The Muliple Furnaces Arise and the Many Chakras Unfold
At the next stage of jing to chi trasnformation, the heart chakra sprouts wings, they’re so wide. As they flap they pump, an unexpected delight. Later they pin down in the chest cavity just as was done in the lower cavity for the root chakra furnace. This is the next stage of development as the River Chariot evolution proceeds further. It mirrors what happened previously to the root chakra in the lower dan tien. Now the old impure chi collects as a white ball of half vapor, half solid like cotton or cotton candy. It is transforming into real chi, the stage of jing transforming to chi. The perineum opens up and it’s pushed out like a bombardier dropping bombs. This is an exit point which rarely spontaneously occurs.
The wings of the heart chakra, the opening of the perineum to discard the impure chi below, this is all indicating that you are starting to cultivate the Realm of Form and the four dhyana. Remember that from the root chakra to the heart chakra represents the Realm of Desire, but from the heart chakra to the brow represents the Realm of Form. As the “heart has sprouted wings,” you are now ready to enter into dhyana. The four dhyana are all within the Realm of Form, so in transforming jing to chi you are leaving the Realm of Desire.
If you can establish the sushumna linkage from the heart chakra to the crown flower bud in the center of the head, the heart chakra will turn yellow and orange, or sometimes a bit of red, and this is it’s own stage of the furnace. The color is just an initial flickering, so don't depend on it to stay that way. So the heart chakra develops its own stage of the furnace too. The base, a square, will form and then rise up to the crown to establish the left and right channels…At this stage the chi at the crown is called “brilliant.”
Yellow and gold colors will sometimes flood the upper cavity from the heart chakra upwards. The brow chakra (third eye) becomes enflamed as a circle of silver chi and you can use it as an exit point to push the chi that’s being cooked out the chi channels. All you want is the microcosmic circulation again and to empty the channels of this impure, untransformed chi.
The chi at this stage is hard to move using force or intent. Only by cultivating emptiness can it start to move.
The chi is white and the body is hot at this stage. You can call the chi "milk white" in color. The root chakra is cooking the chi, and the temperature of your body will rise significantly. This is like the prayoga stage of “Heat” or “Warming” within the Stage of Intensified Practices, for Buddhism has noted you are ready to cultivate dhyana. So you progressed through the Intensified Practices, then Stage of Seeing the Tao, then True Cultivation Practice, and now you’re back again. So you’re at a point where you can cultivate true samadhi. You can call this true cultivation practice, or the intensified practices. Actually, it’s the intensified practices. You’ve made one big loop.
The channels running down the insides of the two legs open up to a yet greater extent, and now your sinuses will start acting up and you will be secreting snot (nasal discharge) almost constantly. Don’t worry if you get sick at this stage. Sometimes you have to get sick to make progress in cultivation. Just arrange yourself and your body according to conditions and keep cultivating. Don’t lose your semen.
If you keep going, and try to cultivate the formless absorptions, the crown chakra loop or bud at the top of the head (inside it, near the top of the roof, just underneath it) will form a small flap of wings on the left and right sides, too, just as was done before for the root and then heart chakra. They are hard to see but they are there. And then it will eventually stand upright and then poke through or protrude through the top of the skull. At this stage you can be called an “Iron Bell Head” because you can still feel the bone chi in the head, which feels like an ion bell, but the bell handle is a little set of chi channel loops from the forming crown chakra. This is why pictures show Buddhas with topknots at the centers of their head. You can achieve this stage, too, you just have to cultivate.
This protrusion means that you’ve opened the Brahmarandra chakra hole in Indian yoga and Hinduism. You can actually see the etheric hole in your skull. If you want to be reborn in a higher heaven after death than where people usually go, then you can now do so after achieving this stage.
Properly this stage belongs to the Hindu schools of Indian yoga but once again, as you can see all the cultivation schools have it. Tibetan Buddhism has it because they borrowed many tantric teachings from India. That's the problem with Tibetan Buddhism -- it's not really Buddhism but an agglomeration of all sorts of yoga teachings from India and China and Bon. Chinese Taoism has it because it is the Baihui location that opens up – a small hole less than a quarter of an inch wide opens and the loop protrudes out here, like the looped handles of a bell. Buddhism has it because all Buddhas are shown with top knots. But Buddhism doesn’t use this chakra for exiting the body – the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas always use the buddhra-randhra behind it for exiting fromt he body. Always. Please remember this most excellent, jewel encrusted, supreme of all teachings. The buddha-randhra chakra at the back part of the top of the head, behind the brahmarandhra, and is the key to complete Buddhahood.
If you cultivate you get this stage but if you don’t cultivate you don’t. How do you cultivate? You let go of thoughts, you rest the mind, you cultivate emptiness. How is that denominational? You’re kidding yourself if you thought your religion had some special promise that won you some reward because of belief, membership, ritual or worship. Everything depends upon your own personal cultivation, and nothing else, except the additional fact you need virtue and merit to succeed or for others to help you. No one can succeed without merit, no one can receive help with merit. No one can even receive or hear about teachings without merit. That’s how critical merit is.
Next a loop of chi channels will then protrude out of the third eye orifice. Then, the throat chakra will transform, and then the left and right channels in the head will assume a new shape and hug its sides instead of going straight up. This shape change is a big secret that people may use to cheat you. A loop will then protrude out the buddhra-randhra chakra on the back of the head, which is more difficult to open than the crown brahmarandra. Remember the teaching – it is a supreme teaching to forget the yogi brahmarandhra and always use the Buddha-randhra when exiting the body. Why would you come all this way and ignore the teachings of a supreme yogi sage Shakyamuni?
Next the heart chakra central hole develops its own loop protrusion. Eventually, you can push the little loops out of all the chakra openings as well as toes, feet and other orifices.
Remember that this is the initial goal of ALL the yoga schools in India since Shiva the Great Yogi – I Salute You, Shiva Oh Great One. Now don’t get me wrong and think I’m saying Shiva was just about yoga and gong-fu, for this Buddha helped establish the great Indian culture. I cannot stand the number of people who try to twist what I say into what they personally think or want to hear. The schools of yoga are about abandoning the ego and reaching enlightenment, but they emphasize form practices as their road to get physical gong-fu which you pass through for attainment. Hatha yoga, Raja yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Laya Yoga, Mantra Yoga, etc. all want you to reach these stages and become the natural human being who can become one with the Universe. Yes, we’ve just been talking about yoga, but I did it in a different way than you’re used to and filled in all the details that people look for in secret texts. In the literature you’d be hard pressed to find anything along the lines of what I’ve just taught you out of kindness. But there’s no secret – it just takes practice. Regardless, the entire culture of India is built up around just this.
If you cultivate Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras or the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, this is the initiatory stage you want to accomplish, so pay attention to how you get here. Yogananada, Muktananda and all the others try to reach this stage for starters. Now you see how to link it with Taoism and the cultivation of jing to chi, and the cultivation of the dhyana in Buddhism, as well as the Esoteric school. But if you think that Sufis who cultivate don’t reach this, or Christians, or Jews or Sikhs, Jains or others then you’re wrong. But where you go from here is where a lot of all these people make mistakes. Even the Arhat yogis, who reach the nirvana with remainder, walked out of Buddha’s Lotus Sutra lecture because they didn’t believe there was a stage higher than what they had achieved. Five hundred of them!
Unfortunately, if someone explained the road to Tao by speaking in the way of Confucius or Socrates, people would just ignore him or worse, even spit on the speaker! No one would certainly understand the fellow. Look at me -- I canot even make money on this site, and you expect someone to value a Confucius or Socrates? This world of modern science only understands materialism and respects only money. Hence the explanations of spiritual cultivation need to be re-given in terms of the Esoteric school descriptions to wake these people up. It’s actually a terrible pollution, but it does help you to understand how the spiritual cultivation schools link. How I wish for someone who could understand Zen, but for that there is no audience whatsoever, just people who THINK they understand. You must remember that Shakyamuni cultivated all this gong-fu and the nine samadhi, but gave them up because they were not the Tao. How supreme, how supreme. This is all just the low level crap.
You didn’t ask why the left and right channels bow out inside the head to hug the left and right sides. Because a large disk forms in the center of the head which will soon push out the top – the thousand petal chakra disk and its leaves. The chakra leaves can now push out and unfold. All this work for just this small attainment. But then again, is it that small an attainment?
The next stages of the chi transformations are called “lightness,” then “invisible,” then “formless.” If you cultivate correctly without clinging, and practice your anapana properly, you’ll pass through these stages quickly. The next stage is called ”clear perception.”
At this point, this is the true chi you’re finally cultivating. This is the stage of finally cultivating the chi of the human body. Previously we called the stuff inside the channels “chi,” but it was really akin to jing whereas this is the real wind element, or chi, or prana. Now you’ve reached real chi and are within the reach of the second to third dhyana if you can cultivate correctly.
By now you should realize that the chi channels are like flexible plastic tubes, just like you’d find on a fish aquarium pump. They are ALWAYS clogged solid all the way through with gunk. Call it jing, chi, jing-chi, the five elements, impure paste, the untransformed body, whatever … the diameters are always clogged with this. They are long tubes clogged with paste.
By opening the channels it means you’re pushing all of this out, and the heat of the cultivation warms it so that it can slide out easily like paste from a tube. How do you do that? By blazing the chakra pumps, by shining awareness on them. That’s a tantric yoga method, or Taoist method, or Esoteric school method. That’s how you can get it to unstuck and move. Or, you can just let go by practicing anapana and it’ll just happen naturally. Or, you can just cultivate mind-only, by letting go and cultivating emptiness, and it’ll happen naturally. The tantric way is the hard way. It only lets you know these useless details, and if you go doen this path, the chances are you’ll never get anywhere. That is the history of all the form schools. Kabbalah, yoga, tantric yoga, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana, internal alchemy, ... you name it. Always the same errors.
At these early stages of spiritual cultivation this material still has a liquidy-element to it, even if it’s hardened like stone. Thus it is akin to jing and the water element as well as hormones. Much later you’ll see tiny white drops or diamondlike crystals exiting out the chakra centers and running through the orbits of the channels, too, right through their centers, but not at this stage yet.
If you can clean out all the channels to a very high stage, and get through all these many many layers I’ve described, then you can become a Once-More-to-Return (Sakadagami), Sotapanna (no more than seven more successive human rebirths) or Anagami as Buddha said. Those are individuals who reached a certain stage of clearing, or excellence, and then stopped, but have yet to finish the whole. Gosh, where are you going to find out these things as to how many times it takes? In the Bible? Don’t make me laugh.
If you can clear everything out to a very high stage, and do some other things as well such as virtues, merits, vows, excellences, mental purity and commitments which we can’t go into, then you can reach the 8th Stage Bodhisattva bhumi which means in every life you’ll be able to get the Tao. You’ll reach a point that, because of your cultivation it will just be easier to cultivate each time you return, and thus your chances of success will be more assured. You can choose any religion to be born into to help them lift themselves up, but you’ll go through same process all the same. That’s why the same fellows keep coming back over and over again, wearing different hats, to help people, yet humanity doesn’t know it. Cultivate awakening to your original nature directly, by cultivating prajna wisdom, and this all happens naturally. I’m just being kind bothering to let you know the esoteric details of some of the physical transformations. Don’t equate the high high Bodhisattva bhumis with this low level crap. But also, don’t say they aren’t related or that there is no connection.
And so now you know a bit behind the Bodhisattva bhumi explanations within Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings, but unfortunately I had to speak of it in terms of tantra instead of his fine fine way, which is much better. This was just to help make you understand and make his road that much clearer. People don’t study, so they really cannot appreciate how well he put everything together. They think they can pick up a few books, look for a secret method here or there, and that’s it. Hardly. All this information I’m telling you is precious, and yet useless to you if you don’t cultivate. Even "precious" you don't understand. Go look for it and you won't find it. I'm the first to ever give this in so many centuries.
Now the real sushumna channel, thinner than the thinnest hairs or wires you can possibly imagine, so thin it seems intermittent, so thin it’s almost non-existent, will appear. At first from only the heart region upwards, later from the root base all the way to the roof. Only with a great enlightenment vow can you open it up to help save ALL sentient beings. “Oh, I just want to be a Taoist Immortal.” “I just found a new kabbalah secret.” “Oh, I want to be a yogi and be free from society.” “I want an immortal sword and to be able to fly through the air.” Yeah, right. Idiots.
Previously you were working on the larger outer layers wrapping the sushumna and would generate a bright spot at the center of the heart chakra, and then lead the chi upwards to the silverish shining crown chakra in the center of the head, and then let the River Chariot rotation carry it down the jen-mai and to the feet and up again to the tu-mai. Eventually you would push this chi out of the body after it revolved a bit. Always you repeated the process over and over again, always trying to keep the heart chakra "cooking,” shining with a brilliant silver brighter than the sun. But now you’re reaching the innermost layers of the sushumna, rather than the larger diameter outer layers, and there is a subtle relationship here with opening it and attainments up to the Bodhisattva bhumis. Stages such as “Immovable” or “Invincible” become a tiny bit understandable.
I forgot to tell you that the stage of chi cultivation prior to the appearance of the real sushumna is called “mirror shine” because of the crown chakra’s shining.
Oh and by the way, the real tu-mai and jen-mai within the larger diameter tu-mai and jen-mai channels are also so thin. So many secrets come out that I’m telling you. Secrets within secrets. Ha ha ha.
These are instructions only given to Arhats and Bodhisattvas. How lucky you are, how lucky you are!
The sacrum tail bone channels transform at this stage to something even greater than before. Finally those stubborn bastards! – it takes forever to open them up to their true stage. Shakyamuni and Manjushri had problems with their lower backs, but Dipankara’s problem was with the right thigh bone. The next Buddha’s problems will probably be in the shoulders, but the first in line for this world had no problems at all. It’s just because of the bad karma of sentient beings that it gets worse and worse and worse for these guys, who basically do it for you (even though you don’t know it).
The chakras start to unfold their flowers everywhere. It’s very hard to unfold these chakras, it’s very tiring if you use this quick tantric way. Another way, perhaps better since you don’t need a master nor instructions, is anapana wherein you ignore them and just let whatever happens happen naturally, for the body knows what it has to do. But remember the rule – “first the loop, then the flowers.” That’s my teaching. First the loops of the chi channels thrust out, and then only later can the higher flower petals appear and unfold. I’m not going to say more other than “the loops (stems) come first, and then the flowers.” Just like within the body, “the arteries come first, and then the organs form.”
Perhaps not necessarily in this order, but the second furnace on the floor of the dan tien will now open, the furnace of the secret place in the front. We don’t talk about this secret thing for fear people would become perverted. This is “sila,” or the discipline of this school. There are no rules in reality, but one sets up rules for gods and men because of karmic consequences. As to where its sushumna and left and right channels go, I won’t tell. I’ll give you a hint though: “The horns of a rhinoceros know plenty.” Without cultivating this gong-fu yourself, there's no way you'll figure it out.
Later, as time goes on, if you can cultivate the sushumna within the sushumna within the sushumna and so on …, the stage of chi you can reach is called “immaculate.” At this stage, breathing is free and clear. The breath in the body feels unobstructed. There is no mental joy or excitement. The “bell handles” on top of the head are now extremely large, and without any effort they keep pouring out and transform. There is no feeling of physical bliss enervation in the body – no bliss. If you needed to use a word you would call it “peace” rather than physical bliss. The mind is even or steady. The gong-fu is called “stable,” which is akin to forbearance or patience. Ohm, I salute the Buddhas!
Remember that Arhats only believe in the crown chakra that comes out the brahmarhandra. They don’t believe in the Buddha-randhra teachings. Trust in the enlightened ones, trust in them, for sure. If it wasn’t for them, none of us would have any teachings, so why would they lie if they said there is something higher? You must not depend on the crown chakra. In fact, you should not depend on anything at all.
I’m not going to tell you what stage this is. Go do some research and then you’ll know yourself. With all these teachings of layers within layers, you’ll also be able to gain an inkling of understanding as to why Buddha partitioned the Form Realm into so many heavens. It’s all science. There’s a reason he partitioned each dhyana into a specific particular number and the Form Realm into a certain number as well. Did you think it was arbitrary religious dogma? It’s all science with a meaning, there’s a meaning behind it and purpose. Gosh, another big secret revealed. This has nothing to do with “Buddhism” as a religion. This is just a cultivation science. Remember that. All you guys who keep thinking this is religion don’t have the slightest clue and certainly not the right understanding. In fact, we can say you’ve lost your head if you keep insisting on that. It means you’re just fighting yourself because you know what’s true deep inside you, but don’t want to accept the truth, so you’re searching for some way to negate it. “Can you attain this stage?” should be your only question. Yes, if you practice.
The next stage of chi is called “moist” – all the chi channels are flexible and have a shine. Encrustments fall away. The next stage is called “smoky.” The secret palace (the fourth furnace) emits vapor. The next stage is called “diamond” – hard and clear as diamonds, the earth element leaves this secret sushumna. Or is the beginning of the bindus being secreted? It’s very hard to tell…
The fifth furnace opens below the Buddha-randhra now, its base on the floor of the skull directly beneath it. I told you to trust the Buddhas – their dhyana is higher than the Arhat’s nirvana. Who could imagine a sushumna this thin? It’s fineness puts all the other channels to shame. So the root chakra, heart chakra and crown all developed a small furnace, and then the secret place and now beneath the buddha-randhra. The funace has a sushumna, a left and right channel, and it powers the chakra above it. Later you’ll suprirsingly see the bindus, or bright points like tiny diamonds, exit the smallest of these sushumna and enter into the great circulation like a broken but contiuous stream.
“Space falls from space” [[[space element]] encrustings fall away like orange slices that fall apart]. “Preparedness.” These are some of the other stages you go through. I haven’t mentioned all the stages all the time, just some important milestones.
The skull breaks open yet again and the inner space body climbs out. It’s time for even those bodies to leave.
Next stage is “no talk.”
The next stage is “flowers” or “flowering.” Even the sushumna (and other chi channels) can have buds on their stalks.
The next stage is “afflictions are leaving” – wasps at this stage depart.
The next four stages are “solid space,” then “shining [??? - I forgot] space,” then “shimmering space” because the chi shimmers inside it, and then “Non space.”
After this the next stage is “united” .
After this the next stage is “ground of jewels” – the floor of the dan tien is transformed. Amitofo.
After a few more stages, the next important stage is “sunrise.” If you think the stage is “dark sunrise,” “night sun,” or “black sun,” it’s because you haven’t cultivated hard enough. Blaze chakra, blaze!
Finally shen comes out. Now you can start cultivating shen.
At this point I’m not going to explain anymore. I’ve already given you enough gong-fu explanations. If I didn’t speak of gong-fu you’d just ignore everything I have to say about cultivation. How much interest would you have? Nada, nothing, scant interest at all. But because I explain a little bit about Yogacara, Tantra, Vajrayana, Shingon, Taoism, Shiva Yoga, Internal Alchemy, and the Esoteric school, you think you’ve found some wonderful and marvelous secrets. It’s all useless information if you don’t practice. How I wish there was someone capable of understanding Zen, the true Esoteric school. This is all just the garbage of the path. So I don’t want to speak about gong-fu anymore. It’s time to go back to the basics.
If you think this is what Shakyamuni Buddha taught, you are mistaken. This is NOT enlightenment dharma. However, I wanted you to know what stages you reach from Indian tantric yoga, the yoga that sprouted from the lineage of Shiva and empowered thousands of sadhus and yogis and gurus who cultivated the body. But most didn’t get the Tao, mind you. Also you see how this connects with Chinese Taoism and nei-gong, the interior part of the Chinese martial arts. As to Tibetan Buddhism and Vajrayana, or the Shingon school of Japan, you can see how the stages connect as well. I’ve tried to fill in the blanks for you and help you connect the traditions so you can see, once again, they all accomplish the same thing but just talk about certain parts of the path because of what they emphasize. BUT … and this is a big “but”- no results come out this way. No superpowers, no real Samadhi, no dhyana, no enlightenment no Tao. You are just cultivating the physical body to health and these are the structures that arise. Big deal. You still don’t have dhyana, you still don’t have enlightenment, you’re still going to die and you almost wasted your life once again. You’ve got a good foundation for health and a long life, but so what?
So what do you do?
Now you try to really cultivate the Tao. Your gong-fu base is solid. It’s there. You’ve established some fundamental groundwork. Now you have two roads you can rely on: anapana and cultivating consciousness. Yet another road is just cultivating prajna. All the roads still rely on using the principles of cessation-observation.
If you studied Abhidharma and know the difference between the 6th and 7th and 8th consciousnesses (see Three Texts on Consciousness Only, the Numata Institute), you try to first realize that the whole mental continuum is Mind-only, consciousness only and search for the root of that. Advaita Vedanta uses this method but by promoting the very end that’s so high rather than offer any intercessionary cultivation methods, I rarely see anyone get anywhere on that route other than memorize a lot of things and learn how to speak in an intelligent Vedantic way. So how do you do it? In the Surangama Sutra all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas instruct us on the methods they used to penetrate through to the source.
Your mind is always bombarded with appearances – sounds, forms, feelings, etc. – and you’re always clinging to them. The 6th consciousness gets tied up with the body consciousness like a heavy curtain, and it’s a mistake to try to push it, to try to move that molasses, to transform that chi or feeling. But that’s what tantrics do. Look further within and see, find that there is a free mind of thoughts that doesn’t have it’s constraints and then you’ve found the seventh consciousness. It’s free, instant, the mind behind thoughts that can flicker and is free of the senses. It’s the “mind within the mind” or mind behind the coarse thoughts you cling to as the sixth. But where does the seventh come from? It’s all still arising in reference to an ego or center point. There is no such thing. You must return to before that. THAT is the real cultivation, not cultivating physical gong-fu.
Now how do you achieve that? Maitreya, the founder of Yogacara, traced consciousness back to the source because he knew its components, and used that knowledge to help in his cultivation. Advaita Vedanta is similar to this at times, too. But the greatest enlightened ones – Kuan Yin, Manjushri, Samantabadhra – simply traced hearing consciousness back to its source. Because you don’t need to know any theory about the structure of consciousness (Abhidharma, Yogacara), but just follow hearing back to its source via the principles of letting go and cessation-watching, you can succeed if you do this. By concentrating on the hearing, you let go of the body consciousness and eye (image) consciousness, the two biggest objects of clinging that stand in your way. You can turn away from them, turn around from them and see the freedom that’s there, and in that instant everything changes immediately. So this is a brilliant strategy if you can learn how to do it.
Though you can read the Zen monk Han Shan’s story to learn how he did it, the only person who can teach you how to do it is you. You have to struggle a bit to separate the 7th from the 6th – that is, to identify the 7th – and then to realize where it comes from. Struggle, with it. Bump around a bit. It took me a while to learn how to do it too. Don’t waste time on other stuff, but concentrate on this task. You can do it. This is the real cultivation, not gongfu. You’re looking for the source of mind and mentation. This is the road of practice you should be on, not the gong-fu road which took you nowhere. So don’t conentrate on the 7th or 6th, but introspect and ask WHERE IS IT ALL COMING FROM? All the sense data, the interior mind, everything rises together — where is that entire tableau coming from? That origin is what you have to find and rest in.
In fact, you can trace any single sense consciousness back to the source and then they all break apart. They are like separate knots that all unwind if you unwind a single one, and the hearing consciousness is the one the great Buddhas use and recommend. So there are multiple avenues you can try and this is what you must cultivate. Buddha explained all this, and many roads of possible practice, as well as their results and many many stages I’ve been discussing, all in the Surangama Sutra. Gosh, it’s even free ont he internet, go search for it.
You could have saved yourself tons of time and trouble if you just did this from the start, as Buddha instructed, but people always want something spectacular and peculiar. So I illuminated that road for you and told you we found nothing. Still no samadhi, or Tao but just a bunch of gong-fu. When did Shakyamuni Buddha ever tell you to “blaze a chakra”? He didn’t. In sixty plus years of teaching, my teacher never did either. It’s the wrong way, but at least by so expounding I cleared up your misconceptions AND got you some foundational gong-fu so that you can devote yourself to REAL practice.
You have to cultivate MIND and then what’s supposed to happen will happen naturally and you don’t need effort, you don’t need a step-by-step roadmap, you don’t have to perform any particular yogas, you don’t have worry about chakras, chi channels or illusory bodies or river chariot rotations or microcosmic circulations or furnaces or anything. Put your mind at ease. The highest road is just letting go, turning inwards behind the sixth consciousness and investigating the source of the mind (thoughts), and dropping everything including the ego. All that other stuff is then taken care of. So this is all you have to do and then you’ll not only succeed, but get all this stuff as well even if you don’t know it’s going on. When you cultivate the mind rather than tantra, the real chi comes up, it fills your channels completely to an extent you’ve never known before and you don’t have to lead or it push it, your mind becomes strongly alive and “brilliant” and you reach a stage higher than anything you could possibly reach through tantra. I promise. Why would I lie? I'm making no money off of you by giving you all of this.
We can say that “tracing back consciousness” is hard to do, but it just takes some effort. Now you can understand that what appears on the tableau of the mind is like layers, and if you try to peel them away one by one it will take forever. You’ll never be done. If you just let the minds go and ignore it, and strive with either anapana or consciousness only to turn within and FIND THE ORIGIN of the mental scenario, then you’re on the right road of practice. It’s right there all the time. You’re always experiencing it, but you’ve become fascinated by gong-fu and lost your mind chasing after something else other than Mind, the origin.
It’s just like someone who has a head on his shoulder and thinks he’s lost his head, and then goes running around looking for it. So the Tao is there, the empty mind ground is there, it's always thee, it's always been there. Even if you don't know about the Tao and were never taught the Tao, still it would be there forever. It is a place where no karma exists because no function yet comes out. If you do that, which is the next step in spiritual cultivation, you can begin to free yourself and then you’ll realize this:
Knowing is of the same nature as emptiness.
[“Appearance” is knowing. What appears in the mind is the knowing of appearances, or what we call "arising." That’s what we call “knowing.” There's an appearance there and because you know that, it's "knowing" even if you don't know what it means. The "knowing" just means experience.]
Knowing is the same essence as emptiness.
