THE DISSOLUTIONS

Every night when you fall asleep, you die. The same dissolution process that occurs at physical death occurs — in compressed form — every time consciousness withdraws from the senses and you drop into dreamless sleep. The same visions arise. The same clear light blazes. And every morning, you are reborn — the same way consciousness re-enters a body in the bardo. The tantric yogis of Tibet figured this out over a thousand years ago and built an entire practice around it. — .

The dissolutions are not theory. They are visions you can see — going into sleep, coming out of sleep, going into deep tummo practice, coming out. If you're seeing them, you're on the launch pad. If you're not — you haven't ignited the engine yet.

Longchenpa — the 14th-century Dzogchen master whose writings remain the most comprehensive mapping of consciousness in human history — described the dissolution process with a precision that would make a neuroscientist weep with envy. He wrote not from theory but from direct observation of his own dying process during meditation, night after night, year after year, in Himalayan caves where the only laboratory equipment was his own awareness.