[Automated, non-edited transcript of the interview with Dr. Joe Loizzo]
It was preserved in the Nalanda University and then preserved again in Tibet after the starting from the eighth to the twelfth century. Is you know a version of the Buddhist teaching tradition which preserves the kind of the scientific university based, Ah, you know the most rigorous curriculum that that that Buddhism developed so suggested. Just take a step back and look at the Buddha himself. In the Buddha’s day. He was living in a period caught some called the the period of the The Semantic revolution, a revolution in Indian society, where the esoteric traditions held mainly by the elite of
your classes, The The Vermont, the Brahman and the ruling classes were increasingly. Interfacing with indigenous traditions and being popularized, so it’s a time when the sort of the spirit of the time was every person has a right to achieve moksha or liberation, but in order to do so in the Indian tradition, they had to have the methods that have the wisdom and added the methods to understand how to move from the ordinary personality that sort of embedded in a course body. In mind to the essence of if you want the soul or the essence of the, the the living being and the the upon a shattuck teachings, right,
The ancient, you know the sort of latest version of the Vedic tradition, that’s part of Orthodox Hinduism,
I had a, are very subtle and interesting relationship and sort of science of understanding. In what was the essence of the being and what and of the human being or the human spirit, and and basically the understanding, in both the, the, the sort of spiritual tradition or the wisdom tradition and the Yoga tradition was that mind or spirit is interconnected with matter. I thought was a sort of more of an embodied approach to spirit then than we might have. We’re used to in the West. Either the Classical West or the certainly the modern West, where we separate mind and body is two completely separate things, and so as part of that, you’ll find in the yoga tradition, the notion of the subtle body that is as kind of embodied map of the nervous system, not as we know it today, from the outside in as a course anatomical structure, but as its experience from the inside out within a living being. Where do we feel our nervous system? How can we feel our nervous system? And that’s a way to think about what the subtle body is at? It’s kind of a first person. What I call interoceptive map. Right, That is a map about our felt experience of being aware inside a living body inside a nervous system and within that the upanishads there’s a teaching that the essence of the human being. Is in the heart is in a sort of what’s called an indestructible drop, an auction or Bindu in Sanskrit, which is located within the heart chakra right, so this goes way back right and and the Buddha when he went to take the Indian yogic meditative science out of the the sort of class structure or the sort, a elite.
Culture and caste structure of Indian spiritual education. He went to popularize it and make this accessible to everybody. That’s the whole idea, and as you can take a Buddhist science, an array of the Buddhist tradition is sort of like you know the popular science of spirituality or a scientific approach to spirituality, or there’s less of a focus on mythology or creation, or or a god you know, and and there’s really. Focus on causality that, with the Buddhist great discovery that it sort of is almost naturalistic scientific approach to the mind and to life, and as part of that, there’s this embodied or understanding from the very beginning that mind isn’t in the brain, or isn’t stuck in the brain. The way we think of it as Ah, but that mind is distributed throughout the whole mind and body and specifically located within the subtle body. It is the the the the sort of first -person or internally experience map of the nervous system, and and and you know, so there’s from the very early times in the buddhist, and systematizing what is the nature of mind and how can we? How can we learn to change the way it works from the the way in which it’s all tied up in knots and bound within conditioning and instincts. That are based on survival that are based on he owns, was called beginning this evolution, right so so big, you know way back Ray of the way we evolved to survive, was seen as a sort of heap of conditioning that was like imprison the spirit within a survival mechanism or a kind of a compulsive survival system or network, and and so he taught you.
How do we get to the essence of the mind and the spirit that he believed was naturally pure right That he believed that all of this conditioning that layered over or entangled or or enmeshed the mind and spirit and heart within within the human body. Ah was actually not our essential original nature. That our original nature was a luminous brilliant, plus full open ecstatic. Wait, am I like a spiritual liquid that that that was his his view, and in the beginning and very early in the teachings. Therefore, when they set it when he said a Buddhist psychology, he set it up so that the mind has really understood is located in the heart, right, and in fact in Buddhist tradition, the the what’s up here is said to be the the body.
So if so there are three basic elements like we have eternity in the West, right, we have the father. His son, in the, in the Holy Spirit, and and you know, and and in Buddhism, the way these are understood as his body, speech and mind, he also, so mind is like the, the the of the father, The God had a body as the incarnation, right and speeches, the spirit, or the speech and breath are seen as two sides of the same coin ripe, and the way they’re located in Buddhist psychology, is you know? It said that bodies appear, which is really kind of a recognition of the fact that this is where our ordinary sense of our bodies is highly constructed, imagined complicated physical thing, spirit or speeches in the throat, and the mind is in the heart rate, so this whole sort of you know various very different approach to embodied consciousness, or or what mind and consciousness are was embedded in the. Eventually in the Buddhist tradition became because, because the Buddha spent his lifetime trying to make spiritual education accessible to everybody when Indian civilization was ready to start founding universities, like mainstream institutions to teach people how to live well, and you know all the sciences and arts that we think of other developed in our own universities, one thousand or two thousand years later, they. Turned to the Buddhist to create those universities and the launder and others, there was a handful of of early universities, and that started really in the early centuries, like around the time of you know, not Christ, but the Apostles, and around one hundred and fifty or two hundred in the common error, and basically these were young, the curriculum was Buddhist, but it was also involving Hindu teachings. In yoga teachings, and and there were secular arts and sciences, like medicine, engineering, architecture, and political science, or political theory, and and you didn’t have to be a monk or nun to enter.
So these were real universities Know the university was founded in North India, buried near where the Buddha used to live. In fact, he used to teach. He loved to teach in the. In this particular kind of, it’s a suburb or a or a sort of a.
You know a a beautiful kind of retreat, and and you know essentially when when this was founded, this became eventually a very large like a university which said to have had in in the sixth or seventh century and enrolments of ten to fifteen thousand bit like a modern university, and this was in the sixth century, like our first universities in the West didn’t really start until. The twelfth century in Naples, and then Bologna and Paris and Oxford, and so this was like a thousand years before, and and the size was huge, right for that time in the in it were an Atlanta wasn’t the only one there were at the. At the time a handful. There was a oddity putti become a sheila, Then your Kartika tuxes, Sure there were a number of other universities that had their special focus, so The The the wonderful thing about that. System is that you had this critical mass and, and people from all around Asia, from there were colleges at No Onda, from Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, You to Afghanistan, and so this was an international like Ca, Harvard, you know of Asia, and and really. Focused and very critically on refining this understanding of the mind and body and how to you, You’re in some sense for medical purposes, well, That was part of it. Medicine was really refined there, but more most importantly for the sort of the art of living, You know, the how do you learn to live well in the human mind and body. How do you understand how to work with you know that, the in the instincts to destructive instincts of stress and self protection and. If the delusion that keeps us from understanding our full potential, if you will, what are for capacity, and and sort of as a special final development of that tradition, integrating like you know both the medical understanding and the Yoga, understanding that they developed a system of a series of esoteric systems of exploring consciousness, called Contrast.
And so do you think of Buddhism as having three like we have Old Testament New Testament and mysticism right, and and similarly, there’s a period periodization in Indian spirituality, So you have early Buddhism and yoga, right and the early coupon a shot at tradition, then you have classical Hinduism like the Gita and and Ah, Ma Barton’s on, and and and alongside that you have. Classical Maya, What’s called Mahayana Buddhism lets the Buddhism. That’s about the whole society, transforming into a loving society. Basically. It’s a social approach to spirituality. It’s like the. It’s like the New Testament, right love and compassion community all that, and then and then eventually around the sixth century, you start to have this esoteric forms, so we didn’t get the mit The proliferation of mysticism. Well, It was starting in the neoplatonic swipe, but it was. No religion go big time into you know the Twelfth century or the thirteenth fourteenth century. In India. That period was again earlier from the sixth to the twelfth century. Tenth century was the flowering of this esoteric mystical approach, but in the Buddhist understanding it wasn’t mystical. The Buddhist understanding. This was just science. This was just the sort of the of a a sophisticated way of understanding our. Full potential, and how do you quickly? The essence of the torturers are? How do you embody? Enlightenment? How do you understand how do you feel it? Live it in your whole body. How do you transform the ordinary survival based kind of prison? Have a body. You know where we’re trapped in our instincts and our re activities and our misperceptions are subject or intensive activity. How do you transform that into a luminous blissful. In the mammalian, the more much more mammalian, it’s you know a socially open and interconnected nervous system and an awareness, and so the tantras you know the and compassion tradition. For it paved the way, and said we need to do this. We need to learn how to embody love and compassion, but the tantras are really the esoteric science of how do we do that using Yoga and the yogic methodologies of trends. Warming the nervous system so that sorta gets us to you know how the heart was viewed within that the tantric or esoteric a nurse ecology, and and that’s a psychology. It was shared between the medical system, the yogic tradition and the and the spiritual tradition.
Yeah, I think that’s a great great context. An overview of where we’re going into now. Elizabeth, Do you have something to go in here? A question of years? Well, It’s definitely a going into and and the Tantric tradition, and that you know padre on our Tibetan Buddhism, and in your book sustainable happiness, you talk a little bit about like this indestructible drops of the subtle energy mines, and then in another way, you said.
Bliss, boy, drop of settlers energy chemistry, mind, and then I was like okay, Well, that’s a lot of words to describe something that probably is really difficult to understand, so I was wondering like. Is there actually a word that we don’t have a translation for or like? Well, How do we understand what this actually means
Is that okay, so I think the best way for us as a modern scientifically educated. Westerners to approach this is to is to recognize that the map of the subtle body, which is where this language is coming from is was also shared with the medical tradition and is a map of the nervous system, right so within that you know, like in our system, we have what are the elements of the nervous system. We have. You know Nuclear Center’s circuits, neural circuits we have. Pathways that are neural pathways, we have energies that run the neurons, and we have drops which under you know chemical chemistry, which has the neurotransmitters that gets secreted that send the messages
so essentially within that a subtle body map you have all as similar or analogous elements you’ve got. Where would a call channels which are the pathways you’ve got the cert the chakras, or the? Circuits which are the circuits and the kind of centers or nuclear, you can call them Ganglia, But there really are you know a to think of them as circuits or or or
centers, and then you have the winds were to call the winds with the energies that are the equivalent of our neural energies, The traveled through the pathways, and then you have the drops that are the equivalent of our neurochemistry neurochemicals. At least explain it in terms of explanatory models. Right, This is what they are. Are trying to model and how the nervous system works and they recognize that there’s some element that’s kind of has a has a kind of liquid phasic, You know a character,
so, though so so the way that that system is described as extremely beautiful red, and that is that it’s like three nested layers like the Russian dolls, you know, so the outer and the outer part is what’s called the course way. The course, mind and body, and that’s the waking state, mind, and it’s supported by and in this the senses, our sense of a physical body and supported by channels that that sprout off of the central channel, so the central channels like the morass, is what we call the near axis, That is the the spinal cord going up to the brain, and ending around here somewhere
on the net and coming off of that. It was a series of smaller and smaller channels sorta like capital. You know, sort of like arteries. A smaller are arterioles and capillaries right, so the so the course minded body is is all is supported by all these peripheral channels, right, though like a whole web of peripheral channels that are touching everything, and and making the senses work, and and and those are those things, do the things that are normal. That our nervous system is said to do they, They run that control breathing, They control digestion. They control excretion, and reproduction and speech, They they attend the census right now within that the next met a Russian doll in the nest is called the subtle mind by, and that’s what’s mapped by what we think of as the yogic nervous system, the three central channels with the sixers. Five, six or however many chocolates, depending on the system, and then, each of those have had like a couple of you know, maybe somewhere between you know a six, two to thirty two different
larger branches that create a circuit until the chakras are made of a pathways that branch off of the central channel, and then and then cradle circuit, so that so within that sort of. What we? What would think of as the central nervous system is where we have our internal experience of monte of mine, stayed emotion, conceptual reality, symbolic processing, that’s like our inner experience of having a mind and knowing we’re in a body right now at at the heart of it all, and this is usually located at the extremely subtle drop in the heart rates are within the central channel.
There are drops and some of them are kind of look the thought of as originating from or sourced from different chakras, so there are drops. The travel throughout the whole nervous system, but the mother drop is thought to be at the heart of the central jail, her epic center channel At the heart. That’s kind of like the ultimate source of all the chemicals that run the nervous system,
and that has a word called the Akshara been. I have been do is the Sanskrit word for drop, but been too also means it also has other subtle meetings know the thing that they put on the the termites called the Bindu, Ah, been to, also in some Catholics mean zero
like it’s it’s thought of as the quintessential, the subtlest you know point of reality of fabric, of the sort of an atom of reality or subtle. You know a building block of reality, said so that. It’s been, too. Has a number of different meanings and auction means it can be broken into. It has never destroyed. So this is kind of if you wanted to look for a place where the soul lives in their view, it that the the more abiding or enduring or or continuous part of ourselves is supported by that indestructible drop at the at at the heart, and now it also is intimately connected with other drops at the other chakras. Right that or source sort of local and variations coming off of this, but yeah, that’s the essence, and so you know their view is that let’s say this whole system was formed by eons of evolution based where survival was the main imperative, and an extreme reactions, Attacks of this misperception at the heart of it all I feel. I perceive myself as solitary unrelated to the world and others around me, even though it’s not true Rate, Ah, but I’m treating myself as if I’m the only living thing in the world or the only thing that matters are the center of the universe,
and as a result of that, I feel very alienated from the world, and I therefore end up stressing out a lot and getting very clingy when I’m frightened or desirous or getting very averse when I’m threatened or or. We’re frustrated, so those two forces are sorta have, so that so the the you know the fundamental force of delusion, and the two other forces of clinging and aversion are sort of thought of as instantiated or or based in the operation of the three central, Charles, writes, A delusion is sort of based in. Do we have access to The The. Inside the central channel, where the real smart mind lives, right, the real mind that knows our nature lives inside the central channel. It’s blissful. It’s luminous. It’s open. It’s infinite. It’s all pervading. But it’s hidden in their protected than the two side channels are like the fight flight system. Which is the you know the The of know the clingy of fear -based or a system like this. What I would call the Sympathetic nervous system and the and the aversion system is like the parasympathetic faint free system, right, so so essentially the ideas that those that, because we spend our lives in confusion and bouncing back and forth between didn’t clinging and ever, and an aversion, or we get all knotted up inside, it’s like we’re all kind of tangled knot. This is really literally depicted as the side channels nodding around the central channel at each of the chakras, So this is too. Originally. It’s sorta like they do a twist. You know, sort you’ve ever seen a little twist ring like a like a snake ring or something like that, so like the central channel would be your finger, and then enter the. The. The side channels would twist around it, and so that happens at the forehead. It happens at the crowded happens. If a throw, it happens at the heart. Enable and the and the sacrum, or pelvis, and and when it not surround the central channel, it cuts off or or ability to access the central channel consciously, The only way we can access the central channel is by falling into sleep and unconsciousness, and then Central channel sort of operating, but not in the disaster, dissociated from our normal waking consciousness, which is more like living in the extremes as more doulas.
So the idea is that in the you know, the whole process of healing or yoga or transformation Map In this way is like a. It’s like a. It’s like the Holy Grail were trying to get from this. We’re all you know, removed or like the Odyssey were all removed from the source of our being caught up in all this waves of extreme confusion and reactivity. How can we come all of that and then take this?
That the mind was thought to be in the heart, which is like completely opposite of how Review the mind and the Western world, and in the modern, you know more than the science where it’s like in the brain or now I read an article. Okay now, it’s not in the brain, but it’s still some how here you know rather hear than here, so I would be curious as what’s the connection in these teachings of of the mind. What is the definition for mine? How does it relate to thinking and emotions young? So there are the in addition, so there’s the three nested nervous system and each of the nervous levels of the nervous system supports a different state of consciousness, right, so the so the course one supports the waking state, which is about course, sense, perception, and imagination, and things like that, Ah, the subtle supports the. The dream state and this more emotionally charged, and you know, expressive and fluid, a quality of awareness, and then the deep sleep state, which is also akin to or connected with the orgasm. The state supports the extremely subtle mind and body and that’s a kind of quality of consciousness, which is considered to be non dual where there’s no experience of being sep, the subject being separate from the object, so it’s like the. Ability of coaches is to merge with what it. No ifs or what it experiences, so in that you’d say in a way, thought or at least the kind of gross imaginative constructed. A narrative experience happens at the course level than at the subtle level. We have this more
emotionally charged and and you know. May be in a intuitive expressive like up. If you want to say poetic, or like the song. You know like when you get a song stuck in your mind, it’s like that kind of more emotionally charged narrative or symbolic expression, and then at the extremely subtle level we have this sort of pure intuition, which is which is you know intuition which doesn’t have. It doesn’t know things by by remembering other things. Why did the basis of constructed perception is that you know one thing by comparing it to another? Whether it’s an image or a word or whatever this one knows things directly by just experiencing the bite, like the Vulcan mind meld right so so emotions than live in this in the subtle, by and within the map of of the subtle body, like circulating around the heart chakra. There are these swirling what they call in in instinctive habit patterns. There’s a
cause one hundred and twelve of them or something like that and.
It’s becoming and three different layers. Rights of the The desirous is on the outer layer, so, although wanting to connect or desiring another person desiring food, desiring whatever you know, Ah, then there’s the aversion oriented ones you know of fearing anger violence, Ah, and then there’s the delusion oriented ones which have to do with. Withdrawing, it’s like depression, or or sort of involution and self centeredness, and all of doubt, and all these things, so those are seen as sort of like you know, like a kind of almost like a an obstacle course that you need to get through to get to the to the central Channel to be able to earn what they call, unravel the heart, not or unravel the knots that that not that block access to the. Extremely subtle mind,
and so you know,
Let’s just say we can compare these to the modern notion of the brain right that we have the three, the trial brain, right, Flippin sits an old model, but it’s a good model. You know the the new the primate brain which thinks and imagines the the limbic brain which emotes and connect, you know, has the sort of emotional reactivity. And the and the reptilian brain, or the vertebra brain, which has sort of basic life support and basic states of consciousness, and so you know, you can say that the
subtle body this map. I believe it can be cross mapped with our brain map, and I’ll think this is a vague airy fairy thing. I think this is actually exploring the same nervous system from the inside that we’ve explored from the outside, right? I so, feeling your way into the nervous system. The feeling science. You know the intuitive saw it, so their emotions would be in the in the subtle body. They’re they’re They’re integral to what keeps us from accessing the sort of tired of going from one emotion to the next and a lot of them being stress. Emotions. That whole turbulence is what keeps us from being able to still the mind and move toward the sort of more calm. And and ultimately blissful cordon network. I call it the core well being at work, right The network. That’s basically about feeling safe, connected right and and we need to sort of steer through those emotions get to that essence of who we are where we feel. You know safe, opening and connecting and and being fully present with others
at this. This was for me a really important distinction, because in my world view, where the teachers that I had and the emotion the way this is framed, the emotions seemed to be more like coming from a reactive state and and and creating this turbulence, whereas what you called feelings seemed to be more like being in this consciousness of perceiving one and
pure.
If your state before all the confusion, and the and distress and the reactivity comes in, and you’ll think of it like this that we have in order to survive, We’ve developed a range of different emotions. A lot of them are blissful and peaceful and loving and caring. We have social emotions and well -being states, and we have stress emotions that are the harsh or reactive or devalue the frank fragmenting. But they’re all thrown in together in a kind of soup of unconsciousness. We don’t know why we feel we love one person or one thing, or why we hate another. It just happens to us, so it’s not that
you know they’re both operating at the same level, But what keeps what we’re trying to do is not kind of you know we’re not trying to get rid of the. The any of these emotions. What we’re trying to do is is get rid of the unconsciousness. At all that keeps us from understanding what’s at the heart of them, and once we get to the heart of the emotions, then we can have an artful relationship with our emotional life, and we can use all of these emotions artfully and constructively even if it’s a kind of showing anger, or or showing love, or or you know a bliss or all they all become art. If we can integrate them with this deeper. Source consciousness or or deeper, kind of an unconditional awareness on, so it’s really transforming the whole emotional life from the place where we get all were pushed around by emotions and were proximate to them. Right Where were they cause us to go into the place where you go to the cause of you know, and we’re actually really a manifesting them from the inside out in a in a helpful or beautiful or or artful way.
I love that I’ve never heard that that way this, because often times I got the sense that you know the whole thing of transcendence and and you know going away from suffering always felt to me like Oh that equates with transcending all the emotions, and not you know not being feeling any more anger or what that is, and that sounds very different. I liked that he’s ruder. I mean, and this is the unique thing about the Tantric approach to. Psychology, spirituality is in in in in the tantric method. They view these other earlier systems of training the mind which are about reaching dispassion. Are learning how to control your destructive emotions and develop your your positive emotions as preliminary practices. So you’re you start by training the simplest thing to do with emotion has tried to not act on it and try to not let it push you around. Then you may be. Want to be able to shift out of what art may be harmful to you or others and shift into what’s good, but the ultimate art and sciences that you go to the next level where you. It’s more like an hour chemical approach where you can turn any emotion into. You can see the the benefit of all the emotions and turn them into their medicine, writer, What cause, if the once they become aligned with wisdom and awareness, then? Then they become like medicine. They become useful and helpful, right so it’s it is a very different relationship with emotions which is about transformation, rather than eliminating or repressing or controlling or judge
iron. I love that also so much because I mean I think you know it, you can look at at and psychology, You can look at it and just regular social experience, or and in the spiritual tradition, right, I mean there’s Because a certain emotion, seeing being seen as negative right, there’s all that spiritual bypassing stuff, and people make jokes about how spiritual people are so repressed very angry, Really, even though they don’t look like it, and it’s kind of funny Because I, you know it’s really be this integration and accept nest, and as this kind of cool channel to enlightenment, which is one of the things I thought was so awesome about Tantra and and it is very compelling, right? Because socially re we repress it, and then it blows up all over the place, so I, I do think I mean I, as far as I’m aware, I mean I feel like it blends with certain aspects of psychology, but I am, would you say that this is also another aspect of more like the mysticism and the different traditions. In general that dude is aspirin, Yeah, like most mythical traditions including alchemy, or about sublimation, there are about. Transforming one thing into another, and so, like, for example, look at you know her, you to St. Teresa, you know, and and St John of the Cross, you know they’re experiencing something that you’ll this this ecstatic blissful state, and the and the inquisitive and the inquisitors are thinking they’re just having some kind of you know, sexual sexualized, perverse, whatever but. They’ve turned that love energy of the way they talk about, Of course a God in Christ, and all the rest as it is is using a this erotic language, as you know, the the poetry of the Sufi in a roomy, and all of those all of that actually my view historically comes was was awakened by the tantric movement which was happening several centuries earlier, and as as characterized by all of this sort of ecstatic poetry and. And the use of the arts you know others you see are Tibetan Buddhism is all very full of artsy, you know, if visuals and and rituals and dance and art and it’s all very positive in its relationship with sexuality and even death in a sense, so it is actually one of my
one of our faculty are visiting faculty who I really enjoyed working with recently, Dr. Nita. It’s the Tibet train the doctor and kind of spiritual healer if you will, and it’s to like a taunt tricks a doctor, and you know he’s one of the first purple purse people ever found who agrees with me that that Freud and psychoanalysis is essentially a tantric practice. The discipline, that at the site, the the understanding and young you can see it more explicitly, but the understanding that desire is good, but it’s necessary. It’s not evil. I met our nature is fundamentally good and that it just requires understanding what has been repressed and learning how to work with it. Live with the transform. It. Especially in the union contacts he eaten young, did talk about, said people have the capacity to transform emotions. You know the super that could be destructive, like the the death instinct into love and and wisdom and connection all that, and that’s the basic view of the of the Tantric system is that there? It doesn’t have to be an unconscious and conscious. Is just you know an artifact of our being not looking at being so busy surviving. We’re not really looking at who and what we are and trying to, really, and you know or understand ourselves and and and make the most of her her for nature, but so yeah, I would definitely say that there’s a very strong resonance between the cycle. The general psychotherapeutic approach, Ah, and. In the targets, because the hunters are much more
optimistic and and and have a lot one methodology for working with the unconscious right Like another words, We’re we’re getting more toward this when we talk about so young in approaches or reiki and approaches which are not so mainstream, and and nowadays, of course we have the understanding that we need art therapy and we need. A body therapy or semantic therapy to to touch that sort of repressed traumas, and but you know the tartars away head in there, and they have this very radically optimistic belief that with the right technology every everyone can learn to unravel all of this accumulated stress and trauma, and and Brent you make the unconscious fully conscious and make an art out of being human, so it’s it’s a very. It’s kind of very naturally fits with Western psychology, but it’s more like a positive positive psychology you know or transformational psychology. I guess you call it
maybe now that we and that you shared the view on this not surround the chakras and the heart. When we defined emotions, and I was curious. In your book, you write that the the knot around the heart is more. Why more and more complex than the other ones?
If our neighbor Jacqueline, so I was curious?
Why is that the case it seems to again somehow
point towards the heart being
something different than the others. I mean I won’t say any of them are better or whatever, but special, or in your way, Def. There is something different about it. Right. I mean the tantric theory about this is that, and I think that this is supported by modern embryology. Is that the the heart dropped it? The the the source of the hardrock is the male and female? As that is the embryo, like that, In other words, that the the fertilized egg,
and that, and that the mind and body dissolve, including the neural tube grows out of the heart space,
right and then, and and that so it’s it’s kind of the primal source and. If that’s part of the reason why it’s the self protective instincts are more
engaged there, or why you know it’s it’s tighter. I mean, I think The the a more kind of contemporary neuroscientific way of thinking about it is that
you know in in terms of my mapping of the two maps between the, you know the Western map and and the tantric man is at the heart and the. Lower chakras symbolize the the vertebrate brain, the reptilian brain the brainstem
and so that is where the salt, the primal self protective instincts are located right. That is you know, so there’s a kind of a. Ah. You know that that’s another kind of Western
argument you could make to say we were really what they’re talking about. Is just this is that they’re talking about where we feel our primal self. Protective instincts, and and you know, and you’re basically, the heart is very closely tied in to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and and and the brainstem, which is regulated from the brainstem right, the the cardio respiratory centers, right there, right next to the sympathetic chain, and right next to the the nuclei of the parasympathetic nerves, They’re all tangled up in there together, right? So so they’re really just simply, I think, describing the way in which that you know that the, the what we feel in our heart is like a a kind of a little indicator of what’s happening in our brainstem,
right, so the we what we feel the brain, we feel the brain stem in our heart and the, and that’s where we’re all knotted up. You know the other interesting thing is that at one of these. Traditions are the most advanced the color tracker, which I mentioned, the where I called the clockwork system and which has this very radical prophecy for the future of the planet that we will, through education and contemplative science, all civilizations will be transformed into non repressive peaceful, democratic cultures, and in every individual will learn how to master their own. In nature and transform into awakened beings, it’s a very beautiful. The shambala. Is that you know that Er Shangri -la That’s the sort of prophecy, but another really interesting and kind of weird thing about it is that they believe in cow chocolate. Unlike all the other systems, the polarity of the of the side channels switches below the heart,
right so in other words that appeared you. I made it the parasympathetic on the side of the sympathetic, with the, you know the the Lunar and the Solar on you know, the you know, usually the Lunar is on the left side and the Solar’s on the right side and pepper below the hearted. There is flipped right and I believe that that refers to the fact that the upper body is a primer. Is primarily regulated by then buy a new branch of the vagal nerve, the smart. This is related to something called Poly Bagel theory, but the new branch of the vagal nerve is what allows us to consciously breathe, and also what works to calm the heart. Right at its core. It had it, It acts as what’s called the heartbreak, and whereas below then below the diaphragm below the heart, the older vagal nerve operates and it’s much more hard to control and it’s much more unconscious and primal. So a lot of are a lot of our anxiety, and a lot of our gardeners happens in the lower body, so I think that there’s you know what they’re describing where they. They noticed. This, I for catered nature of the nervous system, at least autonomic nervous system, and and I think that somehow what is described by the unraveling you know by the by their hard, not being so important, because essentially that’s kind of like. So the gods through the harder of the autonomic nervous system, whether the the subtle nervous system
that is really so fascinating
is like a speculative tantric neuroscience
now, but I love that you have the background you know as a medical doctor, and you know deep knowledge of the original scriptures Because you write them. You can read them, and I think this. This already gives two very different perspectives on. The same topics you read about, yeah, and that’s really what it terms of my journey. That’s what’s been so exciting about this is that you know almost allows that. Having the two almost allows you to go beyond either one of them. He remained to sort of get a window into what the the, the sort of subtlest part you know aspects of our being or reality, Ar. So it’s very, It’s for excited to to be able to kind of use the two together. It’ll look a little little deeper and I would already say I would love for us to continue that. Because you know every statement of your brings up more questions and and more interest, and it’s really fascinating. I have to say Yeah, wonderful Because I’m I’m so glad you guys are like kind of source of the of the heart, stuff like the literal and the symbolic of the heart being at the origin of the beginning and the neural tube growing out of it to create. And human being or I can’t you know. It’s like I’ve got like a crazy question to ask you next time about what happens at the end.
Okay for the crazy question or I will thank you both, but really fun, and you continue. Just let me know that I would definitely love to continue this. Thank you so much to meet you rented a ticket. Elizabeth, say thank you.