' Primary and Secondary Consciousness '...

From direct experience that is also validated by Dzogchen and other similar traditions, I would like to clarify what exactly is occurring during what is ordinarily called “awakening”, “liberation” and “enlightenment”.

Our most basic and primordial consciousness is called the Mind of Clear Light, the Natural State, Buddha Mind and Rigpa. All these terms point to a permanent Consciousness that hosts all other states of consciousness and their content; much like a mirror that hosts all reflections. Although while hosting all lower states of consciousness and their contents, it never changes, just like a mirror being unchanged by its reflections.

The first evolutionary arising in the Primary Consciousness is a secondary consciousness (shespa) that doesn’t know and recognize its source or its actually being dependent upon the Primary Consciousness. Nor does it recognize that it is actually an energetic formation of the Primary Consciousness, much like the vast, clear sky manifesting clouds floating within it.

It is the secondary consciousness that wanders in the samsara of its own thought-up identities and mentally constructed landscapes. It is this consciousness that seems to wander, reincarnating from life time to life time and is the one that experiences suffering.

It is this secondary consciousness that when seeming to look inward into examining its own state of existence, discovers nothing is really there except thoughts “about” identity, but no actual self is findable within those thoughts. It is during such a revelation that the Light of the Primary Consciousness can shine through, leaving a profound impression upon the secondary consciousness. However, that experience usually becomes a mere memory over time, a memory that belongs to the secondary consciousness.

The problem with teaching the secondary consciousness is that it takes all insights and such experiences, and simply adds them to its endless collection of intellectual perspectives, most of which are soon forgotten. Hence its quest’s end never arrives, yet becomes ever more frustrating
as its efforts to exalt itself as being an “enlightened being”; totally free, impervious to harm and suffering, never occurs.

The secondary consciousness is a dense, contraction of the Light of the Primary Consciousness transformed into “thought”. The secondary consciousness is a thought form and functions only through and AS thought and conceptualization.

It’s a “trickster”, a “shapeshifter” that completely dominates our cognitive state of mind in every way. It’s a parasite that takes on a life of its own while feeding off of the radiant energy of the Primary Consciousness. It is the pseudo-entity that interacts and integrates with the bio-computer of the brain.

Keep in mind, all as described is no more than a daydream occurring as the mind of the secondary consciousness itself, and that secondary consciousness in the midst of its daydream is what is appearing like a holographic movie within the empty space of Primordial Consciousness, like empty reflections appearing and disappearing harmlessly in a changeless mirror.

In order to bring this experience of suffering, called samsara, to an end, the secondary consciousness needs to retract back into its source as the Primary Consciousness.

It’s done by the Light of consciousness itself, suddenly recognizing itself as being the Original Light of Primordial Consciousness. This is possible because the light that “recognizes”, is itself a lower, denser, harmonic of the Wisdom of the Primordial Light Itself.

What we call “recognition” is simply a sudden transformation of consciousness which is itself a dense, lower harmonic of the Wisdom (yeshe) of Primordial Consciousness. This is like an ice cube of water suddenly appearing in its less dense form of water vapor.

This moment of sudden transformation of mind into Clear Light, is referred to as the joining of the Mother and Son Lights. No joining actually occurs, rather the Son Light transforms into the Mother Light, it’s true, highest nature.

In that moment as experienced and known well here, consciousness is then known as being the Primordial Consciousness, without doubt, and without a separate possible “doubter”. You are then the changeless, transparent empty host in which all potentials as appearances arise and disappear.

The Primordial Consciousness has rediscovered Itself in that flash of gnosis. The “attention” of the Primary Consciousness had become absorbed fully into and AS its secondary consciousness as “sport”.

All we are doing in these traditions is reversing the arrow of “attention” from being fixated in and AS thought, back toward its empty Source. By simply relaxing and releasing “attention” from all thought and mental topics, the secondary consciousness dissolves back into its Source.

- Jackson Peterson