The Great Perfection of Being a Human Being: The Direct Knowing of Being and the Metabolization of Experience

Introduction

Rongzom Zangpo, the brilliant Dzogchen Master of the 11th century CE Tibet taught that All Human Beings are the profound field of awakening. In the language of phenomenology, this means that all Human Beings are the profound field of Being. All Human beings are manifestations of the field of Being as the field of Being in singular expression. I am and you are, a manifestation of the field of Being as the field of Being in our own form of singularity.

In this phenomenology of immanence, the manifestation and the manifesting are ontologically of the same Being. The Great Dzogchen invocation declares “May I realize that all phenomena are the Dharmakaya.” This invocation in phenomenological language means “May I realize that all phenomena are the self- manifestation of Pure Being. All Phenomena are Pure Being”. This is an explicit declaration of philosophical immanence (Rongzom, 1017).

The Meaning of Awakening

Rongzom Zangpo taught that Awakening means our direct knowing of Being. Awakening is our non-conceptual experiencing of the ontological openness of our awareness. Awakening means our direct knowing of our non-conceptual experience of the radiant illumination of the Being of our awareness. And our Awakening, furthermore means our direct non- conceptual knowing experience of the continuous unfolding of the “Presence of Being.” Awakening is our direct knowing experience of Being and is not a mere belief about Being or a thought about Being.

As Cardinal John Henry Newman describes in his great text ‘An Essay on The Grammar of Ascent,’ belief is an intellectual ascent to ideation. Belief is a function of our mind. Belief is an intellectual experience (Newman, 1903).

Awakening is a direct non conceptual experiential knowing of Being, an unthought known to be thought in time. Thought itself is not the mental ideation about a belief. True thought reflects the direct experiential knowing of the Being of Phenomena and our direct experiential knowing of the Phenomena of Being. Our direct knowing of the Being of phenomena reflects the union and integration of our mind within our field of our Being. Ideation is mind alone knowing. Thought is the knowing that reflects union of our mind knowing phenomena and our awareness knowing the Being of the phenomena.

Direct Knowing of Being

Awakening is the opening of our Being’s perception of Being. Awakening is the experiential opening of our direct knowingness of Being. Our Awareness knows Being and the Being of beings. Awakening is the awakening of our awareness of the field of Being within us, and the field of Being pervading us, and surrounding us. Our deepest and truest awakening is the unfolding experiencing that we are the field of Being which is infinite in its horizons, vast and multidimensional.

In becoming aware of our own innate innermost field of awareness, we experience Being that is manifesting within us and around us. Being is always manifesting beings. Being is always manifesting the Being of beings. True awakening is simply the lively experiencing of field of Being which is always present in its manifestation and manifesting. The manifestation and manifesting of Being as beings, is both experiential and ontological oneness. This oneness is the sameness of Being in all the beings and as all beings. This is the experience of Una Voce that Dun Scotus, Spinosa, Deleuze, Meister Eckhart and so many others have elaborated through time. All beings are the One sameness of Being (Bauer, 2020).

In the Dzogchen Tibetan tradition Dudjom Lingpa elaborated that there is the same oneness and same Purity of the Being in all human beings. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa “You and I are indivisible” (Lingpa, 2015). In Dudjom Lingpa’s Dzogchen tradition, self-liberation is the experience of Equality Consciousness. In the Kashmir Shavism of Swami Muktananda, self- liberation is the experience of Equality Consciousness. Both Dzogchen and Kashmir Shavism reflect Philosophical Immanence and the liberating state of Equal Vision. Equal Vision is seeing the Purity of the Being in All Human Beings whatever their personal psychological characteristics.

All human Beings are fields of awakening, fields of knowing. Knowing the field of Being is essential to humanness. Humanness is our foundational opening to Being. Knowing the field of Being is the greatest of human knowingness. Knowing the field of Being in our self and in other human Beings sustains equality consciousness, sustains humanness. This knowing is non conceptual and is a direct pre-reflective knowing. This is the natural way of seeing what is.

Knowing the field of Being as human beings is natural mysticism. Human Being-ness is awakened, and human beings are the field of Being. They are the field of Being’s direct knowingness. Our Direct open knowing is our own Being knowing the field of Being. Our mind knows form and our awareness knows Being. Awareness is our Being knowing Being. Our Mind is ontic and our awareness is ontological. Human beings are ontic ontological beings. Our sense of self is an ontic ontological sense of self. Our sense of self is our sense of embodied Beingness (Bauer, 2019).

Humans beings are the field of Being. They are a field of gnosis. Gnosis or Jnana implies and means the direct knowing of Being. Our gnosis or jnana is our direct knowingness knowing of Being. Our Being knowing of Being is gnosis. This is profound knowing because Being is not easily understood by our mind. The experience of Being is difficult to conceptualized and difficult to language. The experience of Being is difficult to think or experientially language. Our mind does not directly experientially know Being. Our mind can think about Being. Our mind thinks about Being as a form of metaphysics. In metaphysics, Being is an idea. Thinking about Being is not knowing Being directly. If you are in mind alone and absent of awareness you will experience Being-less-ness. Being-less-ness is profound suffering. Being-less-ness is life empty of Being. Experiencing Being-less-ness in the 6th century BC, Gautama declared “All life is suffering.”

Gnosis We Are!

You and I do not have gnosis but actually we are gnosis. Babies do not have gnosis they are gnosis. Babies are the direct knowing of Being through the embodiment of the Being of their mothering. In time our developing mind can cloak gnosis, contain gnosis, obscure gnosis. Our developing mind can contextualize and hide gnosis. Our mind even denies gnosis. The contemporary science of mind obscures direct knowing of Being. Or worst, our mind conceives of our direct knowing as “super natural” or only for the saintly and holy (Daws, 2016).

Human beings are Gnosis, human beings are jnana. Most often, human beings do not know they are direct knowingness of Being. Human beings often think they only know form. Human beings think they are only their mind. They think Being is only philosophical ideation, and they do not the experience the actuality of Being which manifests them, and is manifesting the world within which they live. The rationalistic mind devalues direct knowing. The person who is located only in their rationalistic mind, dissociates themselves from the primordial field of direct knowing. This is the most basic dissociation of human beings, the dissociation of their mind from their immediate direct awareness of Being. This is the loss of their ground of Being-ness. Their sense of self becomes their mind alone.

Ontic-Ontological Being

Phenomenological philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger and existential psychoanalysts such as Rollo May, Donald Winnicott, Menard Boss, Michael Eigen, and Henry Elkin experientially describe that we are ontic ontological Beings. We are ontic as mind and body, and we are ontological as Being as embodied Being. Our sense of self is our sense of our embodied Being (Trigg, 2016).

Rongzom Zangpo describes how all the places of our experience, all the locations of our experience are the spaces of our experience and within these spaces of experience, the naturally manifestation of self-appearing gnosis takes place. Self-appearing gnosis is the direct perception of Being and the perception of the Being of Phenomenological forms. Our experience contains the sixth senses. The senses are perceptual fields of human beings within the field of primordial awareness, primordial knowingness.

The field of awareness is the field of direct knowing, the field of Gnosis. Gnosis or Jnana or Direct Perception is the naturally occurring field of direct knowing which contain and holds the human’s sense fields, and the sense fields of the embodied mind and body. The field of direct knowing moves directly into Being. The field of direct knowing also moves directly through the instruments and senses of the mind into the blended knowing of the Being of embodied forms, and the phenomenological forms of embodied Being.

There is a natural union between the embodied field of Being and the embodied mind knowing embodied forms of Being. This is the ontic ontological union of the Being of a human being. This simultaneous union of mind and awareness allows the One knower to know the forms of Being and the Being of the forms. This union allows the One Knower to live their life in the Sea of Being through the Being of human forms, the Being of animate forms and the Being of inanimate forms.