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Thogal

The Ancient Path of Joy
in the Dzogchen Tradition   

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.
 

What is Thogal ?

Thogal 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 Thogal, a profound connection with the living essence manifest in its purest form, a natural unconfused practice free of the assumptions of language or culture.

​Where did the practice of Thogal originate?

​This visionary involvement is one with all life and the essence. It is not a coincidence that the four aspects of theThogal visions follow the natural seasonal cycles of the Earth. They arise from the same source, and the visions of Thogal become your the 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 first noble truth of Buddhism, that this world is suffering, begins a very different journey than that of recognition of indwelling meditative experience called Rigpa, which is the starting point of Dzogchen. The complete path of the heart essence involves the union of recognition of Original Heart (Rigpa) and the visions of inner radiance; this union is the practice of Thogal. Without Thogal, there is no Dzogchen, yet Thogal is not widely taught or practiced in the West. 

Thogal visions

The Four Visions of Thogal

​The rainbow-colored visions of Thogal 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   Thogal. The stages of the path of Thogal 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.

When can you begin the practice of Thogal?

​You need to be sure that you have prepared the ground and nurtured the soil of your heart before you proceed with this path.
To allow the visions to arise naturally, you need to embrace the Earth in your heart. You need to become Earth, receptive, accepting, humble and devoted, to join with the holy ones. It is crucial that you experience the state of original heart (Rigpa) in relation to the natural world, as an engaged openness from your heart, not as a construct of mind, for the visions to arise in an authentic way. The path of Thogal is not about holding to or generating an image. The visions of radiance are not mind experiences or visualizations; they are direct perception of the radiance of the essence. The process is not an experience base on fine points of doctrine, nor it is grasping at whatever comes up in the practice of  your mind. You need to know the difference between mind and heart and to have taken responsibility for your spiritual path.
If you have a human guide who has completed the path of Thogal from a heart perspective, you can receive their view on whether it is time to proceed with this path.

Guidance on the path of Thogal

Without Thogal, there is no Dzogchen, yet Thogal is not widely taught by those who have actually completed the path. Rather Thogal has been presented by Lineage holders with little or no experience using Thogal texts and Manuals that are poorly written and translated by those who again have not accomplished the Path. This has led to an emphasis of intellectualizing Original Heart (Rigpa) and the practice of Thogal. This is why Rachel and I wrote Primordial Grace and Luminous Heart of Inner Radiance to clarify the teachings and bring them back to their original roots.
We offer individual teaching and guidance to those who wish to traverse the path of Primordial Grace (Dzogchen-Thogal).

A guide to the whole path of Dzogchen - Thogal with the complete instructions for the preliminaries and the actual practice

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A unique book of drawings of the Thogal visions from our direct experience

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Robert also offers individual teachings and guidance to those who wish to traverse the path of Primordial Grace and the practice of Dzogchen-Thogal. You can contact me here if you search for guidance on this path.

The Earth Refuge 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.

The Earth Refuge is a call to those who seek a place of solitude, within a circle of Earth People, to blend back into the embrace of our Earth Mother and follow the primordial teachings that surround us in the natural world.

It holds a seed for a new beginning. In that seed is a group of Earth people who are spiritually responsible for themselves, knitted together as a living consensus moving within the flow of our Earth Mother. A group dedicated to living without separation, no lesser or higher, an active call and response in the moment, a return to a living wholeness.

Recent articles about the path of Thogal and Primordial Grace

The development of the spheres in the visions of Thogal

Spheres in the visions of Thogal

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  Thogal 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  Thogal 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  Thogal 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  Thogal 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  Thogal 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  Thogal 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.

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May All Beings Walk in the Beauty of Origin’s Heart

And Experience their Indwelling Heart of Light

The Essence Seed of Great Compassion and Love And Live in Harmony and Reverence

With Each Other and our Beloved Earth Mother Returning to the Circle of Life

To Be the Prayer for All Being

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