Mingling Minds

By Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.

There is a word and an instruction that a most wonderful Lama gave in a meditation seminar that I would like to describe. The instruction was an invitation to mingle our mind with his mind. Mingling your mind with the lama’s mind is the great practice of mingling minds. As the lama said, “please mingle your mind with my mind.”

What happens when you mingle you mind with the lama’s mind? I have had the good fortune of mingling my mind with the minds of great meditation masters. In fact, mingling my mind with the mind of teachers who embody awareness has been my greatest and most wonderful practice. I remember many years ago sitting in Ganeshpuri, India mingling my mind with Swami Muktananda’s mind. Later I practiced mingling minds with such masters as Dr. Yan Xin, Namkai Norbu, Lama Tharchin, Lama Wangdor, Kungsang Dechen Lingpa, Yang Thang Rinpoche, Penor Rinpoche, Ammachi, Karmapa, Rigdzin Dorje, Palden Sherab Rinpoche, Lama Norlha among others. I have not only mingled my mind with living meditation masters but those meditation masters who passed through the doorway of deathlessness into the other vast dimensions of the primordial awareness field. Mingling of the mind is not limited to localness and is not time bound. Mingling of mind brings us into timelessness awareness in time and time in timelessness awareness.

Mingling mind leads us beyond our mind and into what remains, which is awareness itself. When a mind mingles with a mind that is within openness and luminous spaciousness of awareness then our mind dissolves into spaciousness radiance of awareness. In this mingling of minds there is a heart mind connection which brings us into the heart essence of awareness field. From within this heart mind union with another we experience the completeness of the heart mind connection within our own being. From within our own innermost heart mind connection we are empowered to extend our heart mind union to and with another person. This extension is truly the great compassion. Or as the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa, “You and I are indivisible.”

As my teacher in Gestalt psychotherapy Erving Polster would say so often “two awareness are better than one.” Liberation is a function of Union. The path of union is the path of the mysterious conjunctio. When you mingle your mind with a mind that is within awareness, infused within awareness, your mind begins to disappear and what remains is awareness. Luminous spacious emptiness…knowingness. This mingling of minds is the most direct transmission possible, transmission through union. The union of mingling minds results with the mind dissolving into primordial awareness.

Mingling minds can bring forth the experience of Nirmanakaya, the kaya of flesh, the world. And through the doorway of Nirmanakaya, the dimension of the Sambkogakaya arises which is the archetypal realm of luminous energy, and vortextual powers. Through the doorway of the Sambhogakaya dimension, the dimension of the Dharmakaya is manifest. The Dharmakaya is the realm of potentiality, the source as no-thingness from which everything and anything arises. Nirmanakaya is the fruition of Dharmakaya just as Sambhogakaya is the manifestation of Dharmakaya, and Sambhogakaya becoming Nirmanakaya. The archetypal dimension is the Sambhogakaya.

You can mingle your mind with the mind of a person immediately present. Since awareness as mind is not bound by localness, you may also mingle with a mind far away. You may even mingle your mind with person no longer in this dimension of the flesh. There is a direct accessibility between the dimensions of Being. And you may even mingle you mind with archetypal powers and configurations beyond the person or behind the person or through the person. You may mingle your mind with Dharmakaya dimension through the doorway of archetypal energies.

From mingling the mind arises the power of transmission and extension of heart essence awareness field of light and trans-lucidity. The essential practice of the Guhyagarbha tantra is bringing your mind down into the heart center, mingling your mind with the innermost heart of awareness creating non duality within mind and heart. A way of infusing the mind is through mingling it. We can mingle our minds with anyone. This is relatively easy. For example a person is locked in their mind alone, who suffers an intense sense of self isolation and solipsism as they are locked in unbearable dualistic separateness. And then one day, they learn to mingle their minds with another person and a natural sense of oneness or indivisibility with another person opens. In that oneness, the awareness of awareness is experienced as one opens to the openness in one’s self and the other. How wonderful!

There are different dimensions to mingling of minds. There is gross, subtle, very subtle and most subtle. The union depends on the conjunctio of both minds. The mingling with some people’s minds can bring us into lunch, or a video game. Mingling of mind can go beyond affects, sensation, thoughts, memory, fantasy, and preoccupations. The mingling of minds can be a cutting through the Dzogchen practice of Trekcho. When there is union through mind, empty mind then heart essence arises and the heart mind union is experienced. And most wonderfully the heart mind union can be extended inside to inside. This mingling is the mysterious conjunctio that Jung studied so earnestly. Ultimately the mingling of the mind opens us to the inner heart essence the essence of non-duality.

Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and The Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy studies.