Awakening is a matter of purifying and activating the causal body
Unpacking the tantric path to enlightenment
Awakening is a matter of purifying and activating the causal body.
The causal body is the most subtle energy body of a human being and consists of hair-width nadi channels running throughout the space of the physical body and extending far beyond it.
At each stage of purification, one is cleansing and activating a particular “layer” of the causal body.
These layers are called bhumis.
Literally it means “ground”.
There are 13 in total.
- “Opening a bhumi” means that a hole has been punched in this particular layer (of self-based ideation).
- “Perfecting a bhumi” means that all of the karmic material that makes up that layer has been cleared and purified. This bhumi is now fully activated and flowing with fresh (non-karmic) energy.
While working at a particular bhumi, one’s mind rests upon and habitually refers back to an unconscious foundation of selfing. This foundation is like an energetic contraction which obscures our mind from its natural state: our Buddha nature.
It is a ground of pure ideation, like a mental fog. When a bhumi is closed we cannot see through the fog.
Each layer of contraction has its own particular vibrational frequency. With practice you start getting a feel for the energetic vibration of each layer of selfing, ranging from relatively gross and coarse (at the first bhumi) to relatively subtle (at the higher bhumis).
You also notice that this frequency is a central and dominant feature of your experience(s), because it determines (or or is indistinguishable from) the current feeling of self.
The lowest closed bhumi will thus determine the nature of our experience. As we open more bhumis, our sense of self gets increasingly subtle and elusive.
Thus “ascending the bhumi pillar” equates to penetrating into deeper and subtler layers of self-contraction (or self-referential ideation).
At progressive stages of mind-purification these layers are revealed one by one, to be inseparable from and not different to the natural state of non-dual awareness.
This process (of purifying the causal body) continues until even the most subtle layers of selfing (which extend out beyond the physical body into the aura) have been recognised as luminous wisdom-clarity: simply the energy of primordial awareness, free from subject or object.
The Russian Doll Analogy
The basic situation for most of us is like being locked within a huge set of nested Russian dolls.
The first bhumi is the little solid wooden doll at the centre: the central feeling of “me” for the vast majority of humanity alive right now. Locked inside a dark prison with solid walls!
However with some experimentation one discovers that these walls are penetrable and that entire realms exist outside!
One thus resolves to break out and sets about punching through wall after wall, egg after egg – layer after layer of solidity, each time discovering a larger mental space (where before the mind was restricted by the habitual mode of selfing: the lowest open bhumi).
Eventually one punches a hole through the final largest egg and awakens to the infinite space outside: the selfless expanse of pure awareness… objectless openness… empty cognisance… buddha!
Of course, this space is not separate from the space “inside” the energetic eggs of selfing. All eggs cracked open, experiences of life unfold but now the overarching context of these appearances is not a closed and contracted shell (of selfing) but the infinite space of our own enlightened mind. Indeed it always has been, only we couldn’t see it because we became so embroiled in mentally-created selfing.
Breaking through eggs takes energy. You can work at it slowly and diligently, with gentle meditation methods, or you can turn up the power and punch through them: this is the use of guru mantra (whose energy emanates directly from the mind of an awakened being) and of physically shouting the syllable “PHET!” in order to blast through the unconscious mind (that’s known as “dynamic concentration” practice and all RAPIDLY accelerate the process compared to silent sitting meditation. Try it – you’ll be amazed!).
This energetic demand of the tantric path is why we see enlightened beings in powerfully active and wrathful forms. Such power is necessary to wrestle the demons of the mind, to break open the subtlest layers of selfishness and to liberate these energies into open selfless freedom!
All eggs cracked open, there is only SKY and the sweet soul bird (of the energy of awareness) is free to continue manifesting non-real / empty / imaginal appearances without limit – and without self!
Having opened and perfected all bhumis we see and know the selfless empty nature of everything we previously believed to be real and comprising a separate self.
At this stage “all things rest in zero”, are seen as thoroughly empty, and the causal body has been successfully purified.
No appearance is taken to be a separate and real entity, or an independently existing self. The bhumis have been opened and perfected and one has reached initial stage of buddhahood.
