Chapter 7: The Realm of Power

Shinzen Young describes enlightenment as a 90-degree turn from surface experience down through an intermediate subconscious realm to the Source. He contrasts ordinary views of solid self, rigid space, and linear time with the Source’s formless ground where self dissolves, space collapses, and time cycles. Meditation’s concentration, clarity, and equanimity draw the mind toward this ground state.

Young identifies the intermediate realm with the subconscious: Freud’s storehouse of blockages (samskaras) and Jung’s archetypal sambhogakaya. Not everyone meets powers or monsters; progress can be entirely ordinary. When unusual sensations or visions arise, they are to be observed as body sensations, images, and talk with equanimity, allowing purification.

He recounts a year of vivid arthropod hallucinations that he dissected with mindfulness, discovering that impermanence’s Flow animates even hallucinations, revealing how reality itself is constructed. This leads to a crucial stance: be fascinated with how phenomena move, not what they mean.

Young classifies reactions to the realm of power: Freak-Out (retreating to normalcy), Diversion (horizontal fascination with powers and experiences), and Plumb Line (unyielding equanimity through all content). He endorses vertical maturity, citing Saint John of the Cross’s “nada,” while allowing oblique shamanic paths that mix exploration and depth. Stories of the Buddha’s students and his teacher Wuguang illustrate power without insight versus insight without powers—and the ideal of both after liberation.

Finally, he proposes using powers as upaya: treat heat, bliss, lights, out-of-body states, mind-reading, past-life impressions, and visions as platforms to perceive impermanence, expand equanimity, and trace cessations toward the Source. He closes with the trikaya map: nirmanakaya (surface), sambhogakaya (intermediate powers/archetypes), and dharmakaya (formless Source).