LUMINOUS HEART

OF
INNER RADIANCE
Drawings of the Tögal Visions
by
Robert and Rachel Olds

HEART SEED PRESS

Copyright © 2017 Robert and Rachel Olds
Drawings © Robert and Rachel Olds
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or
by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
Heart Seed Press
www.acircleisdrawn.org

email: [email protected]

Kindle Version
ISBN # 978-0983194569
Cover and interior design by Robert and Rachel Olds
United States of America
Please respect these images wherever they are found, whether in your heart,
on the surface of a pond, or in this book. These images are sacred; they are
woven throughout the very fabric of being. They are found in ancient
petroglyphs and in the natural world. They belong to everyone, not just to
those few who have experienced them through the path of Tögal. They are
landmarks on a path already laid out in your heart, and they can be a blessing
and an inspiration to anyone who comes to them with an open heart.
 CONTENTS
CONTENTS
RECOGNITION
THE VISION THAT IS THIS LIFE
TÖGAL THE ANCIENT PATH OF JOY
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPHERES
EYES OF THE HEART
DRAWINGS FROM THE HEART OF INNER RADIANCE
THE NATURE OF PHENOMENA
INCREASING
EFFULGENCE
FRUITS AND PODS
SEEDS OF ONENESS
THE FILAMENTS OF LIGHT
RESOLUTION OF PHENOMENA
GALAXIES OF ONENESS
THE SINGLE SPHERE
THE RETURN
SETTING SEED
THE DRAWINGS
Homage to primordial essence,
beyond all language or culture,
pure potential, an intent whose reflection
manifests as the natural world,
arising in concentric spheres of influence,
curving lines through undefined space,
a dewdrop falling into the surface of a pond.
 RECOGNITION
You hold in your hands a book of drawings of the Tögal visions. We are
offering them now because we feel there are aspects of the visions that have
great relevance to our times. This is not a guidance manual for the practice of
Tögal. You will not find here specific techniques or secret information about
an esoteric path. You will find, if your heart is open, clues to the luminous
naturally abiding qualities of the vision that is this life, a sea of experience in
which you are already immersed. We pray that sharing these drawings at this
time will engender a new respect and appreciation for the natural world and
inspire a commitment to honor and preserve this world for future generations.
We spent nine years in retreat together in the mountains of northern
California. For the first five and a half of those years we lived in a simple pit
dwelling, which we built in the forest above a Tibetan Buddhist lay
monastery. We had no electricity, no running water. Even after moving to a
one-room cabin close by later in our retreat, hauling water and hiking steep
forest trails continued to shape our lives and our practice. In this context, we
received Dzogchen teachings as conveyed through the Tigle Gyachen and the
Chetzun Nyingtik and put them into practice. Once the visions of Tögal begin
to truly mature, the visions themselves become your teacher through direct
experience beyond words and doctrine.
The process through which Tögal transforms your very being is
extraordinarily visual, and the visual elements unfold in a way that is
beautiful and specific. We are both artists. We had given up our careers
before we came to our retreat but we brought to our practice years of
experience in the visual arts and a deep appreciation for the nuances and
expressive power of color, line, and shape as a language of the heart. We kept
sketchbooks of the visions to share with each other some of the wonders of
our experience of the luminous visions as they unfolded for us. The images in
these drawings are a message from the heart of essence. They are prayers
from the visionary intent that shapes all life from within, prayers that all
beings recognize their indwelling heart of light and live in harmony and
reverence with every facet of the arising vision that is this life.
We came out of retreat in 2006 after completing the path of Tögal, and
eventually found ourselves in a retreat of another kind in a remote area in the
mountains of Costa Rica where we lived for two years before returning to the
21st century. The correspondence between the vision that is this life and the
Tögal visions is particularly evident in the effulgent growth of the cloud
forest highlands. Natural life reaches its most complex and thorough
expression in the tropical forests. Our experience of the living vibrancy of the
essence manifesting before our eyes, the vision of this life unfolding moment
by moment in the shapes and colors of the tropical forest, compelled us to
share these drawings at this time when the Earth is in peril due to the
increasing scope of human ignorance endangering the whole of this
wondrous vision.
The wonders and the truth are all around us in the natural world. They are
here for us to find and emulate. The teachings are woven into the very fabric
of being. These drawings represent the brilliance within all our hearts, within
the hearts of stone, the hearts of the grasses, the hearts of trees, of fish, of
whales, of elephants, the hearts of soil, all the beings that make up this vision,
our home. This is not a book about the techniques of Tögal, although it does
convey the most crucial aspect of the path. The techniques themselves are
very simple, but even if you have received teachings on them, they will not
work unless your heart is open and you have let go of all that clouds the
radiance of the heart. This is a guide to recognition of the seamlessness of all
life. There is in the heart of every one of us a capacity to reconnect with the
luminous heart of all experience and be welcomed home. We begin with the
patterns on the wings of a small butterfly.
 THE VISION THAT IS THIS LIFE
We were sitting in the small cabin we built high in the Talamanca
Mountains of Costa Rica, talking quietly with each other about how to share
our experience of Tögal with others. In a few days we would be heading back
to the United States. The double doors were open and in the mid-afternoon
light we watched clouds pouring up the narrow valley cooling off the day. A
small butterfly came up to the cabin and flew in through the open doors. The
butterfly flew close around us and landed on our hearts. The iridescent blue-
black color of the butterfly’s upper wings echoed the depth of the essence as
we had experienced it nearing the completion of the path of Tögal. And as
our friend rested on our hearts, we saw the clear shapes of two circles joined,
simple unions just as we had seen them in the visions, but now drawn on the
delicate surface of the butterfly’s closed wings.
The little butterfly was one of many expressions of the essence, and within
all aspects of the essence there is an intent. This intent is not esoteric, it is not
something difficult to find, and it is not something only for those in far off
lands. The intent is woven throughout the entire wondrous expression that is
life. The pattern of this world, the intent of the essence, is love, a love so
strong it can make you cry from your heart and it can take your life. It is a
living beatitude of anything and everything, it is the brilliance of light from
the sun, it can burn you, blind you or it can warm you, nurture you, and
comfort you; all you need to know is how to live with it. This core love, this
core intent, has union at its fundamental heart, a union of return. A union is
two aspects coming together, blending to form a one, like two dewdrops
joining seamlessly on the surface of a leaf. This is the main point of this life,
to blend our very being back into essence, to shed all that veils or precludes
this union.
This union, this love, is a dynamic intent that has formed the sphere we call
Earth. A coming together, a union of expression, produces the atmosphere we
breathe, the ground we stand upon, the gravity that bonds us to the Earth.
There is a love, apparent and visceral, that is intrinsic to our experience of
life. Gravity, space, time, solidity, the colors of light, union, and spheres all
have a fundamental love at their heart that provides a support within which
we learn and grow.
This union of intent, the expression of this world, does not arise as an
illusion to deceive. It does not arise as delusion to make us suffer, or to drive
us to turn away or escape. Nor is it just a dream to be seduced by or to be
tossed aside. The whole expression of the essence is a vision, a sacred vision,
with a living intent woven into the fabric of our being, alive in its intent as
the drawings and colors on a small butterfly touching our hearts, asking us to
speak out in the last hours of this age. As the butterfly came to rest on our
hearts, we were talking about how everything that arises is offering a path to
return, everything is a sacred offering for you to return, for all beings to
return. You cannot escape it. Humanity has a unique gift to recognize this
offering and a responsibility to nurture the whole vision that is this life so that
it will be available for future generations, a responsibility all the more
poignant now because this potential to return, this avenue, is dying due to
human human ignorance of its underlying intent.
Visions are alive; there is a purpose to them. They form out of the love that
draws us to itself in beauty and joy, and the love that hurts, teaching us the
feel of fire. The visions from this love can arise simply, like the dawn, a
dewdrop, the soil under your feet. Specifically, dynamically, the natural
world will speak to you, through stone, soil, sky, plants, animals, even
through the timing of seemingly chance meetings with people who know
nothing of this intent yet they are messengers of this love.
This book of drawings is a call from this intent, this love, to embrace the
vision that is this life, to accept the full range of the brilliance of this love.
This is our task, to remember, to return to this intent, to blend ourselves in
this burning love, to follow its call, honoring it, loving it as it loves us, to a
divine union.
We are meant to arise and live with all that manifests naturally, to live
simply, in harmony with this vision, not to separate ourselves from the
natural world. We are meant to embrace the Earth, embrace this vision, and
not confound it with the intellect; we are meant to live with this vision as
naturally as it arises within our hearts.

TÖGAL
THE ANCIENT PATH OF JOY
Tögal is a dynamic visionary process arising from your heart and the very
basis of all manifestation. It is a relationship, a practice of the approach of
grace. The visions of inner radiance are already within a luminous seed or
sphere that abides in the heart of every being. Engagement with the visions is
the ancient Path of Joy, also known as Tögal, a profound connection with the
living essence manifest in its purest form, a natural unconfused practice free
of the assumptions of language or culture.
The rainbow-colored visions of Tögal are primordial; they are the first and
most radiant aspect of manifestation closest to essence. They are not random;
they arise in the same way for everyone and in the same progression. They
are not visualizations, not creations of the mind; they arise outside the
domains of words and doctrine. They are very simple and organic. They are a
doorway to direct perception of the luminous union of essence and radiance.
 In this practice you access a special channel of light that connects the heart
and the eyes, which initiates the particular cycle of visionary transformation
that is Tögal. The stages of the path of Tögal are spoken of as the Four
Visions, but they are more clearly understood as four aspects of a single
visionary process that is moving you toward the indivisible oneness of return
to essence. The four visions are not separate events, or snapshots that slowly
come into focus; they are a living visionary process that extends over a period
of years of day and night practice. The cycle of the visions can be divided
like a circle into four segments, four aspects of experience similar to the cycle
of the seasons and the stages of growth in a plant or a human, but they are
still part of a single circle of experience. This visionary involvement is one
with all life and the essence. It is not a coincidence that the four aspects of
Tögal follow the natural cycles of the Earth. They arise from the same source,
and the visions of Tögal become your teacher just as the Earth has been your
teacher since birth, through direct experience of the heart.
The path of Tögal is very ancient. The practice of the heart essence arose
out of direct experience in the wilderness long before it was known as
Mahasandhi, Maha Ati, Dzogchen, or the Great Perfection. It has been
introduced in the west as Dzogchen, and although primarily within a
Buddhist context, its origins are not Buddhist. It was added on to Buddhism
around the time one stream of this practice was brought to Tibet from India.
The origins of the path of the heart essence are far older, and its practice is
very different in orientation. The first noble truth of Buddhism, that this
world is suffering, begins a very different journey than that of recognition of
indwelling luminous awareness, the starting point of Dzogchen.
This recognition involves a subtle shift: you see the contrast between the
confined yet ephemeral aspects of the mind and the true sky of your heart, an
embrace of all being, an openness, natural, and abiding. Within this
expansive sky-like experience, there is a sense of knowing, a knowing
outside of any conceptualization, an open embrace that has no boundaries,
edges or restrictions of any kind. This is luminous awareness, none other than
the recognized nature of the essence reflecting out of your heart and all
manifestation. Our eyes, the globe of the Earth, a dewdrop on the tip of a leaf,
the ultimate, profound, amazing truth is everywhere all around us right now,
indwelling yet all-pervasive, personal yet unlimited, beyond self.
The complete path of the heart essence involves the union of recognition of
luminous awareness and the visions of inner radiance; this union is the
practice of Tögal. Without Tögal, there is no Dzogchen, yet Tögal is not
widely taught or practiced in the West. This has led to an emphasis on the
perceptions of the mind and the intellectualization of luminous awareness in
the absence of direct experience of inner radiance as it manifests in the
visions of Tögal and in the natural world. The Tögal visions and the vision
that is this life are not separate. You need to come to the allowing openness
of your heart directly within the radiance of this world before you come to
Tögal, to open the path of joy and allow the essence to move through you and
move you to resolution, the ultimate embrace of essence.
Just as a circle is drawn, the completion is inherent in the path from the
beginning. This embrace of essence, this joy, is in the rings of light that form
on the surface of water, the vibrations of energies extending throughout the
universe, and it lives within your heart as the visions of inner radiance. The
joy you feel in this practice is the joy of the blended acknowledgement of all
being within the intent of essence. The joy is also a knowing deep inside that
you have taken the last path toward the ultimate embrace. Words like
enlightenment, liberation, realization, fail to capture this experience of utter
embrace. These words speak of adding to or getting out of something rather
than recognizing, meeting, blending with what is already pervading the fabric
of being.
The visions arise out of the pure joy of manifestation, the fluidity of light,
the rapture of the holy ones. You touch that joy and recognize it in your heart
and in the natural world. The joy you feel along the path is a mirror of the joy
of the visions themselves, fertile, ephemeral, the pure spontaneous radiance
of origin. Settled in luminous awareness, perceiving the seed of light and
knowing in your heart that you are immersed in the direct perception of the
holy ones, you enter the final path, a path of light at the very edge of essence,
the point of origin, a sacred joyous knowing.
Tögal is a path of total surrender, the surrender of your heart and body,
resolving all phenomena to essence. There is no veil between what arises
naturally moment by moment out of essence and essence itself. The
experience of pure essence never leaves you. The completion of Tögal is a
oneness as natural as the air we breathe and the Earth that holds us. It is a
way of union blending essence with essence just as water blends with water,
no seam, only a fluid oneness.
 Tögal is the manifest brilliance of the intent of essence, integral to all that
naturally arises; it is as ancient as concentric rings forming on a pond. Tögal
was accomplished by unnamed, forgotten guides of the past, long before
names were ascribed to this path. Yet even in ancient times, very few were
compelled to take this last path. Only a few came to it in any generation for it
requires many years of letting go, letting go of yourself, your life, your
precious intellect, your doctrine, all that hinders the process of utter embrace.

The nameless are the true guides of the past for they understood through
their own accomplishment of Tögal that Tögal is one with all expressions of
this natural world. It is as simple as a ring of light on water and yet you must
let go completely, not just in your mind; you cannot just think it, or play
games with your intellect. You have to meet the ring of light in your heart
purely; you need to let go of everything, even yourself, to clean the slate of
your very being. It is as if you are pivoting between this life and the moment
after death over and over, steadying yourself to recognize the fluid wash of
luminous organic being.
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
SPHERES
All manifestation is like a brilliance of white light surrounding a blue-black
star of undefined potential. Out of this brilliance comes the circle or sphere,
the basis of all phenomena, the intent of the essence speaking to us in all
form. The sphere or circle represents the completion inherent at the
beginning, the intent of the essence within all beings and all forms
encompassing the resolution. This simple shape, this organic fluid wholeness,
is the most sacred pure form.
The whole experience we find ourselves within is made of radiant circles
and spheres of light, from atoms and molecules to bubbles, dewdrops, eyes,
the Earth, the sun, the moon, the planets, stars, and galaxies. The circle is also
an expression of the cycles of change seen clearly in our lives from birth
through growth, maturity, and decline into death, and moment by moment
throughout all aspects of this ephemeral vision we call life. The very Earth
we live upon is a sphere made up of cycles that move us just as a circle is
drawn. The circle or cycle divides equally as in early cell division of an
embryo into two and then four equal segments, reflected in the four
directions, the four seasons, the four stages of life, all the natural expressions
of the sacred compass within which we live.
The circle is the ground, the nurturing soil, the egg, the basis of all being. In
the Tögal visions and the vision we call life there is an activating, initiating
force that engages with this ground, as sperm or pollen or as strands of tiny
spheres that are the rosaries of light within the visions. This activating energy
initiates a new cycle when it blends with the circle or ovum, then together
expanding, multiplying, and developing as a new cycle of life arising from
this union of response and initiation.
This initiated, differentiating life is made of light, and that light expresses
itself in rainbow colors, glorious in their luminosity, depth, and radiance.
Color brings out, shines forth, and embodies qualities. Colors are another
aspect of the intent of the essence: the blues of the sky, the greens of plants,
the ochres of the soil, the whole spectrum of colors found in flowers or a
rainbow. This brilliance of celestial light brings to life the visions of Tögal
and the vision that is this life, inner radiance seen everywhere you look and
found within your heart.
In the initial fields of the visions, there is a grey or whitish light with grey
or white circles or spheres moving through space. As the visions mature, the
circles become concentric rainbow spheres, and colors grow more and more
evident until they stabilize and the whole experience is that of brilliant,
incredible, celestial colors the depth of which is impossible to draw.
Some of the circles come together, join, and become another important
aspect of existence. This is union, two spheres blending to form a singularity
of two, an embrace that is total. Union, joining, combining, blending, is the
continuum, the connective tissue, the luminous net of all experience like a
pond’s surface peppered in a light rain creating concentric circles blending in
a dance of countless union.
These radiant spheres, unions, and colors expand to encompass further
expressions of call and response, nurturing and initiating. In the very basis of
all phenomena, the energies that are sometimes called peaceful and wrathful
dance and blend in a union of primordial dynamic forces, and they begin to
manifest in the visions in specific shapes.
As the visions progress, simple peaceful forms appear, four circles around a
central circle. They become one of most prevalent expressions throughout the
rest of the visionary experience, taking on more defined qualities as the
visions grow and mature. Initiating, dynamic wrathful forms also begin as
simple patterns with four quadrants and radiating energies on the diagonals,
and then they too expand and develop with individual qualities. Both
peaceful and wrathful forms are organic in shape; they are expressions of
energy within the intent of essence and are found everywhere around us
throughout this vision we call life, from the peaceful forms of a dogwood
flower to the wrathful patterns of a tiger’s face.
All these energies or aspects of intent come together within the visions of
Tögal in spatial nets of light similar to the arrangement of seeds forming on
the head of a ripening sunflower. Just as the sunflower seeds develop within
patterns of overlapping circles, each seed providing a sphere of influence, the
peacefuls and wrathfuls connect through living strands of light, the whole
producing a luminous net, a continuum of space and intent.
A vivid expression of this intent, sometimes called Indra’s net, arises within
the Tögal visions of inner radiance, but you can also experience the energy of
this intent within the vision that is this life through opening your heart to
another in genuine compassion and love. The jewels at the crossroads of the
net can be holy beings, friends, mountains, plants, waters, rivers, oceans, a
dewdrop, the light on a windowsill. The essential aspect of Indra’s net is the
luminous heart to heart connection with all life, the recognition of the
primordial essence in all. Every aspect of our daily life is already an integral
part of this sacred net of great compassion. Our choice is to open to it and
bond with this great union. It is the same energy that permeates the
shimmering colors, fields, and forms of the Tögal visions.
Circles, unions, peacefuls, wrathfuls, and luminous nets continue to grow
and then mature into total effulgence in complex patterns with jewel like
ornaments, pendants, and mandalas, oceanic in scale beyond space and time,
and yet as in all cycles of life there comes the dissolution. The effulgent
expression of essence crests and begins to decline. As we grow to maturity
and express ourselves in life, we reach a time when our energy moves
naturally toward dissolution or decline and into death. In the visions, this
decline, this inward turning toward essence, returns to a single sphere then it
too pops like a bubble on water and there is only essence.
The four great visions of Tögal are part of an organic living process, a
natural cycle, and within that cycle there are whole arenas of experience, each
with their own texture of transformation. There are landmarks on the path but
they are gateways through which you enter another stage of the visionary
process. The most accurate way to describe the developing spheres of the
four visions is that they mature in the same way as the growth cycle of a
plant. The seedling of light that emerges from the luminous seed in your heart
puts out seed leaves as the onset of the first vision. The seedling grows, puts
out more leaves and the first buds of flowers as the second vision, and then
matures and blossoms as the total effulgence of the third vision. The energy
then turns inward, concentrating the dynamic force of the essence to set seed
in the fourth vision, which brings you to the ultimate resolution of all
phenomena as a seamless whole.
 EYES OF THE HEART
Tögal is profoundly visual, and the visions unfold in a way that is fluid,
organic, and very beautiful. To be truly open to the intent of the essence
embodied in this fluidity and beauty, you must be able to clearly see the light
in your heart with the eyes of the heart.
Most people have allowed their minds to be dominant and use their eyes in a
channeled, tunnel vision way, grabbing blindly out of the negative emotions
and limitations of separate identity upheld by the mind. The channel of light
that connects the eyes directly to the heart in the practice of Tögal bypasses
the brain and the hold it has over what we see, but if you do not break from
the mind’s narrow, uncontrolled grabbing action through opening your heart,
the Tögal visions will still be routed through the mind and will not unfold in
an authentic way.
There is a natural fluid power to the eyes that reaches out and connects with
what it sees. It can meet, hold, push, or pull at need. If this power is guided
by the mind, it grabs and pulls back into itself and interprets in ways that
reinforce perceptions upholding separate identity. The eyes can also be used
more purely, from the heart, to connect with and relate, and with this more
open use of the eyes the visions arise and you bond with them. No longer
grabbing with your eyes, seeing becomes a mutual embrace as you embrace
the visions and are embraced by them.
In modern science, the retina is now understood to have an intelligence of
its own that processes incoming visual images for color, outline, and motion
before sending them to the brain. The brain then processes the images for
distance, dimension, and detail, assigns meaning, and consolidates the
information into the visual perceptions we are accustomed to seeing. The
brain greatly enhances the images sent by the retina so we rarely see what the
retina actually sees.
Tögal practice is rooted in the heart. Traditional teachings speak of the
luminous visions already dwelling within the heart of every being, waiting to
be accessed and recognized. Current research is establishing that there is an
intelligence of the heart independent from the brain, similar to the
intelligence of the retina but even more complex. The special channel of light
that allows the visions to pour forth in Tögal not only bypasses the brain’s
hold on seeing, it also connects the intelligence of the heart directly with the
intelligence of the retina.
We are artists and came to Tögal practice trained in abstract as well as
representational styles. We were trained to appreciate line, color, and shape,
the domain of the retina, in their pure expressive qualities, as well as to
render accurate details. Unlike artists trained in cultures that maintain a more
iconographic way of seeing and painting, our backgrounds allowed us to
experience and record in drawings what the retina and the heart together
actually experience through the progress of the Tögal visions.
When we first experienced the visions arising from our hearts we naturally
began making sketches, little drawings of the spheres to share with each other
the wonder and joy of this organic indwelling truth. During much of the early
years of our Tögal practice we were in silence, and drawing was a better form
of communication than words could ever have been even if we were
speaking.
Before we met we were artists, we had both studied art in college and later
graduate school. For many years art had been our spiritual path. We used our
painting and sculpture as a form of spiritual inquiry and the creative process
itself as a way to nurture a crucial kind of openness and trust outside of
words. We were able to meet the Tögal visions purely as they arose for us
and draw them for each other without distracting from the practice.
The visions are not remembered in the same way you would remember
what happened while you took a walk in the woods. They are from a different
dimension of experience and are remembered directly in the heart and eyes
rather than through the mind. The images we drew for each other were a very
small part of what we were experiencing. As time and space began to fade
and the visions became more complex and all-encompassing, we could only
try to sketch the basic forms and give a sense of the depth that we were
experiencing. Even the individual spheres within the visions, arising not as if
drawn mechanically with a compass but organically as living, perfect circles,
were astounding to draw, moving your hand in that way, entering into their
rhythm, a fluid, living geometry of perfection.
And then there were the colors. Even at the early stages of the visions, the
rainbow rings around the spheres were glorious to behold. As the visions
progressed, the colors became celestial in their variety, quality, and intensity,
moving beyond dimension, beyond familiar cues for hue and brightness. The
faintest tones of turquoise or pink would become spacious and overwhelming
in their depth of radiance and suffused with an equally overwhelming
tenderness, their feeling tone inextricable from their color, all well beyond
the range of our colored pencils.
Within the limitations of time and space and the materials available to us,
our sketchbooks offer a unique record of how and what the eyes of the heart
can see of the luminous intent of the essence woven throughout the visions of
inner radiance and the vision that is this life.
 DRAWINGS FROM THE HEART
OF INNER RADIANCE

THE NATURE OF PHENOMENA

The radiance blossoming forth unceasingly from the essence, the
spontaneous dynamic expression blooming in myriad ways, is the great
compassion. This radiance, this compassion, is not random; it is a direct
manifestation of the intent of the essence, an intent for all beings to reflect
back to the origin. This specific, compassionate intent that creates the entire
world vision we find ourselves within begins with light, a spontaneous
continuity of essence and radiance. The light then shapes itself into myriad
rainbow colors and countless circles or spheres of being that are free and
undefined, yet they form the continuum of all manifest experience as color,
shape, and light. The mind defines and labels, changing and reordering its
perception of what is naturally manifest into the holding patterns of time and
space. Then this realm of light appears as the spatially defined and bordered
solidities of the familiar world. When the continuum of the radiance is
perceived directly in Tögal without these hindering factors, you experience
living light free of the borders of intellect, seen purely from the light of the
heart. This is direct perception of the true nature of phenomena, the
beginning of the visions of Tögal.

DIRECT PERCEPTION
Tögal is the path of no doubts, the path of direct experience. You give
yourself to the visions. You are not making the visions happen; you are not
visualizing or manipulating them. You are allowing, surrendering, entering
into a profound relationship, a sacred dimension with no outside, no inside,
no self, and other, a tender gentle embrace. This embrace allows the visions
to arise naturally from your heart and move up the special channel of light
that bypasses the brain and goes directly to the eyes.
The Tögal visions are simple, organic, and natural, and especially in the
beginning, very cellular. Your perception of them may or may not be affected
by your cultural conditioning. Someone with a long background in the
visualizations of Vajrayana Buddhism or Christianity for instance, could see
some of the more complex forms assimilated to the perspective of their
beliefs. It is important to distinguish between the perceptions of the heart and
the perceptions of the brain in relation to the visions. The basic visionary
shapes in their pure elemental presence have a power just as they are that
both validates and goes beyond all structures of belief, whether religious or
scientific. It is a rare gift to experience the Tögal visions purely, and the only
way to have a pure experience of them and have the signs of the path arise in
an authentic way is to allow the visions to come forth and not cloud or
corrupt them with belief systems and doctrine.
The initial cellular stages of the visions are similar to floaters but the
visions are from a deeper level of experience. Genuine engagement with the
visions brings a tangible shift, a connection with a sense of living presence
that extends beyond time and space and yet is reflected in every aspect of the
natural world. You begin to experience light as essence expressing itself in its
purest form as the seeds of life. It is not that the visions look like cells, cells
look like the visions; cells are the way they are because they reflect this
essential aspect of being. The cellular quality of the first vision is not
something you pass over or wait through until you come to the juicy parts,
the more elaborate parts. The circles and spheres are direct expressions of the
generative intent of the essence; they are the seeds of living light.
 CIRCLES AND SPHERES
The cycle of the visions begins with an oval or circular gently undulating
field like a veil of light rolling and unrolling. Within that field, there are small
luminous circles of light and long strands of much smaller circles like strings
of tiny transparent pearls that flow across the field, always moving, never
stationary. Gradually over the course of much practice the strands slow down
and come to rest on a few of the circles, a process similar to the coming
together of sperm and egg, which initiates the cycle of the four visions of
Tögal.
The circles are pure potential; the strands of smaller circles are the initiating
energy of the intent of the essence, a continuity of intent that pervades all
manifestation. This continuity arises moment by moment in the world, in
your life, and in your practice of Tögal. It can arise as habitual tendencies,
obscurations, and rampant emotions or as recognition of luminous awareness
and the continuum of light. The intent of the essence is the continuum. All
structures are maintained by holding to their apparent reappearance moment
by moment in seemingly coherent order, over and over. The intent of the
essence manifests continuity to teach and guide. Part of the environment of
change provided by the great compassion includes a sense of a basic stability
of the world as a foundation for learning and growing. Sky above, Earth
below, cycles of seasons and night and day express a fundamental functional
grace as a context for our choices, a sacred continuity of intent outside
personal identity, a continuity offering always a way home, a way to return
for every being, and this continuity manifests directly in the visions as the
strands of light.
 CALM SURFACE OF A POND
At first it can be difficult to settle into the embrace of the dynamic quality
of inner radiance arising as the visions. Tögal practice will amplify every
aspect of your mind. You will feel its naturally molten and effulgent qualities
far more than in other forms of spiritual practice. If you are still holding and
grasping to self and others, emotions, and habits, then all your stuff floods
into your mind, arising vividly and compellingly, making it impossible for
what is naturally abiding in your heart to come forth. Everything is a
manifestation of essence. Your habitual tendencies and emotions may
obscure this truth, but with perseverance in the practice these obscurations
will fade. However, for this to happen, you need to be in luminous awareness
while practicing for the Tögal visions to evolve and transform your being in
an authentic way. Eventually luminous awareness will stabilize naturally as
part of the visions.
The circles and spheres have a calming, centering, almost mesmerizing
quality to their roundness. The strands of light are more restless, wilder and
unpredictable, or gliding by, flowing as if pulled by a tidal force. This restless
movement in the early stages of the visions is a reflection of the same restless
energy of your mind that you tame through the practice of Tögal.
As the practice continues, the restless energy slows down in the visions and
in your mind. The veil of light begins to resemble the calm surface of a pond.
Strands of light slow down and begin to settle naturally over the spheres. A
living liquid stillness permeates your practice, not just in what you see but
within your own being. The restless initiating energy is joining with the
centering quality of the potential in the circles. Your experience of luminous
awareness becomes stronger; your mind is more settled like the pond’s
surface.

GERMINATION OF LIGHT
Once the strands of light have come to rest over a few of the circles, there is
a quickening in the heart seed; the dormancy has been broken. The life force
of awareness in your heart begins to quicken; the cycle of the visions has
begun. This is the same process as when a seed breaks dormancy or when egg
and sperm come together, a union of potential and intent. But in the Tögal
visions it is not just one circle or sphere that germinates, the entire visionary
field begins to very slowly evolve and grow. Circles become larger and more
numerous. Other forms begin to appear, briefly at first, gradually more
numerous and then stay longer. The potential of color is awakening. Deeper
layers of the field come into view often turbulent or molten with color at first.
This organic living layer of the visionary experience is where the path of
Tögal transforms your life, your beingness, to the very core, allowing the
indwelling radiance at your heart to merge and blend with essence in the
culmination of the fourth vision. The entire process begins here, after years of
shedding concerns and preconceptions about all aspects of your life, with the
simple coming together of the living strands of intent and the circles and
spheres of potential. With the quickening comes a sense of living depth, the
awakening of a dynamic force in the visions and in your heart. Although
arising beyond time and space, beyond inside and outside, the visions can
feel as if they are coming toward you or that you are entering them. There is a
sense of presence, vast, compassionate, aware, and that you have entered into
its view.
 The initial field of the vision becomes more and more transparent. You see
one or more layers of color fields, often molten and active at first, with
checkered patterns of rainbow colors or fields of shimmering colors, or a
turbulent, surging flood of colored circles and spheres rushing across and
filling the field.
As the molten quality begins to break through, you experience a spatial
shift. You may unexpectedly feel a vast expanse within the field of the vision,
as if you are suddenly looking from a high mountaintop although the circles
and strands of light are the same size as they were a moment before. You are
letting go of ordinary parameters of size, dimension, and perspective. The
brain's contribution to what you see is fading away; you are seeing more
purely what the retina is seeing with eyes of the heart.
 INCREASING
The visions are organic; each vision evolves naturally into the next one. In
the beginning, each practitioner will have slightly different experiences of the
stages of metamorphosis that you undergo as the visions move you toward
resolution. There are however specific qualities to the visions and definite
signs that must arise at each stage, landmarks providing a guide on this
crucial journey.
In traditional teachings, there are a number of ways to distinguish between
the first and second vision. Some lineages emphasize the increasing size of
the circles or spheres and the fields of the vision; others emphasize more
color or the ripening of your mind as guidelines. There is a fluidity to the
process; the heart and the visions evolve together, but as they evolve, your
experience can be like a wave, touching upon new aspects of the visions and
deepening qualities of your open heart then falling back, not too far, more
like a gentle incoming tide, slowly, steadily lapping farther up the shore.
The visual field and the circles and spheres and strands of light become
larger and the rainbow colors begin to stabilize. You see more of the basic
fundamental shapes of living light such as concentric circles, diamonds,
clusters of spheres, cruciform flower shapes, and so forth. These forms are
simple, organic, and natural.
As the displays of inner radiance increase, your luminous awareness
becomes stable; your experience of the visions and your experience of
luminous awareness are joined. You come to a realization that inner radiance
is looking through its own eyes, recognizing, merging with the inner radiance
of all manifestation.
 STARS
Star shape forms appear. They are curvilinear diamond shapes woven of
impossibly fine fibers of light, arising suddenly, coming and going with a
movement and a quality very much like hummingbirds. They are pure
expressions of grace appearing within the visions. As they increase in number
and complexity of their forms, bands of flickering rainbow lights that change
in specific patterns appear within them.
Stars have also been called palaces because of their curvilinear lines
resembling pagoda roofs, and sometimes banners or parasols, but they are not
symbolic objects; they are spontaneously arising messengers of grace,
making a music of colors in flickering patterns and complex rhythms with
rapidly shifting shapes. They are clearly communicating not only a message
but also the syntax of a language of form and color beyond words. The stars
speak of presence, of caring, and a coherent intent to relate. They carry a
message of love and transformation, of intelligent presence far outside the
dimensions of the human mind, expressions of another kind of intelligence,
the heart of essence.
They are pure representations of those spacious moments of grace when
you open unexpectedly to the radiance that is everywhere all around us even
when unseen.
 THE DEITY
During the early phase of Tögal, the visions are simple and cellular in
quality. As the visions slowly evolve, a deity, a single unadorned bodily
form, will begin to manifest, an experience shocking in its significance in
contrast to the organic cellular quality that has preceded it. A strand of light
grows and as it expands in size, it becomes more defined. Within that strand,
a sphere develops a halo surrounding a circle head with a topknot. The deity
appears at first as this simple head with a crown protuberance, then an upper
body, then a complete bodily form, and eventually many forms. The deity is a
feature that will remain throughout the rest of the visions, etched within the
field of your being.
The deity, the divine nature, is the sky of your heart. Your perception is
clearing and you are accepting within your whole being the divine nature
within you. The fluid waters of the visions of light continue to come and go
all around it, and the deity remains. The sky of your heart is clearing in your
innermost being; the passage is open and the radiance is developing. Again,
this is not a result of visualization; it is a natural outgrowth of the Tögal
cycle, from the heart of your very being.
Precious human birth is a gift and a responsibility, a gift to be able to
recognize this divine nature inherent in all, and a responsibility to nurture
every aspect of the vision that is this life. This gift and responsibility are
woven into the fabric of being at the deepest most fundamental spiritual and
cellular levels. The deity or divine being is your heart seed maturing and
developing into a bud of truth. It is a major expression and sign.
 PEACEFULS AND WRATHFULS
Simple cruciform flower shapes begin to mature into displays of clearly
distinguishable peaceful and wrathful energies based on a core arrangement
of four circles of light around a central circle. The peacefuls can be of various
combinations of colors. They may have a single rainbow rim or many rims
around them like ripples on a still pond. They reflect the calm, centered
energy of potential in equilibrium, and they sometimes appear as an equal
cross. The wrathfuls are based on the same core arrangement and are much
more dynamic, almost explosive, with colored shapes and bands coming off
the four compass points and the diagonals. They are expressions of initiating,
forceful energies and their presence has a feeling of movement even when
they are stationary.
Peaceful and wrathful energies are woven throughout this vision we call
life. Looking at shape and color, even the sphere of our Earth contains the
basis of peace, which holds within it the equal cross of the four directions.
Responsive and initiating energies grow and shape themselves in an endless
interplay all around us, in the landscapes and in our fellow beings. They are
meant to be a natural harmony that is understood, acknowledged, and lived
with, embracing the full range of expression and interaction within a balance
of intent.
 As the wrathfuls and peacefuls increase in number, they also become more
differentiated, with variations of color, form, and quality that are very
specific. They can be peaceful, wrathful, semi-peaceful, semi-wrathful, each
one becoming very individual.
At the same time, simple unions begin to arise, the deities are multiplying,
and simple forms of the holy ones begin to appear, all in overlapping waves.
Tögal is not a linear experience; it is an all-encompassing immersion in the
luminous expanse of manifest essence.
UNIONS
 As the visions continue to evolve, color spheres begin joining and blending
with one another. While the peacefuls and wrathfuls are expressions of
differentiating energy, the unions express the pure energy of coming together.
At first, the unions arise as circles of rainbow light coming together like two
lovers in an embrace, later some of these unions develop halos, auras, and
bodily forms.
The unions express the bonding, caring energy at the heart of all
manifestation. In their most essential aspect, they are very simple in form,
although some unions will bloom into a variety of individual forms and
energetic qualities and then often return to the essential form. The two circles
blend with the great tenderness of lovers yet their union is beyond sexual,
beyond male or female. It is closer to the bonding of mother and child but
beyond even that. Relating involves both receptive and initiating energies that
give rise to the core tenderness you experience in the visions as the unions. It
is the energy of two becoming one in such a way that there has never been
two. Even when the forms become more differentiated and complex later in
the visions, they are still facets of this oneness, direct expressions of the
bonding, caring, relating, compassionate intent of the essence.
 The tenderness of union begins to express itself as unions of energies as
well as circles of light. Peaceful and wrathful, form and light, prayerful and
dynamic, the unions encompass a widening range of qualities. As the visions
mature, all forms of union arise and subside together in overlapping waves.
 THE HOLY ONES
Around the same time that the deity arises, simple forms of the holy ones
begin to appear in the color fields. They begin at first as a single sphere with
a halo and an elongated cocoon-like body of light. They come and go within
the color fields, gradually becoming more complex in their forms, developing
as single figures and within the embrace of union.
The deity is an expression of the sky-like openness of your heart, the
ripening of luminous awareness. Luminous awareness is able to recognize
itself through you; all perception is essentially that of awareness looking
through its own eyes.
The holy ones are expressions of the larger aware knowingless knowing,
the intent of the essence outside personal manifestation, the luminous net of
compassionate intent that weaves the entire world vision we find ourselves
within. The holy ones are reflections of the spontaneously arising radiant
nature of everything and anything, within which the spheres of individual
awareness learn, grow, and ripen.
 As the holy ones and the unions are developing, the stars increase in size
and complexity. They can merge in groups in various formations and also
become three-dimensional and turn in space, or transform into other shapes
and then pop back into stars, or join with other aspects of the visions in
unions.
 EFFULGENCE
The visionary field grows larger and there is an even more molten, visceral
quality to the vision and the way it arises. This is the third stage of the visions
of inner radiance.
The seedling of light arising from your heart matures, blossoms, and then
blooms more and more effulgently, abundantly, beyond measure, and the
displays of the vision become all-encompassing. Inner radiance expands
outward to the fullest extent and shines on all levels of the visions.
The visceral, molten quality extends beyond the visions into all your
experience. There is a viscous fluid density, a weight and a freedom at the
same time, as you practice and as you walk around. It is an experience of
being totally immersed, totally engaged in the tactile, transitory quality of
experience and yet you are not holding to any of it. All details are more vivid,
more densely textured, and more fleeting, all at the same time. In this
blossoming effulgent visionary union of experience you are touching the
fullest expression of manifest essence.
 Glimpses of the lattices of light, Indra’s net, the fabric of being, become
more frequent. The lattices are complex visionary experiences of depth,
color, and light extending beyond the field, with radiant peacefuls at every
intersection.
 The unions continue to ripen in all layers of the field. Dynamic energies in
some of the unions become more expressive. Both the unions and the lattices
of light are reflections of the linking, bonding energies that are the basis of all
manifestation, the energies that weave all that arises into a single seamless
whole. They show how this whole vision we call life is woven together like
water molecules joining to make rivers, lakes, and oceans, one water, a
kindness at the root of all life coming together, combining in a generous web
of being.
 The spontaneously arising quality of the visions intensifies. Unions
blossom out of other forms and pop, change, and turn back to circles or
spheres in a creative, fertile upwelling of the pure joy of manifestation, the
rapture of the holy ones.
 GROUPS, MANDALAS, AND JEWELRY
ORNAMENTS OF SPACE
At first, unions appear singly, then in small groups, then in larger groups of
unions forming patterns of necklaces and nets, webs of living light, and vast
towering three-dimensional forms weaving countless worlds of intent. The
displays extend beyond the visual field as they evolve into full-blown
mandalas in a molten, soft, upwelling of the uttermost depths. The mandalas
bloom around or are associated with the forms of the holy ones in organic,
rhythmic arrangements, and some may abide for long periods, floating within
an oceanic depth. Whole fields of luminous nets appear with peacefuls or
wrathfuls at every intersection. Energy masses of tiny bodily forms and
luminous masses of spheres, the heads of the holy ones, join with peacefuls in
lines of living light or change completely into other aspects of the mandalas.
All the while, the structures of the familiar world are becoming less and less
solid, more vaporous and glowing with an inner light. The whole sphere of
your experience is expanding, becoming evanescent, blending with the
companion lights of the vision.
 A symmetry of grace pervades the visions in organic draping curves with a
fluid gravity, a flowing movement that extends beyond your view, and the
weighted focal point comes to rest in the field of the vision. Peacefuls,
wrathfuls, spheres, simple unions, and holy ones all come together in the
necklace-like mandalas as celestial pendants of shimmering rainbow light. At
first you see strands or fragments, and gradually they extend to encompass a
vastness beyond space.
 TIME AND SPACE
The visions arise through day and night practice that extends over a period
of years, and as the habits of mind, emotions, lifetimes of weighted actions,
and deep-seated concepts of time and space slowly dissolve away, you see
directly how this world manifests out of essence, an experience of light,
shape, and color that is all-encompassing. Your physical form and the world
around you are turning to light and yet you still go for water, cook food, and
take care of your daily needs. As you walk down to the creek, the land and
the plants glow with light, it is naturally the way of all things, so simple, just
as your hand is made of light as it lifts the jug of water.
The world of your external experience continues to soften. What was once
a solid, fixed reality is less and less held in place by concepts of time and
space. Substance is perceived for what it naturally is, glowing with an inner
light, and the landscape and your body may suddenly burst into rays of pure
colored light. You begin to see countless holy forms pervading all of space
yet resting upon your finger. Whole universes suddenly unfold from the
vaporous shell of perceptions that a moment before had been an elbow or a
hand.
The total effulgence of the third vision is beyond measure, but as expansive
and all-encompassing as this experience is, it is still not the complete return:
you are still within the realm of radiance, the realm of manifestation.
The visions go beyond the confines of dimensional perception. You can
look all the way down and never see the end, and you can look all the way up
to the top or sides and the visions continue on and on. They can last for
hours; they hover gently outside of time, not static, very slowly changing,
manifesting, and evolving, without beginning or end. Even the stars that are
the essence of ephemeral grace come to rest within the mandalas.
The holy ones, the unions, and the unions of the embrace of essence all
arise within a vast molten panorama, in oceanic structures that are fluid and
growing not fixed in any way. They are natural harmonies, subtle balancing
of forces that are organic and alive. Unlike structures that are set and held in
time and space, they are reflections of a deeper continuum of intent, the basis
of all experience, fluid, molten, yet providing a living support, a structure of
another kind.
 EMBRACE OF ESSENCE
As the unions of the holy ones continue to arise, you begin to see unions in
which one figure is blue-black. The blue-black color is a reflection of
essence, the depth of oneness beyond all manifestation, the ultimate initiating
energy that is also the ultimate responding energy. These unions are an
embrace of essence, part of a process ripening in your heart, showing that you
are slowly shedding whatever remains separating you from total surrender to
the essence. These unions with the blue-black depth of all are a reflection of
your very being coming closer and closer to essence. The spontaneously
arising transformative quality of all experience is becoming more and more
apparent. You are approaching the very edge of radiance, the brilliance at the
edge of the blue-black potential itself, and the unions of the embrace of
essence arise spontaneously out of vast mandalas or simple unions within the
molten oneness at the very edge of manifestation.
At times, the blue-black color can also arise as large or small oval areas in
the field, like black holes in the veils of the vision itself. The membrane of
the bubble that is this life is thinning and essence is beginning to show
through.
 All forms of union continue to arise as the unions of the embrace of essence
mature. The unions of the holy ones bloom and transform, held like jewels
within the oceanic sweep of the mandalas that are themselves blooming,
hovering, and subsiding within the expanding yet deepening molten space.
 FRUITS AND PODS
SEEDS OF ONENESS
As the effulgent, oceanic, blossoming energies begin to crest, fruit and pod-
like mandalas begin to form. The life force of the vision is beginning to
coalesce. In the midst of the shimmering expanse of the lattice, necklace, and
hoop structures that extend beyond the reach of even visionary view, some
mandalas collapse inward into more tightly organized forms with peacefuls
and unions cradled within. The rhythms of the expansion are changing; the
energies of the visions are beginning the great inward turning that leads to the
resolution of all phenomena.
The energy that drives the effulgence of the third vision, ever expanding,
molten, and fluid, begins to fold inward like a wave cresting and rolling back
into itself, concentrating the full force of the effulgence into the seeds of
oneness. The generative energy of pure potential is shifting from outward
expansion to focusing that energy into the awakened seeds.
 THE FILAMENTS OF LIGHT
As the effulgence crests at the furthest reaches of expansion, fine lines of
light pour from clusters of peacefuls and holy ones to connect with your heart
center. The appearance of the filaments of light is a sign of the beginning of
the fourth vision, the resolution of all phenomena. The lines of light are not
only visual, they are felt within all that is left to resolve. The experience is
that of very fine fibers of light weaving a brilliance out of whatever is left of
you, taking the leftovers of your beingness and changing them into the
brilliance of manifesting light.
All these aspects, fruits and pods, oceanic depths, lines of light, mandalas,
and unions are all arising, ripening, and subsiding at the same time, within
the growing sense of the undeniable oneness of all experience.
 RESOLUTION OF PHENOMENA
Whatever is left of the perceptions and appearances maintained by the
deepest roots of single identity fall away. The continuity of all experience
literally ceases; there is a break, a gap, nothing not nothing. This is the
culmination of the fourth vision, phenomena resolving into essence. The
process of the fourth vision is very similar to a how a plant goes to seed. The
plant no longer puts out new buds and the final delicate flower petals dry into
shapes of darkening and opaque color. All the energy of the plant goes
toward the seed. With the same inexorable power that drove their increase,
slowly, unerringly, the visions recede from the limitless horizons of the full
expanse of the third vision. Waves of clusters, unions, galaxies of oneness,
and single forms wash through the field of the visions, gradually fewer and
fewer. There is a quietness, an inward turning, light returning to the heart.
This is the most profound of all the visions. There is a compelling quality for
the last vestiges of manifest identity in riding the visions outward,
surrendering to the glory and the wonder of ever increasing experience, like a
waxing moon reaching an effulgence without limit, the mountaintop beyond
all mountaintops, the sky beyond all sky. But having embraced the full scope
of all experience, as the visions turn that vastness inward, condensing it into
the now awakened seed, the last bit of identity still residing in the body rides
the visions inward and downward in the last surrendering, surrendering even
the expanse of the radiance.
 GALAXIES OF ONENESS
Total effulgence is waning, ebbing, a quality in the visions like the
downward pull of energy within a plant or tree in autumn. The concept of
space is going away leaving a vastness beyond its own definition yet this
vastness can be seen on your hand.
The coalescing energy, the tidal pull of inward turning, first arises as the
fruits and pod-like mandalas and then the clusters with the filaments of light,
and finally in the nebulas of countless peacefuls at the furthest reaches
beyond time and space.
The galaxies of oneness appear as interstellar clouds emanating out of
unimaginable blue-black depths, reflecting the brilliance of the implosion and
expansion at the edge of essence itself. The whole vision has a strong sense
of pulling inward as one whole, drawing down as if falling out of space and
time, falling inward, out of self, out of life. Resolution, dissolution, the
bubble that is this life is about to burst.
 THE SINGLE SPHERE
A single circle or sphere appears in the midst of the condensing vision. It
may be the same familiar circle or sphere as in the first vision or it may be a
new one, and it becomes your guide. All your experience is now seamless.
Simple gestures of nature, the colors of autumn leaves, dewdrops on a blade
of grass, an apple by candlelight, are no more or less amazing than the
visions or the bursts of light. There is a complete acceptance of all levels of
experience as a unity forever beyond sundering, and with this unity comes a
softness and a depth like the endless bottom of the sea, a massive oceanic
tenderness, relentless, fluid, and immense. The qualities of openness,
transcendence, oneness, and spontaneous presence are all one now; they are
the same, the perfection of the single sphere.

THE RETURN
The field of the vision grows smaller, and you may see more oval openings
in the field, black holes, like oil on water, but with a very different quality:
the depth of the essence is showing through, hovering at the edge of
perception. You literally recapitulate the path; layers of veils of all the visions
return, and the field of the first vision becomes more apparent again.
Suddenly, there is a feeling, a wave deep within your whole being, a wave of
all space and then, hitting the bottom of all experience, resolving and
becoming essence, nothing not nothing, no perceiver and nothing to perceive,
yet you return with a memory beyond memory.
As you reach this feeling of the wave you arrive at the very edge of
essence, yet still a net of identity holds the you in place until it too pops, and
then all phenomena and your body dissolve away to pure essence, beyond
oneness. You return to the same body yet different, the same character yet
changed, the same world yet you return with the essence known; there are no
boundaries to this knowing, no breaks in the seamlessness of all life. You are
no more yet you perceive and function as an essence embraced, a humble
seed manifesting in apparent form only to benefit.
When you return you take on the semblance of a life again; you may appear
to have ordinary hopes and fears. You may seem charismatic and bold, or
quiet and plain. You are a rainmaker who brings the long-sought rain simply
by being who you are, nothing not nothing, inseparable with everything. You
are a field of natural emanation to comfort, counsel, protect, or teach. You
appear with an intent that is visible or invisible depending upon the perceiver.
This spontaneous, effortless, selfless way is how emanations arise, naturally,
fluidly, out of the pure shell of your return, your sphere of essence.
 SETTING SEED
This book of drawings offers glimpses into the brilliance and beauty of the
intent of essence within the Tögal visions, and yet ever since we completed
the path of Tögal, we have found this same brilliance of intent in the natural
world wherever we go. The visions of Tögal and the vision that is this life are
not separate; they arise from the same source and for the same reason. This
book is a prayer from the heart of all that manifests that all beings once again
live in simplicity and harmony with this radiant vision we call life.
We live in a time of transformation. Structures in all areas of life are
declining. A culture built on ever-increasing expansion is reaching its limits
and collapsing under its own weight and ignorance. This is a powerful time if
we recognize the turning point we have reached rather than try to hold onto
the failing structures all around us, structures that have been built on
separation from the heart rhythms of the Earth. We cannot escape from the
fabric of being that engenders us. We cannot bargain or pretend ourselves out
of this decline. Unfortunately, there is almost no sign that humanity is waking
up to this reality.
 Any cycle of decline is also a time of setting seed. In this expansionist
culture the natural energies of decline are too often misunderstood, denied, or
ignored. Our collective freefall into dissolution may well be cataclysmic,
based on our reluctance to see our situation clearly and accept the opportunity
that the inward turning offers, but everyone has choice and the ability to
recognize the energy within these times and find a way to set the seed of
oneness with all life within the intent of essence. Few people will be able to
do Tögal in this life, but inner radiance manifesting as the vision that is this
life is all around us ready to teach us if we have an open heart. The setting of
the seed of oneness begins by embracing a life with the Earth, a way of living
that moves within the natural rhythms, the heartbeat of this vision. The seed
is an open heart blended with this vision, living with and learning with all
that naturally manifests.
We each have an opportunity and a sacred responsibility now at the time of
setting seed to make choices that will engender a future of harmony with the
intent of the essence arising naturally all around us. We pray that out of the
dissolution of this age will come another age in which the natural world will
again be seen through the heart, as the heart. There will be no separation, no
distinction of other, but a knowing, loving embrace of a sacred vision, like
the curving petals of a flower unfolding and radiating outward from the seed,
a natural blending of union, fluid like water, expansive like the air, brilliant
like the sun.
 THE DRAWINGS
All drawings by Robert Olds or Rachel Olds.
All drawings with the exception of the small butterfly on page 2 were done
on 9” x 12” cream-colored 80 lb. paper in field sketchbooks, using varying
combinations of lead pencil, colored pencil, and aquarelle, with some
gouache in the early stages of the visions.
Artists Robert and Rachel Olds spent nine years in retreat together
integrating Earth living and the practices of the heart essence of Dzogchen.
They came to their retreat after years of spiritual inquiry through their
artwork and years of letting go and simplifying their lives to connect more
fully with the natural world. They share the unique perspective that their
completion of the path of Tögal brings to encourage recognition that this
Earth, this vision we call life, is a sacred offering.
They offer teachings of direct experience within the natural world for
opening to the luminous awareness in your heart and embracing the radiant
expression we call life. Their other books include Luminous Heart of the
Earth and Water Drawn Before Sunrise.
www.acircleisdrawn.org