Another book for the reading queue, Herbert Guenther’s Matrix of Mystery: Scientific and Humanistic Aspects of Dzogs-chen Thought:

Whether or not the so-called “insights” of any tradition are essential, will be determined by the extent to which they are, firstly, comprehensible to whomsoever chances to focus on them and, implementable, that is experientially accessible, so that they may become relevant to one’s own life by allowing for the means by which those who seek a more satisfactory, and less fragmented mode of being, can open up their limited and limiting perspectives regarding what is, in fact, experientially possible. With respect to comprehensibility this means that the language used to explicate such putatively essential insights must be culturally consonant with both the cognitive and aesthetic complexities of the person trying to probe these insights. In addition, the process of making comprehensible such insights necessarily entails a concerted confrontation with the pregiven prejudices that have sedimented — and continue sedimenting — into and as one’s “natural attitude” toward both what “we” are and what the “world” is supposed to be.

One cannot implement or experientially access that which one does not understand (is not made comprehensible). Although implementation necessarily lies outside the scope of this book, the fact that comprehensibility is so closely intertwined with implementation, makes reference to the latter unavoidable. Here, however, only a few general remarks need to be made. It is a mistake to assume that accessing in the light of a new perspective can occur in isolation, for man by his very nature is always situated with-others and hence “experiences” (even himself) in the midst of and in relation to others. Any attempt to artificially fabricate a lifestyle that would cut one off from social situatedness is based on a lack of comprehension of what the tradition under consideration regards as valuable and healthy. This does not mean, however, that one will have to continue being enmeshed in a social situatedness with one’s natural attitudes intact. Indeed, it cannot be emphasized enough, that to comprehend essential insights means, at the very least, to be forever severed from one’s former (natural attitude. It is equally, and perhaps even more damagingly, a mistake to assume that accessing the essential insights of a tradition means fixating one’s activities on another person judged (more properly speaking, prejudged) to be the locus within which such insights inhere, and that accessing these insights will occur merely by being in the presence of such a “special” locus. These two mistaken approaches to the problem of “how to” access the value and meaning of a tradition are, in fact, avoided only to the extent that one has honestly and carefully acknowledged what is and what is not comprehensible in the light of one’s own experience, for it is only in the light of such sincere acknowledgment of one’s own engagement with the task of opening up that one becomes sensitive to, and can thereby accurately identify, those growth-enhancing patterns which are reinforced by other like-minded individuals. It is only when such sensitivity begins to stir that one finds the “seemingly” inner dimension of spiritual growth “outwardly” mirrored in others and recognizes this mirroring as an incentive to further accessing. Indeed, it is the community of such individuals, sensitively attuned to the essential insights of a tradition, who sustain, by having become the existential embodiment of that tradition, that ongoing process which, like a beacon light, guides man in his measure and value of being human.