The Power of Beliefs and the Substance of Reality
El Poder de las Creencias y la Sustancia de la Realidad
A student asks why beliefs are so powerful in shaping our experience of reality, leading to a wide-ranging exploration of boundaries, emptiness, substance, and what it means to encounter the luminous nature of things directly.
The Power of Beliefs and the Substance of Reality
A student asks why beliefs are so powerful in shaping our experience of reality, leading to a wide-ranging exploration of boundaries, emptiness, substance, and what it means to encounter the luminous nature of things directly.
Why do you think beliefs are so powerful, to the point that they shape how we interpret reality?
I wouldn't give power to beliefs. The way that question is framed is giving power to beliefs, but that's not where the power is. You can choose to give power to beliefs.
I could answer directly and say: because you give power to beliefs, that's why they're powerful. But then the follow-up question becomes: why is it so compelling to give power to beliefs? What is the attraction or temptation?
The prodigal son and the allure of separation
This is all over religious texts. It's a very fundamental theme. I always come back to the Christian parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal son is a metaphor about two sons, but we are one of them, and the Father is God. The Son and the Father are one, and the Son who leaves the Father basically leaves because he wants to live an adventure.
It's compelling because something is enjoyed until it's no longer enjoyable. It's enjoyable to believe in Santa Claus, and then at some point, when all of your friends know it's not real and you're still trying to hold on to that belief, it stops being enjoyable because now you're the only one who still holds it. In that particular example, it changes. But to believe we are something that we're not allows us to experience things in a way that is quite fascinating. Suffering, just to put it under a big term, is one of the main things that it allows us to experience. And suffering is quite an interesting experience.
The sense that one has power, that one has agency, that one can control: that is quite an interesting roller coaster. At some point we can start getting tired of that. That's why it's so important to really pay attention to what we're getting from experiences that we claim not to want, and to notice when we feel that we are powerless.
How would you define a belief?
Anything you can put into words that you believe to be absolutely true, with one exception: "There is something rather than nothing." That is the only statement that is absolutely true. Being is. Non-being is not. I actually like how Franklin Merrell-Wolff says it. He says, "Consciousness without an object is." Absolute consciousness is.
If belief is connected to language, how can we transcend language?
The mind's capacity to draw boundaries
I wouldn't say belief is a product of language. It's definitely connected to language, but it's the capacity of the mind to draw boundaries. Making something into an object can only happen by drawing a boundary. Think of the yin-yang symbol: black, white, a line separating. It shows the foundation of duality. The fact that we can draw a boundary separates something from something else. Then we can name things: black, white. But they're two sides of the same coin. The fundamental thing is the mind's capacity to draw a boundary and separate something from something else. From there, language is just the way we communicate, internally with ourselves or with others, around the world of form that has been broken up into objects by the mind.
How do we transcend that? By observing. You only experience the yin-yang image as two colors with a separating boundary when you think about it. Even in perception, there is only a boundary that separates it as an object in the mental space.
If I were to zoom in, and this is what science has done everywhere, they find that the paradigm of the atomic universe collapsed. It's still a useful representation and it's still taught in school as the foundation of reality, but it's false. The more they've zoomed into the atomic level, where they literally thought the whole universe was objects, really small objects, they found out: yes, there are electrons and protons and neutrons. But then they were able to look closer, and they realized it's empty space. It appears like an object, but it is empty space. So by observing closely, that paradigm collapses.
Does that mean that we are also emptiness?
Empty of boundaries, full of substance
Yes, empty and full, but not objects. If everything is one subject, that approximates something more correct. But if you follow that through, the sense of a subject makes no sense if everything is subject. That's why I prefer the word "being," because "subject" has a really strong implication of "object," whereas "being" implies non-being, something that is more intuitively impossible to pin down.
It's the difference between a verb and a noun. The noun is unchanging and stationary, a concept set in stone, with boundaries. In the beginning, it's boundless.
Yes. Words like consciousness, awareness, reality, being: they point to something more intuitively aligned with what we are.
We are emptiness in this sense: when you believe you are form and only form, the realization of emptiness is needed to contrast form as a belief. The belief in form supports the belief in separation and objects as absolute reality. In Buddhism, they talk about the recognition of emptiness. But it's only in the service of removing the belief in form. If somebody is walking around believing they are empty and everything is empty and there is no form, then they need to remove the belief in emptiness. But that is more unusual. A lot of teachings point to emptiness because people in general believe in form and separation. More and more today, in non-dual circles, there's a belief in emptiness, a belief in non-separation, and people walking around with these ideas. It's very easy to spot when somebody has a belief in non-separation.
How do you spot it?
It's just seeing. It's pretty obvious. There isn't a formula.
When you ask, "So then we're also empty?" it's an emptiness that is full. Empty of boundaries, but full of substance.
Substantiality and ponderability
I love this expression from Franklin Merrell-Wolff: "Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability." He was a mathematician, so I'll explain. Ponderability is something one can make an object of. He refers to substantiality as that which is essentially real, that which has essential substance.
Inverse proportion means: the more something appears ponderable, the less real or substantial it is. The less it appears ponderable, the more substantial it is.
I loved this expression for decades until I had the realization of it, where the substance of reality became direct experience, and everything that was ponderable disappeared as something separate or divisible.
Could you talk more about what you mean by ponderable?
It's anything you can turn into an object, anything you can talk about, anything you can separate from something else. It can still be abstract, like having control or not having control.
So in response to when you say "then we are empty": yes, but substantial. It took me quite a bit of time, because I was experiencing it, and the best word I could use was "substance." It took me months to connect it with Merrell-Wolff's statement because I had forgotten about it. Then I realized: that's the word. That's it, right there.
The experience of substance
Can you say anything more about substance? I know by doing so I'm making it into something ponderable, but still.
Substance is your experience right now of being. It's substantive. The knowing of that can be experienced very directly, like the experience you had of your hand. That is going from ponderable to more substantive. From "my hand," with a story, an object, a history, to this large field of sensation that has a more substantive quality: a presence, an energy, sensations. Versus the image of a hand that is there, that has a function, that is a part of me, that does things. That's more ponderable. The direct, raw experience of those sensations is more substantive.
You can think of that inverse equation as going toward infinity. Something can be infinitely closer to ponderable and less substantive, or vice versa. Something can be infinitely close to substantive and further away from ponderable. He's defining this mathematical aspect of reality: when we are experiencing and functioning from the perspective that things are very ponderable, we are further away from substantiality. When we are operating from the mind, we are further away from what is real.
When I hear you use the word substance, I get this sense that ponderability, or mind, or whatever you want to call it, comes and goes. But substance feels like this big, thick liquid of what everything is. It's always there, constantly, dancing or whatever it does. You can't see it, you can't put your finger on it, and yet it's the most solid thing and the most constant thing. There's something about the word "substance" that feels like a much more direct experience than "presence" or something like that.
Presence is another word, but if substance resonates more for you, go with it. I've experienced it as presence. Substance is more like an ocean, and that's why the ocean is such a common metaphor. Something more ponderable would be a wave. There's the boundary of that wave, then there's that other wave, and then little waves, bigger waves. But if the universe is an infinite ocean, then there's a substantive quality to it, and you can't define any border. That's a good metaphor, but it can also be experienced and known directly.
Substance coming through over the years
Did that experience of substance hit you all at once, all of a sudden, or was it gradual?
It started hitting me as a teenager, and it would knock me out, literally. I was having what I thought were blackouts. I would be sitting and then have this experience of that substance coming up, and I would faint but still be sitting. I wouldn't fall. I would have visions. I went to the doctor. I thought something strange was happening.
Not much later, when I had more of a direct sense of it and after I had met my teacher, I recognized that those visions were basically my mind switching off and going into the dream world to preserve a sense of identity and not dissolve into that, because I was too uninformed, too young, too weak of a mind to survive the experience.
Over time, it started becoming more and more present and more intense. I had conversations with my teacher about it, and he was basically asking me to go toward whatever invited that direct experience. But it was always the case that the more that became my experience, the more I felt it was overwhelming, because the more that form of experiencing or being became present, the more the sense of self was threatened. That's what a few years ago basically took over.
After that, the foundation of reality is that substantive nature, and form, the ponderable, is just floating around within it.
From your story, I go straight to: here you were, and it was very difficult, you were blacking out, it was overwhelming, and there was a certain resistance there. And yet it's another example of "that's where the treasure is, go for it." That's incredible.
My teacher told me, "It's been chasing you all your life. Your destiny has been chasing you all your life, and it finally got you. You've been escaping." It was like being caught between a rock and a hard place. The more I followed my desires to live, the more that substantive nature of reality started to bubble up and become present. So it was this back and forth: the more that bubbling up of substance became present, the more I tried to pull away out of terror. This went on for twenty years, twenty-five years or more.
The ego cannot not resist
That sounds pretty general. What they say, that the ego has to be strong enough. It seems there's no way of not resisting.
It is that way. The ego cannot not resist, because that's the definition of what the ego is. But what can happen is that it can be surrendered too early. For me, there was some kind of intuitive or deep intelligence where whenever it was too close too soon, the pulling away was strong enough to work on being more prepared. At some point, what happens is that you feel completely unprepared, completely not ready, completely trying to resist, and none of it matters. You have no control, no power over it. It's like a fruit on a tree trying not to fall, but it's growing and growing, and the little twig starts getting weak, and the fruit is saying, "No, no, I'm staying here," and then there's just nothing that can be done. Down it goes.
Samadhi and the trust to face death
What was interesting for me, which I don't fully understand, is that in anything I can describe as a sequence, there was first the recognition of nirvana, or samadhi. At the egoic level, that calmed the fear of death enough so that when the substance came on really strong, I think at a deep level there was a trust that was new. That came through my teacher, because when I first went to see him in person, on the second or third day I entered samadhi. Over time, I think that experience created a trust at the level of ego or identity, where death could be faced more fully.
Because what we're talking about is basically like dying. The mind cannot distinguish between what is projected around the body dying and the ego stopping for a moment. It is still experienced as going toward death. There's no way the mind can distinguish. It's the same thing. It is experienced as, "I'm going to die. I'm dying."
Is that why they say, "If you can die while you're alive, you never die"?
That's exactly it. Ultimately, all of those experiences or transitions or realizations are about seeing reality as it is and always was. Nothing is acquired or gained. It's what is lost that allows you to see: this reality has always been of a substantive nature. I just had always believed otherwise. But there was such a deep attachment. Life, "me," existed by believing that. The end of that belief is the end of the sense of self, the identity in that way.
Is the depth you're talking about something like a deep relaxation?
The relaxation is a side effect. I could put my body and mind into a lot of stress, but there's something at a deep level that's just completely unaffected. Whereas before, it was the other way around: there was something really deep, very contracted, and then any minor tension on the body-mind level was amplified.
Luminous essence
Can you say something about experiencing luminous essence? It happened to me and I've been wondering about it. I never really wanted to talk about it because I didn't want to make it into an identity or something, but I've been curious. It was after a retreat in April. That retreat was extremely gut-wrenching. It felt like I'd taken a plunger to everything and it all came out again, though I didn't do anything. It just happened. It was phenomenally emotional, and then it was over. My partner came up with the car to pick me up, and I sat in the car, and we greeted each other. Then I took a look at him, and all of a sudden he wasn't this regular being. It was light. I saw the form, but it was light. And there was this sense of bliss. Then I said something, and he said, "Come on, I'm hungry, let's go eat," and it was just gone in an instant.
That's not samadhi. There are many kinds of samadhi and things can get pretty academic, but the one I'm describing is the one whose descriptions are the most perfect match for what I've glimpsed and realized. It's called Nirvikalpa Samadhi. That's different. But let me talk about what you're describing.
To me, what you're describing is a switching from the mind, from form, into the substantive nature of reality. When we are really attached to form, that shift can happen gradually and go unnoticed, or it can happen suddenly, with all the in-betweens. For some reason, my nature has been more of the sudden kind: really contracted, and then pow.
I relate a lot to what you're describing. You can also have a naming or interpretation around divinity, because if that shift is really sudden and everything is suddenly seen as that luminous nature, it's very easy to name it as God or something similar. In the past, when it was more sudden for me, I would just see everything shining. There was a light and everything was completely one being, connected. I could still experience form, still experience everything that was manifested, but the underlying luminous nature became visible and present.
There was also a sense that the "me" would disappear. The sense of self would disappear, mind would disappear, and there was just experiencing, just divinity. Then a sense of terror would arise: the terror of disappearing into that. Too much. Too much bliss, too much light. And then the contraction would come back. This happened a lot throughout the years, this more sudden back and forth, until it stabilized into something much more gentle. You could say that formlessness and form became one thing.
I'm trying to validate your experience as a shift into seeing something of the substantive nature of reality more directly.
What you say makes sense. It resonates. It was so intense, and then there was this very sudden, sharp shift. That makes sense, that the ability to perceive it was greater because of how sudden it was. The contrast, exactly.
Ultimately, the goal, if any, is not to go back to that state.
That's exactly why I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to even hint to myself that I should go back there. I just wanted to understand it.
It's just to know that it is real, and in fact more real than the normal perception.
It's amazing. But in that moment, it felt that way.
The call and the ego's claim
It does. It's very intuitively and obviously more real. What can happen then is that some people, those who are unlucky, will reframe that as some weird moment, or dismiss it. But that's usually some resistance and fear, and then the reality of it gets denied. The call gets ignored. Jesus spoke about many being called, but only few responding and listening to the call.
What I noticed was that the ego wanted to own it. "This says something about me." That's why I didn't want to talk about it. It doesn't mean anything about me. I just wanted to understand the phenomenon. It happened. It's over. I just didn't understand it.
That's it. We want to own it, make it about himself or herself. That's not going to work.
Stabilizing through emotional work
It's about shifting outside of the mind. Often a lot of emotional work is needed, because we go back to our refuge when we cannot sit with certain feelings that come up. I always say fear and pain, but it's all forms of that: powerlessness, insecurity, shame, anger. That's the work that helps us stabilize.
It amazes me that I was in these circles for quite a long time before the two were brought together: the recognition of the luminous nature and the emotional work. I could have stayed in just one half of the realm forever and would have just been, well, I don't know what would have happened, but I was certainly frustrated without the emotional element. It's quite a discovery.
And that's what keeps pushing things into the future and into time. In a sense, it's until that luminous nature can be experienced in the middle of difficult feelings and emotions. Once that experience occurs in the middle of what we find most difficult, that is freedom, liberation. Things are difficult because we resist them. When that luminous nature is known, seen, experienced in the middle of what we find most difficult, that is the end of resistance. The end of resistance is the end of the separate self, and so on.
Does that tie back to what you were saying before about dying, in the sense that we resist dying?
Yes. It's all the same thing.
The teacher's prediction
When I described that substance to my teacher, he got very excited. I didn't understand why, but obviously now I know. He said, "Get close to it. Become its friend. Get as close to it as you can. You're going to run away and stop it and control it as much as you can. And then, if you're lucky, you will lose all control over it, and it will totally take over, and you won't be able to stop it. If you're lucky. And then you will either go crazy, die, or wake up."
It's like being dropped into the ocean and letting the water come into your lungs.
Yes. I dive, and I have moments of having no air, pushing my body, and I can imagine drowning. I can see it being equivalently difficult: that similar sense of "this is the end, I am now dying." Today, in a sense, I feel like drowning would be easier.
The perfection of it doesn't escape me, that you had this teacher, the perfect teacher to guide you. That's incredible.
The wild thing is that he said, "Give or take twenty years." And he was right. It was probably to the day.
It reminds me of The Matrix, when Neo goes to talk to the Oracle. She says, "Be careful with that vase." He says, "What vase?" He turns and breaks it. He says, "Oh, I'm sorry." She says, "I knew you were going to break it, and that's why I told you." And then she says, "Now, what's going to bake your noodle is: would you have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"
That's how it felt. Had it taken twenty years if my teacher hadn't said so? Something in my psyche was like, "Okay, about twenty years. I'm going in. He said so." Or would it have happened at all? I also felt the pressure of the clock ticking. It feels very much related to that scene.
Was he still alive when this happened?
Unfortunately, no. But again, would it have happened if he was? It's all perfect.
Hearing the teaching with new ears
He would say many things in the groups, things like, "What I'm saying now is mostly for afterwards, when you hear it in a few years. Maybe then you'll get it." And it's so like that. When I started getting him much more, just last year, it was incredible. I would think, "But why didn't he talk about all of this?" And then in the group we're in, people constantly edit sections of recordings, so we listen to him. And I realized: he's talking about it all the time. I just never understood what he was talking about.
Things I thought he was saying poetically, because he would sometimes start reciting spontaneous poetry, speaking in very wild ways from many different places: I always thought some of it was just being poetic and not very literal. Now I'm realizing how much of what I thought was poetry was him being as literal, descriptive, accurate, and factual as possible. In my mind, I was denying it by saying, "Well, that's just poetry." And then he would scream at me. It would be during lunch, and he would scream, "You don't listen to me! All of your energy is to ignore me, to resist me."
His screaming was a lot of the time a wake-up energy, but it was also hilarious, depending on the moment. There was no length he would not go to in order to reach his students.
I remember once I said something and he screamed, "If I could only give you a lobotomy! I would find the part of the brain that created that idiotic thought and remove it." And then I would just start laughing. It was his way of saying: drop that thought completely. Drop the belief. Comedy was a gift in him.