Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The extended snake-and-rope analogy opens this 46-minute talk: Ven Jampa Gendun traces the gradual erosion of a false belief — like pouring hot water into cold — then applies the same logic to our misconception of a singular, unchanging, independent self. He introduces the Four Essentials method for dismantling that misconception at the hearer’s level of understanding emptiness, devoting the session to just the first essential: identifying the object of negation. Thought experiments — brain transplants, the “I can’t control myself” paradox — help sharpen the mental image of what we are looking for. The talk closes with a guided contemplation: reliving charged emotional memories to catch the sense of self as it arises and probe whether it feels solid, transparent, bodily, or mental.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3 PA 1989 09 15.mp3
UUID: d12f4db7-b758-4972-8157-6d3ec1921cae
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-09-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.4 minutes
Words: ~5,834
First the cold water becomes a little bit increases in heat a little bit, a little bit warm. Then it becomes lukewarm. And then slowly as you add more and more hot water it becomes hot. Is a gradual diminishment of the temperature of being cold and slowly rises in temperature until it becomes hot. So in this, we’re trying to generate a well formed contradiction to our conception of a snake.
We’re going to investigate whether that reference object, that snake, the conception of snake refers to an object. What it is referring to is a snake is over there. We’re going to see if we can find that reference object. We’re going to look at that place that we see it. So we look and we’re investigating.
Stand there for a couple of minutes looking. It doesn’t move. It’s not moving. Snakes usually move, don’t they? The first hint that maybe it’s not a snake.
The first doubt begins to arise. There’s a fleeting little doubt. The conception of a snake will weaken just slightly because snakes are supposed to move. Maybe it’s asleep. I don’t know.
Couldn’t sleep. Maybe it’s not a snake. So we’re beginning our investigation. It should move a little bit if it’s really a snake. There’s a crack of doubt may appear.
The thought that it’s not a snake may fleetingly flash through our mind. It’s a glimpse. We’re hardly aware of that one instant of thought maybe it’s not a snake. Maybe I’m wrong. It doesn’t, you know, we’re looking closely, it doesn’t appear to have a head.
It has a strange head. Snakes don’t have heads like that. Maybe its head is cut off. So we’re beginning to wonder. We’re beginning to grasp at that as a snake, beginning to relax just a little bit.
We don’t quite have the force that this is a snake. It’s beginning to we’re not quite as sure. We’re beginning to be a little more open minded. You know the quality of ignorance is closed mindedness, ignoring the reality of the situation. And then holding on that this is the way it is.
We’re beginning to open up. We’re beginning to contradict we cannot maintain our position. That this is definitely a snake in the light of this new information that we’re getting, these contradictions to this position that we’re trying to hold, that this is in fact a snake. You know, either it’s a snake or it’s a rope. It can’t be both.
Now I’m beginning to wonder. I don’t know. So we go get a stick and start poking around It doesn’t move. If that was a snake it would start moving. It’s too light to be a snake.
It doesn’t have a head. It doesn’t have tail. It doesn’t have a smooth body. So we’re adding more and more hot water. We’re contradicting more and more.
Our ability to maintain, to support that belief that this snake is being eroded. It’s being contradicted. The possibility of it being something else is more and more opened up to. That in fact it might not really be a snake, it could be a rope. We’re not quite sure what it is, but we’re beginning to doubt whether it’s really a snake or not.
Our conception of snake is beginning to lose its strength. The water is getting a little warmer. And the fear and all those associated emotional responses begin to lessen in our strength. We’re not quite as tense as we were. Not quite as much afraid of that object.
Of course we’re not quite as holding onto it as tightly as being definitely a snake. You know, doesn’t move. It’s light. It’s too shiny. It’s not shiny like a snake.
It doesn’t have a head. Doesn’t have a tail. You know now, we get very close to it. And now it’s almost impossible to maintain, to support that conception of that object to be a snake. You know, it’s being contradicted by our own perception.
It’s being we begin to form a contradictory conception that it’s a rope. At the same time, we cannot hold the conception of that object being a snake and being a rope. They’re going to cancel each other out. It’s like the cold water and the hot water or like the balance beam. You know as one end begins to rise the other one lowers.
So now the force of that object being, of it conceiving of that object as a rope becoming greater and greater and the conception, the force of conceiving that object to be a snake is diminishing. It’s almost impossible to even conceive of that object any longer as being a snake. It’s a rope, no question about it. Definitely a rope. And that conception of snake and all the fear and all the emotional responses that are associated with dissolve into the emptiness of snake.
They’re gone. You know the cause is gone. The cause of all that fear and all those associated emotional responses was an incorrect belief in something which in fact didn’t exist at all. It never existed at any time before, presently, or in the future at that place. It didn’t exist, but we believed it to exist very deeply.
We conceived it to exist. We held it to exist. We were close to any information which contradicted that belief unless we make a detailed investigation, a commitment to finding out what is really there. Once we completely contradict that form of belief, bring it to awareness first and contradict it, it dissolves in its own place, in its own emptiness, in its baselessness. It’s no longer able to be supported.
And everything which depended upon that belief, that misconception dissolves. All the emotions, all the attitudes, all the feelings dissolve because we’ve taken the basis. We’ve taken away the originating source. Everything is dependent arising. All these various fears, emotions, feelings arise in dependence.
The ultimate base is this misconception of this snake. There’s never been a snake there that we believed to exist. We experience all these fears based upon misconception. There was never a snake there. There was never any reasonable need to have fear at any time.
Whenever, you know, we have an emotional response such as aversion, such as attachment, fear, pride, spite, miserliness, jealousy. It’s always associated with a sense of a singular, you know, we’re beginning at the hearer’s level in our discussion. We’re trying to ultimately understand the dependent arising. We’re going to come to a gradual understanding. We’re beginning at the hearer’s level of understanding.
Whenever we have an emotional response such as anger, such as hatred, aversion, attachment, jealousy, it is always associated with a sense of a singular, unchanging, independent self. This sense, this conception, as in the case of the conception of a snake, we have a conception of a singular, unchanging, independent self. This conception is always associated with suffering. It’s always associated with afflicted emotions such as hatred, desire, attachment, jealousy, spite, miserliness. We have a conception that such a type of self exists.
Conceptions have referent objects. This conception of a singular, unchanging, independent self has as its reference object. The object to which it’s referring to, what? A singular, unchanging, dependent self. This conception is referring to that.
And just as in the case of the snake, when we analyze, if we can find that reference object, we can never isolate. We can never find that object. Just as in the case of the snake, the conception of the snake, when we look for that reference object, the snake, we couldn’t find it. When we look for the reference object of the conception, conceiving of a singular, unchanged, independent self, we can’t find it. We can’t isolate it.
Wherever we look, where we’re seen we investigate, it’s never to be found. There’s nothing that corresponds to it. When I say book, there’s something which corresponds to it. There’s an object which corresponds to that term. When I think book, there is a book, there’s something which I can find which corresponds to that conception, that reference object where I’m referring to.
There is a book. Ah, yes. We can validate that. We can find it. When we look for it, we find something.
We find what we were looking for. We find what was being referred to by that conception. We have a conception, a belief of a type of self. We have a sense of a type of self instinctively. A conception of a singular, unchanging, independent self.
When we look for that reference object, what that object, what that conception is referring to, at the place where it’s seen, we can’t find it. When we search at the place we, you know, for the sense of self, we look in the body and the mind. That’s where we see it. We can’t find it. This reference object doesn’t exist.
It’s never existed. It doesn’t exist now and will never exist in the future. When we begin to deeply realize that this conception which is grasped at the existence of such a self can no longer be supported when we see that it has no correspondence in actuality. When we understand that it’s completely baseless, the misconception begins to dissolve along with all the tensions, all the sufferings associated with this misconception of the nature of the self. They’re all dissolved into emptiness of the self.
The cause of it is gone. The cause of the fear, the cause of our dissatisfaction, the cause of all our afflicted emotions is gone. The cause of it was mental attachment to something which didn’t exist, to a sense a type of self which has never existed. It’s not there, but we believe it to be there. So at the hearer stage, we’re working with the four stages in coming to an understanding of dependent arising.
The hearer stage, the mind only stage, the autonomy middle way stage, and the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. We’re at the baby stage right now. The stage, the hearer level. the hearer stage, the technique used to generate this controlled, well formed contradiction is the method called the Four Essentials. We began to talk about that last week.
The Four Essentials. The essential of ascertaining the object of negation. The essential of ascertaining the object of negation. The essential of ascertaining the pervasion. The essential of ascertaining the lack of oneness.
The essential of ascertaining the lack of difference. These are the four essentials. This is the way we’re going to contradict, we’re going to find as baseless our conception of this type, this particular type of self. The singular, unchanging, independent, the existing self that we will never find that reference object. We’re going to dissolve it making use of this method of adopting controlled, well formed contradictions.
Just like pouring hot water into cold water. Just like the balance beam lifting one pan, lowering the other until the conception dissolves. And all the tension, all the fears, all the associated emotional responses which go along with that misconception cease. So as we mentioned, it is this first essential, the essential of ascertaining the object of negation, which is the most important and likewise the most difficult of all these four. This is what we have to spend a great deal of time on in meditation trying to experience.
Based upon this, then the rest comes quite easy or easier. Know when we talk about the essential ascertaining the object of negation, the object of negation. What you know when we talk about the example of the snake. And these Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism makes use of analogies a great deal. And so thinking about these analogies is extremely useful.
We’re going to use some kind of famous analogies. The snake analogy is going to come up again and again and again. It’s quite useful to get a handle on what we’re talking about. There’s the analogy of the magician. We talk about magicians and things like that.
Anyway, the analogy of the conception of the snake, The object negation was the snake. That is the object to be negated. We can’t negate something that exists. To negate something we’re understanding that the reference object doesn’t exist. The reference object that the conception is made didn’t exist.
If something exists we can’t negate it. We can’t make believe that something doesn’t exist when in fact it does. You know we’re not trying to brainwash ourselves or propagandize ourselves. We’re trying to know the actual situation in reality. So in this conception of snake, the object of negation is the snake.
There is a belief in a type of object as existing and we’re going to refute that that in fact exists. We’re to negate it. We can use the word refute. You know the object of negation, the object of refutation. Same meaning, Same word in Tibetan as matter of fact.
Whichever is most convenient. We refute that snake. If the snake existed there would be no way to refute it. We can’t make the snake go away even though we might like it to go away. But we can’t find it.
We’re going to refute that conception is wrong with respect to its reference object. I think I’m dwelling on this. I hope I’m not dwelling on it too much. So maybe we can get a handle on everything that’s being said as we go along very slowly. If we never identify this object of refutation.
We’re never going to be sure we’re never going to be exactly sure whether it exists or not because we haven’t identified it properly. In this context, we have to identify what a singular, unchanging, independent self feels like. We have to get a sense of its quality. We have to identify it. Just like identifying that snake.
We have to really develop a mental picture it, a mental image. If we’re going to look for it and see whether it really exists or not, we have to know what we’re looking for. It has to be very clear. If it’s a vague image, we’re never going to be quite sure whether it Well, maybe it exists. Maybe I’m not quite sure.
I really don’t know quite what I’m looking for. Couldn’t. Yet, the more vivid, the more clear this image is of what we’re looking for, the more surety, the more conviction, the more powerful the contradictory conception will be. So in developing this, we’re developing a picture, right? You know, someone’s telling you about Paris.
There’s the there’s the Louvre, there’s the Notre Dame. You start developing a picture of what Paris must look like. There’s a bridge, know, there’s an artist painting. Need to develop this. The more that this person talks, know, the more information, the more qualities, the more questioning, you know, what’s over on the east side, what’s over on the south side?
The more vivid your picture, your image, your idea of what Paris looks like. So all of this questioning, examining, we’re developing all the various painting in more and more details, more and more vivid qualities. So we’re trying to get in touch with an object in which we believe and we’re going to examine, we’re going to question from as many possible angles as you can imagine for yourself within your experience to develop a more and more vivid picture, mental image so that ultimately you can go looking for it where you see it. You know, someone’s told me all about Paris, now I think I’m going to go visit there to see whether it really exists the way you told me it was. This image, I have this image.
I want to see if it really lives up to what you said. I’m going go visit Paris. Presently we have at best a very vague, probably a very confused conception of self. Self, I, ego, person, we’re going say these are synonymous for time being. When I use the term self here, unless I qualify what I’m saying, unless I specify what I’m saying, this self is the self which is being grasped at by ignorance.
This self which I’m using this word here, I mean by self, a singular, unchanging, independent self. There is a self. You know, I’m talking. You’re listening. Self exists.
This self is no problem. It’s never been a problem to anybody. This is not the self that we’re talking about now. We’re talking about the self which is the reference object of a mistaken belief, mistaken conception. This is the self that we want to come to understand, to get a picture You know, we don’t have even in general, we have a very confused picture about who we are, our self, this I.
You know, we say, know, something sometimes we say, Oh, I’m sick. I’m sick. And next breath, Because I have a headache. I am sick because I have a headache. So, you know, we begin to question, Well, you know, are you your head?
What do you mean when you say I? Are you one thing and your head another? Are you your head? And we have to begin to investigate with these very common sense notions of I. The I the doer.
The I the experience. You know, we could think for example about our limbs and organs, you know, we had them removed or transplanted. We’re going to dream up all kinds of ways of investigating the I, the self. Really trying to get a feel for it. What I mean when I say I.
Perhaps we have never thought about it at all. But we use this sense every day, this sense of I. We have it both conventionally and in this misconceived way. You know, we think about the limbs and organs when we have them removed or have a transplant. You know, if you were given another person’s heart, for example, how would it affect the eye?
We would naturally think that I have now received a new heart. I have now received a new heart. But you don’t think that you are grafting a new heart into your eye. You’re grafting a new heart into your eye as such. How far can one go with this kind of process?
With limbs and organs it seems quite easy, but what happens if you had a brain transplant? It’s not quite clear. There’s some confusion there. Is the I and the brain are they separate entities? It seems as if you can get a heart transplant and the eye remains pretty much the same.
There’s no problem. But what happens when you exchange brains with someone if that kind of operation were possible? Would your I go with your brain? Suppose you had the brain of another person transplanted into your skull. Are you still that same I?
Or do you become the I of that other person? Or do some of your actions are governed by your present I and other actions are governed by the I of that brain which you had transplanted into your skull. Or would you really know? If the brain is the I, then you would have just merely been transplanted and you would have only exchanged bodies. You know, you were no longer that old person.
You were this new person. Or you know, if you were a male and you had your brain transplanted into a woman’s body, what would you say? Are you a male or a female? Are you a man or a woman? Would you say, I’m a man in a female body or I’m a woman with a male brain?
You know, the kind of question that you can begin to play around with. Perhaps you say, Well, I go where my brain goes. Something like that. All these consequences of having your brain transplant in another person into a woman’s body if you’re a male would begin to you’d have to begin to question, well what do I mean by I? Or maybe you’d be bisexual.
So we could think, well we might wonder if the eye was just kind of a little vital mechanism in this gray stuff in the brain. There’s some kind of little mechanism. That’s the I. That’s the self. If we think about this, we could just have some kind of brain operation and have this thing removed and I wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.
All these problems of all the difficulties I go through would be gone. Maybe we’d be I don’t know what would be left. Maybe it’s some kind of like auto you know, zombie or robot. You know, even the good parts would be taken. The experience the happiness that I experienced would be gone too because there wouldn’t be any I.
There wouldn’t be any I left to experience. And we’d have a life without suffering or frustration but we’d also have a life without any happiness, without any meaning or value. This kind of way of looking at the eye strikes us as being very nihilistic, very demeaning. We have a sense that the eye is much more. We feel that the eye is much more important than this.
What happens when you get into a car accident and you have extensive brain damage in your vegetable? What happens to your eye in that situation? You might you know, now you would feel that if that were to happen, I would want I’d want people to care for me or I’d want them to treat me to help me find a dignified way to die. We see someone with complete brain damage or vegetable case, we treat them as if they were a person, as if there was an eye deserving of our caring. So, it doesn’t seem that the eye so we question is the eye the brain?
It doesn’t seem to be any of organs. It seems as whether whatever the condition of the brain, there’s still where there is life, there’s an I. There’s an I. And We would still be there. I would still be there no matter what the condition of my brain, no matter what the condition of my body.
This I that we’re emotionally attached to, it seems to step back and and kinda look at our life. Just kind of step back, kind of back there somewhere. Overlooking ourself and all the our various experiences that we’re going through. You know, kind of evaluating our experiences and wishes to avoid suffering, for example. We don’t treat, we don’t experience the I as we experience or treat physical objects.
On the other hand, sometimes we identify the I with the mind. You know, for example, we say, I’m happy or I’m sad. I’m happy or I’m sad.’ What we mean is, maybe, is that my mind is happy. My mind is sad. We don’t really make this distinction between our self, the I, and the mind.
Nevertheless, we find ourselves saying things like, I can’t control my mind. I can’t control my mind. You know, as if my mind were one thing and I am another thing. Sometimes we even say, I can’t control myself. I couldn’t control myself.
As if there were two selves, two eyes. The eye which was out of control and the eye which was trying to control that eye that was out of control. So this is when we begin to analyze and look at what we mean by I, and we use this term every day of our lives, as it begins to show up, this lack of clarity, confusion that we have about the actual nature of the self, the actual nature of the eye. So, this lack of clarity, this lack of confusion, this confusion enables us to talk about the I as if sometimes it were the mind, sometimes it were the body, sometimes it were both the body and the mind, sometimes both neither the body nor the mind. We’re not quite sure what it is.
We think we mean something when we use the term. You know, when you’re trying to gain an actual meditative experience of this I itself, we have to begin to ask ourselves a lot of questions and begin to see what comes up. What would you experience? We’re trying to experience the I, not intellectually, but trying to get a sense, a feeling for this I, this self. And we can begin to probe and ask, examine.
Now what appears to you when you think I? You’re just sitting here. I, I, I. What images arise in your mind when you think I? What appears to you when you think I hate you?
I’m worried. What is that concept, I’m worried? That I, what is that I? What is its reference object? What does it refer to?
Can you find? There’s an image. There’s some picture. Some sense of what that I, I’m worried. Tomorrow I’ve got that examination.
I’ve got to look for that job. I don’t have any money. I’m really worried. I. What is that I?
And if terms, concepts have reference objects. What is that I’m worried I? What is it referring to? There’s a snake. That snake refers to something.
That term refers to something. I’m worried that I must refer to some. What does it refer to? What appears to your mind when you when that I, when you think that concept, when you use that term? You know, I’m afraid.
You know, what is it that’s afraid? Who is it that’s afraid? You know, what’s it look like? You know, where is it experienced? Is it experienced in the mind?
Is that I’m afraid? Is that I experienced in the mind? Is it experienced in the body? Is it experienced outside the mind and body? Both mind and body?
Yes, I’m afraid. What do you mean when you say I’m sitting on the cushion? I’m sitting on the cushion. Now what do you mean when you say that? How can you say that?
Now what reason can you say to convince yourself that you’re actually sitting on the cushion in this kind of questioning. When you would say, you know, I’m sitting on the cushion at Buddha House and I’m worrying about what time this talk is going to finish. You know, I’m sitting on a cushion at Buddha House and I’m worrying about what time this cushion is going to finish. Is there an eye which is sitting sitting and an eye which is worrying? Are those two I’s the same I?
There’s an I which is sitting and there’s an I which is worrying. Are those the same I or do you have two I’s? How many I’s do you have? And who is it that has these I’s that you have if you have any I’s? And this is a way we can use an intellectual reasoning analysis.
But we also have to begin to work on an emotional level to begin to get a sense of how we naturally generate a sense of I and begin to gain that image of I as an emotional response. You know, remembering great fears that you’ve had. You know, actually reliving as vividly as possible emotional situations. Great fears, you know, that you’re just about to have a car accident, just about to go off the highway. This fear, this rising, or the pain of a broken relationship, or the joy that happiness when you just won a prize, you just won the lotto, just passed your exam, something like that.
This great sense of emotion which arises. So we try to generate and relive these experiences as vividly as possible. So initially, don’t analyze them. Just try to keep feeding the emotion, you know, the fear, the pain, the happiness, the joy. Make the emotion stronger and stronger, but maintain your awareness.
We use a small corner of the mind to watch. Train in awareness. We’re not biting into the hot dog. Part of our mind is simply going to watch the hot dog go by. Part of our mind is going to watch all these emotions arising, this fear, this joy, this pain.
It’s going to watch. It’s going to watch the nature of the I. I’m afraid. Who is it? What does that I that’s afraid look like?
What does the I that’s happy look like? What does the eye that’s in pain look like? How does it appear to you? The eye that’s so afraid, that’s so happy. So keep remembering the situation.
Restrengthen it. Give it more power. Make it more vivid. More and more. The more apparent, the more solid the eye is going to appear to you.
Like getting more more electricity. It becomes brighter, more vivid rather than dim and hard to see. I’m so afraid. I’m so depressed. Depressed.
I’m so happy. So watching with the corner of your mind, with your awareness, the I, which is the experience, the doer, which is completely involved in this situation. What does it look like? Is it constantly changing, for example? Is it changing from moment to moment, or is it unchanging?
Does it feel solid, or does it feel have a transparent quality to it, like a mist? And sometimes the eye is, you know, is like in a dark room, completely pitch black room, And there’s a sense of some dark thing looming. You know, as if you could reach out your hand. Yeah. You feel it there.
You keep reaching it like this. There’s a sense that there’s something there. And when we say, I can’t stand you. Like this. And the sense between our neck and our midsection, there’s a sense that there’s something there when you say, I can’t stand you.
You poke yourself in the chest that there’s an object you can point to which if you looked, you would find this eye. So you know we’re looking, we’re trying to get a sense of what it is we’re looking for. There’s something out there. We want to make it as vivid as possible under these emotional situations and make it very apparent, make it very vivid. Is it constantly changing?
Is it experienced in the body? Is it experienced in the mind? Where is it experienced? Does it have many parts? Or is it unitary?
Is it one thing or is it many little things? Is it does it have any causes? Is it anyway affected by conditions? So this is the way we can begin to identify the object of negation. This is the first of these four essentials.
The Essential of Ascertaining the Object of Negation. What it is we’re going to look for? We’re setting up our target of our controlled, well formed contradiction. Shoot. Our reasoning at it.
Going to resolve it. So, you know, this question, all in a common sense notion of the I. Why? How do how can I establish that I’m sitting here? What do I mean when I say, I lost control.
I lost my temper. I didn’t mean to do what I didn’t mean to say that. I’m hurt. When you stub your toe, oh I’m hurt. Sometimes we identify with the body.
I’m sad. Sometimes we identify with the mind, the I, the person. So using your common sense, notions of I, you know, when you’re walking along, who is it that’s walking along? How do I, you know, how can I establish that I’m walking? What does it mean to say I’m walking?
And then using emotional experiences to give a, to gain a vivid identification of the object of negation. The I which arises, which appears under these emotional strong emotions has a strong emotional response in these situations. When you have fear, when you have great happiness, jealousy. So I’ll stop there. Maybe we can we can meditate on that.
Okay? Maybe take a minute or two for questions. Any questions about that? It’s a little bit late. Yeah.
About about what? Yeah. Yeah. So we’re going to go through a four step process of coming to a conclusion. Yeah, you’re right.
We want to come to some conclusion, some definite determination. Ah, that snake doesn’t exist. That I that I believe so deeply in. I’ve spent my whole life protecting, fostering. We want to come to some definite conclusion, some definite determination.
We’re going to and we’re using a very methodical method to ascertain it, to work through this so there’s no doubt left in our mind that we missed something along the way. So at this point we’re only working with this very first point identifying the eye. We’re not going to come to any conclusions for the moment. We just want to know what that snake really looks like. And we’re going to use common sense approach, intellectual approach, but also beginning to get I in emotional situations.
Then later we’re going to begin our investigation in order to come to that conclusion that you’re looking for. So we’ll just spend a few minutes just thinking about some of these things. So if you sit comfortably. Would you like to stand up for a minute? No?
Okay. It won’t it won’t take very long. I ran a little bit over time. So just sit comfortably and think about the I. Reasons, just think to yourself, contemplate to yourself, what reasons can you give that you say I’m sitting on this cushion.
I’m sitting on this cushion. I’m sitting on this chair. What does it mean to you? How can you establish that for yourself? What reasons do you give just making that statement?
And try to follow it very deeply. It’s probably as far as don’t come to any superficial conclusion. Question. Question. When you think I, I, I, what appears in your mind?
Does anything appear? Just thinking I, I. Try to evoke some vivid memory. It’s an emotional situation. Some great fear.
Or you can use your fantasy, you can fantasize just jumping out of an airplane in the moment when you’re just leaving the plane or just actual situations that you’re experiencing. There’s a very strong sense of I, fear, jealousy, pain. Where do you experience the eye? Do you experience it in your body? Experience it in mind?
Does that eye feel very solid? Does it feel transparent, like a mist? Does it keep evoking the I that make it stronger, pain, the fear, the happiness, and the eye which is experiencing it. How does it feel? Does it feel solid, transparent, like a mist?
Does it feel like a whole, or does it feel like it has many parts?