Kalachakra: The Fourth Occasion Creative Drop

We have covered now the first three creative-energy drops, the drops of the occasions when we are awake, when we are dreaming, and we are asleep with no dreams, which are also known as the body, speech, and mind drops. Now we have left the fourth drop, which is often just referred to as the drop of the fourth occasion, and this is generating a bliss, a type of bliss. Here, on the basis level, we are referring to the bliss of an emission (like with orgasm). So this is the fourth occasion.

The first question of course is, what is this? Is this bliss that we’re referring to here an object of both body consciousness and mind consciousness? Or is it similar to what we had before with the other three drops, something that’s experienced only with mental consciousness? And maybe the main emphasis here is on the mental consciousness, and maybe it’s accompanied by body consciousness of a physical sensation. But if you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense that here with the fourth drop we’re talking about sense consciousness. If the others are talking about mental consciousness and it’s getting more and more subtle, it doesn’t make sense that all of a sudden for the fourth drop we’re back to sense consciousness. So the suspicion is that we’re talking about some sort of really subtle mental consciousness. So there’s indecisive wavering here, but we’re going more on the side of it being mental.

Now we need to analyze: What’s going on with the experience of the bliss of orgasm? And how does that fit into the rest of the Buddhist teachings?

If you analyze it, the bliss of emission is accompanied by a drawing in of the energy wind. Right? So there’s a drawing in of that energy, getting more and more subtle, but then it’s followed by an explosive release of the energy, the energy wind. It is very similar to what’s happening with our energy when we sneeze. In fact, analogies are drawn. When you sneeze, you go “aaaah” and then “chooo!” There’s a big release of the energy, but it’s preceded by drawing in the energy. And so on a much more subtle level, that’s what’s happening with orgasm.

Think about that in terms of your own experience. Whether male or female, it doesn’t matter. It’s this explosion of energy that is the real troublemaker in terms of this Kalachakra practice. You want to draw all the energies into the central channel and dissolve them. But if you have an orgasm, then there’s an explosion, and all the energies leave and go out. This is why they are saying – on another level, another aspect of the Kalachakra teachings – that the real cause of samsara on a deeper, deeper level is this bliss of emission. We’re not talking on a gross level.

When all the energies are dissolved in that central channel, when we have that very subtlest mind understanding voidness, we can get the true stopping of the obscurations. What is the danger? The danger there is that it’s too much, the bliss is too much, the whole thing is too much, and there’s this explosion to leave the clear-light state. That’s what you really have to avoid. That’s what’s going to bring you back into samsara, is that it’s too much. Because of attachment and a misconception that the bliss of orgasm is going to be better, this explosion, you leave the clear-light state and get back into the grosser levels that bring samsara. So actually that’s very profound and very subtle. And they correlate that with the root disturbing emotions:

• Longing desire based on exaggerating how wonderful the bliss of orgasm is. But then it becomes too much. You have to actually reach that peak, which then destroys it because then there’s the release of energy and it’s finished.
• And then there’s annoyance or anger that it’s finished.
• And then because the energy has been released, you become dull.

So we have this explanation in Kalachakra. And of course we can understand that on the gross level, but I think it’s more significant on this deeper level of leaving clear-light mind.

It’s not that we were originally in clear-light mind and then, like leaving the Garden of Eden, we fall out of that. It’s not like that. We’re talking about if you actually are able to attain the clear-light state in meditation, then there are these real dangers of leaving it.

That’s why, not in Kalachakra but in other anuttarayoga tantra practices, when you have the visualization of the extraordinary or special protection wheel – you know what it looks like? It looks like a gyroscope in which you have eight spokes going out and then a cone on top and a cone on the bottom, the point on the top and the point on the bottom. Not in Kalachakra, but in other tantras. And you have protecting figures on the eight spokes and on the top and the bottom. Well, what is this? On the deepest level, this is referring to the heart chakra, with the eight channels going out and the central channel going up and below. The protectors are there on these channels to protect and keep the wind dissolved in the central channel and not let it out. So a similar type of aim but just a slightly different way of explaining, a different way of approaching it. It’s very profound actually, what’s going on with the energies on this deeper level.

This sensitivity to our energy and how it is going is something that we can develop on the sutra level as well. And obviously in Kalachakra practice, this becomes very significant, to have that sensitivity. It really just requires quieting down and paying attention.

So as I said, we have this drawing in of the energy as well, but in a much stronger sense, with the orgasm and sneezing and then the explosion. But we also have a drawing in of the energy with yawning, falling asleep, fainting, and dying. Right? There’s a list you find, a standard list, in tantra texts. With all of these, you get an approximation of coming down to the subtlest level of clear-light mind. It’s not quite there. That’s why they say that this near attainment without mindfulness – well, you can include that in the general discussion of what’s clear light, but it’s not really clear light yet. It’s only really when you die that you actually get to the actual clear-light level.

In the end, when you reach the conclusion of these different experiences – orgasm, sneezing, yawning, etc. – what you are left with is a very subtle conceptual mental cognition as the consciousness is approaching the clear-light level. That’s conceptual. It’s this very subtle conceptual mental cognition. The only difference between that and with orgasm and sneezing is that in the latter two cases it’s followed by an explosion, an explosion of the energy. So this suggests that what we’re talking about here with this deep-awareness drop, the fourth-occasion drop, is that the orgasmic bliss that’s being generated from this drop is experienced by a subtle conceptual mental cognition. We’re not talking about what you feel with the body’s consciousness or even our normal mental consciousness.

Now, remember this drop of the fourth occasion is at the navel and that the navel drop is both a body drop as well as this deep-awareness drop, just a different name. We have one drop at the navel, and one aspect of it serves as a body drop when we’re awake, and another aspect serves as this what’s called deep-awareness drop on this fourth occasion, so it’s both. This suggests that what we are experiencing here while we are awake is this subtle mental conceptual consciousness of the bliss of orgasm, not the actual explosion but that moment right before. The fact that that drop at the navel has two functions suggests that it’s something experienced when we’re awake. But remember the awake drop only was talking about mental cognition; it wasn’t talking about sense cognition. So the deep-awareness experience, the bliss-of-orgasm experience, needs to also be mental. So that’s another confirmation.

Okay, so now we explore deeper. We’re not satisfied yet. We’ve determined that it is mental consciousness and it’s conceptual and it’s very subtle. So then what is this bliss? Is it a mental factor of feeling blissful, a way of being aware of something while we’re awake?

Remember that one of the mental factors – in fact, it makes a whole aggregate by itself – is the aggregate of feeling. So that is feeling something somewhere on the whole spectrum from intensely miserably unhappy all the way to the most intense happiness. Every moment of our experience is accompanied by something on that scale, on that spectrum. It’s a mental factor accompanying how we are aware of something: are you happy about it, unhappy about it?

So is this bliss referring to a mental factor? Or is it a subtle form, a mental hologram? A hologram of what? Is it a hologram of a tactile sensation, like imagining what it feels like to be tickled or something like that? Are we talking about it like that, like a memory of a physical sensation, or is it a hologram of something else? Well, if it’s a hologram of a physical sensation, why is this something special from what we would experience with the first drop? Mind you, that would be a mental hologram in terms of mental cognition, not with the body. What’s so special about this?

Now we have to bring in another piece of the puzzle. In Kalachakra it speaks about how the human body has six – this is a very difficult term – elemental sources (khams-drug). It’s not very clear whether that’s referring to particles or something else. Right? The elemental sources. And these are earth, water, fire, wind, space, and deep awareness. In the Kalachakra mandalas, there are six colors, the six directions, and all of that, because of these six elemental sources, sources of the elements. I don’t think that they’re the actual particles, because in Guhyasamaja this is associated with its presentation of the winds, the subtle winds. So I don’t think it’s talking about particles here when it talks about elemental sources. But in any case, we have these elemental sources. And if the bliss of orgasm here is referring to a mental hologram, then I would guess that it is probably a mental hologram of the sixth type of elemental source, deep awareness. So a hologram of deep awareness. And this is suggested by the fact that the drop at the navel is called the drop of deep awareness.

Now we have yet another type of mental hologram that’s generated on the basis of these drops with the winds and that just appears to mental consciousness, they all appear to be truly existent, and they are accompanied by believing in that true existence (either in a manifest way or subliminally). And in terms of the four drops, these mental holograms seem to be getting more and more subtle:

• The grossest level are these mental holograms of when we imagine or think of something or remember something (we’re talking about remembering what something looks like, what something tastes like).
• And more subtle would be mental holograms of what appears in dreams and the sound of the internal voice that we have.
• And then, even more subtle, that mental hologram of the darkness when we are deeply asleep with no dreams.
• And then a mental hologram of this deep-awareness elemental source that appears just at that peak moment of orgasm, before the actual explosion. I’m not talking about what it looks like or what the sensation is. It’s something more subtle.

Now of course there’s the question about the bliss of orgasmic emission experienced in dreams, but that will require further analysis. Mind you, all of this is my guesses. We don’t find this in the texts. I’m just reporting to you the results of my analysis, which seems to make sense. The danger of a clever mind is that it can make sense of anything, so you really have to use logic and so on to confirm what you’re analyzing. Is it just something that the clever mind has made up, complete garbage?

Okay, so that’s the basis level.