AS VIEWED, SO APPEARS
by Paul Levy
The word “Buddha” literally means “one who has awakened tothe dream-like nature of reality.” The Buddha wasn’t teaching that thisuniverse was like a dream, he was pointing out that this universe of ours IS adream, a waking dream that we are all collaboratively dreaming up intomaterialization together. The Buddha prophesized that an even greaterincarnation than himself would soon be born whose name would be PadmaSambhava.
PadmaSambhava was a historical person who founded TibetanBuddhism. He is the Tantric Buddha, the incarnation or emanation of theenlightened mind itself appearing in human form. Interestingly, PadmaSambhavais considered to be the Buddha of our Age. By the power of his awakening, he“conquered” the country of Tibet, transforming the evil forces into protectorsof the sacred Dharma (teachings of the enlightened ones), and turning everyoneinto Dharma practitioners. PadmaSambhava is the supreme alchemist andexorcist: it is said the greater the negativity, the greater his power of transmutation.
PadmaSambhava started the “terma,” or hidden treasurelineage, which is particularly unique and psycho-activating, awakening theunconscious beyond belief. To insure the propagation of the purity of theteachings, PadmaSambhava concealed these sacred teachings and holy treasuresthroughout the many dimensions of this universe: in the earth, in the sky, inlakes, in dreams and visions, and in his disciples’ hearts and minds.PadmaSambhava would inspire his disciples to discover these terma,synchronistically, at just the right moment in history when they were needed.The revelation of a terma was like an atemporal, higher-dimensional processmaterializing into linear, historical time. Termas are not make-believe, likesome sort of fairy tale- the terma tradition has been deeply studied and highlyvenerated by both scholars and practitioners alike (see Hidden Teachings ofTibet by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche). Like alarm clocks hidden in this waking dreamof ours, going off to wake us up at exactly the right moment, these terma arelike time-release vitamins that the universal dream-field organically secreteswhen needed, so as to compensate an unconscious one-sidedness. When we connectwith a terma, it is like a sleeping, unconscious part of ourselves becomesawakened. Termas are like charms that break spells, or like keys that openlocks.
One such terma is the Tibetan Book of GreatLiberation. In this hiddentreasure, one of the things PadmaSambhava says is “As a thing is viewed,so it appears,” which can be essentializedto: “As Viewed, So Appears.” As Viewed, So Appears isitself the equation or formulation of how we co-create reality with thisdream-like universe of ours. As Viewed, So Appears is describing, whilesimultaneously being an expression of, the dream-like nature of our wakingreality. As Viewed, So Appears is as all-pervasive and universal a law in therealm of consciousness as gravity is in the physical dimension. Contemplating AsViewed, So Appears can be a catalyst to awaken in us the realization of how inthis very moment we are dreaming up the universe into materialization out ofthe infinite field of unmanifest potential. Contemplating As Viewed, So Appears
When we are in an actual night dream, if we change the waywe view the dream, the dream has no choice but to spontaneously shape-shift andmirror back this change in perception, for a dream is a reflection of the mindthat is observing it. A dream is nothing other than our inner process projectedseemingly outside of ourselves. If we change the way we view our dreamwhile having it, the dream will spontaneously change the way it appears, for adream IS nothing other than our own consciousness externalizing itself. Thedreamscape is an instantaneous reflex (reflex-ion) of the way we are viewingit…… As Viewed, So Appears.
Similarly, quantum physics points out that it makes nosense whatsoever to talk about the universe as if it exists objectively,separate from us, or to talk about us existing independently of the seeminglyouter universe. The universe and ourselves are inseparable partners in atimeless embrace. We are collaboratively dreaming up the universe, while theuniverse is simultaneously dreaming us up. This interplay reciprocallyco-arises in a non-linear, acausal and atemporal, synchronistic and cyberneticfeedback loop. Buddhism calls this beginingless process interdependentco-origination: every part of the universe evokes and is concurrently evoked byevery other part in a seamless expression of undivided wholeness. This is tosay that the idea of separation between ourselves and the universe is anillusion.
Quantum physics has discovered that our perception of theuniverse actually evokes the very universe that is observed. If we change theway we view the universe, the universe itself spontaneously reflects thischange back to us, as the universe is not separate from our perception of it.Physics itself is pointing out that our universe is arising exactly as a dreamarises- as an immediate reflection of the observing consciousness. Is thenature of light a wave or a particle? Quantum physics points out that itdepends on how we are looking. I call this the ‘physics of the dream-likenature of reality.’
Our creative imagination is truly divine, in that itliterally effects the suprasensory blueprint that underlies this seeminglymundane and ‘solid’ material world of ours. Our divine creative imagination isthe part of us through which God, so to speak, imagines this world intomaterialization. This waking dream we are living in, however, being of a moredense vibration than a night dream, is more solidified, crystallized intomaterialized form, and is hence, ‘slower’ in the way it is a function of ourcreative imagination. Due to the seeming solidity of this waking dream, theeffects of the creative imagination on how this universe of ours actually getsdreamed up are visible only with much more subtle, refined and rarefied vision.Our physical universe very convincingly appears to have the continuity of beingsomething that seems solid and objectively existing, but we shouldn’t getfooled or entranced by the seeming concreteness of the universe’s dream-likedisplay.
An example- Is what is happening in our world right nowour worst nightmare that will end up in unimaginable destruction? Or, is whatis playing out on the world stage catalyzing a global awakening previouslyundreamed of? Is what we are viewing a wave or is it a particle? It all dependson how we observe it, or shall we say, dream it up…... As Viewed, So Appears. Thekey agent in how things manifest is none other than our own consciousness. Talkabout responsibility!
The ‘unconscious’ of our species is getting dreamed up andplayed out destructively on the world stage for all to see. Will we realizethat we are all collaboratively dreaming up this universe into full-bodiedmaterialization so as to shed light on the unconscious and awaken ourselves?Or, will we not recognize this, and destroy ourselves in collective suicide, asif we are a species gone mad? We live in a quantum universe of open-endedpotential at each and every moment. We are all complicit in what is gettingdreamed up in, as and through this universe of ours. There’s no one to blame.How our universe manifests depends on how we, both individually andcollectively dream it up.
This is not to negate that certain events are actuallyhappening. People ARE dying. Rather, it is to recognize that in the act ofinvesting our universe with a certain meaning, we are playing a role in notonly how we experience our universe, but in how our universe continues itscreative unfoldment. Even though the viewing and appearing are simultaneous,the viewing is more primary in that it is where the real power, or leveragelies in effecting a change in how our universe manifests. Our interpretation ofour experience is the part of the universe through which we can change theuniverse.
Years ago, when I first started teaching, I didn’t have alot of money. One day I found a brand new bottle of contact lens solution inthe bathroom closet the day after I had just bought one in the store. Iremember thinking, “if only I had found this contact lens solution yesterday, Icould’ve saved the money I had spent.” I started feeling depressed. And then,at a certain moment I realized that I could just as easily interpret the exactsame experience in an empowering, instead of a dis-empowering way. For example,I could interpret finding the extra contact lens solution as evidence that I wasliving in an abundant universe where my possessions had started to magicallymultiply. I mean, instead of having one bottle of contact lens solution, inreality I now had two. Why was I depressed about this? It was clear to me atthat moment how direct and instantaneous a link there is between how weinterpret our reality and how we experience life. Our experience itself is afunction of which interpretation we invest in at any and every moment- one inwhich we give away our power to the outside world, or one in which we realizeour co-creatorship with the universe. It was clear to me that, depending on myinterpretation, I would attract experiences to me that would further confirm mypoint of view. The self-fulfilling prophetic nature of my experience could nothave been more obvious.
As Viewed, So Appears is such a profound articulation ofhow we create our reality, that if we think As Viewed, So Appears is not true,the entire universe will shape-shift and reflect back to us that As Viewed, SoAppears is not true. This apparent negation paradoxically demonstrates itsvalidity. Which of course, is just further proof of the all-pervasiveness andprofundity of As Viewed, So Appears. We are like magicians who have becomeenchanted by our own creation.
When we inquire into the dream-like nature of our reality,we begin to touch what I call the ‘meaning of meaning.’ We begin todiscover that there’s no intrinsic meaning embedded in our waking dreamseparate from our own mind’s interpretation. We are meaning generators.
By connecting the dots in the inkblot, so to speak, we aresuperimposing, or mapping a meaning pattern (projecting, i.e.- dreaming) ontothe screen of our experience, and being that the seemingly outer dreamscape isnothing other than our own projection, our own reflection, it has no choice butto spontaneously shape-shift and reflect back our interpretation. Theuniverse reflects back to us our point of view in such a way so as to confirmour perspective in a self-validating feedback loop. The meaning appears to beinherent in the outer inkblot, whereas in reality the origin of the meaning isour own mind.
A dream is a reflection, a projection of the mind (I amnot talking about the conceptual mind, but Mind with a capital ‘M.’ This Mindis the dreamer of the dream, what I call the ‘deeper, dreaming Self’). And aprojection is an inkblot reflecting back to us ourselves. As soon as we connectthe dots on an inkblot, the inkblot instantaneously shape-shifts and mirrorsback our projection. It is not like one moment we view the inkblot one way andtwo moments later it appears that way. The very moment we view the inkblot acertain way is the very same moment it appears that way. As Viewed, So Appears.The inkblot just reflects back to us our own interpretation. This processdoesn’t happen in time, or over time, this process happens outside of time,faster than the twinkling of an eye or the speed of light. Once we project ontothe inkblot, the inkblot will provide all of the necessary justification andconvincing evidence to prove the rightness of our projection in aself-confirming and never-ending feedback loop that is completelyself-generated. Because this process happens in no time, we don’t see it and weget fooled by the reality-creating power of our own divine imagination. It isas if we are creative geniuses who, by our power of evoking reality, haveunknowingly entranced ourselves with our own God-given gift.
Once we project onto the inkblot and it reflects back tous our projection, we imagine that the form that the inkblot has takenobjectively exists, as if it is separate from us. We then react to the inkblot,imagining we are reacting to the external universe, when in fact we arereacting to our own projection. We are like a kitten in front of a mirrorendlessly reacting to her own reflection, imagining it is separate fromherself, in a never-ending vicious cycle, as we have dreamed ourselves backinto samsara or cyclic existence in this moment and in this moment and in thismoment…..ceaselessly, until we recognize the nature of our situation, and snapout of our entrainment.
It is like we are looking in a mirror and deeply frowning,saying, “We’re frowning because of how the outside world (our mirroredreflection) is. We’re not going to stop frowning until the outside world (areflection of our own face) stops being so negative, stops giving me reasons tofrown.” Not recognizing our mirrored reflection, we have all the evidence weneed to justify our frowning. We imagine we’re only reacting, just like anysane person would, to how things really are. And yet, our having fallen intothis infinite regression is a form of madness. We’ve become bewitched, as ifunder a self-generated spell.
This activity of endlessly reacting to our own energy is acrazy-making activity, as over time this tends to generate insane behavior. Ourspecies is in a state of mass trauma, as we are collectively acting out the ‘repetitioncompulsion’ of the traumatized soul on the world stage. In the repetitioncompulsion, the way we try to heal our trauma is itself the very act thatre-creates the trauma we are trying to heal from. And yet, our doing this isthe very medium through which we can potentially integrate and transcend theunconsciousness which is at the root of our doing this. Hidden in the problemis the key to its resolution.
Inherent in this process is that at any moment we caneffortlessly step out of our dilemma, stop endlessly re-creating our trauma,and spontaneously cease frowning. For frowning is an activity that we areactively doing in each moment. The energy that was bound up in our unconsciouscompulsion to frown and hence re-create our trauma becomes liberated andavailable for creative expression (and smiling).
Frowning itself, however, is recognized to be the verymedium through which we learn how not to frown. This is analogous to ourspecies acting out our ‘unconscious’ destructively on the world stage being thevery way we learn how not to destroy ourselves. Clearly, we have not learnedany other way, or we wouldn’t be destroying ourselves. The key is whether werecognize how moment by moment we are feeding into, supporting, and hencehelping to create the very problem we see out there and are reacting to. Thisis to recognize the dream-like nature of our situation and become lucid in thedream of life.
There is a self-secret dimension in our universe throughwhich we interface with the creation of the universe. Accessing this dimensiongives us the capability to consciously effect change in the universe. I callthis ‘intervening in the dimension of the dreaming.’ We enter this dimensionwhen we realize how changing our perceptual focus of what is happening actuallyhas a creative effect on how our dream-like universe manifests. This is torealize the gift of As Viewed, So Appears.
When we co-operatively intervene in the dimension of thedreaming together we can get into phase with each other as empoweredco-dreamers and co-creators and collaboratively dream a more grace-filled dreaminto full-bodied incarnation. We can put our lucidity together and stabilize acoherent field of awakening which attracts the entire universe into itself. Westep into and remember our true identities as creative, multi-dimensional,visionary artists and dreamers whose canvas is the universe itself.
When we bake bread, we only need so much yeast in thedough for the bread to leaven. The hundredth monkey’s realization precipitatesan expansion of consciousness in the entire species. We are all non-locallyinterconnected. Like the symbolic number 144,000 of the Book of Revelations, ifenough of us realize the dream-like nature of reality that is being revealed,we can put our lucidity together and dream up into materialization a collectiveexpansion of consciousness unimaginable until this moment in history. Out ofthe infinite field of unmanifest potential, we can create a ‘global awakening’-this is truly within our God-given power in this very moment. The universe isasking the most visionary among us to be the conduit through which itconsciously births itself. We are invited to participate in a radical,revolutionary, epochal and evolutionary quantum leap in human consciousness. Itis simply a question of whether we recognize what is being revealed.
The inner meaning of the word apocalypse is ‘somethinghidden being revealed.’ We are the instruments through which the Goddessence isincarnating and becoming consciously aware of itself. The universe is dreamingitself awake, and it is dreaming itself awake through us. And being like adream, if this is how we see it, then this will be exactly how this wakingdream of ours will manifest….. As Viewed, So Appears.
PaulLevy is a spiritually-informed political activist. He can be reached at
© 2005 Paul Levy