VAJRASATTVA

A Deeper Insight into Togal and the Lamps Now, approaching the same from the Togal point of view. If you study the deep meaning of this word Thod rgal it has much more depth to it than the same old common interpretations like Direct Crossing, Crossover or Final Leap. It is Skull Traverse or Crest Traverse. As in crossing over the crest of a hill or mountain, which in this case is one’s own skull, the calcium casing of the three pound organic brain, as long as one still has a skull to think about it. It is called the Direct, Quick Path or Approach. It can mean Direct Transcendence of all conjured arising visions, dreams, illusions, illusory cultivated mirages which are apparently contained within each of the Four Togals. Yet, these illusions themselves are not the Togal itself.1 The Togal is more a newly captured position, solid and secure, which ceases or exhausts the illusory imagined contents pertaining to the particular Togal. This instantaneous Leaping Over, is skipping or jumping over the dream visions of illusions designated within each Togal. Then one has captured the next stronghold of Togal where illusions have no existence. To strengthen this point there are phrases that describe this, like grabbing it by the nose (1st Togal), getting to the bottom of it (2nd Togal), having come into full play or full measure (3rd Togal), the 4th Togal has no nickname as it is Great Completion, the exhausting of the first three parts of Togal into the Pure Genuine Part. These sayings emphasize the stronghold nature of a Togal in itself and not the illusory imagining of discursive thoughts, the Five Wisdoms and the entire Bardo, the Three to Five Kayas, or the Three Realms. All those are nonexistent illusory dream substance, without any substance at all. The Four Togal are captured, secured illusion conquering positions that either immediately or step by step arrive at Instantaneous Arrival across the skull crest into Kadag. The Breakthrough (khregs chod) is breaking through to Kadag. It is breaking through any idea of the solid or hard barriers to get into Kadag. So the Spontaneity (Lhun-grub) is Togal, the Leaping Over, Soaring On, Floating Over, Bypassing, Passing Over the gradual steps. It is Instantaneous Arrival, Crossing in One Leap or leaps and bounds, by Simultaneous Passing, Instantaneous Directness, in a Sudden Jump Passing Over the Summit of Existence.2 There is mention of Thod-rgal in the Abhi Dharma Kosa by Vasubanda from the 4th century C.E., which is approximately eight centuries after the Lion of the Sakyas lived. These might or might not be records of the genuine words of the Sakya Lion, where thod-rgal is described as a transition or transference meditation of ceasing or vanishing into Clear Light. The Lion of Sakya taught in his own words, it is the knowing of one's own mind, just as it is, that is the thing, perhaps Trekcho could be that. He illuminated the processes he had developed to acquire this. So then, can there be question of one existing without the other. So we can infer that Trekcho and Togal were taught in one shape or another by the Lion of Sakya, but really they may have come later in there present form. The first turning of the wheel was on mind as all Void (Trekcho like definitely). The second turning of the Wheel says Form is Void and Void is Form, and so forth going through all levels of Dharma (A very Togal like view). The spiritual battle over Bon or Buddhist origin will go on and on. They both grew up together in the same part of the world, I believe enhancing each other, as all contacting cultures do when they meet with one another. Other thinkers vehemently disagree about Bonpo. Togal is leaping over, skipping over progressive sequences of dream illusion, then gaining that Border, moves to the next. Instead of going around the borders by gradual progress one instantly traverses the parallel borders as one would running across or jumping across four railway tracks. To jump to a higher level (the levels being Togal Strongholds), passing over the four boundaries and the illusions attributed within them, by Instantaneous Directness, even Soaring On over the Summit of Becoming. The first three Togal are something like an amalgamation or combining, united together in the Fourth Togal where the mirage like contents of the first three Togals are combined as a Nuclei of Singularity and then cease into Kadag, the non-dual embrace of Kuntuzangmo (Pure Void) and Kuntuzangpo (Luminosity). Togal is not a mind event or a skull event of fabrications in the head of dreams, illusions or mirages. Vast Expanse has separated from the center of the brows (the skull), there is no body, no mind, no conceptual contact. The Four Togals rise directly from Kadag, not from mind, dream or visions. Togal are consolidations capturing the strong borders at once traversed where there are no more illusions contained under the canopy of that particular Togal. Togal is the advanced practice of working with creative light, luminosity, or the four lamps by upward jump, skull crossing, by direct passage of the All-Surpassing over the Pinnacle, where one attains a body of light, as light is the real substance we are all made out of, form or void, material, illusory or Rigpa itself. Togal is the All Surpassing Instantaneous passing over the skull overpass. The instantaneous directness passing over or above the skull is Togal. The Four Togal in unsurpassed bypass transcend the skull or peak of existence.3 Curious, even though the Four Lamps are associated along the Kati channel in the body, they lead to the Light without body, the Void Luminosity, and it is here, transcending the Four Togal, now combined, united and then vanished into Kadag, that they are fulfilled as Four Instantaneous All Surpassing Solid Assurances that transcend the skull and the Summit of Becoming as this Primordial Pure Kadag. This is the instantaneous (gcig car ba) realization of the best of practices, quick Togal complete. One tends to think of the Four Lamps as a vertical rising up the Kati, but it is not so. Regardless of how the Four Lamps first arise in correspondence with the Kati, only the First Lamp is apparently of the body, considering the Kati piercing the two eyes. Yet even these eyes are not common eyes, but special eyes where perception arises from the source in the Heart Palace, the Kadag within. Yet Kadag is not any kind of bodily connection, except for its giving sight that everything, bodies too, are only the substance of Light. Now from the eye’s Lamp, the next is the Vast Expanse Lamp which if you must locate it in relation with a body would be behind and upward of the skull crest, at a distance without center nor fringe. The third Lamp of the Void or Empty Thigle or Nuclei in the Vast Expanse is even further out and higher up, if you still cling to direction. The fourth Lamp of Self Kindled Self Knowing is the Light whose source of Illumination is Kadag itself. I cannot understand if you still grasp at a directional concept to locate this, for here the real question is where is it not? This needs no answer. I admit this upward and behind view of the Lamps is something more similar to the views of the Yoga schools. Dzogchen points out these Lamp experiences and appearances as occurring more in front of the practitioner. From the Eye’s Lamps, in the pure blue sky outside and above the horizon, is mixed in oneness with the clear sky void within the mind. As one making the Vast Expanse Lamp. Further outward and farther expansively arises the Empty Thigle in the Vast Expanse. This void nuclei, though empty, simultaneously holds everything the universe seemingly is, will become and will return to and that is voidness, the emptiness, the voidness as the nature of every person or object. That is the content and substance of empty thigle. This singular thigle will sink into the Vast Expanse, vanishing ....