THE SEVEN CAPACITIES

A Prose Exposition

The first capacity is the simple, decisive ability to step directly into clear light. When the coarse winds settle, even for a moment, the ground-mind appears on its own: bright, open, and effortless. There is no observer in it and no object before it. It is the original clarity that has always been there, waiting just beneath the turbulence of ordinary mind. This clear-light entry is not yet the deepest form, but it is the doorway through which everything else becomes possible.

When this ground is known, the second capacity naturally follows: the mind can reflect form as easily as a mirror reflects light. Deity, consort, bindu, protective presence, or subtle body—these arise without construction, without imagination. They appear as reflections of the clear mind itself, not as something fabricated. This is the first hint that appearance has always been luminous display rather than solid form.

As the system loosens and awakens, a third capacity reveals itself: the thigles and microchannels begin to activate. Luminous points appear, pulse, vibrate, circulate. The body becomes lighter and more transparent. Winds gather toward the central channel. Appearance becomes subtle; energy becomes intelligent. This is the inner architecture discovering itself—an alive, responsive field where clarity and energy move as one.

From this subtle luminosity, the fourth capacity opens: meaning clear light. This is the mind where emptiness and knowingness are no longer felt as two. It is not blank; it shines. It is not something seen; it is the seeing itself. This clarity is vivid and formless, hollow but luminous, a presence that has no center and no boundary. It is the nature of mind appearing as subtle light, the inseparability of space and awareness revealed without effort.

When this nondual luminosity is stable, a fifth capacity naturally unfolds: appearance re-manifests from clear light on its own. The field reconstitutes itself without construction. Forms appear again—subtle bodies, bindus, radiances, deity-forms—not because they are visualized, but because clear light naturally expresses itself as appearance. Form arises as the continuity of emptiness; emptiness reveals itself as form. This is the beginning of spontaneous manifestation.

As form arises from clear light and dissolves back into it without interruption, the sixth capacity matures: union. Appearance and emptiness, luminosity and space, knowingness and form—these no longer alternate; they are recognized as one unbroken continuum. You can rest in clear light, arise as form, dissolve back, and the cycle feels seamless. No effort, no shift, no conceptual boundary. Wisdom and display are inseparable.

And when this inseparability becomes embodied rather than glimpsed, the seventh capacity begins its long arc: the rainbow-body trajectory. Speech lightens until it echoes and vanishes. Thoughts leave no trace. Reactivity loses its footing. The body grows light, hollow, and pliant. Dreams either become lucid, become positive, or cease entirely. The elements begin to dissolve back into their luminous ground. Form becomes less material and more radiant. The dissolution into light is gradual but unstoppable; the process is already underway.

Through these seven capacities, the path becomes a single gesture: clear light opens, form reflects, subtle architecture awakens, nondual luminosity stabilizes, manifestation arises again, union becomes continuous, and the body and world dissolve into the radiance from which they came. This is the whole arc of clear light and form playing through one continuum, from the first glimpse of ground-mind to the exhaustion of all phenomena into light.