The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology

by Jack Kornfield

As meditation deepens, unconscious patterns held in the body and mind can arise. We can become aware of past history, of beliefs and images that were previously unconscious. Then we can find ourselves confronted with powerful feelings of greed, rage, fear, or grief far beyond anything we have ever known or acknowledged. Sometimes they are connected with our personal history, and sometimes they arise as the more universal dimension of storehouse consciousness. When storehouse consciousness opens, we can spontaneously experience what Buddhist psychology calls the many planes of existence. These range from heavenly realms to animal realms to painful realms of woe. In the consciousness of the heavenly realms we may experience spontaneous uprising of sacred and religious imagery from any tradition, or encounter a dozen forms of celestial pleasures.