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The Alchemy of Freedom
The Philosophers' Stone and the Secrets of Existence
By A. H. Almaas Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2017 A-Hameed Ali
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61180-446-1
CHAPTER 1
Necessary Awakening
In this book, we are studying true nature in an in-depth way. What is true nature and how does it live? We need to explore these questions experientially, directly, and immediately by looking at the trajectory and development of all our spiritual experiences and awakenings and also at our particular experience in the moment. Our understanding needs to be informed by everything we have known as well as what is unfolding now.
One of the things that we learn in the fourth turning of the teaching wheel is the importance of particulars. Any particular form, any particular event, any particular experience is completely itself and also a complete expression of reality. The same holds true for true nature: Regardless of how formless or indefinable it is, it is particular among particulars. That is to say, it is different from the other particulars that we experience, and it is important to recognize this difference. True nature is a particular, and it is a particular that is different from all other particulars. One major way it is different is that it is a particular that is an absolutely pervasive particular. Being absolutely pervasive means that true nature pervades all particulars absolutely, consuming them completely — without exception and without leaving anything behind. True nature does not leave any place or any thing outside of itself.
This is one of the many paradoxes of true nature: It is a particular and it is everything at the same time. If true nature were not a particular, we could not talk about it or point it out. We couldn't even refer to it as true nature. When we call it true nature, we recognize that it is a particular. And yet, it is a particular that absolutely pervades every other particular without ceding its own particularity.
When I consider my experience and learning over the past forty or so years, I see that the life that is lived now is not owned by the individual me; it is reality living its possibilities. I can remember that many years ago, I experienced myself as an individual with a subjectivity, as the subject of various kinds of inner and outer experiences. What I recognized in the freedom of the fourth turning is that there isn't a subjectivity; there isn't a subject that experiences things inside itself in relation to other things that are outside itself. The terrain changes completely. There is still self-reflection and thinking and feeling, but when that happens, it is at the periphery of experience. The dominant experience, the dominant center, is simply true nature itself, and everything else appears as manifestations of true nature. In an attempt to refer here to a kind of freedom, the term "true nature" is still an approximation; I am still using language in a conventional manner. There is nothing out of the ordinary in this condition of simple freedom. Even to call it "a condition of realization" is an approximation.
Sometimes I refer to it as "reality mode," as reality manifesting itself and perceiving itself from a particular location. This way of living reality is simple and free, with no traces of enlightenment and no traces of true nature. In other words, there is no feeling in it of "I am experiencing true nature," or "this is the realization of true nature." It is simply reality living itself. Now this might sound strange and is, in fact, quite mysterious. Some traditions call it "traceless enlightenment," which refers to freedom that has no traces of enlightenment. You don't think of it as enlightenment, and you don't feel it as enlightenment; enlightenment actually becomes an irrelevant word.
This freedom is not a condition, not an experience, not a certain kind of happening or occurrence. It is not a particular dimension or a particular realization; it is not an awakening or an enlightenment. All these things do happen on the spiritual path, and many of you have experienced them. The special and particular experiences of opening, the recognitions and realizations of whatever kind, and the awakenings and enlightenments are all an important part of what makes this simplicity possible. Freedom requires all these things. They are significant in terms of revealing the simplicity of just what is, of just what is happening — a simplicity that neither has nor needs any commentary.
What matters most on the path is not any particular experience or realization, but more the recognition and experiencing of spiritual activation, the lived experience that our being is activated, is set aflame, is turned on. The essence of consciousness is awakened, and the soul of being is afire, turned on in such a way that life becomes a continual revelation, a continual awakening, a continual enlightenment — moving from one realization to another, one illumination to another, one discovery to another. This is the spontaneous freedom of spirit to reveal its treasures.
When I say that what makes this simplicity possible is the activation of a spiritual process, I notice I am using words that are not completely refined or accurate. A process requires time and development, different elements and steps, and this activation isn't anything like that. It is more like your being is so active that nothing can stop it. It is an irrepressible revelation of reality. It keeps on doing its thing regardless of what's happening. This unfoldment of realization and discovery has its own inherent and unstoppable momentum. A combustion begins that has no end except the end of all things, the realization of all things.
At the beginning of any path, you are in hot pursuit of reality. If you are really into it, and the enlightenment drive is turned on, you are seeking and you are practicing and you are passionate and you are loving whatever is happening. Your experience of reality is that you are in hot pursuit of God. You can't rest because there is something you are aspiring to, whether it appears as a seeking or as a natural impulse.
But when this essential activation is foreground, God is after you. Reality is chasing you, and it is not going to leave you alone. When this occurs, it happens regardless of you, regardless of your resistances and delusions. It can't help but confront and challenge whatever obstructs the way. This quickening has its own momentum independent of your mind, your resistances, your history, your influences, and even your practices. It is independent of position and view, regardless of whether the view is owned by a self or not owned at all. It doesn't matter what you do. Even if you try to forget, it knocks on the door, and it keeps waking you up and keeps showing you what it is. It can't help but keep revealing itself, keep stripping itself right in front of you, over and over again. More accurately, at this point, it is actually stripping itself to itself and not to an identified entity.
When we recognize and learn about this unstoppable activation, when our being is finally liberated and our consciousness freed, we see that living our realization means something entirely different from what we thought. In the beginning stages of awakening, living our realization has mostly to do with how we can bring the qualities and dimensions of being into our life, with how we can bring the features of our awakened condition to everyday life situations. But from the perspective of essential activation, living our realization is not a matter of bringing our particular mode of realization into our life or of integrating our life into it. It is more that realization itself can't help but continue to live however it wants. Living realization means that realization continues to live, continues to grow and develop, and what realization is continues to change — it reveals new meanings and new content. The life of realization is runaway realization — realization realizing further realization.
Although the various experiences of realization — the bursts of awakening — are significant, it is important to recognize that we are not focusing here on any one particular experience or kind of realization. We want, instead, to see what it's like, so to speak, when God takes over. And when God takes over, the possibilities never end. God is full of life and is not going to finally rest in any one place. God will play and will turn reality upside down, creating all sorts of mischief. This reveals a kind of freedom that is indefinable because it is not dependent on any particular state. It is a state-free freedom, a state-independent freedom.
So when someone asks me what my enlightenment experience was like, I often respond, "Which one?" What I mean is that there are many enlightenment experiences and, although they are all important and significant and sometimes even necessary, the truth is not any one of those enlightenment experiences. None of them is the freedom and simplicity of reality living its life. It's true that there are conditions or experiences that are necessary for spiritual activation to happen. We have been working with and exploring some of them for some time in our teaching. But there is no single experience that makes this activation happen. In fact, even though we will explore some of the elements necessary for this spiritual activation, I don't know all the factors that are needed for it to occur.
Many traditions have been trying to find out what the necessary factors are, but I don't think anybody knows all of them. Different teachers know various ways to invite this possibility, to dispose us for its happening. What we know for sure is that this kind of essential activation is possible and sometimes can happen, and that there is a continuum of how dynamic and intense the activation is. But it is a rare occurrence. You can have experiences of awakening and even enlightenment — you might not even think of them as experiences but as reality itself — but the kind of spiritual activation I am talking about is a whole other matter. When spirit is loose, nothing can constrain or stop it. This is very different from having an experience of a certain condition that persists or is always there. When spirit is loose, reality is continuing to reveal more, continuing to transform, continuing to surprise itself because, basically, at some point, you are not there.
One of the elements that is necessary for essential activation to happen is an encounter of the third kind with true nature. What do I mean by "an encounter of the third kind"? It's an expression many scientists and science fiction writers have used to refer to how we know some other life form, whether earthly or alien. Encounters are divided into three distinct modes of knowing. In the first kind of encounter, you hear or read about something; you know through hearsay. For example, you read about Buddha becoming enlightened under a bodhi tree and then you know that such a possibility exists. In the second kind of encounter, you know it more directly but still from a distance, like seeing a flying saucer or hearing its sound. You may attend a talk by a particular teacher or take a course in some teaching. You nevertheless have some distance from your experience of being, and you haven't yet shaken hands with it. In spiritual experience, this is analogous to intuiting and sensing that something more is possible. You have a feeling about or faith in something, you aspire and practice, but you haven't peered into its eyes yet. In an encounter of the third kind, you are immediately in touch with the thing itself as it is. You see it, shake hands with it, look into its eyes, touch it, feel it, know it, and talk to it. This is a direct encounter — as close an encounter as you can have with an other, with something you haven't met before. For essential activation to happen, we need to have a clear encounter of the third kind with true nature, and it needs to be as complete as possible and happen as many times as possible.
In an encounter of the third kind with true nature, you recognize true nature as it is. This means not only experiencing it, but experiencing it in its purity, experiencing it as it is. We will spend some time deconstructing our ideas about what it means to see true nature as it is because we have already had many experiences of true nature and have developed many smart ideas about what it is. And yet if we consider all our spiritual experiences, we can see that each of them feels like reality as it is. What does it mean to have many different experiences, each of which feels like an encounter with reality?
Recognizing true nature in its purity means directly seeing that it is not constructed. Reality is not a construction of the mind. It is not an emotion or reaction of the heart. It is not a sensation of the body. Even though true nature is independent of all mind, heart, and body, it expresses itself through them, maturing them by utilizing them. An encounter of the third kind is the experiential recognition of spirit as spirit — experientially knowing that spirit is and knowing spirit in its purity. We will leave aside for the moment what spirit is, whether God or Buddha nature or something else. For this kind of direct encounter, it is simply enough that we recognize that spirit is, that we can experience spirit without an intermediary.
This kind of direct experience and knowing of the purity of true nature I call "necessary awakening," an awakening of true being. This means that an encounter of the third kind with true nature is necessary for essential activation. But being necessary does not mean it is sufficient. That is to say, it doesn't mean that an encounter of the third kind by itself will be sufficient for activation. It is necessary, though, in the sense that activation won't happen without it. The activation of the life of being, this irrepressible, unstoppable dynamism, is not possible without this necessary awakening to true nature, awakening to spirit.
At the beginning of the journey, especially if we are coming from the conventional perspective — which is experience that is dominated by duality, ego, and a sense of self — we recognize true nature as an other. It is other than you, other than what you have known yourself to be, and other than the reality to which you are accustomed. It is completely other. And this otherness is an emblem of its radical difference. It is radically different from everything you have known. It is altogether other than any emotions, thoughts, and sensations you have ever had. It is miraculously other and yet it is its own thing absolutely. It is not a result, a response, or an effect of the nervous system or the mind or the heart. By referring to it as "radically other," I don't mean that it is another separate entity, but simply that it is utterly different from anything else you have ever known.
When we experience true nature, whether it is as a quality or dimension of being or a vision, we realize that it is far different from our ordinary experience. It is from the perspective of conventional experience that true nature appears as radically other. I am not saying that true nature is absolutely other. In realization, in awakened experience, we realize it is not other. So to say that true nature is absolutely other would be to say that it is always other and that it can never be anything else. But that is not the case; it only appears so when we are not realized. When we have a clear encounter of the third kind, we recognize the radical otherness of true nature. This recognition is important because without it we would think that true nature is part of what we have already known ourselves to be. We would assume that true nature is part of the conventional world. We wouldn't see that it is from another world.
Recognizing that true nature is from another world, from another dimension or realm of reality is a significant part of necessary awakening. If we have an experience of true nature and simply think, "Oh, that was nice. It felt good. That must have been an experience of pleasure or some kind of love and sweetness," we might mistake it for a continuation of our usual experience and not see that it is a quantum break with reality as we have known it. If we don't recognize the radical otherness or difference of true nature, we haven't yet awakened. True nature remains for us just another pleasant experience and is severed from the stream of consciousness that can begin to activate the life of being.
In talking about necessary awakening, I am not revealing anything new. We have worked with encounters of the third kind all along the path. It does not matter what form of true nature you experience — whether a kind of presence, awareness, or emptiness, whether bounded or boundless — because all forms are basically one truth manifesting in different ways. What is important is that you recognize the underlying purity and otherness of true nature regardless of what form it takes. And it doesn't matter whether you experience it as inside you or outside you, as a sudden eruption or a gradual emergence. An encounter of the third kind might feel like something happening within you or outside of you or everywhere; it might sneak up on you or be a long time coming.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Alchemy of Freedom by A. H. Almaas. Copyright © 2017 A-Hameed Ali. Excerpted by permission of Shambhala Publications, Inc..
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