I want to draw your attention to the fact that very vivid Tibetan painting has a curious way
 of creating a state of mind, if you really start looking at it, that I can only call
 psychedelic. It's, I don't know anything else quite like it. As you get into the detail
 of it, it's like this. Let's suppose that you look at some object and instead of the
 whole thing becoming fuzzy and fading out, it always gets more detailed, more clear,
 more alive. And you suddenly find out that what you thought was just a bunch of blur
 is 16,000 maggots with bright eyes on them and that every eye was a deep jewel. And you
 go down into these deep jewel-like eyes and you find inside them that there are cross-legged
 Buddhas with Orioles around them and necklaces of human heads. And then you start looking
 at those and by Jove, in every eye on one of those human heads, you look inside it and
 there's another Buddha sitting there, see? And you go on like that forever and ever and
 ever in myriad detail, see? But now that is a state of consciousness which these artists
 are trying to represent. It is the idea of the dharmadhatu, which I explained in last
 seminar. That is to say, the net of jewels where every jewel reflects all the other jewels
 and therefore naturally contains the reflection of all the other jewels in each other jewel
 that it reflects, you see? The infinite interrelatedness, or they call it mutual penetration, of everything
 in the universe. And so this is an art form designed to get you into the mood to understand
 that by looking at it. It is absolute, total fascination. But what I was trying to describe
 to you about the nature of these art forms, where you look at the details and then you
 suddenly discover that behind the details there are millions more details. And you never
 fuzz out. You find, in other words, that the possibility to see down into something goes
 on forever and ever. Now then, that is the visual equivalent of hearing when you work
 with mantras, with these formal chants. To get to hear sound in such a way that, just
 as you could say that a visual field is rich in detail, like these paintings are, like
 a piece of Hindu beautiful silk weaving, which is rich with gold and flowers, and you see
 detail in that. Now, you can hear sound in the same way, and that's what Hindu music
 is playing with. And so when you get down into that, you see, you are what I would call
 truly listening in to the universe. Because eventually, if you listen to sound that way,
 or you look at form that way, you discover its secrets. This is just another way of investigation
 of life, comparable to our scientific investigation, with microscopes and chemical analysis, and
 there's that and the other. But it's a different road. Scientific investigation does what we
 call looking out into matter, into the physical world. This is going in the opposite direction,
 but it's all the same thing. It's the same continuum. But it's going into the nature
 of your feeling of it. That is to say, into the center of awareness, into the self. And
 what these, all these drawings are, from various points of view, is they're drawings of your
 own interior world, looked at in this way, under the influence of the traditions of a,
 indeed a particular culture, which is not our culture, and which therefore strikes us
 as a little strange. But whenever you look at a work of art, and you feel, "Gee, isn't
 that weird? It's not the way people look." You know, for people's first impression of
 Chinese art, say, they perhaps don't meet Tibetans so easily, is that it's, well, everything's
 got curls on it. It wiggles. It's very strange. And that, the reason for that, is that they
 are showing you a vision of the universe which you haven't looked at. And so it looks odd
 to you. And what you mean by odd, is, well, it curls where it shouldn't. Or, I don't see
 things that way. I don't see them with that extra flip on them. No, indeed you don't.
 Because the way you see things is what you call ordinary, and what you're used to. And
 as you know, when we see things, we ignore. We screen out certain aspects of things which
 we don't notice. And therefore, by studying other people's art forms, we are taught to
 see things that we wouldn't ordinarily notice. So that when you become used to Chinese or
 Tibetan painting, you say, why, of course, that's the way the world is, also. So the
 feeling of the strange, of the, we say, we use the word exotic. And that means looking,
 a thing looks exotic when you look at it from somebody else's point of view. And eventually
 you get used to it. And so if you move into a state of consciousness, such as I've been
 trying to describe, that is not the usual kind of state of consciousness, you say, it's
 kind of weird, isn't it? And if you aren't prepared for that, you might be afraid of
 it. And say, am I going mad? Am I going out of my mind? Yes, you are. You're going out
 of your set, ordinary set of mind, but you're going into just another aspect of mind. And
 at first, it always feels weird. That's why people have difficulty in meditation. When
 they really start moving, they say, well, I'm going to go out of my mind if I think
 about that. You know all those famous stories about people who invented computers and went
 mad, or who thought about the nature of thought and absolutely were never heard from again.
 There's a certain fear, in other words, of the loss of one's own ego, of the sort of
 regular world where conventions go on, where the familiar gestures are made so that you
 feel at home and you get into other dimensions of awareness where the gestures are different.
 The nerves are doing something else. Or in Eden, you don't know whether they're even
 nerves anymore. They may be Adi Buddhas and all these charming girls who you see in these
 things and you don't know who they are. Some kind of weird Tibetan fantasy. You say, uh-oh.
 You get cultural shock. Stay away from that. But it isn't cultural shock with respect to
 some other people. It's cultural shock with respect to your own inner life. In other words,
 we all have in us levels of vibration which we are not used to, not familiar with, and
 therefore are scared of. So this particular kind of Buddhism, Vajrayana, is a rather adventurous,
 not to say dangerous, exploration of man's inner consciousness, depicting it in an elaborate
 symbolism which, although to a Westerner used to Christian symbolism, looks as if it were
 a drawing of some heaven somewhere, of potentates seated on thrones and receiving homage and
 all that political bit. All these are quite definitely, I'm not making this up, all these
 are quite definitely to be understood as exteriorizations of your own being. In other words, let us
 suppose that we looked on a microscope slide at the cross-section of a spinal column, or
 of an area of the brain. This would show us certain designs, certain patterns, and they
 would be rather central to you. Now, these are equivalent to those, but they are moving
 in a different direction, and you have to understand now the difference between what
 is called the material body and the subtle body. The rupa, actually that means the formal
 body, as I explained last, second seminar. The word rupa in Sanskrit, which is applied
 to the material world, means the world of form, the world seen in a certain form, a
 form to which we are accustomed. So you have a formal body, which is you as you appear
 to any other objective observer. Then you have a subtle body, which is the way you are
 as you feel to yourself. In other words, supposing you've been on a drunk, and you wake up with
 a headache, and it feels that your head is so big, well that's the shape of your subtle
 body. Spiegelberg used to show a wonderful cartoon of Corky in the comics, looking at
 a plane going over, which was doing some stunts, and it made his neck grow longer and longer
 until it all got tied in knots while watching the plane. That was the shape of Corky's subtle
 body, which is called his linga sharira in Sanskrit, as opposed to sthula sharira, which
 is your gross body, that means more dense. Now, so when you get the drawing of the microscope
 slide, of say a cross section of the spine, or something that is quite fundamental to
 the structure of nervous system, you've got a design of the gross body. But when you start
 looking into the other direction of things, which is how you feel, and you really go into
 feeling, to what sound is, to what touch is, to what emotion is, and you trace the senses
 back along their channels, till you get to the mano vijnana, which is the central sense
 behind each separate sense, and you find that it isn't just kind of a goo, it's an incredibly
 detailed experience. And then you draw pictures like this to represent what you found. We
 would draw them in a different way, if we genuinely made this inquiry ourselves, because
 we have different traditions. And we would find ourselves, goodness only knows what we'd
 be drawing. But we would be making things like the stained glass windows in Chartres
 Cathedral, you see, and crucifixes, because when you investigate sensation, you go down
 into it, and you feel it getting more and more intense, more and more intense, more,
 more, more, more. You see, right down, how much can you stand? Well there's Jesus on
 the Cross. See? Cover it with jewels. Make it gorgeous. So all these things you see are
 investigations of the basic sensation of being alive. And people are curious about that.
 You know, where are we? What's it all about? Well, the only way is to look and see. So
 if you want to find out what you mean by meaning, by asking a question, by being conscious,
 by being here, well you have to meditate. And meditation, as not meditating on something,
 like thinking it out in an intellectual way, it is looking more closely at what you're
 asking the question about. So you could do that externally, with a microscope, with chemical
 analysis and so on. That way is valid. But it has to be balanced by the internal way,
 going down into your own sensation and your own consciousness. And the point that I'm
 going to make again, in another way that I made this morning, is that this isn't something
 you're supposed to do. That is to say, isn't a chore, it isn't your solemn duty, unless
 you want to come on, that's the sort of person you ought to be. This is a delight. To, you
 know, get into that out of total fascination and joy and love of whatever it is that you
 are and everybody else's. So that this is a different spirit of religion than that to
 which we are normally accustomed. Instead of saying, which I suppose is an attitude
 characteristic of what you might call a patrist, that's distinct from a matrist culture, go
 and read your Bible. Get down on your knees and repent, you see. Ooh. We feel pretty,
 pretty spooked by that attitude. This one says instead, "Psst, I've got something to
 show you." Look in here. You all know what all this is about? You watch. Take a look.
 You look in there and you say, "Ooh, no. It can't really be like that." You look at this
 other guy who's the guru, you see. He says, "It's all right. Don't be afraid." Ooh. That's
 not possible. Yeah, you know. And this is the attitude. And I don't know how to suggest
 it except by this sort of drama of the two different approaches. So this then is the,
 as near as I can get to describing it, the inner meaning of Tantra, of an attitude which
 is common to both Hinduism and Buddhism. They say Tantra, it means not only the web, the
 warp and the wolf, where you can't have yes without no. You can't have this direction
 without having this, that direction, because this direction, to have it there, needs this
 other one to hang on to. But he says, "No, look here. I've got to have something to hang
 on to too. So we hang on to each other and so there we are." See? That's the nature of
 a web. And so Tantra means the comprehension of the unity of opposites, of the good and
 the bad, of life and death, of love and hate, of all extremes in the whole spectrum of our
 emotions, our sensations, everything. In a sense, this is not something for children,
 because you have to be reliable to get into this, because otherwise you go berserk. You
 wouldn't pay any respect to any rules or anything if you didn't have a mature attitude before
 getting mixed up in this, because you suddenly see anything and everything goes. There is
 no way of being wrong, because you are it, whatever there is, forever and ever and ever,
 and that's so. You can die, fantastic, forget everything altogether, blow right out, come
 back, because the light is the other side of the darkness. Be all new again, but it's
 all you, just as it was before, because you do the same patterns, same kind of stars,
 same kind of physical properties, the same dance, blot it out, it starts again, just
 like the physical forces in things, you see, repeat their fundamental laws and patterns.
 It's exactly the same with the inner world I'm talking about. Investigating the outer
 world, investigating the inner world, it's all one, and that's you. So, the Buddhist
 enlightenment is simply to know that secret, and that's what it means really, finally,
 to grow up. You see, again, just as I said, that we find in our own preachers and religious
 people an attitude of against lifeness, and we get a funny feeling about that, that they're
 full of reprimands, and they're full of, there's a trap, you see, and they have the young people's
 fellowship, as I explained, to suck you into this trap. It's exactly the same thing exists
 here. In particular, I think one of the basic tantric texts is called Saraha, the Treasury
 of Songs, by Professor Gunter of the University of Saskatchewan. Saraha was a tantric teacher
 living probably in the area of Bengal about 1000 AD. He is making a critique of both the
 Hindu and Buddhist orthodoxy. So he says, "The Brahmins who do not know the truth recite
 the four Vedas in vain. With earth and water and kusha grass they make preparations, and
 seated at home they kindle fire, and from the senseless offerings that they make they
 burn their eyes with the pungent smoke. In lordly garb with one staff or three they think
 themselves wise with their Brahmanical law. Vainly is the world enslaved by their vanity.
 They do not know that the Dharma is the same as the non-Dharma. With ashes these masters
 smear their bodies, and on their heads they wear matted hair. Seated within the house
 they kindle lamps, seated in a corner they tinkle bells. They adopt a posture and fix
 their eyes, whispering in ears and deceiving folk, teaching widows and bald-headed nuns
 and such like, initiating them as they take their fee. The giant monks mock the way with
 their appearance, with their long nails and their filthy clothes, or else naked and with
 disheveled hair enslaving themselves with their doctrine of liberation. If by nakedness
 one is released, then dogs and jackals must be so. If from absence of hair there comes
 perfection, then the hips of maidens must be so. If from having a tail there comes release,
 then for the peacock and yak it must be so. If wisdom consists in eating just what one
 finds, then for elephant and horse it must be so. For these giant monks there is no release,
 Saraha says. Deprived of the truth of happiness, they do but afflict their own bodies. Then
 there are the novices and bhikshu, that means a Buddhist monk, with the teaching of the
 old school. That's not the same as old school Thai, it means the old school of Theravada
 Buddhism. With the teaching of the old school who renounced the world to be monks, some
 are seen sitting and reading the scriptures, some wither away in their concentration on
 thought. Others have recourse to the Mahayana. This is the doctrine which expounds the original
 text, they say. Others just meditate on mandala circles. Others strive to define the fourth
 stage of bliss. With such investigating, they fall from the way. Some would envisage it
 as space. Others endow it with the nature of voidness, and thus they are generally in
 disagreement. Whoever deprived of the innate, that's what you really are, seeks nirvana,
 can in no wise acquire the absolute truth. Whoever is intent on anything else, how may
 he gain release? Will one gain release abiding in meditation? What's the use of lamps? What's
 the use of offerings? What's to be done by reliance on mantras? What's the use of austerities?
 What's the use of going on pilgrimage? Is release achieved by bathing in water? Abandon
 such false attachments and renounce such illusion.


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