Ilya Prigogine Meets Thinley Norbu or: The Youthful Vase Body IS a Dissipative Structure

This article was first published in our sister blogspot dedicated to natural forms of healing and maintained by Healthy Healing Center, in Goa.  We are reposting it here today because it contains much food for thought (for those who still the leisure and time to think, rather than being compelled to mechanically and without interruption act and react to the stimuli of the moment). 

Healing and 'enlightenment' are indeed deeply interconnected.  The Buddha himself was called 'King of Physicians' by his contemporaries because what he shared with the world was a view of reality that had the potential to heal from all suffering by 'seeing through' limited concepts or ideas about the world, or life in general.  And that's why we're trying to weave it all together, 'healing' and meditation', the 'old science' and the 'new science', 'eastern experience' and 'western insight'.


The title of the posting, of course, sounds like a big mouthful of a headline! 

And I have to admit, formulating it, gave the writer a satisfying, wicked kind of pleasure.  As cumbersome as the title may at first sound, it points very much right to the heart of the matter of what healing, including through conventional medicine can achieve, when unfettered by limiting concepts – but rather enabled by empowering ones.  Empowering concepts are those that support the capacity for self-organization in all of life - including the awesome selfhealing capacity inherent in the bodymind.

That’s what healing involves: all of life.  Healing should not be administered only by following the inflexible rather limited laws of physics as laid down by the long-gone forefathers of modern science, like Descartes and Newton.  It should actually include the input from the more recent, modern theoretical physics, too.  Unfortunately, most often it doesn’t.  As Larry Dossey so aptly puts it, “We [physicians] have built a model of health and illness, birth and death, around an outmoded conceptual model of how the universe behaves, which was fundamentally flawed from the beginning.  While the physicists have been painfully eliminating the flaws from their own models, we have in medicine ignored those revisions totally.  We find ourselves, thus, with a set of guiding beliefs that are as antiquated as are body humors, leeching and bleeding.”

Yes, physicians are practical people, usually not much given to philosophical meandering.  But now, the time has indeed come to pay attention to our view of reality, as any physician will treat his or her patients according his or her basic view of life or the world.  What we see and take for real is what we are going to apply.  What we fail to notice, because it remains outside the frame of reference of our view, we will dismiss.  In short, the broader and more precise our view, the better healers and physicians we will be.  And that is our mission, isn’t it?  Not just filling up prescription pad after prescription pad!  And that’s why we are going to investigate, what entropy means for healing, as well as the impact of ‘dissipative structures’. 

Healing is not limited to merely restoring and nursing back to health out of order physical bodies, supposedly only made out of inert matter.  Although all healing will, to a large degree, always be working with this very body made of physical substance, when ignoring the realms of possibilities beyond substance, however, the healing will have less of an effect; it will remain incomplete.  We cannot be good physicians when we stay in the Newtonian universe.  We have to step into the vaster world of modern, post-Newtonian science – and may be even into the timelessly vast universe of meditation that defies the conceptual world as much as it informs it with a new kind of ‘energy’ or ‘information’. 

This ‘energy’ and ‘information’, in turn, defies entropy and enables surprising steps of evolution – and healing.

The centerpiece of the posting, therefore, is a long quote from the book Magic Dance by Thinley Norbu, a Tibetan scholar, artist and mature master of the crystal clear Buddhism that he taught.  When he spoke, Thinley Norbu spoke from experience.  Likewise, his motivation for writing was not in becoming famous or selling books but in sharing his experience beyond concepts for the purpose of empowering us, so that we, too, may experience the fullness of our own humanity – and its as yet uncharted limitless possibilities.

Engineer, social scientist, academic, futurist, writer, and visionary Willis Harman once wrote, “…Since we have come to the understanding that science is NOT a description of ‘reality’, but a metaphorical ordering of experience, the ‘new science’ does not impugn the ‘old’.  It is not a question of which view is ‘true’ in some ultimate sense.  Rather, it is a matter of which picture is more useful in guiding human affairs.”  Likewise we can state that the view beyond substance taken by Thinley Norbu, based on meditative experience, does not deny or ‘impugn’ substance but rather puts it in the place it needs to fill and deserves in the overall picture of a larger reality.

To begin with, we need to remember that the human body is more than an assembly of its parts.  And the origins of sickness involve more layers of reality than the rather restricted playground of the molecules…  This is why Thinley Norbu, in his rather poetic manner of phrasing it, states,

“Essence lineage is the unbreakable natural connection with continuous pure and natural energy.  If we separate natural energy from its secret source, it becomes obscured and impure…  When our subtle elements become gross… the pure essence of the elements seems diminished or lost, but really it has only become hidden.  Everything visible has invisible essence.  Even cement, which seems to be completely gross and inert, has invisible natural essence…”

“The fresher something is, the closer it is to its natural source… The older food gets, the more stale and inert it is, and the less accessible its secret essence is to us when we eat it.  Our phenomena are constantly in the process of becoming stale and inert unless, through practice, we can return them to freshness… Our body is constantly in the process of becoming inert unless, through practice, we can return it to the Youthful Vase Body…”

“Youth is symbolic of pure balance in Dharma because the secret essence of the elements manifests visibly in things when they are young and their subtle and gross elements are in balance.  When a tree is young, its leaves display pure light and fresh colors because its branches, roots and leaves absorb and use earth, water, fire, air and space in balance with each other.  When sentient beings are young, their bodies are light and their complexion is fresh because they sustain their body from the earth’s food, blood from water, warmth from the sun’s fire, breath from air, and consciousness from mind’s space, in balance with each other.”

“As living things grow older, an imbalanced relationship develops between the subtle and gross elements, which are dependent on each other.  Some of the elements become more dominant and conspicuous while others become weaker and dormant.  Trees produce heavy inert bark, and the human body produces inert fingernails, hair, pus and mucus.  The leaves of the trees become brittle and colorless, people’s complexions become dry and pale, until finally the connection between the gross and the subtle elements becomes so imbalanced that it completely breaks, leaving a dead tree or a corpse as an inert remainder…”

“For those who are able to go beyond the obstructed gross and subtle elements to their unobstructed secret essence, there is no imbalance, and so no inert gross elements are left behind…”

These are beautiful words, true poetry.  But they are not meant to remain mere poetry.  They are meant to be translated into action – and thus made real.

Readers who are a little better educated in science will be able to draw parallels:  The eroding balance over time is easily recognizable as congruent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or Increased Entropy.  According to it, while the quantity remains the same, the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time.  This has to happen because usable energy is inevitably converted into unusable energy, as it has been spent for productivity, growth and repair.  Thus, useable energy is irretrievably lost in the form of unusable energy.  ‘Entropy’ then, is defined as a measure of unusable energy within a closed or isolated system (for example the human body).  


As usable energy decreases and unusable energy increases, entropy must increase, in proportion.  Entropy is also a gauge of randomness or chaos within a closed system.  As usable energy is irretrievably lost, disorganization, randomness and chaos increase.  This means with regard to the human body that, as the Buddha said, it has to age, fall increasingly prone to more and more illness – and finally die. 

This is the rule. 

But there are a few exceptions to the rule.  In science we call these exceptions ‘dissipative structures’.  What does the word infer?

Ilya Prigogine, a Belgian chemist, first discovered these dissipative structures, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, in 1977.  Larry Dossey explains, “The entire concern for the biological sciences, for example, is the study of exceptions to this irreversible trend [towards entropy].  Biologists study life; and living processes embody a trend away from the static equilibrium of entropy.  In a universe that is gradually running downhill, life processes are continually running uphill in defiance of the thermodynamicists’ second law…”

“Prigogine has described, through a series of complex mathematical equations how the second law can remain valid for the universe as a whole, yet fail in certain local parts.  Chance fluctuations do occur, and at a distance far enough from equilibrium [entropy] their effects can be magnified enormously.  In local defiance of the universal tendency towards disorganization, the fluctuations can give rise to forms of a new complexity… The more complex the structure, the greater is the energy flow required for its survival, and the greater the internal perturbation is likely to be if it occurs.  In other words, increasing complexity generates a need for increasing energy consumption from the environment, which in turn gives rise to increasing fragility.  But ironically, it is this feature of the dissipative structure that is the key to its further evolution toward greater complexity.  For if the internal perturbation is great enough the system may undergo a sudden reorganization, a kind of shuffling, and ‘escape to a higher order’”…

This ‘escape to a higher order’ is what Thinley Norbu, in his piece, calls the ‘Youthful Vase Body’ – a body, inconceivable for the concepts of ordinary mind, because informed by the limitless energy reservoir of the ground of being, and thus not limited by either time, or death.  Of course, for those subject to the inevitability of death, it is difficult to understand the deathless.

Yet, this so-called Youthful Vase Body has been realized or experienced by some who dared to follow a certain path of practice, to the end.  For them, ‘the end’ suddenly turned into the equilibrium of self-renewing energy, forever leaving behind the ordinary equilibrium of entropy, or total exhaustion of all energy.  This is actually not as far-fetched as it may sound.  It is just one of the possibilities offered by existence that we tend to ignore, due to our identification with death, or entropy.

However, even from an ordinary physician’s point of view the transcending and reorganizing qualities of dissipative structures are very revealing as they reaffirm, proven through mathematics and science, the body’s innate capacity for meeting the challenge of disease of its own accord – and dealing with it successfully.   Because the body has this innate capacity to fight off disease, we need to strengthen it.  Rather than staying focused on disease, we need to focus on health.

Therefore Larry Dossey writes, “Our health strategy needs to incorporate flexibility as a primary goal – the adaptability and capacity to react to the periodic challenges to our body/mind integrity.  What we do in the interval between illnesses also becomes crucial.  I can, by conscious [or unconscious] effort, sabotage my body’s wisdom to resist perturbation.  If I subject myself to negative health habits – smoking, obesity, unrelieved exposure to stress, chronic fatigue, failure to exercise, uninterrupted anxiety or depression – I limit my body’s homeostatic capacity to react to external perturbations.  I ask it to do what the bamboo in its wisdom never attempts: to remain rigid in the face of stressful and perturbing events.”

“Seen from this perspective, the real medicine is what we do between illness-events.  All of the techniques of health care, which we relegate to the second-class status of preventive medicine, are of critical importance for they help determine the body’s capacity to successfully reorder itself to a higher degree of complexity when actually challenged by disease processes.”

“Conversely, the traditional approach of medicine and surgery should be viewed as a second line of defense.  These methods should be used as a last resort, as a supplement to the body’s wisdom…”

The bottom line is: because of the self-organizing capacities inherent in the human body old age, disease and suffering are surmountable, even though this is difficult to achieve.

Due to the same: disease prevention is far superior to fighting disease.  It should be the primary form of health care.

All of this is what the hard sciences have to teach the science of medicine, in accordance with the experience of meditators.

Meditation supports and calls forth the ultimate dissipative structures.  It is a viable strategy for better health – and eventually may lead much further than physical fitness.

Retreating into the 'Jungle' of the Human Body

The following are excerpts from Touching Enlightenment by Reginald Ray PhD.  From my knowledge of the available literature on Buddhist yoga in western languages, there is no other book like this, not even Tarthang Tulkus series of publications on Kum Nye.  The Kum Nye books are manuals of instruction attempting to stay clear of all matters personal, in Touching Enlightenment Reggie Ray invites the reader to share his very intimate and very direct exploration of his life and practices as a Buddhist yogi.  As I said, it is personal, but in a way that Carl Jung's  memoirs, or Lama Govinda's Way of the White Clouds were 'personal' - inviting the reader to join the pilgrimage to greater knowing and penetrating insight: personal but not at all gossipy and overly anecdotal.  The main theme being that directly exploring our own bodies is the only ultimate retreat, the only 'jungle' left to us in the dawning of another insane century, this time the 21st (in no way more enlightened than the 20th, or any century before).

"In the Buddhist past, when questions have arisen about the authenticity of institutionalized, conventionalized Buddhist organizations, politics, beliefs and practices, practitioners have retired into the 'forest' (Skt: vana, aranya), the classical term for the uninhabited jungles of India.  The 'forest' was regarded as a place beyond the reach of conventional culture and institutionalized Buddhism, a place where the atmosphere was open and unobstructed.  The 'forest' was understood as a trackless waste, a place for all those 'others' standing outside of conventional culture,… and, most important, those spiritual practitioners who literally walked away from the conventionalized religious systems of India, seeking the 'origin of all things'."

"Within Indian culture, the 'forest' was considered the ideal place for spiritual practice because, in the forest, there are no rules and there are no presiding authorities.  The only authority is the chaos of the forest itself.  The only rule is what awaits there for each practitioner, unlikely, to discover.  Memories of the past and plans for the future, the psychic infrastructure of civilization, do not apply… The forest is about something else.  In the forest there is only the ever present possibility of events, encounters, and insights that emerge directly from reality itself, pure and unpolluted by human wants, expectations, and attitudes.  Uniquely in the forest, the most radical of all human journeys can take place, one which brings us into direct contact with primordial being.  Generally, the greatest saints of Buddhist tradition both in India and larger Asia were products, so to speak, of the forest…"

"Increasingly in our world, there is no longer any geographical forest for us practitioners to retire to.  It is not just that the places frequented by lonely meditators have been overrun by modern civilization… every manifestation of Buddhism, it now seems, must immediately demonstrate 'social engagement' and 'ethical impact'.  It is not that these are unimportant values.  But now, more and more, they have become a litmus test to determine which forms of Buddhism are acceptable, and which are not.  Thus the true 'forest' is quickly disappearing, perhaps forever, from our world."

"But there is a new wilderness, a new trackless waste, a new unknown and limitless territory, a new terrain of chaos, that calls us.  It is a territory - I do believe - that has not been, and cannot be, colonized and domesticated by human ambition and greed, that in its true extent cannot be mapped by human logic at all.  This is the 'forest' of the human body.    The body is now, I believe, our forest, our jungle, the 'outlandish' expanse in which we are invited to let go of everything we think, allow ourselves to be stripped down to our most irreducible person, to die in every experiential sense possible and se what, if anything, remains."

"In this, I am speaking not of the body we think we have, the body we conceptualize as part of our 'me' or my self-image.  Rather, I am talking about the body that we meet when we are willing to descend into it, to surrender into its darkness and its mysteries, and to explore it with our awareness.  As we shall see, this true, limitless body cannot even be entered until we are willing to leave our own thinking process behind - on the surface, so to speak.  It is similar to the deep-sea diver: while floating on the surface of the sea he knows little of what lies below, but when he descends into its depths, the limitless worlds of the ocean open to him.  It was of this ever unbounded and unknown body that the great

mahasiddha Saraha spoke when he said, 'There is no place of pilgrimages fabulous and as open as this body of mine, no place worth more exploring."

The Buddhist yoga that we are sharing here in Goa, occasionally, has no affiliation and nothing to do with any form or format that Reggie Ray may use for his own presentations in groups that are learning together with him 'how to meditate with the body', or 'touching enlightenment with the body'.  And yet, what he is saying in these few passages very much sounds like what is breaking forth through some us in our gatherings.  And naturally, I love his articulate way of saying what needs to be said to leave behind us this unfortunate artificial and fake tinkering with the body and the mind that many take for 'meditation'.  Really meditating with the body is actually quite different from any contrived effort to do so as a smart means for well defined ends.

Cutting through Layers of Conceptualization

The following is the feedback from Dr Ankur Kumar describing the effects of his recent retreat in Cabo de Rama, in Goa.  In sharing his experiences he indirectly demonstrates how NadiPrana is designed to peel layer after layer of mental and emotional conceptualizations.  After the letting go of the first resistance, he immediately experienced another layer coming up on day 6 and 7 of the retreat, in order to be felt and integrated.  This is actually quite normal  In his own words:

"The apparent objective was that this retreat would be a 'precursor' to the longer individual retreat to follow - to enable the body to 'sit' for longer periods, and for the mind to 'quieten down', for the same purpose.  I knew from my previous NadiPrana retreat that this would be one of the benefits."

"The other less obvious but paramount motivation came from the inkling, again from previous experience albeit limited, that NadiPrana offers a unique opportunity for self-exploration and nurturing awareness to its highest potential."

"As soon as the retreat began, barring a meek resistance, the body was happy to engage and the mind happy to settle as if into its own nature.  However, the fear of a particular exercise remained largely unexplored due to my own lack of will, despite the instructions/suggestions to engage with 'decisiveness, dedication and relaxed focus'.  The curiously interesting thing of note, here, was that what was a 'difficult' or 'challenging' exercise for me, turned out to be a simple or even enjoyable posture for others, and vice versa. This possibly points to the different set of resistance patterns, emotions and/or blockages each person has: a unique bundle of stuckness."

There was a palpable flow of energy in several exercises - energy in the form of heat, tingling, gross bodily movements, or an inner massage, emotions or simply 'energy' too subtle to be put into words.  The stillness and feeling of bliss that followed after each exercise (usually when sitting down & feeling after the completion of the posture) felt completely uncontrived. Waves of energy, quite pleasurable at times, arose and settled." 

The stillness was of an unusual kind, hard to describe.  It was not mental dullness or fogginess - the mind was alert, yet at the same time very calm.  Sense perception had a different than usual quality.  Thoughts became more 'transparent', often a distant configuration of 'proto-ideas'.  Day 3-5 of the retreat were the most enjoyable, most easy, blissful even - with episodes of stillness merging into each other, to gradually fade into a space beyond words - or into unconscious babble, which was tantamount to an escape from directly noticing and feeling what was actually going on."

"Then came day 6 & 7, which marked a sharp return to a resistance to feeling anything at all, as well as an onslaught of emotions, which I labeled 'negative' because they brought up unpleasant memories and hurts from the past."

Dr. Ankur Kumar has been a student of Buddhist Yoga and Buddhism since 2005.  He took refuge with Nagchang Choyin Dorje in 2006, and since then, has also been a student of the late Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche, as well as Acharya Dawa Chhodak Rinpoche, both in Nepal and India.  He works as a registrar for anesthesia in a hospital in Perth.  He follows the path of a householder yogi.  

The Realization of All-Encompassing Bliss

The Realization of All-Encompassing Bliss, the meditation song about the three kayas, was sung by King Devaraja in these words in the city of Gunashri at the time of dusk.

HUM
I bring within the perfect natural state
The urge to focus on apparent and existing things.

Worlds and beings, Samantabhadra from the first,
Nothing else than this, so undistracted I repose.

The training, I have realized, is simply this:

This body, made of matter, just a label for illusion,
My mind has reached the greatest wakefulness.

CHANDRA DEVA KOSALA A HO!

Moreover, the Instruction of Vimalamitra states:

The poisons five are present as five wisdoms,
Seeing this is knowledge most sublime.

from "Wellsprings of the Great Perfection", compiled and translated by Erik Pema Kunsang (one of my favorite books, giving voice to the early masters of mahasandhi, or dzogchen.

How to ‘Un-Stuck’ One’s Life – Gagori’s Feedback

For me, the most fascinating aspect of Buddhist yoga is neither in its history, nor in its still thriving age-old practices and lineages, nor even in the awesome feats and realizations of Tibetan yogis, past and present… now featured on DVD – but in its perennial workability.

Buddhist yoga works now as good as ever.  It can work for everyone.  It helps the untrained beginner as much as the advanced practitioner.  Everyone can apply it in order to explore how sensations, feelings, thoughts, emotions, mind, and body interact to co-create different moment-to-moment ‘realities’; and how these ‘realities’ constantly shift and change.  It is totally process-oriented, free of any pet theory set in stone regarding a ‘self’ or a ‘soul’, or any once and forever fixed ‘ideal state of being’ or ‘consciousness’ that we would need to achieve in order to become the ‘perfect human’. 

Rather we are the ‘perfect human’, even now, begging to be discovered. 

As Dogen Zenji, one of the great Japanese Zen masters once remarked, “If you want to study Buddhism, study the [coming and going of the myriad things in] the universe; in order to study the universe, examine this lump of flesh.”  It is all here, but not in the concepts and theories we entertain about it.  In order for genuine understanding to dawn, this ‘lump of flesh’ has to become alive and aware, so to speak, in the course of an open-ended exploration.

Then, when we closely attend to the interplay of the factors and aspects that create us in a moment-to-moment fashion, feeling it unfold through our ever- changing embodiment, again and again and over a long time, we begin to get a sense of how ‘fluid’, how ‘un-stuck’ we can be.  And that is the whole point: to be un-stuck.  What is left of the so-called ‘real reality’ when everything, including our ‘self’, constantly changes? 

There IS.  But IS will have to remain undefined.  Concepts cannot nail ‘it’ down.  Buddhist yoga leads into this open space that cannot be nailed down – that is embodied liberation, not just ‘health’, not just ‘feeling good’ but ‘embodied liberation’; in another word: ‘bliss’ not tied to subject or object; in short: blissfully vast!

However, the path leading there is a personal journey, and one has to walk the path in order to get to this particular ‘nowhere’ that is everywhere and everything, without ever being one and the same.  Walking this path – sitting, breathing, moving, and then acting in a more compassionate, feeling, respectful manner toward ‘self’ and ‘others’ – all of this turns into a wonderful adventure, too, because it reconnects us with our deepest humanity.

It all starts in the beginning.  It all starts with you and I and our so-called ‘most mundane’ concerns.  It is good to hear the story be retold from many different voices.

In the following Gagori Mitra-Gupta will share some of her experiences from the recent NadiPrana Buddhist Yoga retreat that was conducted in the south of Goa, late August this year.  She has been a student of Buddhist yoga since 2002, now going a lot deeper than she ever did.  Gagori holds a Masters Degree in Human Resource management, but already many years ago opted for leaving the corporate world.  Instead she teaches modalities of bodymind therapy, including Ayurvedic massage.   You can learn more about her and her work at www.aitheinhealing.com

“For me, the NadiPrana retreat this August past was one of the best in all these years…I say best because the energy of the small group was one, a lot of support came from each participant.  We all shared this space together, this precious time.”

“When I arrived, I was actually suffering from severe anxiety attacks.  I had even left Pune a few days early, in order to be with someone I trusted totally, as I said, these attacks were severe.  I felt as if I was going to die.  The negative thoughts were so strong that they appeared absolutely real, or almost.  Every second thought that I had was about death, my own impending death, so to speak.  I could not sleep in the night, as my heart would race into palpitations.  It really felt as if my chest was about to burst.  This happened during the retreat, too, and I faced it, went through with the exercises my mind in turbulence, sat through the palpitations while meditating.”

“However, on the fourth day I realized that all of this had been and still was my mind’s creation.  This realization was rock solid.  It did not come as a superficial ‘intellectual insight’, like an ‘idea’ that had struck my fancy.  It felt more like the ‘whole body knowing’ what the mind was doing, far more stable and embodied than any concept, free of doubt.”

“I am not a newcomer to Buddhist yoga.  This last one must have been my fifth or sixth retreat.  So I had experienced in the past how the body actually stores memories in each and every cell, not just in the ‘brain’, or ‘mind’ – and how the simple NadiPrana postures set these memories free, to be felt again as a presence and released.  Or how action and reaction patterns keep repeating in one’s life, like making the same mistake or sacrifice again and again.  This time, for example, it became so clear to me how I often give in to suggestions and that I do not really wish to follow, but I do it anyway just in order to please everyone, to be ‘nice’…  Like, my heart wants to stay home and rest, but I push myself to go out and party and meet people.  And then I curse myself for doing so, and feel angry and shitty inside.”

“Another new thing was the mediations after the exercises.  In NadiPrana we always sit for 5, 10, sometimes 15 minutes after an exercise, in order to give the bodymind sufficient time and space to integrate the energies, feelings and sensations set free by the practice.  In the past, I had always tended to get lost in thoughts when sitting.  But this time I could focus.  I could feel what was flowing and moving through me instead of thinking about other things.”

“Overall, there was more sense of purpose, more dedication, or devotion pouring out of me.  I particularly noticed this shift during the so-called vajra posture.  The first day, I did it mechanically, but the second day, I was so focused, and concentrated, and not at all fighting with myself.  No pain would have made me move.  I sat down fully energized.  What a great way to be.”

“And one more thing.  I want to learn more, not ‘techniques’ but essence. And I want to be ready to teach from that.”

Saraswati's Wisdom Magic

“Children of Buddha, the oceans of worlds

Have various forms and characteristics…

There are infinite distinctions. 

Some are shaped like whirlpools,

Some like mountains of flames,

Some like trees, some like flowers,

Some like palaces, some like Buddhas.

There are as many forms such as these as there are atoms

In an ocean of worlds.

-Avatamsaka Sutra, ‘The Formation of Worlds’ 

From the above quote, we may conclude that in ancient times people were living in a multi-faceted and -layered universe, allowing their senses to reach beyond apparent limitations, conceiving of innumerable worlds and describing them in their scriptures and experiencing them in visions.  Whereas in present times we often seem unable to see beyond the concerns of our own petty needs and emotions.   We likewise tend to reduce all issues to the tiny reference frame of this one planet, life and brain, through the mirror of a very limited understanding of mind.

Yet even today, perception beyond what is considered ‘normal’ is not only possible; it is actually so common and occurs, albeit unnoticed, so often that it might as well be regarded as ‘norm’ denied. 

The only trouble is: We usually cannot acknowledge these perceptions because, by force of fear, we are inclined to dispute the ‘paranormal’.  From childhood we have been taught to be afraid of what lingers outside the boundaries of the socially accepted norm. This habit makes us lazy and blinds us to recognizing the whole palette of options for perception and action at our disposal in any given situation. Habit, especially when enforced by fear, blocks and suppresses our natural flexibility.  Consequently, it makes us dull and dumb.

However, paranormal perception, or anything beyond the boundary of the established ‘norm’, can be much more than a flight of fancy:  it can be a useful tool.  It can help us, for example, in the kind of crisis or ‘conflict situations’ to which there appear to be no so-called ordinary solutions.  In such cases, any intervention based on ‘paranormal perception’ does not, in fact, involve any phenomena, which we would need to regard as ‘extraordinary’ per se.  Rather, the practical workability of paranormal perception through the ordinary ‘magic’ brought to bear through a trained heart, mind and hand, only proves how ordinary this all is.  In the last analysis, in all of these cases, it is first our minds that stretch beyond their limits - and ‘perception’ or ‘reality’, then only follow. 

In order to illustrate our point, let’s examine a real life event that actually happened.

Several years ago, a personal friend of ours underwent a sudden and inexplicable change of character, from generally displaying the traits of a loving, compassionate and supportive human being to becoming, let’s say it as it was, the proverbial ‘son-of-a-bitch’, and insufferable to boot.  People tried to point the obvious alteration for the worse out to him, but he could not notice anything of this sort, and thus would not even listen.  In his own eyes, he still was the same – the ‘nice guy’ he had always been.  As a result, he felt wrongly accused, and in response to outside criticism became even more obstinate and, of course, irritated.  ‘Being irritated’, ‘becoming violently angry’ and ‘acting with smug arrogance’ had turned into his ‘new normal’. Which made it difficult to stay in touch with him, and much of his family even stopped calling him or talking to him. 

We were saddened but also intrigued.  What had happened? 

When we examined the situation on the basis of the information that we had at our disposal, we could not come up with any logical explanation.  It was impossible to pinpoint any clear-cut psychological or physiological cause, for example in terms of sudden drastic lifestyle changes, relationship and other emotional troubles, let alone alcohol or substance abuse.  We could not make heads or tails of it.  For lack of an explanation based on reason, we went to see our Buddhist root teacher Acharya Dawa Chhodak Rinpoche to ask for his opinion and advice.  He suggested that we do one of his so-called Saraswati mirror divinations.  Let Saraswati shine some light on this issue. 

For some, involving Sarasawati, the Hindu goddess of learning and also one of the Buddhist deities of wisdom, would automatically infer a call on the ‘divine’ or ‘paranormal’. For others, such as ourselves, appealing to Saraswati for help is like seeking recourse to a different aspect of mind, not restricted to ordinary human mind, but also not totally beyond its reach, especially for those properly trained. We don’t see anything special or ‘esoteric’ in it, just another feature of reality.

After having completed years of training in this discipline and with decades of practical experience, Lama Dawa by now has become an undisputed master in this kind of divination.  And prior experience had showed us time and again that it was helpful.  The divinations had proved accurate whenever we had consulted Saraswati’s mirror, regarding all different kinds of problems. Not only that:  the advice given had also contributed to solving these same problems.

Our question regarding our friend‘s total change in personality, then, solicited the following unusual answer.  According to Saraswati, “When on foot on the sidewalk in a busy city our friend had bumped unintentionally and unknowingly into a so-called ‘king-demon’.  Angered by the affront the ’king-demon’ in turn had cursed our friend by transferring part of his own habitual bad temper unto him.  And from that moment the poor guy could not help himself but had to act out the ‘king-demon’ part, while remaining totally ignorant of the fact.  The remedy”, Saraswati continued, “would be, to have a particular Mahayana Sutra recited and dedicated to him according to his age (i.e. recited as many times as years that he had lived).”  Lama wrote the answer down on a piece of paper and gave some additional information about the character and actions of  ‘king demons’.

We had received seemingly off-the-wall replies before – strange according to conventional wisdom.  We nevertheless had always followed the recommendation.  Thus, we did not hesitate and commissioned the sutra recitation that Saraswati had suggested and had it done by some yogis in Kathmandu. 

A few weeks after the recitation had been completed, we called our friend.  Naturally, we were quite curious and wanted to find out if the ‘magical intervention’ had been successful. 

From the way our friend responded when he picked up the phone it became obvious on the spot that he had reverted to his previous amicable self.  By the way, we had never informed him about what we had initiated on his behalf.  It was not mentioned at the time.  We only talked about it recently, several years later.  Now in retrospect, he was actually able to connect the dots. There had dawned a previously buried awareness in him regarding the sudden switch of character in him, from ‘generally friendly’ to ‘generally irritated and angry’ – and back to ‘friendly’.

If such occurrences as told in this story still surprise us, this only shows how ignorant we remain of the extreme limitation of what we normally think is ‘conceivably possible’.  The ‘conceivably possible’ constitutes but the thinnest of slivers of this vast multi-faceted, grandiose reality, this totally magical world that we inhabit.

A few months ago, I quoted in one of my FB pages from basic science’s ordinary wisdom.  Yes, you read correctly, science not spiritual wisdom.  And this is the quote: “You can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum, and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum.  As you read this you are traveling at 220Km per second [NOT per hour, PER SECOND!!!] across the galaxy… RELAX!”

In other words, due to the limitations inherent in the way we have been programmed to use our senses, we are almost blind and near completely deaf.  Our capacity to perceive is pretty undeveloped, and our world a much more dynamic and ever-unfolding process than our rigid ego-minds are able, or even willing to comprehend. Which is less due to an inherent lack of capacity of the senses but rather more due to the way they have been conditioned to function. As one of my former Lamas used to say, “In ordinary circumstances mind will neither be open nor flexible; it merely functions as a reduction valve.”  One of the causes is fear, which has been put into us to keep us feeling small and our view narrow.

Indeed, many a world exists that we cannot see; many a beauty and truth vibrate inside and around us that we are not yet equipped to hear.  Ordinary mind filters them out.  Much of the cosmic, and all of the sub-atomic interplays escape our ordinary noticing.  Such is the situation. And modern science confirms it. Yes, we are 99% blind and 99% deaf.  So, may be, the time has come to open and fine-tune our eyes and ears.  If we do that even our so-called ‘ordinary’ world will be imbued and reflect a very different kind of light – and lightness than the drab and unresponsive version of reality that we take for the ‘only’ reality there is.

Reality is so much closer, and so much more vital.  All realities unseen and unheard of, like in our example the world of the ‘king-demons’ (as only one among innumerable possible worlds), are given together with ‘our’ everyday reality.  At certain points they intersect with it.  And as we showed in above anecdote, they can also impinge upon us.  They can influence our life in a negative or positive manner, no matter how much rational mind prefers to deny it. 

In all of this, we are not at all powerless victims governed and pushed around by outside forces too strong for us to understand, harness, transmute or transcend.  To the degree that we allow our minds to manifest its own vastness, to the same degree our resources become vast, too.  Yet as a result, we do not turn into tyrannical ‘puppet-masters’, lording it over the rest of the mankind.  Rather, we remain part of the play of infinite enjoyment. 

Yes, people like you and I who from the outside appear plain and ordinary, and are free of delusions of grandeur, can achieve extraordinary things… without becoming full of ourselves or clinging to these strange powers that may be moving through us occasionally.  We simply play our ungraspable part in this continually co-emerging infinitely faceted universe… and be done with each particular play when it is complete.