and multidimensional. Timeless Awareness is both Source and the manifestation of Source.

Timeless awareness is also called Deathless Awareness. Because in living with Timeless Awareness in Time, Times ends and Form ends and nonetheless we continue as Timeless Awareness  forever and forever , and in different Times and in different forms. Timeless Awareness is ongoing Continuity of Being and Beingfullness life after life and death after death.

Bodhicitta signifies the indivisibility of the power of  our awareness and the self-manifestation of Being. Awareness is the Knowing of Being and the Knowingness  of our Being is Awareness. There is the knowing of mind which is the knowing of form and there is the knowing of awareness which is the knowing of formless Being. Being knows Being. Awareness is the knowingness of Being knowing Being.

Luminous Energy

The awakening of awareness is an awakening of the energy of Being , the Phusis of Being. Phusis is  the infused embodiment of the light of Being  as unfolding luminous vital energy. This is the energy of becoming. Being is luminous Energy.This is the  Energy  of self manifestation. In the mystical non dual tradition of Kashmir shavism this phusis , this unfolding of luminous vital energy is Shakti.As Bodhidarma of the 6th century said Beyond words and letters there is a transmission, this transmission does not belong to any tradition. This transmission  is the nature of human awareness.  Our capacity of natural transmission is the natural self manifestation of the Luminous vital Energy of Being. The Luminous Vital Energy of Being is The Vital Energy of Luminous Self Liberation of Timeless Awareness.

All human Beings are seen as the profound pure field of awakening and profound pure field of manifestation. Sensient beings are awakened and they are the field of Being. They are an awakened field just as they are and they are the source of all the qualities that arises as the great perfection. This is profound knowing because  this knowing is often hidden by the forms of phenomena.The very forms of manifested phenomena  can obscure the self manifestation of the field of Being. Gazing and cutting through phenomena is the creative  opening of phenomena as the embodiment of light as a Praxis.This is the profoundity of ordinary human existence.

All domains of our experience are seen as naturally occurring self appearing gnosis. Events of gnosis, events of direct knowing.All phenomena are seen as the manifestations of Being.All domains of experience are naturally occurring gnosis appearing to itself and these domains of experience comprise the sentient beings  field of sense experience, naturally occurring gnosis consist in those fields of experience. Gnosis is naturally occurring within and through the fields of sense. The dharmakaya as Timeless Awareness  remains in all ways just as it is , the non conceptual naturally arising Direct knowing of Being.Gnosis manifest in all humans but is obscured by mentalistic mind. By integrating our mind within Timeless Awareness , Timeless Being and Beingfullness, our mind becomes infused with Luminous Gnosis, with Luminous Knowing of the Field Of Being.

Esoteric Knowing Of Being

Archetypal  Realms of Being are Fields of  Gnosis, Direct Knowing, and they are unfolding Archetypal  Spheres of self arisng gnosis. The archetypal Dakini is archetypal symbolic Luminous Energetic  dimension of Direct Knowing of Being.The archetypal symbolic  Dakini’s are innate Spheres of luminous knowingness Beingness that are primal dimensions of ontological Being.

Bliss is the nature of our experience  of Pure Being and the Bliss of Pure Being is pure non conceptual knowing of Being.Bliss emerges within pure gnosis of direct knowing of the Being of beings. Amerita is the manifestation of embodied Bliss. Amerita is the soma of bliss. Amerita is luminous viscous liquidity of embodied Being as Bliss. Amerita is  nectarian pervasive light of embodied Being.  Within  the power of our  own embodied awareness, is incomparable gnosis, and within  gnosis is the opening of  the saturating of  spontaneous bliss.The esoteric experience of  liquid viscous Bliss is elementalness of Being . There is the  bliss of the fire element, the bliss of water element,  the bliss of wind, the bliss of earth, the bliss of  air and the bliss of spaceousness. In experiencing the field of Being embodies the felt sense of these elemental energies  that or who can be experienced as they self manifest.

The Metabolization of Experience

Awareness metabolizes Experience. Abinavgupta the 9th century Master of Kashmir Shavism would write that awareness is like a powerful digestion. This understanding that awareness metabolizes experience is most important and a most fundamental understanding of the power of the field of awareness.The awareness field of Being metabolizes and dissolves experience.Through this metabolization of experience luminous vital energy becomes available for spontaneous knowing action. Awareness metabolizes our experience, our multidimensional experience. Our mind has only a minimal power for metabolization of experience compared to the power of our fully embodied Beingfull Field Awareness which is embodied Being.

The awareness field of Being metabolizes and dissolves experience. The awareness field of Being metabolizes painful and fixated states of experience. The awareness field metabolizes saturating states of affect, saturating states of thought, saturated states  of sensation and saturating physical pain. The awareness field of Being metabolizes dissociated states of fantasy and dissociated states of affect that can be integrated and assimilated into the field of transitional awareness.  The Existential phenomenological psychotherapies  places great emphasis on the metabolization of experience through the power of awareness. By integrating experience  into awareness , experience becomes stabile and lucidly luminous.

The awareness field metabolizes bliss and metabolizes love, and metabolizes happiness, and metabolizes erotic experience. The mind does not have the same power to metabolize traumatic experience as does the field of awareness. The mind understands the context of experience and the mind understands the signification of experience and the mind understands the sensation of experience and the mind understands the historical manifestation of experience. Yet the mind does not directly or fully metabolize experience. The mind does not directly digest the experience ,transforming the experience into energy, vitality and light. The mind metabolization of  saturating experience  is limited and mind can not alone liberate us. Our mind contextualizes experience and the meaning of experience.

The metabolization process of the embodied awareness field is much more powerful then our minds capacity to metabolize experience and the events of experience.  Our field of awareness  metabolizing the experience of thoughts, sensations, memory, fantasy and immediate experience of circumstances  is self liberation. The stabilized state of awareness can metabolize traumatic experience and traumatic memory and somatic fixation. The true power of transitional space of transitional awareness is the power of metabolization. Inflammation is a function of metabolization limitations.

By focusing on our experience within this realm of  awareness of awareness and remaining for a sustained time in this transitional state of awareness is a powerful instrument in our metabolization of experience. Awareness of awareness is like the development of a power digestion and assimilation.Awareness transforms all “experience” into vital energy and luminous knowing. The field of transitional awareness transforms human experience into energy, light , and embodied knowingness. Transforms both beauty and terror in Vibrational Beingfullness.

Awareness is a field of knowingness, a field of energy, a field of spaceousness, a field of light and a field of self illumination of phenomena.The field of radiant light is a metabolizer of experience. The metabolization of experience brings forth energy , vitalness and illumination of embodiment. The metabolization of experience brings forth the metabolization of energy and corresponding embodiment of the radiance of light. In the metabolization of experience ,energy, and vitality and the luminousity of awareness is increased. In our metabolization of experience the deepening of the embodiment of luminous awareness takes place naturally.

A foundational existential terror for a person is to become stuck in the catastrophic and primitive experience of unbearable absence of Being and the corresponding unbound desperate rage with the sense of there being no way out of infinite vacuum of emptiness. The person is terrified of touching and entering the primitive painful feelings of annihilation and the internal abyss like states of absence. With in the power of metabolization  of our awareness field we can feel the existential support to enter these primitive states of void, and metabolize the experience of the abyss of Being. The power of awareness metabolizes the void, the lack and the sense of infinite emptiness. As awareness metabolizes these states of absence, the field of Being self manifest and the ongoing continuity of Being becomes completely possible. Our ongoing continuity of sense of self becomes embodied and the ontological anxiety disappears.

Within the field of awareness we are able to integrate our states of mind and states of affective experience into this open luminous transitional space of awareness which is the field of Being as our own direct knowingness. In living within the field of awareness , a person is more capable  to hold and metabolize experience and maintain boundaries  as to what will happen within themselves. To integrate experience and assimilate experience into the field of  awareness is to liberate ourself through the metabolization of experience within the field of Being just as we are.

Within the base of awareness a person begins to experience  that the painful saturating states of experience  can be directly touched, contained , assimilated and metabolized by the field  of the embodied Being of awareness.  The person is more free to experience everything and anything within their range of lived experience. Painful feelings and affective experience  can be metabolized  and digested in an unfolding step by step  movement of integrating everything into and within the field of awareness which is the field of Being. A person or religious tradition does  not have to use   dissociation and detachment  as the only way  of freeing oneself from painful states of experience and painful states of memory.

In the early Dzogchen tantra’s of the 8th and 9th century there is a focus on the  the power of awareness illuminating the experience of Being and metabolizing  reified states of mind, as well as the generational field.

Without the sense of the base of the field of embodied awarenesss, intense affective states of fear and terror as well as forms of self negating experience can become completely saturating and consuming. In saturated states of experience, intentional and even reflective capacity is often dissolved in the context of saturation, terror and annihilation anxiety.   Saturating experience us can comsume our intentionality and our minds reflective capacity. The intentional function of the mind disappears in staturating states of overwhelming and intrusive painful experiences of agony.

The mind understands  context and causal effect thinking. The mind becomes easily saturated by compelling experience. Our minds capacity for the  metabolization of complexity of dominating and  traumatic experience , does not have the depth and breath of the embodied Beingness of awareness,

Subtle States of Being

Moreover, Awareness metabolizes subtle states of Being. Awareness metabolizes subtle states of Energy. Awareness metabolizes the subtle winds, and subtle spheres of vortexual light of mystic experience. Awareness metabolizes archetypal powers, and archetypal energies and archetypal Beingfull spheres of light. Awareness metabolizes the Density of light  and awareness metabolizes the vortexual energies into the liquidity of Being.

Rudolph Bauer,Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology.A.B.P.P.

The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies

The Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies

The International Center for Existential and Phenomenological Consultation

Reference:

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Bauer, R, The Timeless Interface of Dzogchen and Contemporary Existential Phenomenology,Transmission: The Journal of The Awareness Field, vol.20,2021.

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Bauer,R. Experiencing The Archetypal Realm: A Phenomenology of Self Liberation Transmission; The Journal of The Awareness Field.vol20.2017.

Longchen Rabjam. The Precious Treasure of Genuine Meaning , Berosana Publications, Ashland , Oregon ,, 2015.