The impersonating ego, that is not a true person because it’s a collage of inputs from external sources, and dependent upon the validity and validation of the culture and of the Other—this is always an imposter, and always feels not fully real and authentic; because the only authentic Person is the One Self. When you are the manifestation of that Person, then there is true power, true clarity, true spontaneity, and absence of fear and desire, and absence from the need to remain as some thinking being within a world—but one acts in service and then disappears back into the Infinite, and abides as the stillness.
But the power and the freedom to act and to be and to disappear and to appear is given, because the Self never really fully appears or disappears. But the presence of the Self is everywhere in the dream, not only in the form of persons, or a person, or many buddhas, or sages, speaking, teaching, guiding, doing their charitra—but also in all of the magical events, the synchronicities, all of the uncanny aspects of reality, that is the manifestation of that consciousness in its appearance as the cosmic dream itself, is not different from its appearance within the dream as the teacher of righteousness, and truth, and beauty, and goodness, and divine love.
So it is that absolute power to abide in the transcendent and in the immanent, but in neither and in both, because samsara and nirvana are not different for the Self, brings the absolute freedom to bear within the constraints of time and space, and cause and effect, even though the Self is not subject to any of those.
So I’m going to read another section from The Supreme Source, the fundamental Tantra of one of the main lineages of Dzogchen. This comes from the—it’s called The Further Tantra, The Teachings on Understanding. This is number six on the path.
“Listen—the nature of the Supreme Source, Teacher of Teachers, abides in the single condition of the unborn. However, as it is difficult to realize the meaning of the unborn, in order to lead their followers on satisfactory paths, the Teachers of the Three Dimensions, my first disciples,” so this is a lower level of teaching, right?—“teach that it is necessary to tread gradual paths, for people who don’t know what it means instantaneously to be unborn,” to not be able to realize and grok that, then at that level of consciousness teachers arise who teach gradual paths. Here we teach all of it. The gradual path for those who are stuck in the ego, and for those who are in the soul, a much more clear path of devotional union—and then for those who are capable of realizing the Absolute Self, instantaneous liberation. You can choose which you want. All are true, but one is true only on the relative level, and not necessary except for the fact that you are choosing to believe in limitations, and the need for a gradual path, and the fewer of those beliefs that you are holding on to with rigidity, the more you are able to grok the fact that you are already unborn. OK.
So, “Thus, to lead those of lesser capacity toward the true meaning, they transmit provisional teachings.”
So it’s not that those provisional teachings are bad or should be avoided, but you won’t find them necessary or interesting once you have grokked that you are already unborn, and you are that consciousness that is the Absolute.
So he goes on. “Listen.” Listen is interesting—it’s Shema. Shema, the same as you have in the Hebrew prayer, Shema Yisrael, although this is Shema Tibet. But it’s the same idea that you must listen with your Third Ear.
“They teach that by following the gradual paths of accumulation,” right, accumulation of merit and wisdom, and of application of techniques of meditation, right? “of seeing, of contemplating and of the final attainment, that it is possible to realize the fruit of these efforts after hundreds of kalpas, or maybe within seven lives, or three lives, if you’re lucky. But however, in this manner, they do not enable people to understand my path.”
So there’s an absolute path that doesn’t require time, because time is an illusion.
“Listen, I will explain to you the path of the Supreme Source. As the true nature is unborn, I transcend the limiting definition of taking up or not taking up a path. Thus, there is no need to tread a gradual path.” There’s no need for a path at all, because you’re already that.
“The five paths,” these are parts of a lower level of the Dzogchen, “are conditioned by concepts. However, as I transcend the objects of concepts, I cannot be reached by following a conceptual path.”
So this is the most important concept, OK? The concept that ends all concepts. Because a concept has an object, it’s a word, it’s a signifier, and so it’s always tied to a signified. But the signified is never fully understood. It can’t be known. The concept is a representation, but it does not include within itself what it represents. So you can hear the word unborn a thousand times and hear that you are unborn, but does that mean that you grok that you are unborn? No, because the signifier does not contain the signified. OK? And the only way to get from the signifier to the signified is to not have a signifier. It’s that simple. If you don’t have a signifier, you are the signified. That’s all that remains. And so you are the unborn, but as soon as you think about it, you have lost it. And now you think you’re born to think about becoming unborn. And you will never reach your goal.
So, “Listen, my path has no stages, and it is always equal in the immense sphere of the unborn. Understanding this single nature, one discovers the futility of treading a gradual path. Listen. In order to attain me, the teacher of teachers, the Supreme Source, there are no stages related to any path. Self-arising wisdom is instantly perfect. Leaving the natural condition as it is, one finds oneself at the goal without ever having started the journey.”
OK? The journey is in order to reach where you are now, but don’t know it because you are living in a plane of representation. You’re living in signifiers and concepts. You’re not living in your Real Self. You have projected yourself into language, and as long as that language, that mental chatter, keeps going on, you are projecting your consciousness away from your Real Nature. And it is only because you are identified with those ideas, and representations, and images of who you are instead of who you are, that a gradual path would be necessary.
