How Beings Migrate Through Different Realms of Conditioned Existence Dependent Upon their Kamma
Dependent Origination Expressed as Different States of Being and the Different Realms of Conditioned Existence
Human Consciousness
Deva Consciousness
The Danger of Delighting in Our Own Creations
Questions and Answers
[Discourse Given on a Vipassana retreat 2011. Dependent origination expressed as the migration of consciousness across different states of existence, producing the endless variety of beings with different desires, longings, characters and preoccupations; through selfish or unselfish action, virtue and the lack of it, the future experiences and wandering on of beings is determined.]
Dependent Origination Expressed as Different States of Being and the Different Realms of Conditioned Existence
How can we understand at a more complete level what we’re actually involved in here, in this human life? Much of our vexation is caused by the fact that we don’t really understand what is going on. Here we are in this human life and there’s a number of ways that we come to be here. The human life encompasses the whole array of consciousness from the exalted to the woeful.
So here we are, human beings in this extraordinary melting pot, living out our lives, working it out, working through our kamma and its challenges in the best way we can and in doing so we are not only working out the kamma that is fruiting now but sowing the seeds of what happens later, in this life and in future lives, by the way we meet these challenges and the choices we make in the face of our life.
Hopefully by now you understand enough about dependent origination to understand that past causes produce present effects, in other words– what is happening now, and how you meet and react to what happens now, becomes the present causes for future effects. It’s this dependent origination that is the process by which life rolls on within any given life and from one life to the next.
Human Consciousness
So here we are now in this human life, experiencing human life, each of us experiencing and expressing various degrees of exalted consciousness, mundane consciousness and woeful consciousness arise. The ordinary preoccupation of human beings is what we would call mundane consciousness. It just rolls around with itself, occupied with itself, preoccupied with itself, in this 'not really seeing beyond ‘me’ and my life' kind of way. Usually totally unaware that our actions and quality of mind now is paving the way for our future. In general we are focused on little other than our human comings and goings, and engaging in them with varying degrees of greed or non greed, aversion or non aversion, mostly unaware of the kammic or moral implications of our actions in the future. Probably 90% of human consciousness is in this mundane, occupied with ourselves or preoccupied with ourselves state.
How do we get into this state? You understand about the three roots of greed/non-greed, aversion/non-aversion, ignorance/non-ignorance. The basis or basic building block of our mind, has these three roots to it. Within the mind of each of us, a deeply involved, elaborate idea of ourselves is underpinning our existence. The idea of ‘me’ and the pursuit of what I want, is the strongest, driving, motivating force in our lives.
For the most part, this is what constitutes human life: a life time pursuit of an idea of myself and my desires. That’s it, when you look at what human beings do, investigating, and being occupied with the indescribable this and that of human life. And so we live our lives, preoccupied with ourselves in one way or another, not really aware of how on earth we got here, what it is to be here and where we are going, and not particularly aware of what we’re doing while we are here.
And so for the most part the ‘Ignorant’ root of the mind is strong; i.e. we just do things without really being aware of what we are doing or why, and certainly mostly unaware of the kammic effect of this or that. And so ignorance or its opposite- non ignorance, is the third root of our mind along side greed/non greed and aversion/non aversion. The Buddha went as far as to say that greed and aversion do not arise without ignorance, and so ignorance or the lack of it is the predominant conditioning function of our conditioned mind. Even though we have this capacity of mindfulness and wisdom, and at a higher level we’re capable of being extremely aware, we’re also capable of losing all sense of awareness or all sense of mindfulness and just being driven by impulses and conditioning, which is ignorance.
We come into this human life and we experience everything from the exalted and fortunate to the ordinary and mundane, to the woeful and unfortunate states of existence. We all arrive with our basic starter pack of conditioning tendencies and kamma and thereafter off down the human road we trundle, either paying attention and acting with mindfulness and discernment, trying not to fall into greed, aversion, or ignorance, or quite possibly falling into all of these. And so our mind either becomes more refined or it degenerates from the state in which we start our life, depending upon how we conduct ourselves within the life.
We have all of these possibilities, from being born in an ordinary state where we are just pretty occupied with ourself and continue being occupied with ourself right the way through till the end of the life where we may also die pretty occupied with ourself. This is the typical a very ordinary, human preoccupation that ends up perpetuating a very human consciousness and human life which reflects the various qualities of mind and the kamma it creates in its preoccupation with itself.
Or we might be born very fortunate and thereafter, being very fortunate, become very preoccupied with ourself, enjoying our good fortune, merely indulging in it and doing little that is of merit to others. In that preoccupation with ourself we become more and more ordinary and more and more mundane and die very human, with a very human type of consciousness, and almost always with much less good fortune going forward than we had supporting us at the beginning of the life. Alternatively, but less often we might find ourselves born in good fortune and instead of organising our lives merely around the enjoyment of that good fortune, we set out efforts towards bringing benefit to others and being of service in various ways so that we might move on at the end of this life more fortunate than when we arrived, instead of less.
At other times we are be born very unfortunate and in a number of ways we turn and struggle and strive and gnash our teeth, and remain in such a state throughout the life, with our aversion and anger possibly even stronger at the end than when we started. And so having suffered much in the life we might die with a woeful state of mind. However we might at times, on account of the challenges that we face, make the effort that is necessary to surmount those challenges with some kind of humility, some kind of grace and some kind of acceptance, and gradually through the life raise up the quality of the mind while we pass through our unfortunate kamma, without multiplying it or renewing it. Mostly we find find this kind of migration between varying states of good fortune and misfortune occurring in the human realm. There’s a tremendous amount of rolling on from ordinary to ordinary, an awful lot of ordinary to woeful and very little ordinary to fortunate.
In times of good fortune we see an upward movement in the good fortune of human beings, in times of degeneration we see a multiplication in the level and degree of suffering. All of this is governed by the virtue or lack of it with which we conduct ourselves and live our lives. Rarely do fortunate beings become more fortunate at the end of the life than they were when they arrive. Mostly their good fortune wanes considerably on account of assuming such good fortune can be taken as given, and consuming it without renewing it throughout the life. But it is not given. It is always a reflection of a past accumulation of merit that we forget in our intoxication with the pursuit of our pleasures and desires. And so there is predominantly a migration of fortunate beings into an ordinary or even woeful state and very little migration from good fortunate to greater good fortune.
What we see during the human life is a migration from the state that we arrive in, which is the underlying basis of our life, towards and increase or decline in the quality of our mind from the beginning to the end of the life, depending upon how we behave and what we do. When we add to that the conditions we accumulate during the life, we define the quality of our mind at the end of the life. The aggregate quality of our mind at the end of the life together with the merit or otherwise of our actions in the life determines our destination and how we fare the next life.
That is within the human life: past causes producing present effects, present causes in response to present effects producing future effects.
Typically you have this human life, this human consciousness that is preoccupied with itself and does not think that far beyond itself. It does occasionally think beyond itself, reflecting upon things like the fact that we are all connected to each other instead of individual units and this kind of spiritual reflection upon things but predominantly our mind remains very mundane and very human in its outlook. And that's one way we arrive here, one human life rolling on into another human life.
Deva Consciousness
The other way that we arrive here is from deva consciousness, which is exalted consciousness and the attachment, desire, longing, to experience the human realm bring us here. Deva consciousness is usually born in a fortunate state but not always. Deva consciousness can appear in an unfortunate state, a fortunate state and into ordinary circumstances - but the quality of the mind will always be refined. It will be predominantly non-greed and non-aversion. So born from the deva life as a human we arrive here and depending on how we behave, what we do, what we become preoccupied with, the quality of our consciousness is thereafter conditioned by the way we respond to the ongoing experience of our life.
Also there is a type of consciousness that is very wilful and competitive and driven by the pursuit of power and influence. This is called azura consciousness. It is usually the result of consciousness that has developed a high level of insight and merit in the past but which falls into intoxication with itself to the point of surrendering its virtue to the pursuit of its desires or in the desire to wield influence over others. This is one of the classes of being that are the cause of much conflict when they appear as humans.
And then there is the condition of being born from a woeful state of suffering (either a hell type of existence or a preta type of existence) into the human life. With the cutting off of unwholesome kamma, wholesome kamma fruits, and a life of less hardship begins after a period of more intense suffering. The quality of the mind, however, may still be not yet be that exalted, and if aversion and anger or greed and craving are not surmounted in the life there remains a great danger of falling back into a more suffering existence on account of lack of supporting merit and kamma.
The number of possible ways by which we migrate from one type of existence to another is vast and so we see this diverse tapestry of characters and qualities of mind, together with the myriad types of conditions we can find ourselves in.
Here we are as human beings and we don't appear that dissimilar. We might look very different, but we’re all made up of fundamentally the same thing. You can say, “that’s definitely a human being, that’s definitely a human being and that’s definitely a human being.” But when you actually look into the essence of this human being, you can see that one human being may have exalted consciousness facing challenging conditions while another human being has mundane consciousness but well supported, and another again has woeful consciousness and suffering conditions in the life and so on and so on. You can’t see merely by looking into a person's life which aspects of their kamma they came into the life with and which they accumulated, nor what kamma will fruit in this life and what will carry them over into the next life or fruit in the next life
So there’s the exalted consciousness, very bright, not obsessed with itself, not strong in aversion and strong in virtue. Such consciousness can still be strong in attachment - desire can still be strong, particularly when born from the deva life, but it is always tempered by virtue and an unwillngness to harm others or oneself. In the deva life, you get what you desire for the most part, but what they desire is not harmful. Whereas to get what you want in the material realm you have to bend the physical universe in your direction. The tremendous applying of our will to get what we want as a habit pattern is a trait of certain types of deva consciousness that the Buddha called azura, as mentioned above. This type of consciousness that takes what it wants simply because it can has a huge impact upon the human world, whereas it does not have such an impact on the deva world.
If we’re used to good fortune in a world where the experience is extremely pleasurable, and we’re used to pleasurable experiences and we’re not used to challenging experiences, we will do absolutely everything we possibly can to get what we want. We don’t deal very well with not getting it. So that greed or attachment-rooted deva consciousness has a tremendous capacity to consume this pool of resource which is our human world. Which is why it is almost always a few fortunate beings that consume most damagingly the human world. Those with less good fortune are never able to consume so wantonly as to create so much suffering for others.
Then again there is the aspirational 'wanting-more-than-I’ve-got' aspect of the mundane human consciousness which is the reflection that “If I was to just have a little bit more, I’ll feel better and I’ll be happier.” So, here again we find this tremendous greed-rooted activity of humanity, that is endlessly in search of more in the belief that there in lies the path to happiness and the end of suffering. This group also has a tremendous capacity to consume the pool of resources that the human life, and all worldly life depends upon.
Now in the woeful state, being born into an unfortunate existence, there is not very much opportunity to have what we want. This life is far more often rooted in anger and aversion than greed. Although greed will still be present it often remains latent rather than expressed. Here the capacity to consume in the pursuit of what you want is very limited. So the expression of the greed root is not nearly as strong, but the capacity to acquire what you want as a result of aversion is present. Should it occur in the mind, “I want that but I can’t get it through righteous means, my desire for it isn’t enough, and nor are my means, I’ll have to go and take it,” therein begins all the warring and fighting, stealing and robbing and all this sort depraved activity that causes no end of suffering now and in the future for everyone involved. Within this there is the ignorance of not knowing what’s right and wrong, to the point of willingness to harm self and others.
So we have got all these things going on all the time. And then beyond that we also have this deva consciousness that arises that is not greed-rooted, and not aversion-rooted, and still it comes to the human life. Why would such a consciousness want to come here from an existence that is markedly freer from hardship and strife than this human world? It comes simply because it has such a powerful longing to experience what it is to be here upon the Earth. The thing about being in the deva world, is that while they are beautiful and sensuous, they lack the pure richness of physicality that we are capable of experiencing as humans. Turning up physically here upon the earth is such an extraordinary thing in the universe, where consciousness actually embodies materiality in this fully integrated way, as opposed to being witness to it. You’re in your human life, you have got this physical body and the tasting and smelling and breathing and touching, together with all these amazing experiences that are related to that. They all happen here in this worldly life as humans. A lot of this deva consciousness simply comes here with the desire to delight in this human world, and delight in the beauty of this planet and its wondrous displays of nature.
So there is a vast array of deva worlds from the lower to the higher, and the lower ones actually are earth bound and very close to our own existence. These are the ones that are delighting in beauty and nature. This kind of deva consciousness appearing in the world tends to really just be delighted about the fact that it’s here, and as long as it doesn’t get too smothered by being here, or too intoxicated with the various other human goings on, it probably lives quite a straightforward, quiet, unassuming life, just enjoying itself and mostly going unnoticed by many.
The Danger of Delighting in Our Own Creations
So here we are a human in this life, delighting in the creative process itself - we’re delighting in creation. Now the danger starts when we begin to delight in our own creations and become obsessed with them. It’s not a problem when it’s things like music, physical form and this kind of display. These kind of devas delight in song and dance and having a jolly good time. That doesn’t impact the planet, that’s just enjoying your thing and sharing your display with other people, and it is reasonably harmless. Mozart, for example, is this kind of deva. They come here to delight in their own creations here and at that level they do no harm. Wonderful. Other people delight in them too. There’s something quite joyful about that.
However, there comes a point when this delighting in one’s own creation that starts to fold in on itself. This is a kind of reflection. When we are still delighting in beauty and nature and our own creations are merely an expression of that delight, that’s still a wonderful thing. But then comes the point where our expression begins to become more of a delighting in ‘me’ the and my idea of being a creator, and my need to be seen. So we start to create extraordinary things, and we begin to delight more in our creations than the experience of being alive itself. At that point we lose our connection slowly to the creative intelligence behind life itself, and fold slowly in on the idea of ourselves as this extraordinary creator. So in the higher deva realms there are these beings who are creating extraordinary displays of things and delighting so much in that, that eventually they lose sight of that complete deeper creative process that we’re all a part of and an expression of.
Becoming the creator becomes the obsession. It’s what I am capable of creating that becomes our obsession. That’s where the connection to the very thing that produced this exalted consciousness in the first place starts to fold in on itself. We see it here in the human life and when this kind of consciousness incarnates in the human world you start to have tremendous destructive or consuming energy, that is merely obsessed with expressing itself and displaying its creations. Elon Musk’s obsession with Space X for example is a typical expression of the driven need to do whatever one is capable of dreaming up. When we fall into this state we will literally bend our world to create our creations, with little regard for their cost at any level. All these things, all these creations, all this stuff that we are creating now - these are the minds of the devas that delight in their own creations, with themselves as the creator and being so focused on this creative process that they’ve lost all touch with creation. When this type of consciousness mixes with the sheer wilfulness of the azura consciousness, great suffering results as well as a rapid degeneration in consciousness. We’re experiencing that so acutely now, and always the last devas to appear in the human realm are the highest ones and the most powerful ones. Shortly after their appearance there begins a rapid degeneration of consciousness and the quality of life.
This delighting in our own creations and the intoxication with the creations of others, is what is taking place now. So much so that it reaches a point that it becomes almost all that human beings are doing; delighting in all those things, consuming all those things. We’re not even making this stuff, we’re just loving our new tablet, new phone, new car, new video game, and wow, our life is full of these amazing creations of other people! That level of folded-in-ness has now completely annexed itself from the creative source that actually it’s all coming from, and so we become entirely galvanised by our material preoccupations and lose sight of any kind of spiritual aspiration or higher sense of meaning to our lives.
The highest deva realm is a very broken place. It was one of the biggest shocks I have ever had when I saw how desolate this highest deva realm has become. The lower deva realms are extremely beautiful places, very inspiring, so of course one expects the highest one to be the most inspiring. But it has completely consumed itself. It is burned out, dried out, souless, and barren. While the light that’s driving the lower deva realms is the joy and delight and reverence and wonder at the creative intelligence of life itself, in the higher realms as beings become more powerful in their ability to display themselves creatively, eventually they inevitably fold in on themselves and consume themselves and their world in their intoxication.
When the Mozarts and the Leonardos come to the planet they enrich it. But gradually and inevitably we slowly start to become more and more intoxicated with our own creations and stop looking out at creation itself for our inspiration, folding in on our own creations instead. In many ways the inexorable pursuit and obsession with our own technologies has blinded us to and replaced our delight and connection to the very sanctity and creativity of life itself. It always ends with the ultimate act of creative futility - our willful efforts to artificially create life ourselves. But in truth, nothing we have or ever will create will compare to the effortless unfolding of life and beauty that produces a flower, and bird, or a human being, all of which is a spontaneous display of intelligence way beyond our grasp.
And so all of this goes on throughout the world cycle. As human consciousness evolves and becomes more complex, more sophisticated, it loses its connection to its very source. That’s what’s happened and is what is happening now. We used to be all connected through the creative process. Slowly, more and more of us are severing our connection to it, where we work only within the world of our own inner psyche. We relate to each other in terms only of my psyche relating to your psyche, and eventually the only way that we connect is egoically. We’re connected at the point at which we’re separated, where originally we were connected at the point at which are connected, in the unity of all things and its pure creative intelligence.
Now we’re all extremely individual, displaying our individuality to everyone around us, being acknowledged and met in terms of our individuality. Our egoic expression is the way in which we relate personally to others, and as that becomes more and more accentuated, our genuine connection gets broken apart. In essence we are all connected in the unity of all thing. We either recognise that as the place that we’re all connected, or gradually we lose sight of that and instead substitute it with the notion that we are connected as various groups of individual human beings sharing a common sense of identify. We find our common ground in mundane ways, kinship, class, philosophy, race, gender etc. In endless ways we identify with some and not with others. This is almost always rooted in our prevalent ideas of self.
It’s a paradox. We started off all one, all connected. We slowly lose the sense of where we are really connected and start to connect in our separation at a lower level, through the ideas of ourselves that we get lost in.
Now we have got the highest levels of consciousness, in terms of creative intelligence (which doesn’t mean virtue I hasten to add) – arriving here, with such a tremendous almost frightening capacity to bend things, to make things, to turn one thing into another. Now when this type of consciousness appears on the planet, it needs to consume huge amounts to gratify itself. What we consume now, in the pursuit of our desire, it so unbelievably costly. We tend to always chase the tail of the one we perceive as greater than us. When it was just Mozart and Leonardo coming down here and everyone was delighting their creations, the cost was bearable. They were trying to reach up to a higher place and express their reverence for it colour and form, sound and nature which is understandable and wonderful.
Nowadays, the things we are delighting in are is so costly, maybe not costly to buy but tremendously costly to our environment and even our consciousness. Going and listening to a beautiful opera is not costly, standing and delighting in a painting somewhere, it does not cost anybody anything. But to be able to communicate with your best friend suddenly anywhere anytime, without the power of telepathy, costs so much, when we look at what what had to be taken from the planet to make it happen.
So we are now delighting so much in these things, always chasing the highest lead and in doing so we start to consume and consume and consume – and this is how the highest deva realm became such a desolate place. And it’s the same challenge we face down here that is faced up there. It mirrors it. Now we have to choose for ourselves whether we are going to chase the most exalted physical gratification simply because we can acquire them wilfully, or whether we are going to find a more sustainable delight in the endless unfolding of things in accordance with the natural order. Life has existed for billions of years, the will of man holds sway for a brief period only before it consumes itself and its world with it.
Now that’s the way things really work. What you have going on up in highest deva realm, and now what you’ve got going on down here is the not waiting for past causes to produce present effects, but wilfully bending things to our desire. We are manipulating present effects to produce present causes. That’s the application of will, the personal will that bends the universe to its desire rather than lives in accordance with the creative principle. To apply one’s will to get what you want is to become become obsessed with ourselves and intoxicated with our desires. It is the opposite of living in accordance with the creative process of life itself. Now that’s what we have got going on right now. Every social structure, every political and economic system, almost all of them on the planet right now are an expression of the wilful manipulation of present causes to produce present effects. It is the bending of things to our will that is the law that governs the planet now.
Now when beings did not have the power to bend that much to their will, the planet could cope with us being here. It’s not suddenly happened that beings bend the world to their will. It’s been like that for a long time. But now we have the capacity to bend so much according to your will and this becomes very unstable. The universe doesn’t exist in a state of conflict like that for long. That is not how the universe behaves. If you bend it, it bends back. You can’t keep the universe in a state of friction just because you want it to be a certain way. The only way that things are stable is when the way it turns out is a result of this natural unfolding process.
Right now on this planet there is a mighty maelstrom going on and at the same time we’ve have much talk about the rising up of human consciousness.
But I ask you, is that really what we see going on around us? How is human consciousness rising itself up at the moment? How much of humanity is human consciousness moving through the human life to the human life, folded in on itself, occupied with itself? How much of humanity do you think is moving from human occupations up towards a more exalted attitude? Or how much of it is moving the other way, from conditions of great good fortune, sowing the seeds of tremendous future suffering?
So little! So little! Human consciousness is rising up so very little. And what of the shock of coming here to the human world from the deva world, thinking you have a return ticket, only to realise we are spending our return ticket revelling in our delight here, never stopping to reflect on the kammic cost of that or the damage we have done until afterwards. Whilst we are still delighting in it we rarely stop to think. But when you get fed up and bored of it, or when our creations begin to collapse under their own weight, if only then we realise we no longer have a return ticket, what then? In that pursuit of our personal desires, and perceived needs, there’s very little sowing the present causes for pleasurable, fortunate future effects. Its like saving up all our lives but then going on such a gargantuan spending spree that we suddenly find ourselves hugely in debt, with no good fortune left in the bank.
I am sorry to have to lay it out like this but that is how it is. The sooner we wake up and see it like that, the sooner we might be galvanised to motivate ourselves strongly and change our attitude. It isn’t good enough to say, “Yes, human consciousness is just going through this mass awakening.” It is not going through a mass awakening. I see beings whose energy fields were beautiful becoming dull and some becoming really messy, twisted and heavy. I do not see many beings whose energy fields were messy becoming beautiful. I don’t see it. I cannot remember the last time.
This is why I ask the question: what kind of consciousness do we think we embody? We are good people, we’re all good people, of course we are, but the problem is that we become blinded by ignorance and don’t understand what we’re doing. I asked you yesterday: what kind of consciousness do you think follows you on when you die? This one! What kind of mind do you take with you when you die? Exactly the same mind as the one you lived your life by. Does this look like deva consciousness to you expressing itself now? Is it behaving like that? Of course, there is a strong thread within all of us that delights in nature and beauty and goodness and virtue and purity, but how are we allowing that to become smothered? What are we most occupied with? Our mundane ordinary concerns about yourself? That is human consciousness. That can’t be a wonderful things when as humans we live consciously and build our lives considerately, but when we consume the ground we depend upon in the pursuit of our desires, then our human condition rapidly degenerates.
Of course, the human world is an extraordinary world and so we should spend some time exploring it. Good fortune brought so many of us into this life, no end of good fortune. Such good fortune is extremely rare i the greater scheme of things. Many of us will have sowed the seeds of good fortunate over a very, very long time only to forget! We forget probably very soon after we turn up here, how extraordinary all this is. We often stop even to think about it, and then we just collapse into this idea of “me!” And then we turn and turn in 'what I want' and 'how it should be' and 'why is it like this' and all of that stuff. We forget that the person next to us is the same as us, we forget that we’re all connected, we don’t even think about it. We see only our differences, we compare and compete with each other. We just chase our tail in the pursuit of what we want. The expressing of the will of man, that’s the signature of humanity at the moment.
Of course, within that there is always our latent capacity for love and compassion and appreciation and generosity but it’s all so easily smothered with its idea of itself that it chokes itself. That’s the dust that we have to clear off so we can see the brightness and so the brightness of what we actually could be starts to radiate through us. This is our delight in being here, this is our love for everybody around us, this is our being completely blown away when we wake up in the morning and see what we are a part of. That’s exalted consciousness. That’s beautiful consciousness, that’s it. Not whether or not you can do something better than the next person and or whether they think highly of you because of it, and all the other ways you can show yourself to the world. Not whether we can mine the moon, but whether we can simply look out at it in awe and wonder. That's it - just look around, isn’t it beautiful?
This job of washing the dust away is such an important job because that dust, when we are covered in it we cannot begin to remember where we all meet, where we’re all connected, where we come from, where we’re actually longing to get back to. And that dust is ignorance and all the manifestations of it – selfishness and pride and competitiveness and jealousy and greed and anger and all of the other messy stuff; it is because of the dust of forgetfulness when we get so carried away with ourselves.
So try to wash the dust off. Really. If you’ve got yourself really dusty and you’re finding it really difficult then get someone to seriously motivate you and encourage you to keep going! And if you think, “I can’t, when is it ever going to end, when am I going to feel light and bright again?” Well then you just keep going until you do, because that’s the only thing that is really worth putting all that effort into, this reclaiming of the consciousness that we have surrendered.
Just reflect on the effort that’s expended in staying preoccupied and obsessed with ourselves. Bring some of that back and put it into washing the dust off your eyes and off you so that the being that is really you, starts to shine again. Human beings aren’t bright now, they’re not shining, they’re dull. Their eyes have got no light in them. So let's do something about that now. Remember, whatever you are trying to show the world is not what you’re actually experiencing inside of you.
I sincerely hope you take that in the right light, in the spirit in which it is given so that it might motivate and inspire you. Remember it doesn’t matter how dusty or rusty something gets, if you stick at it, it will shine again in time. Whatever you have to clear off to make yourself a radiant being again, so your consciousness is exalted, so that you’re free of greed and aversion and ignorance, that is what you have to do! That’s it! We have all got to do what we’ve got to do, until it’s done. And then when it is done, we must not fall again into forgetfulness, thinking, “ah, wonderful,I can indulge once more.” Because that is the wheel that the Buddha called Samsara. the endless rolling from good fortune to misfortune and back again over and over again. Remember ultimately, only virtue produces real happiness. Wanting something and then getting it it because we can doesn’t produce happiness. Virtue produces it. Never forget that.
Questions and Answers
Student: Do you think you could get all the way up to the deva realm and then blow it?
Burgs: Well, yes, I mean quite a lot of us are here in the human world are doing that! But also we might like the idea of being born as humans. This is according to your desire and your virtue and in this way it is your merit that has to support this human life. Let’s look at it like this, just to make it simple: maybe it costs ten thousand gold pieces of merit for one life in the deva realm or for a hundred years in the deva realm so you get one hundred years there and you spend so long there that you forgot how it was that you got there. We always end up spending our gold pieces, we’re always spending more kamma, more good fortune in there, than we are producing anymore gold pieces of merit. That’s the problem. You know, because our desire is so strong and our capacity to pursue our desire intoxicates us. We forget, we’re not patient.
In a way most of the really strong raising of consciousness happens in times of real strong misfortune. It's such a tragedy that it should be like that. But that’s when beautiful consciousness often emerges out of extreme hardship, humility, patience, generosity, grace, all of these things, that take a long time to build real momentum behind. This is such a difficult place because, it’s all very difficult. That’s why the Buddha said look why don’t you just realise how dangerous this all is and then try and recognise that which is beyond all of this that you’re entangled with, and try and recognise the unconditioned state. But I want you to understand more about how this is working, because that might prompt you. Virtue is your only, it’s the only currency, virtue and lack of it is the currency by which consciousness migrates one way or the other. That’s it.
So that’s it. No matter how much you can bend your will down here on earth, no matter what you’re capable of creating that might blow everybody’s minds, it doesn’t equate one step to a higher state of consciousness afterwards. Only what’s prompted you to act. Well, right, yes, a little chat before tea! (Laughter).
Well, think on that because you can all understand what I’m saying.
Student: What about the angels? Are they the devas?
Burgs: Yes, devas.
Student: So angels come to be born as humans?
Burgs: Well, in a way this is one kind of terminology, deva consciousness is a certain quality of consciousness that produces life in different deva realms. It can also produce life in the human realm.
Student: What about the great prophets, like Jesus and people like that?
Burgs: Jesus would be deva consciousness, definitely.
Student: Not even higher than that? What’s higher than that?
Burgs: Higher than that is Brahma, that’s Brahma consciousness. That’s not where virtue is the governing principle, that’s where purity of the mind is the governing principle. It’s like here, this is all dependent upon action, this is action, active, delighting in doing good things or delighting in being selfish and all of this sort of stuff. Brahma consciousness is very simple, like the quality of love or the quality of serenity or the quality of joy or just these simple states of consciousness, not active like all of this stuff.
Student: So, Jesus came from there, from Brahma consciousness?
Burgs: Difficult to say. When he died, his death consciousness was that act of forgiveness so that would have also been his strongest kamma, so in that moment just prior to his death, that was his ascension. So that act of forgiveness and that insight that it was ignorance, that’s very high consciousness. That wouldn’t necessarily produce Brahma consciousness, but very high deva consciousness, yes. So where did he come from? The Bible says he was something beyond but there’s no sign if you actually look at him in his life, there’s not enough there to show what kind of realm he was born from. His unwillingness to do wrong and his commitment to virtue, this is deva consciousness.
Student: And the Buddha, what realm was he born from?
Burgs: Deva consciousness. He was born from the deva world, became human and then became Arahant. The Buddha was born in a high deva realm, became born as the Buddha and then became an Arahant and now the Buddha won’t be born again. Jesus will be born again, where or how, we don’t know, but it will be presumably very similar to the way the Buddha’s rebirth-linking consciousness brought him to the human realm, because the Buddha’s death consciousness in the deva realm produced a desire to bring to an end the suffering of beings. That was the consciousness that supported his last human life. Jesus’s consciousness appears quite similar to that, his desire for the end of the suffering of beings, so it would be compassionate. So, we don’t know when Jesus would be born again but it would be with that kind of mind. If you look at it in terms of dependent origination, past causes, present effects, present causes, future effects.
Student: How do people get up to the Brahma realm then?
Burgs: That’s from very, very pure states of consciousness, through concentration, samadhi, this is samadhi.
Student: Do Arahants get reborn?
Burgs: No, Arahants don’t get reborn. That’s the end of the coming into being. So you’ve got – the human world, then you’ve got the lower planes, animal, preta and the hell realms. And then you’ve got deva realms of which there are many and then above that you’ve got the Brahma realms and there’s a number of those. And in one type of Brahma realm, called The Pure Abodes, there are beings who have reached what we call third stage of Path Knowledge, where there’s no desire for renewed human birth, no chance of being reborn as a human but they are not yet Arahant. The final birth is in this brahma realm. Here they realise Parinibbana.
Student: If you’re a Brahma and you’ve got this amazing, wonderful, just pure pureness, it’s difficult therefore to gear yourself up to become an Arahant.
Burgs: It’s just functional at that point.
Student: They don’t think?
Burgs: No, the only residual desire is for the desire of witnessing, experiencing this extraordinary display. Once that desire’s fulfilled there’s no remaining desire. So that’s it. There’s no active work to be done. It’s not that there’s any remaining insight to be realised, it’s just to realise, ah well that, OK, you could realise it down here, OK, I’ve seen what I need to see.
Yes, there you go!
Student: What about hell realm? Is it a really bad place?
Burgs: It’s just tormented consciousness. Greed is preta and hell is aversion. So the really strong, insatiable greed is this preta, and this aversion is hell. And ignorance is animal.
Student: So what realm is the Arahant born into?
Burgs: An Arahant is not reborn, you are not born and Arahant. You realise Arahantship through the purification of mind and the final stage of the realisation of Nibbana. Arahantship can be realised in the human realm, brahma, deva, anywhere, but it won’t appear in the preta or hell realms.
Student: I thought Arahants didn’t have a rebirth?
Burgs: No, they don’t. The Buddha became Arahant and after that he was not reborn. And if Jesus got the desire to deliver beings from suffering, he’ll be born with that as the cause of his renewed becoming. That would be presumably his last life? The cause for the last life of the most recent Buddha which was this one when he died in India, was to bring beings out of suffering. Having found the way to teach them, there wasn’t anything left for him to do. That’s when he said “that for which I came here to do, has been done by me”. There’s no lingering desire, no attachment to renewed becoming so he becomes Arahant.
By the way, we don’t have to deliver all beings out of suffering! He just made that aspiration. You might simply feel “that for which I came here to do, I’ve done”. When there’s no longing for renewed becoming, that’s basically Arahant consciousness.
Student: Where does that Arahant’s consciousness go then? Where’s the Buddha now?
There’s no rebirth-linking consciousness, there is no cause for renewed becoming.
Student: Where is it abiding, that consciousness?
Burgs: It’s gone back into the infinity of all things. That witnessing awareness that was experiencing itself as the Buddha or that’s experiencing itself as me or that’s experiencing itself as you, that sense of self that gives the experience of you as being separate, comes to an end.
The thing is Brahma consciousness is still impermanent. Whilst there’s an enormous amount of purification of consciousness for a Brahma being to be born in the Brahma planes, it is still possible for those beings to be reborn. Sometimes intercepting kamma, sometimes the kamma supporting that Brahma life comes to an end and then there will be another rebirth. Rebirth-linking happens between whatever life you’re in, when it comes to an end that process of re-birth linking happens. So Brahma’s life comes to an end. Brahma’s life is very, very long, very long. The Brahma around our world was already there when life appeared, when this world came into being, to watch the coming into being and passing away of the world cycle. But one day, that consciousness comes to an end and that being becomes reborn again somewhere else. Who knows, maybe that was it’s last wish to watch the coming into being of the world cycle. No desire for a new becoming, who knows? Maybe becomes Arahant? We don’t know. Difficult to know that one. Have to go and ask him!
Student: Do you feel there’s like earth consciousness, like the Gaia hypothesis that the earth itself being a living entity?
Burgs: No, we’re all an expression of that single creative process. That’s it. We’re all that creative process expressing itself as me, as you, the whole earth is that process expressing itself. Within it you also have this aspect of your sense of individuality, this sense of self. But you are the same process being expressed as I am. So you’re saying does Gaia, the planet have this bhavanga consciousness, is it awareness of itself? No.
Student: There is a sort of group, collective earth consciousness that links human beings together to animals to nature to….
Burgs: No, that’s universal, that’s everywhere, that pure consciousness, everything arises within it, that’s the basis of everything! Here’s the world, and the process of manifesting out of that basic state, that’s what we’ve been talking about as the creative process. The human world is an expression of the creative process, the deva realm is an expression of the creative process, everything in creation, everything is an expression of the same process.
Student: Were people aware of this before the Buddha? Or was he the first person to really be able to know these things or was he just taking it further?
Burgs: Look! You just need to meditate! Learn to meditate, then you can see for yourself. All of this is dependent origination. You can see what consciousness does, what it becomes, how it behaves, what it creates. You can see that. That’s dependent origination. The whole universe is dependent origination. I mean look at it, to give you an idea here we are sort of occupied with ourselves and looking left and looking right at our, I don’t know, what we’re going to do next summer and my new iPad and how’s the job going. This is the array of consciousness!! It’s so extraordinary and in a way so beyond…your…when you see it you’ll go “Oh my God, what was I thinking?”! (Laughter).
Honestly, even if you saw the first, lowest deva realm it would blow your socks off so much you would pull them up properly and go right, OK, sorry, done with that iPad…I mean really!
Student: You get a glimpse of that when you look at the night sky, don’t you, just how small we are and insignificant.
Burgs: No, but it’s not that, it’s how extraordinary….we are watching the array of such ordinary consciousness here. It’s such gross consciousness.
Student: Is it unconditioned love, then?
Burgs: The exalted states are appreciation, love, compassion and equanimity. So these are the sort of signatures. So you’ll find those beings where appreciation and appreciative joy is their signature, where love is the flavour of their mind, where compassion is the flavour of their mind, where peace and serenity is the flavour of their mind. But all of this, all of this, is exalted. It’s all got virtue. It’s all virtue. It’s not not-virtue. The only way here is through virtue! Brahma realm is samadhi, so yes, you need to cultivate your mind, purify your mind. Virtue is the deva realms.
So, you know, make appreciative joy, love, compassion, equanimity the flavour of your mind, not preoccupation with yourself. That’s the human world.
Student: Is Brahma what the Christians call God then?
Burgs: Brahma…well…
Student: Is that the Father that Jesus talks about?
Burgs: I guess, Brahma would be, yes, what Jesus talks about as God would be Brahma. What Moses talks about as God would be a deva close to the earth plane because he finds him quite close by. You know there are devas that live very close to the human world and it’s highly understandable that when a human being comes across one of these beings or even are touched by their consciousness, one can completely understand why you’d think that is beyond. But there’s a difference. That is a different type of consciousness, that would be a local….some deva close to the human realm. For example, if you climb Mount ___ in Bali, on the top of Mount ___, there’s a very powerful deva there, living there and it has very, very powerful, the charge on its mind is so strong. That would be something like Moses came across when he was on Mount Sinai. But when Jesus said “I go to prepare a place for you, I go to sit beside my Father,” now that would have presumably been, what he’s referring to would be some kind of elevation from the deva consciousness to the brahma consciousness. But when he’s asking us to behave in such a way that we would make it into heaven, it’s not that we would make it into the Brahma realm, it would be make it into the deva realm.
Student: He’s says there’s many rooms in my house…
Burgs: Many mansions, yes, exactly. And that’s what I was describing earlier, and that last one is the broken one and above that is Brahma. Hmm.
Student: That’s why the Christians are a lot on virtue.
Burgs: Yes, because only virtue…virtue is the way to the deva realm. Definitely. Yes.
Student: If one has been meditating, and you’re going along quite well and living a quite virtuous life, not going off the rails too much and then, I don’t know, maybe from your practice you come off a little bit or maybe big things happen in your life. Is that kamma fruiting that then the dust gathers so heavily again?
Burgs: Kamma. Kamma.
Student: And you lose the way a bit...
Burgs: That’s how most beings coming from the deva realm…the first time appearing here as a deva is the most important time that if you wish you can keep that virtue and go back. But once you end up in the human life then you tend to just turn and turn and turn in it. It takes a tremendous amount of work to elevate yourself. So, you know, from the sort of things we’re preoccupied with generally is human stuff.
Student: yes, but it’s amazing how quickly that dust does re-accumulate.
Burgs: Yes, that’s why people talking about the raising of human consciousness, I don’t see it like that. I look back at my parents’ generation and their parents’ generation. There was much more simplicity and innate virtue, and sort of, what I would call devic values inherent there. We’re really losing those, we’re really becoming so grossly human.
Student: You lose the way quite quickly. It’s amazing.
Burgs: Yes. Even things like respect for family, and care for one’s friends and those around you, and generosity and selflessness and simplicity and delighting in nature and all these things, that’s beautiful consciousness. Those are the parts of us that we want to be engaging in and spending our lives engaged in. All the other stuff is nonsense, total nonsense. It just chases its tail. We’ve got to the point of seeing how far you can go with enjoying the human realm, as far as the pursuit of our… You know, it doesn’t get more elaborate than this. All these extraordinary things that are coming out now. That desire to delight in gratification, this is the pinnacle, right now, but it doesn’t equate to happiness and seeing that is the shake-up. Shame it takes that much to shake it up.
That little bit at the end of my book when I talk about my grandmother. She’s sitting in her chair, looking through the rain at the lamp and just seeing the beauty in it. And we’d see a doddery old lady, lost her marbles, staring out the window, but she was delighting in it, just delighting in being there, you know, that’s beautiful consciousness. It leaves no trace.
