Dzogchen As Gnosticism: A Phenomenological View

By Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.

Transmission of Light
In the summer of 2013 at the Tibetan Center in Poolesville, Maryland the
great Lama YangThang Rinpoche gave instruction on the practice of the
great compassion, or as he described the practice, as being the practice of
Absolute Compassion. The instruction was to extend the light of awareness
into the world and into the cosmos. Extending the light of awareness into
the present moment of a person, extending the light of awareness into the
past time of the person and extending the light of awareness into the future
time of the person.
This truly is the great practice of the great compassion and everyone can
practice this extension of the light of awareness. This very proactive praxis
brings forth the light within us and fills us with the light of the field of
awareness. It is great to practice this vast practice. Of course it takes a
boldness of intention and passion of heart.
Extending the light of our innermost awareness into the present of those we
love, and into the past of those we love, and then extending the light into
their future of those we love is self-liberating. The light of awareness
illuminates experience, metabolizes experience, opens us into un-bound
awareness, undoes fixated-ness, and brings forth luminous intensity. The
light of awareness is pure potentiality. The same practice can be used with
those whom we hate or dislike or whom disgust us.
This practice of extending the light of awareness deepens our own
experience of becoming aware of awareness. As we practice extending
the light of awareness, awareness itself completely opens up for us and
deepens our experience in depth and breath. In time we begin to
experience the true secret of this praxis. Timeless awareness begins to be

experienced by us and sustained by us. Timeless awareness is the

essence of Dzogchen. And so, as we are in abiding in timeless awareness,
we extend the light from the dimension of timeless awareness into the
dimension of time.
In Dzogchen, as in Heideggerian phenomenology, there are four times.
There is the time of the present momentum, there is the time of the past,
and there is the time of the future. Most profoundly there is the fourth time,
the time of timeless awareness. To be able to be in timeless awareness
and then bring forth this dimension into time for ourselves and others is a
most wonderful experience and skill. In time we will find ourselves having
facility with being in timeless awareness and in time simultaneously.
This great practice is not only an essence of Dzogchen praxis, this practice
is also reflective of early Christian gnostic praxis. The great translator of
Tibetan text and teacher of Tibetan studies, Herbert Guenther who
influenced many generations of Tibetan scholars with his translations and
his scholarship and understanding of the Vajrayana. He suggested in his
magnificent text on Padmashambhava that early Dzogchen practice (7th 8th
and 9th century) was influenced by the early Christian Gnostics. The early
Christian Gnostics were practitioners of gnosis or jnana, or direct
knowingness of Ultimate Reality as pervasive divinity as light. The Gnostics
also practiced the transmission of the light from one person to another and
from one group to others.
Early Gnostics and the Light
The early Gnostics understood that Jesus, the Christ Consciousness was
an expression and embodiment of the primordial light. The same primordial
divine light that both manifests and pervades everyone and everything.
This light is the light and radiance of innate awareness. Human beings are
the embodiment of luminous primordial awareness.
The gnostic path was the path of the self-revelation of the light. The path of
the light is the direct path of gnosis, the direct path of knowing divine light
both within self and within the world. The gnostic path was the path of
experiencing the divine light unfolding within our life experience, and the

light unfolding as our innermost experience of subjectivity. Everything is the

manifestation of the light.
Early Christian text were gnostic in essence and in origin. For instance for
the early Christian Gnostics, the gospel of John was a Gnostic text, a text
about the divine light of consciousness. In the beginning was the word and
the word was with God and the word was God. This is the gospel of the
logos. This is the gospel of illumination.
For the gnostic practitioners, Jesus said that he was the light,, and he was
the light of the world. The world was light, divine light and everything of the
world and in the world was the very same light. Jesus was pointing out the
nature of human awareness as being luminous radiance knowingness.
The early Christian Gnostics were radical in their understanding that God
dwells within them as them and God dwells within the world as the world.
God is light. The light is the source of human consciousness as well as all
beings. For the gnostic Christian, Jesus taught this understanding about
the divine light being embodied by everyone and everything.
Orthodox Christianity and the Gnostic Light
Of course there was another understanding of the gospel of John and this
was the understanding of the growing clerical organization of the
institutional church. For many of the bishops especially Athanasius the
bishop of Antioch, Egypt, Jesus alone, was the light of God and Jesus
alone, gave light to the world. Jesus was the only path to God. Jesus alone,
was the word. And the path of light was through Jesus alone, and through
the church alone, since the church alone was the path to Jesus. And of
course there was the early church understanding that outside the church
there was no salvation, there was only darkness outside of orthodox
Christianity.
This constant interpretation of the growing institutional clergy was
dramatically reified and solidified from the year 325 AD onward. This is the
year the Christian creed was formulated by the counsel of Nicaea. In this
year of 325 AD, Constantine declared that the old Roman Empire was now

the Holy Roman Empire and there a fusion between the Roman church and
the royalty of holy Christian church and thus the Holy Roman Empire. The
Roman Empire and the growing spirituality of the Christ as expressed by
the Catholic Church hierarchy was now one. Religion and royalty were now
fused.
The unbound luminous spirituality of Jesus had become an institutionalized
religion. Jesus became institutionalized. The growing path of light was
usurped by the Roman emperor Constantine. A smart political move, for the
despot who had only recently murdered his son. In this move in declaring
the Holy Roman Empire, he fused religion and royalty. The official clerical
and political interpretation was dogmatically defined and reinforced that
Jesus was the only expression of God, the only way to God was through
Jesus, and the only way to Jesus was through the Roman Church and its
sacraments and its priesthood.
This fusion of royalty and religion was sustained and maintained by torture,
murder, continuous mass horror. The use of horror was used within the
Holy Roman Church. The Holy Roman Catholic Church focused
relentlessly for centuries on heretics as a mode of political and religious
domination.
The actual teachings of the Gnostics were distorted by the orthodox clerical
Roman church. The heretical Gnostics were described by the church as
being anti-body, anti-human, anti-life and even anti-Christ. These
distortions were used over and relentlessly throughout the entire course of
church history to attack gnostic practitioners as heretics.
Most of all the Roman church hated the understanding and the praxis of the
Gnostics in their direct experiential perception and direct experience of
divinity. The church hated the understanding and praxis of gnosis. The
ecclesiastic church hated the gnostic practices that supported the direct
experiential experience of divinity and the experiential embodiment of
divinity. The church hated the personal experiential transmission of the
light. This was, and is the most threatening understanding because this
transmission of the light implies the unmediated experience of the divine.

This directness of experiencing the embodiment of the divine light

challenges the power of the fusion of religion and royalty. This experiential
directness of the luminous experience undoes hierarchy, undoes the
priestly caste systems, and invokes the experience of God as light as
dwelling with everyone and anyone. The distortions about Gnosticism were
elaborated for centuries as a way of the church undermining the Gnostic
tradition and destroying the tradition by the relentless program of murder
and juridical power throughout the centuries.
Original Gnostic Text
Then a most dramatic and historical change took place. The year was
1945. Many ancient gnostic text that were previously hidden for centuries
were discovered and made public. Thus a view was now possible that was
not the destructive reframing of clerical Roman church. The newly found
gnostic texts opened the experience of the pure nature of the early
Christian Gnostics. These negative attributions of the church against the
gnostic Christians was a projected descriptions of their own anti- libidinal
preoccupation and self- hatred of embodiment.
The rediscovered text presented the understanding that Light of awareness
was completely and pervasively present in every human being and in every
situation. This actuality is fully capable of being known directly by everyone
in every situation. The gnostic tradition empowered everyone.
The Gnosis of direct perception was the natural capacity of all human
beings. Becoming aware of awareness was the light becoming aware of
itself, both within the person, and within the circumstances of life. This
capacity to directly know the light of awareness as the light is the essence
of direct perception.
I began this discussion about Dzogchen as Gnosticism by introducing the
practice of the great compassion as transmission of the light of awareness
into the three times of a person. This practice of radiance light is both a
practice in Dzogchen and a practice of the gnostic traditions. I then focused
on a brief history of Christian Gnosticism. I will now introduce
Padmashambhava who has been described as a great Dzogchen master

who helped introduced the Dzogchen teachings in Tibet. He was a master

of the Radiance of the Light of Awareness.
Padmashambhava : Dzogchen and Gnostic Master
Padmashambhava personified the Dzogchen teachings. Padmasambhava
was a person of mystery and symbolic fiction. He lived in the 8 th century
and his name symbolized living within the world without being enslaved by
its vicissitudes, without being captured by contained mind, and containing
circumstances. He lived within the spaciousness of freedom and the translucidity of light as the great expanse of awareness. His path of freedom
was living in spaciousness and light and not the detachment of
depersonalization and disengagement. His personhood personifies the
Dzogchen view.
Padmashambhva lived within the space of freedom and action during the
wild events of the 8th century in Tibet. Some think he came from Pakistan
and others from Iran and others from still other places. Most believe
wherever the place, the place of his origin was a country where the gnostic
views were vital and alive. He is not an Indian and not a Tibetan. His
thought was gnostic, in that he understood and experienced human
awareness as the power of space and radiance of light. This power of
space and radiance was a source of human freedom and self-liberation.
His thought was gnostic and as a gnostic he understood that humans are
beings of light and the process of the experiential embodiment of light was
the source of self-liberation. He lived and understood that the luminous
knowing of primordial awareness was the innermost sense of self. The self
was not the self of the mind alone, but the innermost, experiential
knowingness of direct perception, direct experience and direct awareness.
Innermost awareness was the inner self.
Direct luminous perception as gnosis was for Padmashambhava the
natural path of self-liberation. Self-liberation arises through self-awareness
and self-recognition of what is already present within us as us. To
experientially know who you are in essence, is to become the who-ness of
being itself.

Padmashambhava lived in the realm of the Siddhas and wherever he was

the Siddha realm would become manifest in its completeness. He would
suggest that where ever and whenever he was present, he invoked the
Dakini realm and the archetypal realms would become manifest. He was a
master of manifestation. His expression of the Vajrajnana was shamanistic
and inclusive of the power of the invocation of the light.
He would also speak from within his own experience in a most direct and
poetic manner. His language communicates the felt sense of his
experience and is rich in symbolism which is dramatic. He gives a poetic
and imaginative view of the subtle luminous universe of light and energy.
This light and energy is experienced both in the relational world of ordinary
life (Nirmanakaya) as well in the archetypal realms expressed as the deities
and dakinis.(Sambogakaya) His awareness lived within the luminous
Dharmakaya which is the dimension of pure potentiality within which and
from which everything and anything manifest.
Padmashambhava describes how we emerge from within the Dharmakaya
and dissolve within the Dharmakaya. And then we reemerge again and
dissolve again and then again reemerge and again dissolve. His abiding
existential understanding is this who-ness who we are, and through this
who-ness who we are manifesting. We bring forth this who-ness life after
life and death after death. His confidence is that in essence we are unborn
and undying, and we emerge life after life and death after death. He had
the awesome power of extending the field of radiance light and energy, as
well as the power to dissolve and liberate demonic forces through the
extension of his field of light and energy.
His visionary experiences are of an imaginative nature wherein the
experience is luminously subtle and the poetical language expresses what
is beyond logical and the linear objectifying rational mind. There is no
superego encapsulating and containing Padmashambhava. He is never
bound by annihilation anxiety or the terror of deprivation. He was magical in
his use of the power of invocation of the luminous archetypal energies and
radiant light.

Human being-ness is the center of his understanding and work in a form of

ageless mystical humanism within the context of luminous Gnosticism in
which everyone and anyone is the divine light. Everything and everyone is
light. All events are the unfolding of the light as forms. His expression and
his understanding is distinctly a gnostic understanding which is human
beings are beings of light and who have rational minds. He had great love
for the natural power of jnana or direct knowing as unbounded gnosis, and
he understood that everyone has this innate nature of primordial
awareness and the capacity for the power of invocation of the sublime
radiance.
Our humanness emerges out of the innate potentiality that we are
essentially. We are manifested from this primordial ground awareness. This
primordial ground awareness is both space and radiance. This primordial
awareness is also energy and the resonance of compassion. For
Padmashambhava compassion was not a sentiment but sublime
generative action of the radiant light of the heart essence that liberates
beings from endless suffering. Compassion is both benevolent and fierce.
Compassion is the light of the moon as well as the light of the sun.
This manifestation is not of our mind alone but primordial awareness
manifesting everything and anything, including our minds, bodies, and
subjectivity itself. This dynamic potential expresses itself in living symbols,
living icons of trans-lucidity. Everything is within this symbolic translucent
realm of being.
The experiencer is not mind alone, such as our mind of thinking, feeling,
sensation, memory or fantasy. This mind is secondary phenomena to the
dimension of awareness. The ego logical self as mind is emergent from
within this large field of awareness itself which is manifesting in time and
space. This awareness is multidimensional and simultaneously beyond
time and beyond space. We are timeless awareness and we are timeless
light in time.
Padmashambhava named this drama as Snying Po which means sheer
intensity or individuated energy or the creative force of vortices. This is

similar to what Jung called psychic energy or psyche and the Gnostics
called Pleroma, the fullness of no thingness or the no thingness of fullness.
Padmashambhavas teaching is luminous, mystical Gnosticism in which we
can experience the unfolding of luminous elemental-ness as the universe
and as the pervasive divinity.
The dynamics of this intensity manifest through human experience, and all
forms and all symbols are of a luminous radiant quality. The universe is
radiant light energy. As experiencers, we are already luminous beings living
in the immediacy of these universal energies. We live in the world and live
within this luminous sensuous nature as place and space. The immediacy
of sheer experience is found nowhere else but within our daily experience,
and within the ever present translucent symbolic reality of all that is.
The symbolic reality is not only mental but is the archetypal configuration of
actualities that are present in us. We enter in them and them in us.
Padmashambhavas teachings are free of rationalistic legal thought and he
often characterizes the human person as the little man who is the
wholeness of self-manifesting light. The primordial field of ground
awareness manifests individual fields of brilliance and radiance.
Padmashambhavas understanding about the nature of awareness was
different then earlier Buddhist understanding about awareness and the
nature of mind. The first turning of the Dharma (5 th century BC) by Guatama
was the understanding of mind as thought. The second turning of the
dharma (2nd century AD) was the understanding expressed by Nagarjuna
and the mind was understood to be emptiness. And the third turning of the
Dharma (5th century AD) by the Uttara Tantra was that the nature of mind
was wisdom gnosis or Buddha mind. So at this stage the traditional
teaching about awareness such as expressed in Madhyamika was that the
nature of awareness was cosmic emptiness. I consider that there was a
fourth turning of the wheel of Dharma during the 9th century and this event
was carried forth by Padmshambhava in his unbound understanding that
the nature of awareness is not only emptiness but radiant light. This is a
foundational change. Padmashambhava is symbolic of this change of the
understanding that the nature of primordial awareness is radiance and

emptiness or to express this another way light and spaciousness or still

another way luminosity and openness.
Herbert Guenther and His Text on the Teaching of Padmashambhava
In his great text The Teachings of Padmashaambhava, Herbert Guenther
presents an existential understanding of Padmashambhava. I am going to
use some of Guenthers descriptions of Padmashambhavas
understanding. I am transliterating Guenthers statements and
understanding that focus on Padmashambhavas teachings in the light of
Gnosticism.
Padmashambhava understands that the human person is the cosmic whole
self-manifestation of light in singularity. The self-arising of light within the
person break apart the mental frames which contain spiritual pursuit as
beliefs of the representational mind, and the self-arising of light destroys
representational thought and replaces belief (both personal and cultural)
with a profound unbinding and unbounded experience. The intensity of the
radiance can be fragmenting, and the mind as well as the body seem to be
falling into pieces.
Through the unfolding of this intensity of light of awareness, the vast light of
luminous openness as the innate core of all is manifested and revealed.
The unfolding of the light is self-revelation of the innate guru or the innate
Buddha mind or Shiva consciousness or the Lumen Christos.
This unfolding of awareness brings a person into existential authenticity
and this authenticity is manifested with immediacy and suddenness. The
totality of that which exists is without exception, the radiance light. From
within the fragmentation of the personality of mind alone, authenticity arises
and becomes the organizer of the personality.
The wholeness of intensity/energy becomes a vortex of light. The light
expands and appears as bindu us and circles of light. The light is both
within the persons mind and embodiment and suffuses everything and
anything around the person. The primordial ground of Being is the ground
of radiance and spaciousness. The primordial ground of Being is also the

ground of gnosis, jnana or yeshe, knowingness as light. Self-illumination is

a difficult experience and beyond a persons comprehension. This
experience is beyond words and beyond language and cannot be thought.
This means the totality of all that is, is indivisible and undetermined. There
is a ceaseless spontaneous non conceptual happening that is opening and
shining, self-illuminating and radiating, giving and manifesting everything
and anything.
The cosmological wholes intensity/energy becomes luminous vortices of
radiance giving birth to thoughts and language and to human meaning. The
self-illuminating experience of awareness outshines all other spiritual paths
by brilliance and radiance and naturalness and the intensity of direct
knowingness.
Within this personal experience of manifestations of cosmological whole
and intensity energy there is no judgement as to fault or virtue, no wrong or
right and no truth or falsity. Non judgment does not mean being without
discrimination of direct perception or gnosis. Situational reality is the
manifestation of ultimate reality.
Awareness itself fragments us and breaks us and self illuminates us, and
liberates us. For Padmashambhava there is a vast luminous field of
knowingness beyond our contained mind. The sense of being located in
mind alone can feel like being contained and in a bound solipsistic box. The
light of awareness can break through us, breaks us open and we are
terrified of the vastness of the light. Through the dissolving of our aversion
to the luminosity, the experiential emergence of the awareness field
happens and the brightness emerges as unbound completeness and then
the abyss of darkness is dissolved. This is the inner meaning of Dzogchen
as the great perfection or great completeness.
The elements are light and the elemental-ness as light is also the gnostic
understanding of Valentinus and other forms of both western and eastern
Gnosticism. Elemental-ness is central to Padmasambhavas work. From
the view of elemental-ness everything is alive and moving and translucent.
There is the relentless unfolding of the trans-lucidity of awareness and the

trans-lucidity of appearance. The world is anima mystic. The universe is

luminous psyche.
Padamashambhava created and taught methods for gazing into the light.
He was a master of Togal the leaping into the light methods of Dzogchen.
These gazing methods of Togal bring a person into the completeness of
self-luminousity. Our mind is not the source of liberation. The mind is a box
that can be opened to the infinite field of light. The experience of the light is
both the source and the result of self-liberation.
Padmashambhava thought that the human mind with its dichotomizing
activities directs a person to take positions opposing reality, and (the laws
and ways of rational consciousness) narrow reality, impoverishing and
enclosing it within the minds narrow rationalistic thinking. The mind cannot
grasp the nature of awareness and the mind alone cannot grasp the
intensity luminosity of everything and anything. The mind cannot grasp
Being and cannot grasp the being-ness of Being. The mind can apprehend
form and detail, particularity and singularity, and the mind can grasp
difference. Awareness experiences Being and the being-ness of Being.
Awareness is the light experiencing the light.
The Influence of Gnosticism on Dzogchen
Throughout the history of Christianity there are many forms and traditions
of Gnosticism. I would like to recommend the wonderful text Rainbow Body
and Resurrection by Francis Tiso for a studied elaboration of the influence
of gnostic Christianity on Dzogchen. The text is the study of the light
unfolding in Dzogchen and Gnostic traditions.
Tiso with his knowledge both of Gnosticism and Dzogchen surveys the
history of the influence of Gnosticism and Dzogchen in their mutual
understanding of the radiance of the light. He begins with the spirituality of
the Syriac church of the east, and proceeds through other forms of gnostic
thinking such as Manichaeism. He also describes how the radical gnostic
teachings about the luminous direct perception of the divine was so
disturbing to the Patriarchal clergy over the centuries. The same can be
said about Dzogchen teachings and practice on the visibility of the light

being disturbing to the Tibetan Buddhist Clergy of the new translation

traditions. This emphasis on the light, this emphasis on Togal praxis was
beyond the mentality of Indian philosophy. The great tantra of the light the
Guhyagarbha tantra which is the 8th century source tantra of the Nyingma
tradition was often condemned by the new translation traditions such as
Gelugpa and Sakya.
There is an ancient book written in the 8th century named The Realization of
Profound Peace and Joy by the Christian monk Jingjing and this text was
found hidden within a cave in Dunhuang, China. This ancient text focused
on the dialogue of Chinese Buddhism and Christianity. The teachings in the
text is a blending and synthesis of Gnostic Christian Buddhist teachings.
The book presents the view of the Silk Road nations, wherein the gnostic
traditions of the light, the religions of the light influenced each other as well
as the Buddhist. Tiso presents the unfolding view of the Buddhist Dzogchen
traditions of the light. In Tibet much of this influence took place in the early
Tibet of 7th 8th 9th and 10th centuries. This influence was of Chan Buddhism,
Daoism, Tantric Kashmir Shavism and various Christian Gnostic as well as
Iranian mysticism. The religions of light were gnostic teachings that were
becoming pervasive during these centuries. The orthodox traditions of
monastically bound traditions in the various religions would often stand
against the unfolding gnostic radicalization.
God As Good and Evil, God as Light and God as Darkness
Gnosticism were preoccupied not only with the light but with the drama of
good and evil, light and darkness. Many of the various gnostic traditions
considered God or Divinity as both good and evil. God or Divinity is both
light and darkness. Divinity is understood to manifest goodness and
evilness.
How to understand this relentless duality and how does Dzogchen give and
understanding to this dramatic duality. Dzogchen tradition understand that
primordial ground awareness is divinity manifesting everything and
anything. This pure luminous compassionate primordial ground awareness
manifests everything and anything. From this dimension of non-duality,

duality arises. From this dimension of oneness differences arises. From this
potential space of indivisibleness infinite forms of phenomena are created
and manifested.
In Dzogchen language the Dharmakaya is primordial awareness as nonduality. This primordial light is completely total goodness, total compassion.
And then within the self- manifestation of awareness, the self-manifestation
of the Dharmakaya into the self-manifestation as the duality of phenomena.
All phenomena is both non dualistic and dualistic simultaneously. At the
level of non- duality all phenomena are total ontological goodness and at
the level of duality there is dualistic experience of goodness and evilness,
light and darkness phenomenologically. Difference brings forth dualism and
duality and there is the arising of simultaneous pairs of opposites. And so
through duality we can experience non duality and through non duality we
can experience duality. As Parmenides pointed out over a 2000 years ago
the world is oneness and difference. The world is difference within oneness
and oneness within difference.
This view is same in many gnostic tradition. Primordial Consciousness is
the light as Divinity and as Total Goodness. The light self-manifests itself
as the various forms of phenomena as difference and as duality .The light
is total goodness and at the level of self-manifestation there is experienced
range of difference of both goodness and evilness of both light and
darkness.
This difference within phenomena is not only on the level of ordinary
human experience or the Nirmanakaya level to use Dzogchen language,
but also there is dualistic difference even at the subtle energetic luminous
forms of archetypal energies. Even at the archetypal level there are
dualistic archetypal realities that are benevolent and malevolent. There are
luminous archetypal realities of light and archetypal realities of darkness.
In the non-duality of pure awareness there is total goodness and out of this
realm of total compassion everything and anything is created and brought
forth. Self-arising from the Dharmakaya, the archetypal is manifested and
from within the archetypal, the Nirmanakaya is manifested as ordinary life.

Everything, absolutely everything is the great expanse of the Dharmakaya.

Everything is the manifestation of Divinity, Divinity dwells within everything
as Divinity. Within the darkness there is luminosity.

The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington

Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies