Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

Stopping once in a while, turning mind in

No big deal

Yet I don't add my crazies to my ongoing crazies for Big Crazies….

Less samsara in my day…..

Elaborating….

Samsara:  Buddhist term for ordinary consciousness, which is seen as a badly distorted form of consciousness.  Our perception of world and self is badly distorted by the three main driving forces of greed/attraction, aversion/rejection and ignorance (of reality and of one's true Buddha nature).

Sixth Consciousness:  Traditionally each of the main five senses is considered a kind of consciousness, and (ordinary) mind is considered the sixth kind of consciousness, a consciousness which takes the input of the senses at any one time and simply and objectively names their object and perhaps brings up some immediately relevant, objective information about them.  Right now, my sixth consciousness says "computer screen" as I look straight ahead, "coffee cup" as I look to my left, "bookcase" as I look to my right.

Seventh Consciousness: This is an almost completely conditioned, automatic elaboration of the simple perceptions of sixth consciousness into our personal "stories," our hopes, fears, etc.  So there is a feeling as I notice the computer screen in front of me of satisfaction, of pride, I'm a writer, I'm good at it, and an undercurrent of anxiety – this monitor has been acting a little flaky lately, suppose it breaks, it will be expensive to replace it…..That coffee cup, I need to take it to the kitchen and wash it, I'm so tired of washing out coffee cups, maybe it I just leave it out my wife will wash it for me, oh damn, how can I think that, I'm a lazy person, why can't I be more responsible?  Ah, the bookcase, look at all those books!  I'm so smart to read so many books, I'm happier thinking about how smart I am rather than how lazy I am…..

According to Buddhism, greatly supported by the discoveries of modern psychology, we almost never stay with simple sixth consciousness perception, automatic seventh consciousness reactions take over almost instantly and can be strong enough to effectively blot out or distort simple, objective perceptions.  I've used mild illustrations of this here, but the emotional dynamics and psychological defenses of our individual selves can have us dwelling in our "stories," our dramas, most of the time.

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

A perception, my like or dislike, which triggers associated likes and dislikes, which triggers more, on and on and on, the original sixth consciousness perception lost in the drama.  New events, new stimuli which are strong enough to get our attention are often almost instantly distorted by the seventh consciousness to fit right into our ongoing story…..And our illusory existence, samsara, continues and builds…..

Many brief moments: In Dzogchen turning the mind inward to notice what's there, in Gurdjieffian terms self-observation or self-remembering.  Succinctly expressed in Buddhism as samsara is the mind turned outward, lost in its projections.  Enlightenment is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  Rigpa is one of the names for the true nature of our minds, our Buddha nature.

So I'm in samsara, then I turn mind inward for a moment.  A sensory event, a stimulus comes along then and it's just sixth consciousness perception, it's just a bookcase, no activation of my personal "story" about how wonderful I am, how much I know.  I glance at the bookcase again, notice a book sticking out, close to falling off the shelf, I'll push it in next time I go over that way, back to the moment.  Here's my mind, here, now, nothing "special" about it, just calmly here – but that's pretty special compared to the usual ongoing, self-stimulating drama of ME!

Radiance of rigpa:  It's not that the goal of Buddhism is to stay forever in a state of mind that's absolutely calm, where nothing ever happens.  That's not our nature.  Our nature of mind, our rigpa, moves, thinks, creates, like the sun radiating light and heat.  But to have it stay close to sixth consciousness perception, not get twisted into my story…..that's something!

I called this a small song of small realization, question mark.  No big deal, yet very fundamental.  Coming back to the moment every once in a while during my day, I don't get so carried away, I don't have fantasy building on fantasy, amplifying samsara.  Perhaps not a big deal insight, but I like it….

So once again:

Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 1 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Any kind of habit you can set up at the early learning stages of becoming more mindful is a good habit. Do watch for the point where it starts to become just a stimulus to trigger off the fantasy of being mindful, though, instead of actually doing it.

I don’t know how many times I remembered that I wanted to come to the present and be mindful, and so I thought about it, and fantasized about it, but I didn’t make the shift of attention to notice what was actually happening now. I got caught up in my thoughts about the now instead.

Ouspensky recommends changing “alarm clocks” when an alarm clock gets like that. Find something different that will trigger you off. So, for instance, you could set up a kind of conditioned response that every time you touch a doorknob, you’ll come to the present; and that might work for hours, days, maybe even weeks. But when you find yourself having fantasies about being mindful when you take a doorknob in your hand, it’s time to drop it because we don’t need to learn how to condition ourselves further. We’re already very good at that!

Now since I feel like you’re all being very mindful, I’m going to do a little review here at a conceptual level, but I ask that you try to keep some touch with the present while I get intellectual this way. You can do it by keeping some attention in your arms and legs; by looking around some, rather than staring fixedly at any one thing for too long a time; by noticing the quality of sounds as well as understanding the content of the particular words I’m saying; and in each of your individual cases, there may be some other particular kinds of sensations or actions which will help you be mindful, too. Experiment. What works for you?

The little sheet I’ve passed out – everybody got one? – has four drawings on it. If we were going to look at these, we’d say the order is upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right. I’m just going to review these. You’ve seen the first three before, and then I’ve added a new one that I created a couple of days ago when I sat down to do a formal meditation session.

My meditation went “poorly.” Instead of having any luck at all coming to the present, the goal of my meditation, I kept having the idea for this diagram that would help you guys understand something. So I decided that maybe my higher self is telling me the good outcome of this meditation will be a diagram. Or maybe it was just an excuse for not being able to concentrate….

The upper left corner diagram [figures presented separately here] – I told you this is my representation of one of the ways Shinzen Young talks about ordinary consciousness, or living in samsara, living in a state of illusion. You’ll remember I said that while some spiritual schools take an extreme position that the world really is an illusion, what the emphasis really is in most spiritual schools, as far as I can tell, is not that the world is illusory, unreal – that’s a metaphysical position, you can believe what you’d like to on that, but be careful about stepping out in front of cars! – but that the point is that we distort our perceptions of the world and ourselves so much that we effectively live in an illusion.

So on the left hand side here, you’ve got primary simple perception. Right now, for example, it’s bright. It’s warm. It’s quiet. You feel the chair pressing up against your butt and your back – very simple, primary sorts of things. Maybe the movement of your clothes against your skin as you move, the sensation of breathing – simple, primary sorts of things. What the Tibetans call Sixth Consciousness.

But we almost never spend much time in focusing on those simple, primary perceptions. When we do Vipassana meditation, we do something like that. But that’s not our ordinary way at all. Instead, we get into all sorts of processing of the perceptions that involves, on the one hand, elaboration of them into various thoughts and feelings and memories and hopes and fears and plans; and on the other hand, abstraction – that, insofar as you maintain some kind of contact with the world around you, it’s with higher level abstractions about the world where you “perceive” – quote, unquote around perceive – that we’re sitting here in a classroom. Classroom is an abstraction. It doesn’t begin to take in the details of this actual particular classroom at this particular point in time.

So we have an enormous amount of automatic processing. Generally, we have no control over whether it’s going to happen or not. We’ve been conditioned to have it happen. It happens. It runs automatically. And this automated process is working over your primary simple perceptions in both abstracting them and elaborating them.

One analogy we might use is that you’re the CEO of a major manufacturing company. You get some reports passed up to you, but you don’t keep track of every little widget, and where it is on the production line, and whether shipping has got so many boxed up and all that. You look at more abstract kinds of things like profits over the past month, or something like that. You have hopes and fears about growing the company, or avoiding a downturn. You don’t stay very much with the manifold actual details. That’s not a terribly good example, but it will do.

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While I hope that the field of Transpersonal Psychology will advance so much that in a few decades I'll be able to give great advice to these folks, Transpersonal Psychology is still a tiny, under-supported field and progress is way too slow…..

This is to share an example of the kinds of questions I get and my responses.  I have disguised the identity of this questioner to protect her or his privacy and paraphrased the communication for brevity.

Hello Dr. Tart.

My name is ********* .  I really enjoyed Waking Up and am on my second round with it.  In between I read Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous as it was recommended in Waking Up for people interested in pursuing further Gurdjieff's ideas.

As a Zen practitioner and having had interest in psychology since I was young, you have my attention!  I feel I have well above average perceptive abilities, that is to say, aware of my thoughts, beliefs, distortions, reactions and such. I can see it all very clearly.

The reason I am writing is that, as mentioned in Waking Up, I perhaps have some emotional issues (listed) that I am not sure whether they need to be addressed before seriously going further on this path.

I have been living in Japan for 5 years and although I really enjoy living here (despite the earthquakes), I feel there might not be enough resources for someone like me who wants to find a group and/or therapist to aid in my waking up. There is one Fourth Way (Gurdjieff) group in Tokyo but it's in Japanese (not so much a problem, but I wouldn't want to miss the subtleties as well as specific cultural issues might not apply to me).

I guess there are 2 things I wanted to ask and get your opinion on.

(1) Do you think there are/know of any resources someone in my position overseas could find in terms of a Fourth Way group, or is it best to go back to the States for that?

(2) Being that I have a good degree of self-awareness and self observation, are the emotional issues I have enough to warrant NOT going further down the road of serious work with Gurdjieffian methods?  I know it might be hard to access that not knowing me, but…I guess that disclaimer in the book just gave me pause. [I had noted in Waking Up that serious emotional issues could easily derail what one thinks of as a spiritual search into neurotic activity]  I really feel like between 2 stools as these emotional issues keep pulling me back into patterns that are hard to break on my own.

Well, I am sorry for writing so much as I am sure you are a busy guy. Thanks for your work and insights.. I am really enjoying discovering this work.

Here's how I responded.

———–

Dear ********,

It has taken me a while to answer you, as I cannot give you the answers I would really like to give.

> First, let me say I really enjoyed Waking Up and am on my second round with it.<

You might find my other two books on mindfulness useful.  Same basic subject, different ways of expressing myself.  One is Living the Mindful Life, the other is Mind Science.  It often takes me several different presentations of things, in different styles, to learn them. The latter book may be hard to find though….And remember, my books are introductions, far, far from the final word…..

> There is one Fourth Way group in Tokyo but its in Japanese (not so much a problem, but I wouldn't want to miss the subtleties as well as specific cultural issues might not apply to me).<

That's a realistic concern.  You might learn some things and entirely miss others if the Japanese are as subtle as they are usually depicted.

Getting to the heart of the matter,

>(1) Do you think there are/know of any resources someone in my position overseas could find in terms of a fourth way group, or is it best to go back to the States for that? <

I have no idea about G groups in Japan.  I have written a friend about it who is in the G Foundation, but he's traveling now and I'm not sure he's going to be able to offer any useful advice for your situation.

>(2) Being that I have a good degree of self-awareness and self observation, are the emotional issues I have enough to warrant NOT going further down the road of serious work with Gurdjieffian methods?<

In my ideal world, which I fear has little connection yet with the actual one, although I hope it does someday, any spiritual development group would have both psychological and spiritual work, with enough sensitivity and competence on the teachers of each to know when you need more of the other.  A meditation teacher, e.g., who knows when to say "Don't sit so much, take that up with your therapist," and a psychotherapist who knows when to say "I think that issue is reduced enough that you can go on with the relevant spiritual work, see that teacher for more instruction," or, even more importantly, "I think you are using this spiritual practice as a way of avoiding this basic psychological issue."  (spiritual bypass)

There are many G groups, so there might be some that have more psychological savvy, but maybe there aren't…..So I can't recommend any in particular.  On the other hand, you say you have emotional issues, but so does everybody.  Are they strong enough to seriously hinder your ordinary living?  If not, you can probably profit to at least some degree from G work – although some of the G groups are, of course, cultish.  I rather wish we had the spiritual equivalent of Consumers' Reports magazine, "Group M has a cheerful tone but most people leave after a few months, undamaged but with little growth.  Group N is unpleasant in tone, but those who stick it out claim significant growth, although about 5% are psychologically damaged by the work……"

Sorry I can't be more helpful.  I am glad when I can get people interested in spiritual growth, and frustrated that after giving them a start I can no longer be of much help……

Charles T. Tart

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 4, Part 15 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now I have to introduce a business item, because I got the notice that it’s time for the mid-quarter review. So they sent me a sheet that says what you’re supposed to get from this course, and I have to ask you whether you’re getting anything like it.

So let’s see. The course objectives, three of them – (1) on the academic level, to familiarize the student with the nature of ordinary consciousness and its often mindless nature with the possibilities of becoming more perceptive, mindful, and sensitive in life.

We gettin’ any?

(Laughter)

I’ll give you the other two. I think these can all go together. (2) On the professional level, to sensitize the student to recognize the occurrence of relatively mindless functioning and its implications for dealing with the person experiencing them. And (3) on the personal level, to foster sensitivity to variations in the functioning consciousness, and so be able to discern more appropriate and mindful styles of cognition and action.

Okay. I think things are going very well, but this is the time for – if there’s something big being left out, or creating confusion or something like that – this is the time to speak about it so I can do a mid-course correction.

Student: Good job.

Student: Yeah.

(Laughter)

Student: Yeah.

CTT: This mid-course review never works. Everybody always says we’re doing fine, let’s get on with it.

(Laughter)

But they (the Administration) say I have to do it.

Student: I appreciate the structure you have surrounding the papers. I like passing them between class members and getting various people’s feedback, and I like writing one each week.

And also, I was trained as an engineer and worked in the field for almost 20 years as an electrical engineer, and I appreciate the linear nature of your person, that I had seen as caused by or based on some of your engineering training.

CTT: The linear nature of my person? What does that mean?

(Laughter)

Student: Well, I think art or software programming or things involving being near the heart are very non-linear. And you’re not going this way, this way, this way. However, there are a lot of processes in things that are very linear, including scientific thought and organizing things. You bring a certain linear perspective to stuff that is difficult to talk about, and I feel like you manage that well with a difficult subject.

CTT: Okay. Thank you. I try to remain comprehensible.

Student: Seems like judging a class on mindfulness would be somewhat paradoxical.

(Laughter)

I mean, it’s like hard to go wrong.

CTT: Well, it could go wrong. We could just do this on a very intellectual level and come up with some nice words. That wouldn’t do it.

I feel – but I guess I should ask for more direct feedback on this – by now, has everyone had at least a taste of what it’s like to be more mindful? If anybody hasn’t had even a taste of it, then I haven’t been doing something right.

I’d love to be able to know how to teach this so that you all became very mindful and it became a permanent change in you, and all that. I don’t know how to teach that effectively. I don’t know how to be that effective myself.

But if everybody’s got a taste of it, so you know that direction is there, then I think that’s a little seed that’s going to be useful throughout the rest of your careers and your lives.

Student: I’ve appreciated being able to integrate this mindfulness into everything that I do. I was having difficulty being able to do that, and this has been very helpful. I think being in this environment is very helpful. I wish I could stay in this environment forever.

CTT: By this environment, you mean this particular class, or ITP in general?

Student: First, this particular class, and it does extend to ITP.

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Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 4, Part 19 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

Student: So what’s the reason why you enlighten people?

CTT: It’s a friendship act. That’s all.

Student: Yes. Why would an enlightened person not say that they were enlightened? Because you keep being humble, and I just wondered.

(Laughter)

CTT: Let’s work around that this way. In ordinary situations in life, you like to have influence over people, or power over people. And there are some ways in which you have direct physical power over people, especially if you’re the head of an army, or you can have psychological power over people by controlling who they think you are by the way you project your image.

I would say any reasonably aware person would realize that if they let somebody else think that they’re enlightened or just very spiritually developed, they know that person is going to immediately project all sorts of strong and probably unrealistic expectations on them, and that may well block the learning process. It creates an impression. You’ll be expected to do miracles of one sort or another. You’ll be expecting to understand very deeply, and you’ll be expected to give blessings.

(Laughter)

And it just traps you in a role that is very limiting.

Student: Okay.

CTT: But what happens in life has something to do with flexibility. If you want to be of help to other people, you want to keep your options open to find what will work best with them and not be locked into a narrow concept.

Student: But there’s the whole marketing thing.

CTT: I’m impressed with my answer. I never thought of that before.

(Laughter)

Student: It is a good answer. It is a good answer. But marketing works too, right? And the thing is that presumably there’s a theory that the universe is trying to become self-aware, and according to that theory, you could say that – arms and legs – that…

(Laughter)

…that we, you know, why wouldn’t the universe… (inaudible) .

CTT: You see, when you keep some attention in your arms and legs, questions are more grounded.

Student: Yeah.

CTT: They make more sense. Yes, marketing matters. If you think you know some things you’d like to teach to people because it will make them happier, then clearly you need to get their attention in the first place. And so you have to market yourself at a minimum level so that they’ll want to pay some attention to you. Now ideally it will be the aura of sanctity that you project that automatically does the job for you. But if that doesn’t work, you can wear a robe.

Student: Yeah, but maybe not. Maybe people want to be drawn to their normal traditions, you know?

CTT: To some extent that’s true, but it is my belief that as you become more present and mindful, other people detect that on some level. Gurdjieff talked about these three brains: emotional, body-instinctual, and intellectual; but he really said we’re five brained beings. We have a higher emotional brain and a higher intellectual brain and these brains are fully functioning already. If we could tap into them that would feel like enlightened functioning to us, or at least a hell of a lot more enlightened than ordinarily.

We ordinarily pay no attention to the information in these brains. But they can have effects on us. So it could simply very well be that when you go into the presence of someone who’s more awake, some part of you picks that up. You may not know what you’re picking up. You may just get restless or whatnot, but it may attract you and make you want to do more.

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One of the discussion lists I’m on is the Forge Guild, and one of the members wondered if trying to be mindful in life is practical, can it happen for more than moments.  The question wasn’t specifically addressed to me, but I posted the following as a partial answer, and thought it would be of interest here on this blog.  Mindfulness is very much on my mind, as it were, having just returned from a week of Tibetan Buddhist teachings, where meditation and a kind of mindfulness beyond formal meditation is greatly valued.  So…

Using the methods developed by G. I. Gurdjieff in his experiments with developing mindfulness techniques that worked for Westerners, I spent a lot of time living in the present years ago.  In a supportive environment, like other people working at it, I could spend much of my day very much anchored in the present.  Working on my own I could do it pretty well too, but it took more effort.  Nowadays I don't focus on it anywhere near as much, except when I teach this in my Basic Mindfulness class at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, where I try to stay anchored in the present for the whole 2 hours of class.  I often get intellectually excited by something we're talking about and lose touch with the present, of course – and I'm very pleased when my students start to catch me when I do this, and feel mindful enough and secure enough to tell me to come back to the present!    
While I don't formally try to be present and mindful all that much in everyday life anymore, I usually remember to do so when situations get sticky, and I feel there's been an overall shift in my level of consciousness/being from that earlier work, such that while I wouldn't describe myself as "awake" I could accurately say I'm not as deeply asleep, lost in consensus consciousness and my own story, as I used to be.
Oh, Gurdjieff's approach differs from classical mindfulness meditation techniques in that it's mainly about developing mindfulness in everyday life, rather than in special environments.  Few of us have every done anything really stupid while sitting quietly on a little black cushion, but our mindlessness in everyday life has sure gotten us in trouble!
You can get the flavor of Gurdjieff's methods from my blog, where I'm slowly posting a transcript of my mindfulness course (http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/), and or from my three books on mindfulness training ("Waking Up," or "Living the Mindful Life," or "Mind Science: Mindfulness Training for Practical People."
A final word.  We have to be very careful about using mindfulness techniques as a way of avoiding reality.  To be mindful is to be curious about what is actually happening, inside and outside at the moment, and to be courageous in looking at it.  Given our human condition, that means that while it's often satisfying and joyful to be more mindful, real mindfulness also makes us more acutely aware of our own and others' suffering.  If you try to turn mindfulness exercises into ways to feel good no matter what, that's exactly the kind of living in illusion, samsara, maya, that the Eastern spiritual systems say is at the root of suffering to being with.  I know mindfulness practice can be twisted this way – I've done it a lot of times!
Learning to become more mindful is a great way to go, and, I believe, fully compatible with the essence of real spirituality.

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Lecture 4, Part 5 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: This goes back to an idea of Gurdjieff’s that I think is worth talking about, and that’s the idea of the food of impressions. Have you come across that in Ouspensky yet? Yes?

Student: Say it again.

CTT: The food of impressions. We all know that in terms of diet there are certain vitamins and minerals we need, and if we don’t get them we get sick. If you don’t get enough Vitamin C, you get scurvy, for instance. Deficiency diseases. Gurdjieff said that in the same way that our body needs various elements and enough of them and with sufficient purity and quality of them to keep healthy, a mind needs the food of impressions. Our mind needs to take in information that actually nourishes parts of our mind, in order to maintain it and grow it. And if you don’t get that food of impressions, you get mental deficiency diseases just as you get bodily deficiency diseases.

Now most people, from Gurdjieff’s point of view, since they’re asleep most of the time, are basically eating mental junk food. They’re not getting very high quality impressions because they’re not present, not here-and-now, for all these incredible sensory impressions coming in. So when you get nothing but junk food, you need a lot of it and it has to be real spicy to try to convince you that you’re getting something. If you’re not bringing awareness like you are now to your sensory impressions, and so affecting them in a way that turns them into high quality nourishment, then you don’t get enough nourishment and you get these mental and emotional deficiency diseases, which produces a feeling of experiential hunger at some level. Then you’re liable to do funny or dangerous or pathological things to try to get more impressions.

So, for example, some of the Sufis say — and Gurdjieff would go along with this — we need a certain amount of attention paid to us. We need it from other people. We’ve got to be recognized. We’ve got to be paid attention to. Normally we get that from our parents when we’re very little, but some parents don’t give their kids enough attention.

So what’s one way of getting attention? Be bad! It’s much better to be shouted at or spanked, and get some attention, even if it’s not the best quality attention, than to starve for attention. Very weird.

Psychotherapy has all these theories about what you do and all these techniques and whatnot. Maybe the main effective thing is the fact that the client is getting a good steady input of quality attention from a therapist, and that attention will do a lot, just as attention per se, quite aside from any specifics.

Where did we start on this? I remembered my arms and legs but I lost the beginning point!

Student: Food of impressions.

CTT: Food of impressions. Right. I’ve never seen this idea developed in standard psychological texts and probably not even in the transpersonal texts, per se. I’ve mainly seen it in Gurdjieff, but I think there’s a lot of truth to it.

It came in as part of the basis of transpersonal through humanistic psychology, mainly in all the body based therapies that came along. They give you a certain kind of food of impressions with body based massage therapies, physical releases, and things of that sort. Again, they also just give you a lot of attention. So sometime when you’re seeing a client some day and you’re listening to the problem and you don’t have any idea exactly what to do, at least pay good attention to them. They can usually sense at some level when they’re getting good attention.

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Lecture 4, Part 3 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: So take a minute to look at the comments on your paper. You might not have a response to them. You might. It might also remind you of something that you wanted to bring up from the readings or the last class.

But remember to always try to keep some part of your awareness in your body in the here and now. Now when somebody does ask a question or brings up a point, listen to what they say. Your thinking mind is obviously going to be engaged, but keep some of your awareness in body sensation: in the sound of their voice, in the sight of what you’re seeing, rather than just trip off on the concepts the way we so often do. We’ll see what that does.

Student: I notice when I’m trying or when I am more present that my contacts bother me, because I have a harder time seeing with lenses. If I’m doing Aikido, it’s better if I don’t have my contacts in. I can see much better when I’m being more present. So right now you told us to focus, and I notice them kind of start pulling out, like as a filter.

CTT: You think it’s literally a change in the muscular structure of your eye that’s forcing them, rather than just more awareness of a sensation that was there all the time?

Student: I wonder if my eyes are just more relaxed.

CTT: That could be.

Student: They’re not trying to see detail. It’s like the soft focus of the person, you know?

CTT: They do teach soft focus vision here as part of Aikido.

Student: Yeah. And I have a wider perception, like trying to see everything in the room versus trying to read just that.

CTT: That’s interesting. I’d still raise the question of whether it’s an actual change in your eyes, it might be, or whether it’s a sensation that’s always there but normally you’re too involved in other kinds of things to notice it.

One of the frequent reports I get when I teach mindfulness and have people start sensing their arms and legs, or the more formal Vipassana sensing your whole body, is that some people say this is really uncomfortable or painful. Because some people discover that the ordinary, “normal” state of their body is tense painfulness. But normally they’re going too fast to notice it! They’re distracted from that. If they start bringing some awareness back to the present, to the body, they notice it. So the tendency, of course, is to not want to do it, to just continue to rush along, but that doesn’t really solve the problem of the body being uncomfortable and tense.

As I think we talked a little bit about last time, if you become more clearly aware of your body, even working on being equanimous toward it rather than trying to make it better or something, there’s a tendency for the body to relax and drop the unnecessary tensions just by being more aware.

The analogy often used is that the unconscious is psychological processes that go on in the dark, that we don’t have conscious awareness of, and when you start shining the light on them, they can be dissolved. Not all of them. Some of them take much more intense, therapeutic kinds of work, but there are a fair number of things which if you simply become clearly, consciously aware of them — habits, attitudes, stances, things like that — they dissolve away.

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I’ve always been very pleased that I can give ITP students a taste of meditation and mindfulness in life in a single quarter course, and even more pleased when I hear back from them after the course is over that they are sometimes able to apply these techniques in useful ways.

I recently got a communication from a former student, while traveling in China, that dramatically illustrated how useful these techniques can be, even to someone who is undergoing an exceptionally stressful period of life.  With her permission, I have excerpted her report here as an illustration of what is possible.

Meditation techniques — body scans, sensing listening looking

The most immediate and daily-applicable skills I learned from the course are meditation techniques, specifically, body scans. After practicing the techniques repeatedly in class exercises, I became more or less adept at using them to manage stress and anxiety. At the time of the course, the stress and anxiety level in my life accelerated to intolerable degrees due to a divorce. I experienced anxiety attacks almost everyday; during the 15-20-minute attack episodes my heart raced until I was nearly passing out. Sleep became difficult; I could manage at most two hours at a stretch at night, and only from extreme exhaustion. The rest of the time I lay awake with heart pounding and skin turning cold. It was primal fear, beyond rational comprehension. During those weeks, I came to understand the literal meaning of the expression "scared to death".

So it was a fortunate coincidence that I signed up for Mindfulness at this time. I'd had no previous experience with meditation, nor much knowledge of what the course exactly taught. The reason I took the elective class was Prof. Tart's academic prominence at the school.

The first dose of relief from meditation came at night. Whenever awaking with a pounding heart, at the first awareness of consciousness, I tried scanning my arms and legs, hands and feet. At first it would take me up to a minute to really feel a body part distinctly; with practice the sensations came more quickly. The scans did not take away the fright completely; however it took off enough of its edge that I could drift back to sleep after a while. This made a significant improvement in the quality of my sleep, and my life.

As the class went on we learned other techniques as well; one of the more useful for me was "sensing, listening, looking". The sensing part I already did regularly. Adding "listening" to the meditation, from the very first time I tried it, was a fairly powerful boost in the grounding effect – the moment I listened mindfully I could feel the attention and energy shifting to the world happening all around me. These days I don't use "listening" very often, only occasionally when I feel the need for this extra "boost" of mindfulness. I practiced "looking" a few times when the course introduced the material. By following the book's direction on it, I did experience its awesome power.

I even led a few half-hour sessions with my friends (none of them was familiar with meditation techniques) covering the full "sensing, listening, looking" routine. They all reported "feeling fully alive", which was my exact experience.

(Note from China: Yesterday, my car got packed into a monster traffic jam in a tunnel five miles before the port, where we’d depart for our destination island. For a while the driver and I sat in the dark tunnel surrounded by 18-wheel freight trucks bound for the busy harbor, the road surface torn up by heavy use. We couldn’t see much ahead – the traffic situation or the tunnel length. I had to meditate to control the claustrophobia. It is perhaps no coincidence that Buddhism and meditation had their beginning in Asia –there is often no place to hide amidst the crowd, noise and dust. The only place of calm is to be found inside.)

Awareness of automatic programming and reaction

From the course readings I gained an awareness and perspective for the automatic programs running in all of us. In one of the weekly journals I wrote about an incident involving the birthday party for my son William, when W (my ex) wanted me to excuse myself from the party so Z (his girlfriend) could co-host with him. My old machinery, when similar buttons were pushed, would’ve operated like this: 1) fight with W for the injustice, and/or 2) cancel the event all together. I succeeded in doing neither. I attended the event for William, observing W and Z putting on the show as host and hostess. I knew that my son cared only about his mother and father being both present, that he was indifferent to Z’s presence.

I’d always been keenly aware of W’s unresolved anger toward me for leaving him, yet the knowledge seemed powerless in stopping me from reacting to his “triggers”.  It was as if the program took on a life of its own regardless of underlying rational knowledge. That day, aware of my program, I was able to override the program and held the right actions for my son’s benefit. Although maintaining complete equanimity was difficult, applying meditation techniques did help in reducing the degree of discomfort. What I was able to accomplish that day gave me a huge boost of confidence. Knowing all reactions as nature’s program, I can let whatever feeling run its course without necessarily taking the actions. I have a choice. Knowing the same is true for other people’s feelings and reactions, understanding (even compassion) becomes easier. I now see other people’s words and deeds more as a reflections of their programming than as directed at me, so I no longer take things as personally.

(Note from China: This passages takes on new meanings from the perspective of China, where the Confucian concept of 忍 (sound: ren, meaning to endure, to tolerate) is a long touted virtue. It’s similar to the idea of “stuffing one’s feelings” in the West, except in the West it has a slightly negative meaning. Personally I’ve always rebelled against “ren”, as I believe it sucks life out of our human spirits. The more “enlightened” route to “ren” should be understanding and compassion, by being aware of the machinery and program in all of us. “Ren” is thus achieved through equanimity, which is a Buddhist concept. Throughout China’s long history, Confucianism and Buddhism have battled each other as the favorite tool of the rulers governing over a massive, mostly uneducated, population.) ….

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Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 4, Part 17 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: But let’s throw in one more factor here that’s important, especially since so many of us are going to become clinicians, and that’s projection and transference reactions. Every one of us has had the experience of relating to God-like teachers, and that was our parents. When we were infants and little children, our parents, by comparison, were so incredibly knowledgeable and powerful, and could give love or take it away. Freud was quite right in pointing out that this creates very deep, very primitive kinds of attitudes toward powerful figures like that and, without buying all of psychoanalysis, these things happen in later life, so you get transference reactions. Okay?

So these primitive feelings that you had toward your father or mother get transferred to some other living human being who, of course, isn’t your father or mother, and isn’t magical. But some parts of you regard them that way. And I’ve seen a lot of this happen in various spiritual teaching situations. When it first begins to happen, it’s wonderful for the person who experiences it.

You fall in love with your guru. They are so wonderful and what they do works. You have experiences. When you were a little kid and you hurt yourself you ran to mommy and she kissed the boo-boo and made it better. It works! The guru kisses the (psychological) boo-boo and makes it better, and that draws from and stimulates this deep transference kind of reaction in you.

The trouble is that this devotion and appreciation and energy toward following the guru is based on a fundamental error. This person is not your father or mother. You are not a little child. Whether they have any magic abilities or not is a wide open question, but you deep down feel that way. And of course, you rationalize it all as this is their spiritual ability coming through.

The problem with building on this foundation is that transferences can flip from positive to negative if the right circumstances come along. And all of a sudden, this wonderful emissary from God, who loved you and taught you everything you know, is a God damn fucking charlatan who’s been exploiting you the whole time, and you lose everything! All the effort you put in, all the skills you learned, you don’t want to have anything to do with it because it’s gone to a negative transference! All the things you hated about your parents suddenly become projected on to the relationship, smothering the positive projections.

As far as I can tell, most spiritual teachers have very little awareness of the phenomena of transference (or counter-transference, which swells up the ego of the spiritual teacher). And so they have a lot of problems with these sorts of things. They don’t know how to handle them.

One of the early groups I was in was led by Claudio Naranjo, when he was on a very spiritual “high.” And no, I don’t think he was “enlightened,” but he was in touch with something really important. He was also a psychiatrist, and he made his students write essays on their transference relationships with him every once in awhile.

Student: Wow.

CTT: Very unusual kind of approach, which some people, who I think had big transferences, said “This is our opportunity to tell him how much we know he really is God.”

(Laughter)

Scary. Scary.

Let me just finish one other item in this story. Maybe you’ve read about it in the book already; maybe you haven’t. When I ran a mindfulness training group along Gurdjieff lines for about a year and a half, two years, I tried to keep people aware of this transference dimension because I didn’t want that kind of psychological distortion confusing the skills people were learning to be more present.

But it started happening, and I could see it happening. Somebody would ask me a question and I’d say “I don't know the answer to that.” And they’d get this look in their eye that this was a very profound answer on my part.

(Laughter)

And it wasn’t a profound answer. I just didn’t know! So I tried to explain that to them, you know? “Don’t act like that’s profound. I just don’t know.”

(Laughter)

And the look would get deeper.

(Laughter)

He’s very humble, as well as profound!

(Laughter)

I saw this starting to go out of control, so I ended the group, because I didn’t want that kind of crap happening. I didn’t know how to take people through that in a sensible sort of way. But it’s something to always watch out for in any spiritual path that somebody’s on. Transference and a countertransference.

You know I don't know how popular Freud is among clinicians nowadays, but that part of it you should be familiar with, because it’s a very real thing in spiritual circles. And especially because it’s not understood at all, by and large. That makes it all the more powerful. And it’s one of these things that, if you understand it, you have a chance to do something about it.

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Ouspensky weighs in on the 5%

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 4, Part 12 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

Student: Before you said that I was thinking about this 5 percent and the Ouspensky book. In that book, doesn’t he talk about there only being a certain amount of knowledge?

CTT: Ah. Yes.

Student: And so that’s a little bit, not confusing, but sometimes uncomfortable. Sometimes it feels good, like, “Oh yeah, some privileged people,” but then sometimes it’s like “Oh, that’s not so nice.” Like it kind of reminds me a little bit of Christianity and that Jesus is the only Son.

Student: Is that where he says I need somebody who can be enlightened and those things like that?

Student: Same time.

CTT: Ouspensky uses the analogy of gold, there’s only so much gold in the world and if you gave everybody an equal share, then we’d each have a tiny grain that did nobody any good. I always hate that part of the book, and I refuse to believe it.

Student: Okay.

CTT: And I hope it’s not true.

Student: Okay.

CTT: But suppose it is. I mean suppose there’s a literal food of impressions to really take you into a higher level of consciousness, but its amount is very limited, then it could indeed be the case that you could have a few people who’d move to a whole new level by getting nourished enough. But if you spread it all around, it wouldn’t make any difference with anybody.

I’ll bet we could use an ordinary analogy: medical care. Fancy medical care can extend people’s life. If you do that for people say who are very productive people contributing to society, you’re going to think that’s wonderful, but it costs you a lot. If you take that same amount of money and spread it around equally to every single person on the planet, then what? Everybody will have one less cold, but we’ll all die at the same age.

Now see I really don’t like that part of Gurdjieff. I refuse to believe it, but I recognize my resistance. I rationalize that he said this to deliberately motivate people more. This is a variation of the guy lying in ambush with the stick to find out when you’re not practicing enhanced awareness. I hope this limited amount stuff is not true.

Student: But it’s like the lack of intelligence thing where, when you want to sell something, you say “Oh yeah, limited time offer.” Tomorrow the price is going up, so if you want it at this low, hot price you need to buy it today. And time’s running out, and we’ve got masses of orders coming in, and we might run out of stock. And when you call up a place and you say “Have you got that book?” and they go, “Let me see.”

If you want a room at a hotel and they go, “Oh, let me check. Oh yeah, there’s one room left,” and then you have a conversation and it turns out there were 8 or 10 rooms available. And anyway. (Laughter) I already went out of the mix. (Laughter)

CTT: Let’s just note this as another factor to keep in mind as you study various spiritual traditions. You know? There are realities here that are vitally important, and there are human distortions of the whole process, and there are styles of teaching. Okay?

For a lot of people, Gurdjieff’s methods were harsh, and he was obviously abusing people. There was no question about it. For others, he was the greatest spiritual master ever to come along. For others, he was a real pain in the ass who got them moving. And he would go out of his way to egg people on.

His philosophy was not, “Oh, oh you poor precious souls, we have to make you happy.” His philosophy was that most people were going to die like dogs. They’re not going to make any effort. It’s not worth wasting your time on them. So you’ve got to screen people very rapidly for the ones with potential for actually waking up and then you can treat those people in any way that will actually get them to wake up. If that means being nasty to them at times, no problem.

Waking up is so precious that you wouldn’t give a damn whether you felt like you’d been abused in the process. It’s like when they do CPR on you when you’ve had a heart attack and you’re going to die, right? If you survived, you don’t waste your time sitting around afterwards thinking “Oh, they were pounding on my chest in a very undignified way.”

(Laughter)

“You know they should have respected me more,” or something like that. You can all see the sense of that approach in a way.

At the same time, what abuse potential that idea has! What a rationalization for charlatans who are not genuine spiritual teachers, but who like to push people around and abuse and exploit them and then claim that it’s for their own good. Don’t we have a preference for the saintly ones who sit up there and beam smiles at us and give us blessings?

(Laughter)

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Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 3, Part 11 of 13 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Nobody’s asking the question people always ask of how come only your arms and legs? So I’ll give you the answer anyway. Do some people at least wonder?

Student: Yeah.

CTT: Point one, it’s traditional. That’s the way it was taught to me and you know I’m a great respecter of tradition and don’t believe in any change.

(Laughter)

Point two, I have heard a rationale for it which makes a fair amount of sense for me, but I don't know if it’s an absolute truth, namely that arms and legs are neutral territory for most people. That is, there are psychologies that think that somehow our problems and traumas in our life get stored up in particular kinds of body locations, and those are mostly all in the torso, rather than your arms and legs. So you’re not going to reactivate any old traumas by keeping some attention in your arms and legs, because that’s kind of neutral territory.

Student: Okay.

CTT: It makes sense. Reason three, there are generally good quality sensations in your arms and legs from being moved around a lot in the course of daily life. It’s easy to find them. You know, if I said concentrate on the seventh vertebrae, duh, where’s that, and I’m not sure it’s got any feeling there. The arms and legs always have something.

The more practical way I personally apply it is I always sense my whole body, for instance, but that’s because I’ve been doing that sort of thing for years and I’m comfortable with my whole body. I don’t think I have any trauma bombs hidden in there ready to go off. So what I advise people is if you find you’re actually kind of sensing your whole body naturally, that’s fine, but don’t force yourself to sense your whole body if you’re not sure about that. And again, a more limited area like your arms and legs, is easier.

Do the priming exercise first thing in the morning, especially before you read the news. Do you want to prime your mind with the idea that you could be more conscious? Or that the world’s going to hell in a hand-basket? That’s what happens if you turn on the news, or that the traffic’s worse, or something like that. Do this sensing, looking, and listening (SLL) as much as you can during the day.

Now I would suggest you do it mainly in short bursts. That is, if you say I will do this process continuously for the next 16 hours, you’ll probably forget about it in 5 minutes and then start feeling guilty. It’s much better to say I’ll do this for a couple of minutes now while I walk to the other side of the building, or while I fix myself a cup of tea, or something like that, and have some success with it in a kind of limited process. And then think ah, I can go back to sleep for a minute, a vacation from larger consciousness….

Of course you might get to like this and want to do it all the time and that’s all right. But do it in a natural way. Don’t force. Ideally, you should have had at least a year’s practice in concentrative meditation before I even introduced this practice, and who has time for that in modern life? Even the Tibetan monks complain there isn’t proper time for concentrative meditation. They get more time at it than most people.

But by doing the sensing, looking, and listening process, you’re also practicing developing concentration. You’re also practicing Vipassana. You’re practicing staying in touch with body sensations. You’re not making them the main focus, but you’re keeping some attention in there and learning more sensitivity to your body that way.

If you would like to do some formal concentrative meditation or Vipassana meditation sessions in addition to sensing, looking and listening, that’s fine. All three of these things will reinforce each other. I’m going to make the sensing, looking, and listening (SLL) the main focus for the rest of the quarter, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t profit by more time spent sitting in more formal meditation periods.

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