Dilation & Dissolution

In this experiential exploration of the body, we allow the physical, or gross, body to dissolve. We then discover the existence of the energy body. We finally "take a step back" from the energy body and recognize ourselves as pure consciousness.

Transcript

Conduct your attention to the base, Meaning to the legs, To the glutes, Etc. And in particular, Draw your attention to your left foot. Feel that it is soft, Meltable. And with the exhalation, Start to feel that your left foot, As if it were butter, Were melting into whatever is beneath it, And then spreading out in all directions. Whatever tension or weight is in your left foot is going away. Your left ankle and left lower leg are melting, Dissolving, The sensations spreading out onto and into whatever is beneath the lower leg. The same is true of the left knee and of the left upper leg. Your left hip joint and your left glute are falling to pieces and dissolving into whatever it is that they are touching. Your right foot is melting, And thereby vanishing. Your right ankle and right lower leg are both melting, Spreading out, With the result that all the sensations are seeping into the earth. Your right knee follows suit, As does your right upper leg. Your right hip joint and your right glute melt and melt and fall away. Regard the entire base as a single sensation, And let any vestigial tension fall into the earth. In your direct experience, The base may have disappeared. There may only be a neutral state, Or at this point there may be tingling, Vibrating. Have no desires. Simply look closely. Your spine is a long, Doused sapling, Whose slender trunk is waving in an invisible breeze as the tree is growing yearnfully for the liquid sky. The brown, Now leafing, Is caressing the ceiling. Meanwhile, This sapling trunk spine slowly, Gloriously, Majestically, And again yearnfully, Ascends skyward, Tastes lightness, Homecoming, And you feel that the spine is tinglingly, Joyfully coming to life, Reclaiming its innocence. So beautiful is this movement that one is almost inclined to cry. So sweet, So tender. You visualize the slender silhouette of the body, Upon which gentle or slightly more forceful rain is now falling. You can almost hear the pitter-patter of rain on the crown of the head. You can feel the body crying happily as the rain falls down. You can almost taste the spring rain as it covers the face, Neck, As it pours like twin waterfalls down both arms and drips off of the very ends of the fingers. And all the while, Whatever tension is graced by a raindrop is itself carried down, Down, Until it mingles with a subterranean river whereupon the tension is carried off. Feel the rain touching, Covering the body and gently carrying away tensions here and there and there. The body is being baptized, Purified, Washed clean. Without any doer, Impurities are falling away. Somewhere, Somehow, Who knows how, A lilt of gratitude is felt. Somewhere the heart is opening. A very thin membrane, The thickness of papier-mâché, Is covering the so-called physical or gross body. So thin in this membrane is this membrane that it breathes inside the membrane. As a surprise, There is only emptiness in direct experience. There are no things, No forms, No names, No body parts, No organs. Not a thing. An imaginary attentional hand searching inside of this membrane would find nothing. And this would not be scary, But rather would be glorious. Sweet. Peaceful. Clear. Obvious. Newborn. Perhaps equally surprising is the fact that an imaginary attentional hand sweeping outside of this membrane would find the very same emptiness. There would be no world out there. No thing. But instead, Simply emptiness abounding. And in fact, There would be a third surprise, Because the membrane would turn out to be simply an imagining, An idea. With the consequence that there would be neither two emptinesses, Inside and outside, Nor one countable emptiness, But rather pure, Uncountable, Seamless, Unbroken, All-pervasive emptiness. As if it were a single, Albeit uncountable, Space without borders or boundaries. And lo and behold, There would be no world, No skin, And no body. Just this. In what follows, It is completely permissible and reasonable to refer to the names with which we are conventionally familiar. All the names referred to are to be regarded simply as metaphors, No longer as literal truths or as things existing in their own right. If your hands are clasped together, Then you might want to put them on your thighs or knees. Visualize now and feel your left hand. There is actually no left hand, There's just pulsation or vibration. Or undulation. Following these metaphorical cues, Imagine that all four fingers, Plus your thumb, Are extending outward until they are touching, Sweetly, The wall out in front. And then feel the experience directly, Without the visualization. In other words, The visualization leads, But then as it deepens, You become more interested in the sensation. Proceed at your own pace. Next, Take the rest of the hand and allow it to go along with the fingers and the thumb. So that it too is making contact with, And indeed merging into, The wall out in front. Feel what your experience is like. Your entire left arm is now following suit. The fingers, The hand, The wrist, The arm, Are all extending into the front wall, Where they are thereby lost. What does this experience feel like? Begin to notice energy coming to life. Imagine your right hand, And in particular your right four fingers, Plus the thumb, Extend all five, Until they merge into the front wall. Let the rest of the hand follow in train. Let the entire arm make its way to the front wall, Whereupon it too is merged into it, And as a result is lost. Both hands and both arms are extending into the front wall, And then are disappearing. Stop the visualization, As well as the energetic movement, And simply experience energy, Sensation, Tingling. Flowing. Vibration. Do nothing. We move now in the opposite direction. Energy is beginning to flood the left arm in the following way. First, It flows into and through all four fingertips and the thumb. And then it pervades the rest of the hand. Visualize and feel this. Let the energy, Which is flooding forth, Continue as it moves through the wrist and through the left forearm, Through the left elbow and inside part. Through the left upper arm, And indeed through the left shoulder. When your attention is cast on what the mind terms the left arm, All it discovers now is shapeless flowing energy. Energy is now flooding into the right hand, Beginning with the fingers and the thumb. And coursing through the top and the palm of the hand. Then flooding the wrist. Coursing through the right forearm. Ascending via the elbow and opposite part, The upper right arm. And then summoning the right shoulder. You have no arms. You're only experiencing energy. Let the same be true of the left and right legs. Start with the left foot and feel that it is being flooded through and through by energy. The same is true of the left ankle and of the left lower leg. The same is true of the left knee and inside soft part of the left upper leg and of the left hip joint and left glute. All you're experiencing is energy as it pours into and colonizes the right foot, The right lower leg, The right knee and underside, The right thigh. The right hip joint and the right glute. You have no legs. You have no arms. Your pelvic floor at this point is filling up with and as a result is turning into energy. That energy continues its unassailable climb upward, Passing through the lower abdominal region, The thoracic region, Through the upper chest and upper back. It continues by pouring itself into the neck and then it passes completely through the head and in turn the head as a concept dissolves. What is your direct experience of this vibrant and vibrating sensation? See that there are no lines, No shapes, No inside, No outside. All that you actually know is vibration, Sensation, Energy. You are discovering or rediscovering the subtle body, The energy body or the light body. Here is a thorn to remove a thorn. Your direct experience does not reveal a gross or physical body. Your current direct experience discloses energy, Prana, Vital force. The assumption, However, Can still be that this vital force is somehow bounded, In which case imagine the surrounding space. Allow energy to be malleable, To course, To flow, To expand and extend. Specifically, Let the energy expand into the space out in front, Ranging further and further until it's clear that the space is nothing but energy. Proceed at your own pace. Place the emphasis on the feeling of the sensation. Visualize the space off to the left. Let the energy on the left side expand into that space with such clarity that the space dissolves, Becoming nothing but energy. Visualize the back of the body. Feel the back as energy. Visualize the space out and back and let energy expand into that space, Allowing them to become one. Visualize the right side of the body. Regard it only as energy. Visualize the space off to the right and extend energy into that space, Allowing the former to colonize the latter. Go to the bottom of the body. Let this experience be nothing but sensation energy. Visualize the area beneath the bottom of the body and note this well. Allow that area beneath not to be regarded as though it were solid, Dense earth, But rather as flowing liquid or as gentle airiness. And now expand the sensation energy until it and the area beneath it are one. Visualize the crown of the head as well as the space above it. And allow the crown to be nothing but sensation energy. And let the sensation energy expand, Growing skyward and taking its essence along with it. Finally, And don't think about the following instruction, Expand sensation energy in all six directions at once. Stop all movements and simply experience energy. Be completely relaxed. So far we've been exploring the sense organ of touch. We turn now to the other sense organs. We will be exploring hearing briefly, Seeing, Smelling, A detour at the cheekbones, And tasting. Tensions will slowly dissolve through these artistic explorations. Visualize the face. Drop the visualization and just feel it as one seamless vibration. Visualize the left ear. And as if it were a scene out of Alice in Wonderland, Just let the left ear dissolve. Travel with your attention inside the imaginary left ear canal and feel it becoming more and more spacious. Feel that hearing is actually appearing now in the left hand space. And travel with your attention out from this imaginary ear canal, Going further and further into this space, Until it is clear that the space itself off to the left is, So to speak, Doing the hearing. There is, In brief, Some magical left hand space that has the capacity to hear, To hear effortlessly. Magically, Wonderfully, Innocently. Feel what this is like. Imagine your right ear, And notice how quickly that imagining disappears. Let your attention travel down through the imaginary right ear canal. Imagine and feel that the right side space is itself hearing. And expand the sense of hearing into the right side space until it's immediately clear that the space itself is the only, Quote-unquote, Thing doing the hearing. Marry the two spaces. There's just a vast space in which hearing is appearing. A vast space that is palpably, In fact, Discernibly, Intimately, Undulatingly, Sensitively hearing. Surrender, Giving yourself up to this very experience. Your left eye is gelatin. It is glowing and vibrating. Slowly it's being lowered down into its concavity, Its vault. Whereupon it easefully submits, Relaxes. Your right eye is glowing, Vibrating gelatin. And it is sinking back and down into its respective vault. There are not, In fact, Two eyes. There's simply one horizontal gelatin-like energy band that is now expanding in all directions until it feels as if this single, Shapeless eye substance is doing the invisible seeing. This shapeless eye is invisibly seeing. What is this like? Your left upper cheekbone is a cherry, Red, Warm, And sweet. And it grows and grows, Becoming a gigantic, Room-sized cherry. There is not, In fact, A room, A cherry, In a cheek. There's one experience only. That is, Cherry-cheek room. What is this like? The same procedure is followed in the case of your right cheek. Here also is a red, Vibrant cherry that is the size of the room. This cherry-cheek room has a single taste, A single flavor. What is that taste or flavor? And, Of course, There are not two gigantic cherries. Now there is only one. And thus one cherry-cheek room taste. Your attention finds the left nostril and curiously travels up it in a somewhat diagonal direction, Moving through this invisible canal and terminating at the third eye. Your attention then discovers the right nostril and carries on up this invisible river and terminates also at the third eye. There is thus a triangle, The so-called nose, With a halo or orb or a circle, The third eye on top. And this entire triangular edifice plus the circle on top expand until they are the size of the room. They lose their shape and there is only a single scent. What is this single scent? An astonishing single red grape is placed atop your tongue. Your tongue is soft and spread out across the bottom of your mouth. This is an amazing still-life painting. A grape. And the grape grows and grows, Taking up the entire inside of the mouth as it grows. And then it's breaching the mouth. And then it's growing and growing and growing until it takes over the entire room. Here is the experience of a grape mouth room. And tensions here and there are falling away like twinkling falling stars. What is the experience of this grape mouth room like? Finally, The skin of your face, Like a very malleable permeable mask, Is being stretched kindly in all six directions at once. That is toward the front, Toward the back, Toward the left, Toward the right, Toward the bottom and toward the top. There is no violence. There's just a curious art experiment here. Clay or wax is giving way. There's a rediscovery of innocence. A so-called mouth is like a baby's mouth with a few soap bubbles coming out. The eyes have lost their grasping. The cheeks know nothing of bracing and so on. In fact, There are no eyes, No cheeks. There is no nose, Nor any mouth. There's just this. Let all movements come to a halt. Be at rest. Experience the current vibration. How clear and how sweet the current sensation is. How newborn, How vibrant, How poignant the current experience is. In your direct experience, There are no properties associated with the gross or physical body. No density, No solidity, No notion of matter or physicality. No discernible inside, As well as no discernible outside. No discernible size or shape. How then can one legitimately speak of a physical or gross body? This superimposition, Physicalist in nature, Has dissolved. And what has been revealed, A thorn to remove a thorn, Is the energy body. It is flowing, Shapeless, Undulating, Vibrant, Subtle, And so on. Go one step further. Does your current experience admit of any division between you, Consciousness, And energy, This subtle object? Do you find any partition, Any split, Into subject, That is consciousness, And object, That is energy? Where is that split if there appears to be one? Or isn't it abundantly clear that there is no split, No division, No partition in direct experience? Be soft. Be like an uncarved block of wood. Be simple, As simple as you actually are. If there is no object in direct experience, And if there is no subject either, Then the current experience must be made of something. And it must be made of that which is continuously present, And luminous, Or illustrious. And that is being consciousness, Or pure consciousness. That is to say, The current experience, Or direct experience, Is nothing but you, Pure consciousness. Therefore, Let all vestigial ideas, Subtle mind stuff pertaining to energy, Fall and fall away. Said differently, Let energy merge completely into pure consciousness, Into eternal being. In eternal being, As eternal being, You are not different from this. Therefore, Allow any further subtle duality between I and pure being to dissolve. First, Then energy falls back into being. And second, Any attempt on the part of the I to stand apart from pure being falls away. And thus, There is only I alone, Only consciousness, Only pure being. And thus, In the final analysis, Only non-dual, Unnameable, Perfect silence. We conclude, Resting here, Resting as silence, With silence, Just be.