In my last post, I took you through the first three parts of what are called the Five Ranks of Tozan. Tozan was a Zen master who lived about 1200 years ago, and his description of the stages of enlightenment are very well-respected and have stood the test of time for twelve centuries. To fully understand this post, I strongly suggest that you read my last post before you read this one, since this is the second of two parts.
So, in our last episode, we left our hero in the third of the Five Ranks, established in the transcendent. This Third Rank is what most people would consider “enlightenment.” In this stage one’s center is no longer a separate self, a separate ego, a separate, agentic “doer.” Instead, one’s center is experienced as being everywhere, and the only doer is the entire universe, the Tao, the entire going on of it all. In the Third Rank there are no boundaries, no beginning, no end. You are birthless and deathless. This is Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind.
In this place all opposites are clearly and obviously one thing. And, you ARE that one thing. You are the background, the ground of being, the awareness out of which everything comes and into which everything dissolves. You are pure awareness, awareness without content. Good and evil, life and death, me and not me, and all other supposed opposites have collapsed into just being–not being something, but just being.
The experience is one of peace…flowing…perfection…oneness. (For a more extensive description of the transcendent, you might want to read my post about the Unitive level of development, two posts back.)
At any rate, there you are–enlightened.
Pretty cool, huh? Everything is perfect. Good/bad, having/not having, healthy/unhealthy, alive/dead, whatever–from this perspective, the universe is dancing along in a perfect way, and you are that dance. There’s nothing outside of you, so what could you possibly fear? There’s also nothing to get, because your experience is one of completeness. Since nothing is outside of you, what would you get–and where would you get it? There’s nowhere to go, because you’re everywhere.
In addition to being everything and everywhere, you’re also everyWHEN, because it’s obvious from this perspective that time is an illusion–or, more properly, nonsensical. It’s always NOW, and it will always be now. Even “now” doesn’t make sense, because now only exists or makes sense in relation to not-now, and there’s nothing from this perspective that’s not-now.
This is Eckhart Tolle’s now moment, the presence, except you don’t have to do anything to get yourself there. In fact, it’s not a matter of getting there or not getting there. It isn’t that there is a you that then experiences it. You are IT. Your experience of life isn’t some thing or some place to get to, but rather WHO YOU ARE.
When “you” act, it’s obvious that it’s the entire universe acting, not some separate person or separate ego. All divisions are seen for what they are–ideas, an artificial and arbitrary mental chopping of the One into pieces. No division is real, other than in the mind.
This is, to be sure, a tremendously great experience (especially at first, because of the contrast with what it felt like to be–supposedly–separate). After a while, you integrate the experience, and it isn’t so novel anymore. At that point it feels more “ordinary,” but as I said in my last post (quoting D.T. Suzuki), it’s like normal life, but about two inches off the ground.
So what’s missing from this place, the Third Rank of Tozan, where you’re everything, everywhere, everywhen? Heart, for one thing. Though at this stage you see the suffering of humanity, and you feel compassion for all those who are caught in it, you can’t help thinking that if people would just wake up to who they really are they could step out of it, just as you have. You certainly feel tremendous love for humanity–in fact, for everything–but you are, to a certain extent, detached from it all. So in one sense you do have heart, but it’s a detached heart, you might say.
Many great teachers live at the Third Rank. A person at this stage has tremendous charisma, and what Eastern mystical schools call “shakti,” divine power or energy. Others, if they have enough sensitivity, can “feel” you. They sense your power, your centeredness, your equanimity, that you are somehow above it all and not caught in the same bullshit everyone else seems to be caught in.
In the 60s and 70s we used to say that you could get a “contact high” from being around such a person. Because of this contact high, this vicarious taste of the transcendent, and the clear and potent teaching of someone at this stage, students typically love (and flock to) teachers who are at the Third Rank.
Even though the Third Rank is such a great place to be, it’s considered in Zen to be another place of stuckness. Just as you can be stuck in the relative world (as most people are), you can also be stuck in the transcendent. In Zen they say, “Enlightenment is delusion.” There are Zen stories where a disciple in the Third Rank says to the Master, “The geese and the mountains and the wind are all the Tao, aren’t they, Master?” and the Master says, “Yes, but it disgusts me to hear you say so.” At a certain point a Zen teacher may begin to tell his enlightened student that he “stinks of Zen.”
This happens partly because the teacher sees that the student, though “enlightened” in the sense that he is established in the transcendent, is, to a degree, lacking heart. The Third Rank is, by its very nature, impersonal. Though its perspective is one of seeing and encompassing all connections, all relationships–everything–the person at this stage doesn’t really FEEL those relationships. There is a denial, or perhaps you could say a distancing from, or an impersonality toward, the suffering of the world.
At the Third Rank you’re on the mountain top, and everything below you in the valley seems far away. From the mountain top it seems as if everything is perfect (which, in a sense, it actually is), including the suffering in the world. “God is playing all the parts. He who suffers and he who inflicts the suffering are both God in disguise.” In one sense this is true. However, there is a lack of personal connection to that suffering. “If only I could help other beings wake up, they would see the perfection I see, and they, too, would be out of the world of suffering and impermanence.”
I asked Genpo Roshi for his thoughts on this, and on the next step, the Fourth Rank, which he describes as a fall from grace. Here is a summary of what he told me:
When we have the experience of Great Death and Great Liberation (taking us to the Third Rank), the ego attaches to the “non-experience experience” of enlightenment and appropriates it. The ego becomes inflated and ignores cause and effect. It seems as if there is no ego, but there is. The ego is denying the ego in order to co-opt the enlightenment experience as its own. Karma, however, inevitably accumulates (in other words, cause and effect continue to work). Eventually the ego balloon pops from its own inflation. When this happens, there is a fall from grace–and in that fall from grace (which is the Fourth Rank) the relative world and all its suffering can no longer be denied and comes back with full force.
Where the Third Rank was impersonal, the Fourth Rank is very personal, and very humbling. In the Third Rank you thought you were beyond the world of suffering, that you had escaped from the vicissitudes and problems of the human condition. Now, having fallen, you’re up to your neck in personal problems, personal suffering, and the human condition. In fact, it seems worse than before. Everything is personal, and everything is relational. You feel your own suffering, plus that of all the others who suffer. And, having fallen from so high, you are humbled. In the Third Rank you felt quite extraordinary. Now you realize that you’re incredibly and totally ordinary.
And, in the Fourth Rank, you FEEL. You feel everything. Before the First Rank, back in pre-stage one, you were subject to the world of human suffering, but this time it’s different. In pre-stage one you were unaware, unconscious, unawake. Now you’re very awake, very conscious. And, because you are so conscious, so aware, you feel everything.
In the Third Rank you were “one with the universe”–but you were detached from the human aspect. You saw the suffering and even felt compassion about it. Perhaps you worked to help others wake up, to help others out of their suffering, but you weren’t really FEELING it. Now you are. You’re really one with everything now, including all the suffering. And, it hurts.
This is, however, not the same as it was when you were just another unconscious human being, before your “enlightenment” experience. Without having the experience of the first three Ranks you wouldn’t be able to handle what you’re feeling and experiencing in the Fourth Rank. In pre-stage one you had many defenses and ways of avoiding. You were able to repress, ignore, project, and otherwise delude yourself. You had “great hope” for something better in the future, some heaven or some better state or situation to hope for and anticipate.
Having experienced Great Doubt, though (part of the transition to the Third Rank), and having the awareness to clearly see reality for what it is, you now KNOW that there’s no escape. And, there’s no going back to your previous pre-stage one delusional state–or, to the delusion of the Third Rank. You’ll never again be able to feel that you’re above it all–that you’re divorced from the world, from suffering, from the human condition, and from cause and effect.
The Fourth Rank shatters the ego in the sense that from this point on delusion becomes very difficult. You know too much to be deluded by the Relative–and you also know too much to be deluded by the Transcendent. All the pain of being human, you discover, is real, and there’s no escape from it.
One famous Buddhist teaching is that of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. The first Truth is that all life is suffering. This is so because everything is in time, everything is transient. Sometimes we get what we don’t want, which creates suffering. Sometimes we don’t get what we do want, which also creates suffering. And even when we get what we want, we still suffer because when we get what we want it still exists in time and eventually passes away. Whatever we get we eventually lose because all things, at least in the relative world, have a beginning and an ending.
The second Truth is that suffering is caused by our attachment to things being a certain way–especially our attachment to life, to the idea that we must go on living.
The third Truth is that suffering can be ended by giving up attachment, and the fourth Truth is the method for doing that. (We could go much more deeply into the Four Noble Truths, but I won’t do that now because I’m introducing them just to make a particular point, which is…)
In the Third Rank, we think that we’ve given up attachment, and therefore ended suffering, but we haven’t. When you’re in the Third Rank it certainly seems like it, because everything feels perfect. Everything is flowing effortlessly and you’re continuously happy. However, the truth is that you’ve just found something else to be attached to (the transcendent) and another (and much more elegant) way to delude yourself about what it means to be human (what a bummer, huh?). You’ve stepped out of the relative entirely, as if it didn’t really exist.
In the Fourth Rank you find that the relative is real, and you can’t avoid it. You discover that cause and effect are all too real. As long as you’re here, in a body, being human, cause and effect will hunt you down, and there’s no avoiding it. The Fourth Rank is painful—and Genpo Roshi tells me that it took him years to recover from his fall from grace.
So what does it take to get out of the Fourth Rank? And what is the Fifth Rank all about? The Fifth Rank is the integration of the relative and the transcendent. I’ve referred to it in other things I’ve written as knowing who you really are (ultimately, that you are the transcendent, the entire going on of it all, Big Mind, beyond all beginnings, beyond all endings, and without boundaries or limits) but also knowing that you are expressing That from the perspective of a limited human being, living in time, subject to the laws of cause and effect, subject to karma.
Genpo Roshi sometimes calls someone in the Fifth Rank the one who chooses to be a human being. Knowing what you know, being unable to delude yourself anymore about who you really are, and what is really real, you choose to be here, you choose to be human.
(This is, in fact, the only stage at which you actually could choose to be a human being, where you really have the ability to make a conscious choice. Before this stage, you wouldn’t make this choice. At previous stages you either don’t know enough to choose (you don’t really see things the way they are). And, if you did know enough, you wouldn’t make this particular choice. You wouldn’t be strong enough, aware enough, wise enough, or compassionate enough.
In a sense the Fifth Rank involves another, and even deeper, surrender than that which you went through in the Second Rank, because now you really feel the reality of the relative and KNOW that there is no escape (at least as long as you’re a living human being). In the Fifth Rank you surrender to what is in a whole new way, because for the first time you really know what is.
This is not unlike the story of Jesus, who is seen as being the Son of God (in other words, the transcendent), yet takes the form of a human being, despite the suffering involved in being human. There is a famous passage in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Phillippeans which describes this choice to be a human being:
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippeans 2:5)
When you consciously choose to be a human being, fully knowing what is involved, and being totally awake to (and fully feeling) your own suffering and the enormity of the suffering of all of humanity–while also knowing at the same time that you are simultaneously the unborn, undying transcendent–something remarkable happens. Having REALLY surrendered to what is, you’re free.
Freedom, in this case, however, doesn’t mean freedom from suffering. It means the freedom to CHOOSE. In surrendering you don’t remove yourself from cause and effect, or from the fact that human bodies and psyches are sensitive and therefore subject to both pleasure and pain. At the Fifth Rank, however, you can choose your suffering.
What do I mean by that? You may have heard me describe The Game of Black and White, where we divide the world into two piles, the desirable (White) pile and the undesirable (Black) pile. Then, we add the rule that White Must Win. Since White and Black GO TOGETHER and define each other (and are really just ideas about reality, anyway–not reality itself), White can’t win, any more than up could win over down. In playing this game we put ourselves in a double-bind, an unwinable situation.
To be here, to be human, you have to play the game of Black and White at least a little bit. You can’t be human without becoming attached to something. Without desire you wouldn’t eat or come in out of the cold. Without desire, we wouldn’t procreate, and humanity would cease to exist. The unconscious person, however, plays the Game of Black and White without knowing that it’s an unwinable game. The unconscious person creates one kind of suffering after another by playing a hard and serious version of the Game of Black and White, desperately trying to get White to win.
The enlightened person, the person at the Fifth Rank–the one who consciously chooses to be a human being–chooses when and how he plays. He plays with full awareness of the karma he is creating, with full awareness of how cause and effect works. Though he is, relative to other unconscious and unaware people, unattached to life, he still chooses, for instance, to be attached, to some degree, to his children, his spouse, his friends, his motorcycle, his body, his life–or whatever.
Since he is very aware that everything is in time, he knows that whatever he becomes attached to will eventually pass away, and that becoming attached to anything has consequences. But the Fifth Rank human being doesn’t become attached unconsciously, like other humans. He chooses, and he chooses knowing full well what the consequences are. And, moment by moment, he surrenders to those consequences. The surrendering of the one who chooses to be a human being therefore isn’t a one-time event, but rather ongoing, in each moment. And, in being fully aware of the consequences of his actions, the one who chooses to be a human being avoids all sorts of unconscious suffering common to most human beings.
Genpo Roshi uses a triangle to describe the integration of relative and transcendent, self and no-self, mind and no-mind. The lower left corner of the triangle represents the relative, the world of the mind, the separate self. The lower right represents the transcendent, Big Mind, the world of no-self or no-mind.
The apex of the triangle represents the integration of the relative and the transcendent, the place where one has transcended and included both. The only way to really be in the world and be fully aware–and fully human–is to integrate both mind and no-mind, relative and transcendent, to transcend and include both. This is what Jesus meant by “being in the world, but not of it.”
Genpo Roshi also refers to the one who chooses to be a human being as “the Master.” When you integrate relative and transcendent, you become the master of your life. You are subject to cause and effect, and the impermanence of the relative world, but you have mastered life by fully (and continually) surrendering to the fact that this is the way things are. You have mastered life, not by defeating Black, as others try to do in playing the Game of Black and White, but rather by embracing Black and White–ending resistance to Black while also surrendering to the impermanence of White–and then, transcending them both.
A person at the Fifth Rank lives spontaneously. He is completely alive, completely comfortable in his own skin, and completely comfortable being a human being.
And that is a rare event.
******
A few announcements before I let you go.
1. I want to urge you once again to come and experience Genpo Roshi (and me) in person at our New York workshop, June 28-29. I promise that it WILL change your life. Just go to www.centerpointe.com/bigmind to register. There are a FEW spots left. Since every workshop so far has sold out, if you’re interested in attending NOW is the time to decide to go and sign up. You’ll be VERY glad you did. I look forward to meeting you in person.
2. I’ve just launched a free online course about the work of Eckhart Tolle, featuring several awakened teachers: Genpo Roshi, Ken Wilber, Saniel Bonder and Linda-Groves Bonder, Diane Hamilton, Sally Kempton, and me. If you’ve been captivated by Eckhart Tolle, his books, and the lessons he’s been teaching through Oprah, and want to learn more of the power of Now and how to awaken to who you really are, go enroll in this free course I’ve put together for you. Just go to www.masteringthepowerofnow.com.
Next, I think I’ll write something about Holosync, but I’ll also tie in many of the other topics you’ve asked me to write about. Thank you so much for your suggestions and your other posts. Do let me know what you think about this one–I really want your feedback. Also DO tell others about this blog, please.
Be well.
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Does Ken Wilber’s statement that only “3% of the population are conscious” mean that only when you’re stable at stage 5 are you “conscious”? I have touched the waters of all 5 stages at the “state” place and have found that it’s cyclic, like a spiral, that I return to the first state and do it all over again, but at a much deeper place of understanding. I would hope that when I’m able to stay at the 3rd stage that I would have enough consciousness not to get so intoxicated that I would get stuck there, or I would have someone close to me with enough consciousness, bring me back down to earth. Is this possible?
FROM BILL: “Conscious” is pretty vague. Since it’s a continuum, where does not-conscious leave off and conscious begin? Both are ideas, concepts. If this really is a precise quote from Ken, he probably means that very few people have awakened, or perhaps are at the higher developmental levels he describes.
interesting info. care to share more of it??
Nice to see you posting on this topic, I need to book mark this site. Keep up the good work.
Interesting blog, look forward to more.
Thanks, Bill. While I have qualms with your marketing, I enjoy your clear articulate writing.
Having done Big Mind with Genpo at an ILP seminar a few years ago, this was helpful to understanding more about the 5 Ranks and where I might be in terms of them.
May all beings be happy,
~Duff
“The separate self is an illusion.”
Yes, but it disgusts me to hear you say it.
FROM BILL: Impersonating a Zen master?
Channeling – Which presupposes I understand what he meant. Or borrowing. Otherwise, how else would I have made the statement.
AsSuMiNg an impersonation may be useful to you – and that’s fine by me – but it’s not useful to me.
If you disagree with the assessment, I respect that.
Hello Mr. Harris,
unfortunately my personal experience has been a bit uncomfortable.
(just to let you know) I have been meditating with holosync for a year and a half now and have seen great positive changes in me so far and for that I thank you deeply. I would also like to tell you that based on your developmental levels analysis in previous blogs, I believe myself to be mostly on the narcissistic level slowly working myself upwards, though I have a long way to go.
A few days ago, as I was sitting in my bed thinking, I asked myself a question, and then heard no reply. I wondered who was it that would reply back to me, and was that actually me? and then something amazing happened. For a few minutes then I felt this place of stillness Mr.Tolle and you talk about. I don’t know if that was a moment of enlightenment but it was peaceful, just being, no time, no form, out of this world really, felt like one with the universe. It felt like consciousness. And it felt like home.
I ‘came back’ after a few minutes, and sat down to do some work. Talked on the phone, listened to some music. But as time went by I felt all the more my egotistic self. And it kept strengthening as time went by. I felt more narcissistic. More self centered. And my thinking was narcissistic as well. And that was awful. I thought to myself that maybe that is my ego trying to fight back and it used up all of its tools. So I thought I’d just watch.
And then I started crying, endlessly. The pain was so much. I felt all the pain of my ego all at once. Not just a little bit of loneliness here and a little bit of despair there, but it was like I felt ALL the pain of my life all over my body. And then I was crying and saying “why come back? WHY COME BACK TO MY EGO?”
And then for the first time in my life I felt I wanted to commit suicide. Never felt that before. Just the occasional thought everyone has I guess, but not the actual feeling. And I kept thinking “why come back? after all its not me thats dying”.
Then I thought to myself that that is my ego talking (I think) and after a while I calmed down. But I was so scared of myself. And then, I felt like a door opened to my subconscious, (like when I do holosync and stuff come out of there) and I kept seeing terrifying things. I saw awful faces with blood and accidents and horrible things I cannot even describe. I felt so scared. So scared I was trembling. I phoned a friend and went over and slept there.
The next day, my mind was thinking endlessly (also making insanely fast new interpretations of the world and how I see reality) and I had blocked all of my feelings really. I realised that after many hours and I decided to feel myself again a little bit. And then something happened. I felt so much pain all over my body and started crying endlessly again. I was thinking of humanity and the suffering we go through and the pain, and what we do to one another with our egos, and the pain was too deep. It wasn’t just a thought. This thing where we all tell one another “oh we burn forests or we start wars, how wrong of us…” I felt the actual feeling all over me. And it hurt so bad. I blocked my feelings again immediately.
And then the following day, I went to the park -which I never do- but felt this sudden innate need to ‘go home to the trees’ and just sit there on the grass being with them. And then I saw a little child and started crying again and felt the same pain all over my body. It felt like pain for humanity.
And today, as I’m writing this, I have still blocked my feeling body, and I hope in days to come I will be able to integrate emotionally what happened to me, and maybe evolve a little bit. The impact of those few minutes was tremendous for me. Maybe others who are at a higher emotional level can handle it better than I and won’t go through what I did.
I guess I just wanted to share this with all of you as there is noone in my environment who I could share it with. I don’t know what question to ask you Mr. Harris -to be honest. But I think any reply from you will be comforting.
Thank you,
Natasha
FROM BILL: First, I think the experience you described at the beginning of your post was a transcendent experience. Second, I don’t hink you are still at that narcissistic stage. We all have some narcissistic ways of being, no matter what our developmental level, because “it’s all about me” is part of being human. You seem to feel a lot of empathy for the suffering in the world, and that isn’t narcissism.
I’d also don’t think you are as blocked as you think about your feelings. This transcendent experience you had seems to have opened you to a lot of feeling. This is a good thing, because you have likely repressed or disowned a lot of this pain. When you do that, it comes out anyway, but it comes out in immature and not-resourceful ways (in fact, narcissistic ways). When you begin to consciously feel it, when you begin to become truly aware of it, and let yourself feel it, the way you express it matures. This is why your pain, though still about what happened to you, is also now about the problems and suffering in the world.
When a person is traumatized during childhood, as I think you were, they often relive intense feelings from that trauma. Someone or something reminds you of your past, and the pain you felt, and you transplant that old feeling into the now moment. You saw that child, and your own childhood feelings came back. If a person was traumatized by their father yelling at them, they might feel the same helpless feelings when another authority figure–a boss, perhaps–yells at them, despite the fact that they aren’t a helpless little girl any more.
What I’m getting at is that what happen is that the past can influence the present, but ONLY if you are unconscious about it. If you can observe your reaction to an authoritarian boss, for instance, and see what you are doing, as you do it, you won’t be able to keep doing it. What matters is what you do NOW, not what happened in the past. What you do now will be automatic if you are unaware, but if you are aware you can CHOOSE what you do now–you can choose your reaction to a boss who yells at you.
So, the pain you have from the past is real pain, but the attaching it to what happens in the present isn’t necessary or inevitable. You WILL attach it to what happens now if you remain unaware, but you’ll stop doing that the more awareness you have. This is one of the huge benefits of Holosync–it creates tremendous amounts of awareness, making it easier to quit doing things unconsciously and automatically, based on the past.
Dear Mr.Harris,
I waited for a few days before I’d reply back to you,
so that I could see how I’m doing.
Your reply was very helpful to me, I thank you deeply
for your immediate response. It is true that I have
been traumatised emotionally when I was a child
and that I did project my pain onto the child I saw
in the park.
I am much calmer now, and are trying to feel
my pain consciously.
My personal goal in life is to feel love,
which I was so deprived of when I was a child.
Aside from the love we feel in our everyday life,
when we selflessly care for another, or for our society,
(and holosync has greatly enhanced that in me)
I thought that true love is to feel the spiritual unity of all life,
that we are all one,
but after this transcendent experience, I now think that true love for me
is yes to go there but then come back. And participate. And help others.
So, I feel secure now. And grateful for what I experienced.
Now, I feel great respect for all the people who stayed there for a while
and then chose to come back.
Thank you again for all the help and guidance you offering to all of us.
Natasha
Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
I really liked your article. Very informative. Keep up the good work.
wow what a collection of great info how long did it take to put together? are you on twitter?
Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.