Guhyagarbha Tantra: Awakened Awareness and the Awakeness of Phenomena

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd

1. The Guhyagarbha Tantra is the tantra of awakened awareness and the awakeness of phenomena. The world is awakened awareness as awakened phenomena, and the divinity of awakeness is without us and within the world as phenomena. Awakened phenomena…there is no separation between being and the phenomena of beings. All beings are the manifestation of pure being…pure awakened...awareness.

2. This awakeness is the openness of being itself, and this openness of being is the openness of all beings. Human beings are openness. This openness of awareness is the opening of subjectivity itself, consciousness itself. This openness allows us to know and experience both within and around us, to know directly (gnosis) and also indirectly through symbol and through words and letters. This openness allows us to communicate directly through and indirectly through mediated language…da sein...means that openness of thereness, later named the great expanse.

3. So being a being is openness or emptiness or spaciousness…and from within being all beings are brought forth. What is most amazing is the openness of the human being, the openness of primordial awareness itself. The openness of primordial awareness manifesting itself both in the openness of the person and in the circumstances of the person…a person is openness personified in particular mind and body.

4. This openness is a clearing ….luminous clearing. The clearing or the openness of primordial awareness gives itself to human beings within human beings as human beings. Humans are the guardians of this openness. We are aware of this openness, not through thought but through being open to the openness.

5. So human openness is not the whole of openness, we are like locals of openness yet we belong completely to the openness, completely to primordial cosmological openness, emptiness…our localness belongs to the sea of openness. Humans are guardians of being and of the openness, of this open mega universe.

6. To experience this openness, this space, this clearing is radically existentially transforming. To experience the sea of openness frees us form the concreteness of mind and body, frees us from density…the density of mind and functions of mind.

7. This primordial phenomena of openness, potential, this infinite letting phenomenon arise…worlds arise, dimensions arise. This is manifested macro cosmic primordial awareness manifesting infinite worlds and infinite dimensions as its own self. This is manifested micro cosmically in us manifesting our own world, our own dimensions of infinity…unbound openness.

This is beyond calculative thinking and can be experienced through our own awareness, our own openness of the openness. One attunes oneself to this primordial openness and becomes the openness, and as such one is the openness in its infinity. This openness can not be thought.

8. Space spatializes and makes room, space frees up, clears, clearness radiates, so this space is luminous and radiates energy and light…blazing light.

9. This openness, which is light of knowingness, is not the creation of human beings; this is givenness of being itself as itself to and through humans. Primordial being dwells in us as us. God is being itself; god is openness itself…however, there is not an “it” in openness.

10. So you and I are this openness as it is given and manifests. It is given as pure knowingness; it is given in its radiance, its rapturing radiance, and is given as the elements, the energies configuring and conjoining as the world.

11. This openness in its manifestations is within us and in us as us. And we are this openness, this emptiness, this luminous space in all its dimensions.

15. The archetypes are us and we are the archetypes, this primordial configuration of energies and elements. There is this inter beingness, or drama or action of oneness between us as nirmanakaya, and us as sambhogakaya and us as darmakaya. This is one house with three floors.

16. In this way, the entire experience is personal or subjective; as the kayas open experientially, the subjectivity of knowingness and its manifestations are present and yet subjective without a subject. Openness is subjectivity. It is not objectified and can never be objectified. Yet, this subjectivity is not the subjectivity of the mind, thinking or body; though the mind and body become pervaded by the subjectivity as primordial awareness. The mind and body are the subjects of generational field…the vehicle of our subjectivity. There is the subjectivity of primordial awareness in the mind and body field. The mind can not know the field itself, but can come to understand the field through the infusion of awareness, openness.

17. Subjectivity is not an entity, but openness manifesting openness…gnosis, light, spaciousness, compassion…are metaphors for openness. This openness is. I am. 18. “I am” is subjectivity without a subject. And this subjectivity is manifested in the subjectivity of all the creators. The i is given. But this i is not the aggregates, not equipment, not the vehicle; although this i permeates everything and everyone. The subjectivity of the i is not the subjectivity of mind or functions of mind. This i is beyond mind and body and yet manifests in mind and body. This i manifests in phenomena as phenomena. This i is being itself, awareness itself.

19. The archetypes are completely personal and field configurations of the beingness of your own being which is both horizontal and vertical.

20. The vajra kumara is primordial awareness itself.

21. The archetypes are not functions of your mind, your fantasy, your neediness but rather the very givenness of your own dimensionality that you are. The alayic dimension is not simply nirmanakaya traces but sambhogakaya traces …non duality in duality. Welcome to the universe…non duality in duality…non duality manifesting duality…duality always within non duality. In other words, you are the whole shebang…entering time. Timeless enters time and leaves time and reenters time. The traces abide in timelessness…as Garbe Dorje says an abiding in immersion.

22. Such tantric texts as The Sovereign Goddess uses i throughout the text as subjectivity as openness itself. It is no thing, and yet is subjectivity without a subject, as mind or body. Out of this subjectivity, subjectivity arises as subjects and objects…phenomena. This vast world is compassion…the drama is compassion, and compassion is personal, but beyond mind and beyond body. Translucidity is subjectivity.

23. When this openness is not experience, vast amounts of energies turn again. Everything and the hatred of subjective experience arises, and the demonic mounts and drives itself to destroy what it does not experience.

24. The liquidity of sacred drops, the liquidity of the bodhichitta as the liquidity of sexuality. In the drop there is transmission of the drop…which in the luminous body has power of illumination.

25. There are the heart drops of dharmakaya. There are the sexual drops. And there is the liquidity of the mouth, golden drops for healing. (Dr. Yan Xin Chinese qigong master refers to the golden drops of healing). There are also drops from the wrist, and drops from the figure tips. Tear drops are extremely useful in the body of light, vajra body, for the dissolving of phenomena.

26. In the non dual tantra, the definition of ati is the very nature of the unborn or the essence of everything. This is what is meant by phenomena are primordially awakened. The ground is that phenomena comprise the appearance of samsara and enlightenment and are, by nature, primordially awakened. This path is the indivisibility of the generation and completion stages.

The result is to fully abide upon the ground of the spontaneously perfect Samantabhadra in the present moment and as the present moment. Phenomena lack true inherent existence but do appear…why not? Uninherent existence, temporary existence does not negate the time of manifestation which is the great compassion...time is the great compassion…manifesting the path of liberation.