Livre de Suzanne segal qui parle de Spiritualité et d’Illumination et de Dissociation
Highlights
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The separate self that yearns to realize the truth must first be seen for what it is—a compelling construct with no abiding existence—before we can awaken to the recognition that we are nothing other than this mystery.
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What Suzanne helped me to realize was that fear doesn’t mean anything except that fear is present. It does not obscure our true nature unless we believe the story it tells us or take it to mean something it does not. In fact, the infinite awareness that is our true identity contains everything within it, including all mental and emotional states. Fear, anger, jealousy, sadness, and other seemingly “negative” emotions are there too, like seaweed floating in the limitless ocean of ourselves.
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There just doesn’t happen to be a separate self to whom they refer. After all, if the infinite— which we all are intrinsically—is indeed infinite, how could it be otherwise?
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the realization that awakening may not correspond to traditional pictures is one of the most significant messages this life has to convey.
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culture has led many to believe that the roots of all human experience lie in early childhood and that psychological theories can account for any point on the continuum. The events of our past tell us about the personal, not the impersonal: about the individual self, not the universal Self.
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I used to meditate on my name. As a child of seven or eight I would sit cross-legged, eyes closed, on the long white couch in my parent’s living room and say my name over and over to myself. The name would reverberate in my mind with each repetition, starting off solid and strong. My name, who I was. Then fainter, repeating, repeating, repeating, until a threshold was crossed and the identity as that name broke, like a ship released suddenly from its mooring to float untethered on the ocean waves. Vastness appeared. The name became a word only, a collection of sounds pulsing in a vast emptiness. There was no person to whom that name referred, no identity as that name. No one.
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the dissolution of I-ness that occurred in this daily practice when I was just a young child, was only a preparation, a foreshadowing, for the profound and permanent state that has become my abiding reality.
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Do you think I know what I’m doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it’s writing, or the ball can guess where it’s going next. —Rumi
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Enlightenment, he said, came about in three distinct stages. The first was Cosmic Consciousness, the stage characterized by the witness, an awareness that watched while remaining separate from all phenomena and that was not overshadowed by the cycles of waking, dreaming, or sleeping. The witness, in other words, remained “awake” even as the body and mind slept, dreamed, or functioned in the world.
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The next stage was God Consciousness, in which one perceived the manifest world as resplendent with sacredness, even though a separation continued to exist between “I” and “other.” In this stage, the witness. which had previously remained detached and flat, disappeared in “God’s consciousness,” which was a sublime realm of perception permeated with divine love.
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The final stage was Unity Consciousness, in which separation of any kind was obliterated as consciousness expanded to encompass all of creation. The Unity state did not admit any duality, was bathed in the purity of Oneness, and was final and complete. Maharishi always told us that Unity could not be reached without a guru because we were incapable of identifying it when it arrived. Only the guru could recognize it and. in that recognition, transmit a finality to the disciple by saying, “Yes. that’s it!”
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With these explanations of enlightenment, which seemed so clear and complete at the time. I entrusted myself to the ocean of transcendental awareness, letting my concerns float
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They were particularly relieved to know that we were now categorically opposed to using alcohol or drugs of any kind, which Maharishi had called “poisons to the nervous system.”
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it was obvious to me that many of the long-time teachers, especially those in positions of power and authority in the organization, were not living the message they taught. They did not radiate the qualities I had been taught to expect in experienced meditators—kindness, patience, warmth, compassion. In fact, I found many of them to be just the opposite—curt, angry, controlling, and vindictive. I managed to sustain my idealism, however, by avoiding contact with these higher authorities.
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Maharishi insisted that men and women be housed separately in order to promote “one-pointedness” in our efforts to attain enlightenment. Although TM was marketed as a technique to improve everything from blood pressure to sex, those of us who attended the advanced courses knew that we were after only one thing— enlightenment.
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it was not unusual for any of us to entertain the notion— which we idealized—of leading the life of the renunci-ate seeker who left the world of maya and lived only to achieve enlightenment.
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Our amazement quickly turned to hilarity when we witnessed the old-timers take off. “Flying” wasn’t really the right word for what they were doing; it bore a closer resemblance to hopping. But there they were, sitting in lotus position with their eyes closed, letting out sounds ranging from war whoops to giggles, hopping around on the foam mats looking like frogs plopping from one lily pad to another. What a sight!
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I found it more and more difficult to ignore the obvious lack of compassion shown by those of the inner circle, and this in turn raised long-suppressed doubts about the entire message of the organization.
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“Maharishi,” I began, “I must ask you about an experience that I’ve been bothered with for over a year. Whenever I have clear experiences of transcending, I’m attacked by an overwhelming fear that makes me feel like I’m going to die right there if I don’t stop meditating.” Maharishi broke into peals of laughter, a response I had not anticipated. “Don’t worry about the fear,” he said, still laughing. “It’s just the body holding on to the world. You must let go of the world to transcend, but the body becomes afraid because it thinks the world is all there is. You must not listen to the fear of the body—just let go.”
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although just letting go seemed too terrifying to be an appealing alternative. Maharishi’s suggestion made sense theoretically, but it would be many years—after experiences of fear infinitely more excruciating than any I had previously encountered—before letting go would finally just happen out of sheer exhaustion.
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I had realized early that I could trust completely that the next thing to do would make itself known in an obvious manner
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For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness. —Rumi
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My body seemed to be dissolving, losing its solidity and disintegrating into the air around me. As I looked out through my eyes, I actually perceived my body’s form transmuting as it became infused with a spacious, foggy’ luminosity that erased its previously distinct boundaries. The air was made of the same luminosity, which stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. I felt more and more non-localized, as if “I” was nowhere in particular in that glowing tog, but I everywhere at once.
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I tried to maintain a focus on his words in order to bring myself back to solid reality. But the sensation of being far away remained and was to continue for several days, as did the distinct perception that the air was infused with a glowing fog. This perceptual shift was so distressing that I was unable to do anything but deliberately and obsessively try to distract myself from what was happening.
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Around this time, another perceptual shift began manifesting itself in discrete incidents that lasted anywhere from several minutes to several hours. During these episodes, the world appeared to be onedimensional, as if it were a movie set cut from cardboard with nothing behind it. The Parisian scenery appeared flat, empty, and cartoonlike, lacking dimension or solidity.
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Objects that had previously seemed stable appeared to be simultaneously larger and farther away, pulsating gently in a single motion of life, subsisting in their own perceptual strata that was unreachable to my astounded mind. Each time these shifts occurred, terror arose immediately and remained, even increased, throughout their duration.
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I became hypervigilant to all changes in my usual mode of perception in an attempt to isolate what might be causing them to occur. I ran through a long list of possibilities, from specific foods to the amount of sleep or exercise I was getting, but I was unable to identify anything that could consistently be instigating these changes. It was a complete mystery—and the mystery was about to deepen a thousandfold.
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As I took my place in line. I suddenly felt my ears stop up like they do when the pressure changes inside ’ an airplane as it makes its descent. I felt cut off from the scene before me, as if I were enclosed in a bubble, unable to act in any but the most mechanical manner. I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called “me” was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. “I” was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body’s eyes.
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In this witnessing state, physical existence was experienced to be on the verge of dissolution, and it (the physical) responded by summoning an annihilation fear of monumental proportions.
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The terror was escalating rapidly, and the body was panic stricken, sweat pouring in rivulets down its sides, hands cold and trembling, heart pumping furiously. The mind clicked into survival mode and started looking for distractions. Maybe if I took a bath or a nap, or ate some food, or read a book, or called someone on the phone.
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The whole tiling was nightmarish beyond belief. The mind (I could no longer even call it “my” mind) was trying to come up with some explanation for this clearly inexplicable occurrence. The body moved beyond terror into a frenzied horror, giving rise to such utter physical exhaustion that sleep became the only possible option.
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Sleep came, but the witness continued, witnessing sleep from its position behind the body. This was the oddest experience. The mind was definitely asleep, but something was simultaneously awake.
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The moment the eyes opened the next morning, the mind exploded in worry. Is this insanity? Psychosis? Schizophrenia? Is this what people call a nervous breakdown? Depression? What had happened? And would it ever stop? Claude had started to notice my agitation and was apparently waiting for an explanation.
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The witness appeared to be where “I” was located, which left the body, mind, and emotions empty of a person. It was amazing that all those functions continued to operate at all.
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There was the sense of being on an edge of sorts, a boundary between existing and not existing, and the mind believed that if it did not maintain the thought of existence, existence itself would cease.
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Charged with this apparently life-or-death directive, the mind struggled to hold that thought, only to exhaust itself after several fitful hours. The mind was in agony as it tried valiantly to make sense of something it could never comprehend, and the body responded to the anguish of the mind by locking itself into survival mode, adrenaline pumping, senses fine-tuned, finding and responding to the threat of annihilation in every moment.
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The thought did arise that perhaps this experience of witnessing was the state of Cosmic Consciousness Maharishi had described long before as the first stage of awakened awareness. But the mind instantly discarded this possibility because it seemed impossible that the hell realm I was inhabiting could have anything to do with Cosmic Consciousness.
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The witnessing persisted for months, and each moment was excruciating. Living on the verge of dissolution for weeks on end is stressful beyond belief, and the only respite was the oblivion of sleep into which I plunged for as long and as often as possible. In sleep, the mind finally stopped pumping out its unceasing litany of terror, and the witness was left to witness an unconscious mind.
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After months of this mystifying witness awareness, something changed yet again: The witness disappeared. This new state was far more baffling, and consequently more terrifying, than the experience of the preceding months. One might imagine that a great weight would have lifted when the witness disappeared. but the opposite was true. The disappearance of the witness meant the disappearance of the last vestiges of the experience of personal identity. The witness had at least held a location for a “me,” albeit a distant one. In the dissolution of the witness, there was literally no more experience of a “me” at all. The experience of personal identity switched off and was never to appear again.
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The personal self was gone, yet here was a body and a mind that still existed empty of anyone who occupied them. The experience of living without a personal identity, without an experience of being somebody, an “I” or a “me.” is exceedingly difficult to describe, but it is absolutely unmistakable. It can’t be confused with having a bad day or coming down with the flu or feeling upset or angry or spaced out. When the personal sell disappears, there is no one inside who can be located as being you. The body is only an outline, empty of everything of which it had previously felt so full.
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The mind, body, and emotions no longer referred to anyone—there was no one who thought, no one who felt, no one who perceived. Yet the mind, body, and emotions continued to function unimpaired; apparently they did not need an “I” to keep doing what they always did. Thinking, feeling, perceiving, speaking, all continued as before, functioning with a smoothness that gave no indication of the emptiness behind them. No one suspected that such a radical change had occurred. All conversations were carried on as before: language was employed in the same manner. Questions could be asked and answered, cars driven, meals cooked, books read, phones answered, and letters written. Everything appeared completely normal from the outside, as if the same old Suzanne was going about her life as she always had.
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In an attempt to understand what had occurred, the mind began working overtime, generating endless questions, all unanswerable. Who thought? Who felt? Who was afraid? Who were people talking to when they spoke to me? Who were they looking at? Why was there a reflection in the mirror. since there was no one there? Why did these eyes open in the morning? Why did this body continue? Who was living? Life became one long, unbroken koan, forever unsolvable. forever mysterious, completely out of reach of the mind’s capacity to comprehend.
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This is generally referred to as introspection. Without a personal self, the inside or internal simply did not exist. The inward-turning motion of the mind became the most bizarre of experiences when time and again it found total emptiness where it had previously found an object to perceive, a self-concept.
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simultaneous with the cessation of personal identity, the experience of sleep had changed radically, leaving me with no escape from the constant awareness of emptiness of self. Sleeping and dreaming now contained the awareness of no one who slept or dreamed, just as the waking state of consciousness contained the awareness that there was no one who was awake.
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“You know how you never have any doubts about who you are, like if someone says to you ‘Who are you?’ and you just know, ‘I’m me, of course.’ Well, I can’t find a ‘me’ anymore. There’s no one.”
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“But I don’t experience a ‘me’ anymore,” I practically shouted. “It’s the most horrible thing that has ever happened. When I look in the mirror. I’m shocked to see a reflection. When I walk down the street and people look at me, I wonder who they’re looking at. When I talk. I hear a voice speaking, but there’s no one behind the voice. Oh, this is impossible to explain to you. It just can’t be put into words, but it’s awful! Maybe I’ve gone completely insane. Is that possible?”
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a deep despair settled over the mind as it realized that I would never again experience having a personal self—even though the mind could never grasp how that was possible.
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it was impossible to believe him. because every idea I had ever acquired about spiritual development was based solely on notions of bliss and ecstasy. It seemed inconceivable that a genuine spiritual experience could be as horrifying as the state I found myself in.
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“If this is what people spend years in caves trying to achieve,” I told him. “they’re out of their minds.”
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In November 1982 my daughter was born. The labor and birth took a total of three days, and the exhaustion was beyond anything I had ever known. Yet even such an extremity of physical and emotional fatigue did not overshadow the experience of no-self, which was as omnipresent as ever. During childbirth it became utterly clear that all of life is accomplished by an unseen doer who can never be located. The previous sense of an “I” who was doing was totally illusory. The personal “I” had never been the doer—it had only masqueraded as the doer. Everything continued as before, only the person who used to think she was doing was absent.
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The horror the mind encountered when it was forced into direct, unceasing contact with the vastness of no reference point had given rise to the concern that pregnancy would not continue or that birth would never happen because there was now no one there to do it. It seemed so unimaginable that everything would continue as before now that it was all seen to be empty of what it had previously been full of. But continue it did, just as before—and in most cases even better. The birth of my daughter occurred with all of the sensations, emotions, and thoughts that are present during any birth. There was wondering about the health of the infant; concern about the intensity of sensation; anxiety about knowing how to care for a newborn; and awe at the mystery of it all.
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During this stage of labor, the mind kept saying that the birth would never take place unless someone was found who could give birth. Yet all the birthing functions were functioning—albeit slowly.
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my daughter was birthed in a darkened room, so she wouldn’t be shocked by bright lights, into a large basin filled with warm water to ease the transition into the world outside the womb.
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How can one describe a baby being bom to no one? She had no mother, yet the birth occurred just fine, and in the years to come the mothering function would take care of her and raise her in a completely competent manner. The mind never stopped questioning how mothering could occur without anyone there to do it, but the mind was forced to witness mothering mother without hesitation.
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The way the body experienced exhaustion did not change in the face of no reference point. Nor is it different now—the body’s functioning still requires what it has always required in terms of rest, nourishment, and care.
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through my awareness, the perfectly normal functioning of what everyone took to be the “normal” Suzanne continued unperturbed. No one noticed anything awry in my comportment as they merrily filed by to admire my daughter and extend their heartfelt congratulations. How extraordinary!
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There is no one here, and it’s apparently unnecessary to be someone for mothering to take place. Mothering mothers, just as talking talks and thinking thinks. The mind was having a hard time getting used to this.
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I was no longer able to have “personal” relationships, and never would be again
The mind was clearly having a hard time with the experience of no-self. It appeared to be on a campaign to prove that something was seriously wrong, and it employed any available evidence to substantiate this belief. The most compelling piece of evidence was the presence of terror. Every description I’d ever heard of spiritual development had included some mention of bliss, ecstasy, or joy. But there was no bliss in this experience of no-self. When the mind turned inward again and again to locate an experiencer, a self-concept, it repeatedly generated terror as it found only emptiness.
Relationships to other people had been radically altered. Without a personal “I,” there was nowhere for the reverberations of experience to be received. The feeling of being connected to others was gone because there was no longer a person to whom they could be connected. I must reiterate, however, that all feelings continued to arise appropriately. What had vanished was the reference point of a personal self that felt the feelings personally. Emptiness was consistently co-present with all emotional or mental states, and this co-presence precluded any personal quality from existing. No thoughts, feelings, or actions arose for any personal purpose anymore.
The strangest phenomenon of all was the fact of having no name—literally. The name by which I had been identified now corresponded to no one. Seeing that name written down stimulated no current of recognition; hearing that name spoken produced no sense of the person to whom it referred
The best that could be hoped for, it seemed, was that the mind would eventually become accustomed to this state and stop conveying the message that something was horribly wrong. But this would not occur for more than a decade.
When I received the news of his death, I cried. There was no one who felt sad, yet the emotional response occurred as before and appeared to be about a someone, though it was not. Crying was there—simply that. To others it may have seemed that there was someone who was sad, but there was no one.
The mind did not take well to this continuation of emotional functioning in the face of no-self, and once again it began collecting evidence to show that something was wrong with the experience. At the same time, it tried to make it look like I was a someone who was responding appropriately to the death of her father.
The “attempt to be someone” was putting on a convincing performance, and I told no one that all those emotions never for a moment referred to a “me.”
three years after that fateful encounter with emptiness. I came to depend on her laughter to calm my mind when it was most enthusiastically generating its vast array of fearful ideas. She helped me more than anyone then, and for years afterwards, with her sweet reminders that safety can be found in even the most terrifying of moments if you don’t lose your sense of humor.
Since the mind had already judged the entire shift of consciousness to be negative, there was little room for the positive to be perceived. In those rare moments when the emptiness appeared to move to the background, even slightly, the mind seized the opportunity to note a return to a “normal” state ol awareness. This shifting of the emptiness to a background position was the only thing that qualified as positive to the mind.
The mind’s hypervigilance was exhausting. Because it was constantly engaged in rejecting the experience of emptiness, there was very little attention available for anything else. My life was filled with seeing no-self, fearing no-self, judging no-self, trying to forget no-sell, rejecting no-self, worrying about no-self, and raising questions about no-self. Even in sleep the emptiness of personal identity continued unperturbed. No mental activity ever changed the experience of no-self in any manner, and none of the attempts to figure out, organize, or evaluate it ever brought back a sense of an individual identity.
The mind seemed driven to understand what had occurred, but its search for answers within the mind itself was not yielding results.
A friend who worked at a suicide hotline told me about a psychiatrist who was treating one of the more frequent callers. The patient raved about his uncanny ability to help her find the humor in life—something my daughter had certainly shown me was vital. I called him to make an appointment
“It’s called depersonalization disorder,” he said, without changing his expression. “It’s common for people to have this experience after encountering a deep shock, like when someone they love dies, or they hear some really bad news, or even when something overwhelmingly positive happens, like they win the lottery. It usually comes and goes over a period of a few hours, or a few days at most. Frankly, I’ve never heard of it lasting as long as it has with you. But I’m sure that’s what it is, and I’m certain I can help you with it.”
Remembering Carl’s diagnosis, I spent extra time reading up on the “dissociative disorders,” including depersonalization, derealization, and dissociation, Clearly, certain characteristics of those disorders were or had been present in my experience, although none of them described the most prominent feature—the absolute absence of personal “I-ness” accompanied by unimpaired (and even improved) functioning in the world.
Sam pushed me to express my pain by yelling, sobbing, and hitting pillows. He told me that the pain kept instigating my flight into emptiness because I was unwilling to face it fully, and until I faced it without running away. I wouldn’t be healed.
Emptiness of self was again pathologized, which by no means changed the experience, but simply increased the fear of it
Maybe you should just be honest and admit you don’t know, rather than making me more afraid than I was before.”
the appearance of being someone was pursued by the mind. Because we came together in fear, the mind felt compelled to make the act of relating appear to be personal by constructing from memory what it thought it looked like to be a woman in relationship. Never for a moment in all those nine years, however, did Steve and I have a personal relationship, since there was never a “me” for him to be in relationship with.
after Sam. I sought out yet another therapist. Lauren Spock was a clinical psychologist in her early fifties who had a solid reputation in the transpersonal community as both a therapist and a spiritual teacher. After listening to the description of my experience, she told me I should never go into the emptiness; it was simply too dangerous. What she meant by dangerous I will never know, because once those words were uttered, the fear became so enormous that it was impossible to ask for clarification. She further warned that I should never listen to anyone who recommended I go into the emptiness, because that very recommendation would signify they knew nothing about it. She said that she was worried about me, and that I would soon be unable to function if I kept going as I was.
Despite the fear, something always knew that Lauren was wrong. It was the same something that knew that all the therapists who had sided with the voice of fear had been wrong
I could never understand why someone would want to pay good money to a person who says little to them, refuses to respond to the simplest of questions, sees in their actions hidden, negative motivations (“the fact that you’re two minutes late for therapy means that you’re resistant to treatment”), and pathologizes their experience by interpreting everything they do as a sign of some deeper, underlying problem. Traditional psychotherapy seems to be based on a primordial fear of mystery, and this fear creates the tendency to reduce, interpret, or pathologize all manifestations of consciousness that do not fit the cultural norm.
Although I am well aware that not all therapists work in this manner, this was the model in which my training took place. It was equally disturbing to hear what analytically oriented psychotherapists said about their patients amongst themselves. I rarely heard expressions of compassion, sympathy, or even human understanding. Instead, each patient had a label according to their diagnosis. “You won’t believe what my borderline patient did yesterday.” Or, “The obsessive-compulsive I see at 10 o’clock is driving me crazy.”
As I neared the end of my training, it became clear that I was looking in the wrong place to understand the experience of no-self, since, psychologically speaking, this experience was something of which I needed to be cured. The notion of “cure” involves trying to eliminate, stop, or change something that you, or more importantly your therapist, cannot accept as appropriate
all the therapists I spoke with were imprisoned by their ideas about how life should be interpreted and were unable to stay open to the possibility that reality could be experienced in many different ways. In the end, no one was willing to admit they simply didn’t know.
In Buddhist circles, I learned, one is not met with stares of confusion and horror when describing no-self. In fact, I was getting the impression that not only was my experience considered a positive one, it was seen as the goal of every’ person who embarked on the Buddhist path.
All the same experiences still happened, there just wasn’t a “me” to whom they were happening. And the appropriate responses just happened as well, arising out of and then subsiding into themselves. Everything appeared and disappeared on the broad screen of the infinite—interactions. emotions, talk, actions of all kinds.
Without an individual self to direct action and speech, the concept of service took on an entirely new dimension. Now action and speech were seen to arise not out of any personal purpose, but out of what was needed in the moment for the situation at hand. There was no personal functioning, yet functioning in its entirety continued unimpaired—a copresence of functioning and not-functioning, existing and not-existing.
The Buddhist texts explained this by saying that what remains in the state of no-self are empty functions (empty, that is, of individual personhood) called skandhas, or “aggregates.” What speaks, then, is the speaking function, what thinks is the thinking function, what mothers is the mothering function, what feels is the feeling function, and so forth. These functions do the job of living in the world, and they are empty of individual self.
The five skandhas are generally translated as form; feelings and sensations; perceptions; mental formations: and consciousness. All experiences associated with the sense of self, according to the Buddhist teachings, can be analyzed into these five skandhas. There is no persisting self to be found over and above their functioning. These five “aggregates” do not in any way constitute a self. Rather, their interaction creates the illusion of self.
The worst fear we encounter as human beings is the fear of annihilation. What happens, then, when annihilation occurs and still something remains? The Buddhists say that we have then stepped into truth. The skandhas remain but their truth (which is that they are empty) is revealed. This was my direct experience. But why had no one ever mentioned how bizarre and frightening the “step into truth” can be?
The reality of the infinite must inevitably be terrifying to the flimsy illusion of the finite self. How could it not be? And why hadn’t anyone discussed it? A closer look at the language and assumptions of modern-day spirituality provided some possible answers to these questions. There are widely shared, unquestioned notions in spiritual circles about what constitutes a true spiritual experience— notions that are undisputed primarily because they form a closed system. If you dispute their validity, the system insinuates, you must not be having the true experience, and therefore you have no basis on which to dispute.
Fearlessness is regarded as one of the signs of a valid spiritual awakening. Along with infinite love, bliss, joy, and ecstasy, fearlessness is considered one of the indisputable markers of an enlightened life. People have always looked for things they can navigate by, signs that point the way and tell them when they have arrived at their destination. The interpretations of spiritual experiences have been managed or organized by this need to navigate and have thereby lost their validity.
We have become convinced that the presence of particular thoughts, feelings, or actions is the only way we can really know if someone is enlightened. The checklist of enlightened attributes is both lengthy and complex. Is this really love, we ask, in the presence of a supposedly enlightened being? Or bliss? Do they still have thoughts, we want to know, since we have heard that a mind empty of thoughts is surely a sign of spiritual advancement? And what is this? Is fear present? Well, the presence of fear proves they couldn’t possibly be having a true spiritual experience. In fact, however, the presence of fear means only that fear is present, and nothing more.
Jean, he said, taught in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and other great advaita sages that the individual self is simply a fabrication of the mind, and that the real Self is a nonpersonal. all-inclusive awareness.
“You seem to have experienced a profound spiritual awakening. This appears to be the state of freedom that all the spiritual traditions, particularly the advaita (nondual) tradition, describe. This is wonderful!”
“Ten years ago, quite abruptly, my sense of being an individual self dissolved, stopped, turned off,” I began. “Ever since then I have never felt like there’s an T there anymore. When I drive a car or speak these words or walk down the street, there is never an experience of a person who is doing these things. No person is there anymore.” “You mean there is no experience of a ‘me’?” Jean asked. “That’s right,” I answered, “there’s no ’me.’ There used to be one, but now there isn’t anymore.” “Well, that’s perfect,” Jean replied. “Perfect,” “But Jean, why is there so much anxiety? And why is there no joy?” “You must stop the part of the mind that constantly keeps trying to look back at the experience.” he responded. “Get that part out of the way, then joy will come.”
There was a part of the mind—perhaps what we call the self-reflective or introspective function—that kept turning to look and, finding emptiness, kept sending the message that something was wrong. It was a reflex that had developed during the years of living in the illusion of individuality, a reflex we commonly consider necessary to know ourselves. We “look within” repeatedly to determine what we think and feel, to make a study of ourselves and track our states of mind and heart. Now that there was no longer an “in” to look “into,” the self-reflective reflex was adrift, but it persisted
I corresponded and met with several teachers to solicit their response to this one central question: If what I am experiencing is a true awakening, then where is the joy, and why is fear still arising?
Christopher Titmuss, an English teacher of Buddhist vipassana meditation, told me how significant it was to realize the substantiality of the “I.” Addressing my fear that the experience meant that I was insane, he wrote, “In spiritual language, insanity is the absence of such experiences as yours, since it (the absence) renders absolute authority to the ‘me, me, me’ culture. The madness of the belief of that culture has personal, social, and global consequences.”
In further discussions held when he was in northern California to lead a summer retreat, Christopher described how the calm acceptance of the experience would inevitably bring a quieting of any movement in the thoughts and feelings that gave rise to fear.
“You need to be reassured,” he said. I could feel the quiet integrity’ behind his words. “The reassurance will allow a quieting of the fear. Out of the quieting will arise the bounty of the experience and a deepening of insight.”
He continued, “When someone comes to me and tells me they have realized the emptiness, I usually tell them. ‘Come back in a year and a day, and let’s see where you are then.’ If they can say the same thing to me then and if their lives have been profoundly affected, then I’ll say, ‘OK, that’s it.‘” “Is twelve years enough?” I asked. “I would say you were eminently qualified— overqualified even,” he responded, and we both laughed heartily.
Without question, what I had lacked during the entire twelve-year journey was calm acceptance. For twelve years I had received no reassurance; I had been completely alone. The mind did not know what to make of it all. and it searched constantly for understanding and meaning. It took close to eleven years to finally accept that the mind was simply incapable of grasping the vastness of the experience of no personal self.
This acceptance cleared the way for the mind to comprehend that an ungraspable experience is just that. It’s neither wrong nor crazy—it’s simply ungraspable.
“The experience of emptiness of self is bliss,” he said. “The emptiness knowing itself is bliss, but it’s a bliss that is not the same as relative bliss. It’s obvious to me that you are completely in bliss at this very moment.” He went on to explain that the relative mechanisms of the skandhas cannot perceive the bliss of emptiness, and therefore it made sense that the bliss that was occurring was hard to recognize. Reb’s description loosened a rigidity in the way the mind had been interpreting the experience.
Jack Kornfield, vipassana teacher and cofounder of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, and Ram Dass, well-known author, lecturer, and disciple of Neem Karoli Baba, also sent helpful, encouraging words, both doing his best to provide reassurance and accompaniment. Both of them reminded me that it takes years to grow into and integrate such a profound shift in consciousness. In a phone conversation, Jack said, “This is a wonderful experience. There’s nothing to be afraid of…In the East the word akinchina is used to describe a person who is fully awakened. It’s translated to mean one who has nothing, longs for nothing, stands upon nothing, and becomes nothing.”
“The way it happened to you is different from how my process of awakening occurred, and from the way I teach in my work. And the fact that your experience goes through stages and developments is also real and corresponds to how the process of awakening happens to many individuals. I believe your childhood experiences have prepared you for it. and the meditation and retreats you did also contributed. The tear and terror you mention is usual under such conditions, and it requires a great deal of understanding to see through it and go beyond it. It seems you have done well on your own without the guidance of a teacher.”
When I “met” Ramana Maharshi through his dialogues with his disciples. I knew I had met my spiritual father. He described my experience in such a direct and simple fashion that it left absolutely no room for doubt about what I was encountering. Ramana: After transcending the dehatma buddhi (I-am-the-body idea), one becomes a jnani. In the absence of that idea there can be neither doership nor doer. So the jnani performs no actions. That is his experience. Question: I see you doing things. How can you say that you never perform actions? Ramana: The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. Similarly, my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the radio, there is no one inside as a doer. Question:I find this hard to understand. Could you please elaborate on this? Ramana: The potter’s wheel goes on turning round even after the potter has ceased to turn it. In the same way, the electric fan goes on revolving for some minutes after we switch off the current. The predestined karma which created the body will make it go through whatever activities it was meant for. and the jnani goes through all these activities without the notion that he is the doer of them—because he is not. It is hard to understand how this is possible, but the jnani knows and has no doubts… He knows he is not the body, and he knows that he is not doing anything, even though his body may’ be engaged in some activity. These explanations are for the onlookers who think of the jnani as one with a body and cannot help identifying him with his body.
Question: You say the jnani sees no differences, yet it seems to me that he appreciates differences better than an ordinary man. If sugar is sweet and wormwood is bitter to me, he seems to realize it so. In fact, all forms, all sounds, al! tastes, etc. are the same to him as they are to others. If so. how can it be said that these are mere appearances? Do they not form part of his life experience? Ramana: I have said that equality is the true sign of a jnani. The very term equality implies the existence of differences. It is a unity that the jnani perceives in all differences, which I call equality. Equality does not mean ignorance of distinctions. When you have the realization, you can see that these differences are very superficial, that they are not substantial or permanent and what is essential in all these appearances is the one truth, the real. That I call unity
Poonjaji, a well-known and respected disciple of Ramana Maharshi, wrote that “in between the arrival of the bus and your waiting to board, there was the Void where there was no past and no future. This Void revealed itself to itself. This was due to your merits gained in many previous lifetimes. This is a wonderful experience. It had to stay eternally with you… This is perfect freedom… You have become liberation (moksha) of the realized sages.”
you have directly discovered yourself to be no individual ‘I.’ This realization of the inherent emptiness—which is pure consciousness—of all phenomena is true fulfillment. In the face of conditioned existence, much fear can be initially felt. Ultimately, the fear is also revealed to be only that same empty consciousness.”
He conveyed how exciting it is to live in the awareness that there is not and never has been a personal reference point for anything.
You are indeed a rare individual because in most cases when an individual has come as far as you have (which is rare in and of itself), they usually unknowingly take a position in their experience which makes it difficult if not impossible to proceed any farther. Your openness and receptivity is a sign of true humility, which alone makes all things possible.”
Richard told me that it seemed I was still in the winter of the experience and that the blossoms of springtime would bring the joy I sought. His description of spiritual development in terms of seasons was a reassuring and highly appropriate one.
I had gotten stuck in the emptiness—what Richard called the “Zen sickness”—and it had become a vicious circle. Afraid of what had happened. I had isolated myself out of fear, which then just created more fear and more isolation.
He also told me how unusual it was to transition into the emptiness so abruptly and completely. With others he had observed, the transition had occurred in a piecemeal fashion, with discrete openings over time that allowed interludes of acclimation. Because such an abrupt shift in consciousness is uncommon and thus lonely, it can lead to an increased level of fear until one can “catch up with the experience” and give it a context. The mind must learn that it can’t grasp the experience of emptiness; in fact, it doesn’t need to grasp it. But the mind doesn’t take kindly to ungraspable experiences and tends to pathologize them simply because it can’t understand them. Out of its own inability to understand, it sends the message that such experiences are wrong or crazy.
I continued to ask Richard why the fear kept arising. He took the traditional Buddhist view that the presence of fear meant that something was incomplete, and he started to suggest practices I might do to get rid of it. I responded by telling him that there was no one who could do any of those practices, since there was not a locatable doer to be the practitioner. This period in our friendship became a turning point. By suggesting that I find some way to get rid of the fear, Richard was clearly operating on the presupposition that there was a personal doer who could accomplish this task. He was also implying that the presence of fear meant that something was wrong and needed to be eliminated.
He was taking the presence of fear to mean there must be a personal reference point who was afraid. However, in the entire time I had been discussing the experience with him, I had insisted that the fear never referred to a someone.
He had also been influenced by psychological theories as well as by the belief in Zen that one must do “character work” in order to evolve. When he began to tell me I needed to work on my character, I knew his advice was predicated on the assumption that there is an individual doer who can work on its character. I had realized that such a doer does not exist, so the idea of character work seemed absurd.
I reminded him that I experienced no “I” who could do inner work. As a matter of fact, there was no “inner” to work on
I am not, but the Universe is Myself. —Shih T’ou
From the clear experience of emptiness of self, my state of consciousness was about to transition abruptly into the next season—the experience that not only is there no personal self, there is also mo other. In other words, I was about to shift permanently into unity awareness, in which the emptiness that dominated my consciousness was seen to be the very substance of all creation. Once the secret of emptiness was revealed in this way, I began to describe it as the “vastness.”
Although I had received a great deal of reassurance from the people I had contacted about my experience, the wintertime of no-self was still not yielding much joy. As it turned out, the joy was to arrive all at once, crashing onto the shores of awareness suddenly and irrevocably, just as the first wave of the dropping away of self had occurred twelve years before.
In the midst of a particularly eventful week, I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw.
In the wake of this transition to the vastness of emptiness, I began to meditate intensively
everything seemed more fluid. The mountains, trees, rocks, birds, sky were all losing their differences. As I gazed about, what I saw first was how they were one; then, as a second wave of perception, I saw the distinctions. But the perception of the substance they were all made of did not occur through the physical body. Rather, the vastness was perceiving itself out of itself at every point in itself. A lovely calm pervaded everything—no ecstasy, no bliss, just calm.
At the same time, something else began emerging which continues to this day—something I can only describe as a “thickening into unity” that was both experiential and perceptual. From that day forth I have had the constant experience of both moving through and being made of the “substance” of everything
This is what is experienced first—the stuff of unity, its texture, its flavor, its substance. This nonlocalized. infinite substance can be perceived not with the eyes or ears or nose, but by the substance itself, out of itself. When the substance of unity encounters itself, it knows itself through its own sense organ. Form is like a drawing in the sand of oneness, where the drawing, the sand, and the finger that draws it are all one.
On my own with the vastness, I had encountered the very insight that did the work of exposing the fear and releasing its hold. I realized that the mind had been clinging tenaciously to the erroneous notion that the presence of fear meant something about the validity of the experience of no-self. Fear had tricked the mind into taking its presence to mean something that it did not. Fear was present, yes, but that was it! The presence of fear in no way invalidated the experience that no personal self existed. It meant only that fear was present.
Nothing needed to change or be eradicated: nothing needed to do anything at all but to be. Everything occurs simultaneously—form and emptiness, pain and enlightenment, fear and awakening. Once seen, it seemed so incredibly simple.
Fear’s grip now broke, and joy arose at once. The experience of emptiness had given up its secret. The emptiness was seen to be nothing but the very substance of everything. I finally saw what had been in front of me the whole time but had been obscured by fear: There is not only no individual self, but also no other. No self, no other. Everything is made of the same substance of vastness.
I knew myself to be made of nothing and everything, just like all of creation. How could I have missed it before? It was right there in front of me the whole time, as close as the emptiness, as empty as the emptiness, and as full.
For twelve years I had known, seen, breathed emptiness, and now it extended throughout the universe in great tidal waves of empty fullness.
That everything was unified in the emptiness now seemed like the most obvious thing in the world, but it had taken so long for me to stumble on it. I guess it had stumbled on itself.
Maharishi s description of the three stages of awakening—Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness. and Unity Consciousness—now appeared to be incredibly relevant
The initial months of my experience. in which witness awareness persisted throughout waking, dreaming, and sleeping, was clearly the state of Cosmic Consciousness. Because of the abrupt and radical alteration of every previous manner of perception, this state of consciousness horrified the mind. The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident. When the substance of all creation is perceived first and distinctions second, there is no doubt what state of consciousness is prevailing. However, I still found myself wondering what Maharishi had meant by God Consciousness. He had always described it as a state in which all of creation is perceived to be infused with the sacred, the divine. The perceiver is perceiving directly out of the awareness of God. Nothing I had ever experienced fit that particular description. Nor had I ever heard Maharishi describe anything resembling the experience, so clearly delineated by the Buddhists, that one is not an individual seif.
It was not until I discovered a story about Shakespeare written by Jorge Luis Borges that I entertained the possibility that God consciousness was really the consciousness of being no one. “In him there was no one,” the story begins, and goes on to explain that, when he was a child, Shakespeare thought that everyone knew they were no one as well. When he talked to his friends about the experience, however, he encountered blank looks, which “showed him his mistake and made him realize that an individual had best not differ from his species.” The story describes a life lived in the wintertime of the emptiness, where the mind, juiced by fear, tried everything my mind had attempted to spark the return of a personal reference point. It searched for it in familiar people, intense emotional states, and sexual involvements, but never for a moment did those things refer to a someone.
When Shakespeare became an actor, the story goes on, he found the perfect profession, where he got to “play at being someone before an audience who played at taking him for that person.” Although he spent his entire life attempting to reconstitute a sense of being someone, he never succeeded, though to everyone around him he certainly appeared to be someone.
The story concludes: “The tale runs that before or after death, when [Shakespeare] stood face to face with God, he said to Him, ‘I, who in vain have been so many men, want to be one man—myself.’ The voice of the Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, ‘I too have no self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dreams are you, who, like me, are many men and no one.”’
According to this account, which admittedly is fictional, Shakespeare was constantly being seduced by fear into regarding the emptiness as wrong or problematic. He took the presence of fear to mean that the emptiness was a “strange ailment” and therefore spent his life trying to make it appear that he was someone. I know this experience well. The ten years that followed the abrupt awakening to no-self were spent trying to look like I was someone. The fear that fuels such a pursuit is relentless.
The final paragraph of the story declares that the consciousness of God is the realization of being no one. From the perspective of the infinite, it is obvious that the individual self absolutely does not exist. The idea that we have a self that controls, arbitrates, or is the doer behind our actions is absurd. The individual self is nothing but an idea of who we are. Ideas are ideas—and nothing more. An idea can never be the doer or creator of anything: it can only be what it is— an idea.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there lies a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn ‘t make any sense. — Rumi
The infinite— which is at once the substance of everything and the ocean within which everything arises and passes away—is aware of itself constantly, whether the mind and body are sleeping, dreaming, or waking.
This life is now lived in a constant, ever-present awareness of the infinite vastness that I am. In this state, there is absolutely no reference point, yet an entire range of emotions, thoughts, actions, and responses are simultaneously present
In every moment, this body-mind circuitry is consciously participating in the sense organ through which the infinite perceives itself. There is never a locatable “me.” In fact, the non-locatability of the vastness is the predominant flavor of the experience, and the infinity of this non-locatability is forever revealing itself to be more and more infinite.
At the bus stop in Paris, the “me” was annihilated, and it has never reappeared in any form. With this annihilation, there occurred the realization that a “me” has never existed who is the doer behind what has appeared to be “my” life. In recent years, it has also become clear that not only is there no “me,” there is also no “other.” The “no other-ness” is now so dominant that nothing else is perceived. Life is being lived out of the infinite substance of which it is made, and this substance—which is what and who we all are—is constantly aware of itself out of itself. What an extraordinary way to live!
The vastness never requires that something must go away for it to be the vastness. After all, where could anything go in this vastness? However, an entire range of “self-referential” emotions, such as embarrassment. self-consciousness, shame, envy, self-pity, self-reflection, and introspection, have simply ceased to arise. Since the individual self to which they referred no longer exists, they have nothing around which to form.
The same is true for the self-referencing aspect of all thoughts, body sensations, emotions, and actions. Although these experiences continue to occur, they no longer refer to a someone, a me. Nor do they arise anymore to serve a personal purpose or to achieve a goal
Thinking never precedes action or speech. Everything has an immediacy that is empty of personally directed intention
The presence of any thoughts, feelings, or actions is never interpreted to mean anything other than that they are present.
The vastness perceives purely that thoughts are thoughts, feelings are feelings, actions are actions. There is no longer any wondering about whether a particular thought is right or wrong. In fact, no judgment about good or bad or right or wrong ever arises; everything is simply what it is.
In this state, nothing is ever experienced as a problem. To see anything as a problem, one would have to assume that something needs to change or go away for the problem to be solved. But I never relate to circumstances, experiences, or people as if they need to be anything other than what they are— because what they are is the infinite vastness. Nothing has to change, go away, or transform itself into something else for the vastness to be the vastness. The vastness is always who and what everything is.
Take, for example, the relationship to strong emotions like anger. The relationship of the vastness to anger is similar to the relationship of the ocean to the seaweed floating around in it. The ocean would never complain about the presence of seaweed and insist that it be removed for the ocean to be the ocean. In a similar manner, the vastness would never complain about the presence of anger or anything else that arises in it—and is simultaneously made of it—or insist that this arising cease. The vastness is never altered, no matter how numerous or intense the arisings. Nothing that occurs is ever regarded as a problem.
It is only quite recently that the vastness has begun to encounter itself directly in every person it meets. In the first decade of the experience, which I call the wintertime of the emptiness, there was tremendous fear that being no one was wrong. How can relationships exist, said the fear, if there is no one here relating? But exist they did, though they never referred to a someone, a me. The mind was totally confounded by the mystery of relationships occurring for a non-personal purpose and in the absence of a personal self. Over the years, however, the mind was forced to acknowledge that, despite its fears, ordinary functioning never diminished
Once it became clear that the presence of fear and anxiety meant only one thing—that they and everything else were present simultaneously in the vastness—then the relational season changed.
In the wintertime of relationships, there was a constant attempt to look like I was someone in relation to a person who took me to be that someone, even though I always knew I was no one. The memory of what it was like to be someone lingered, and the mind’s fear about being no one inspired so much anxiety that relationships evoked a fear-constructed outline of somebodyness
To see with the eyes of the infinite—which is the substance of everything and perceives itself from within every particle of itself using its own sense organ
Once the mind admitted to the parameters of its own sphere and stopped pathologizing what lay outside it, the non-personal. indescribably joyful flavor of the vastness experiencing itself moved radically to the foreground forever.
the relational function continued as before, and it always looked like relationships were proceeding unimpaired.
relationships ceased to exist, since there was no longer any experience of an other.
the human circuitry of this life started to participate consciously in the sense organ with which the vastness is constantly perceiving itself. The vastness is the substance of all things, existing everywhere simultaneous with the appearance of form. Form exists simultaneously as that vastness and Ln that vastness, like a drawing in the sand in which the drawing itself is made of the same substance as what is “inside” and “outside” of it. In the same way, everything that appears to be form is not separate from the vastness.
The human circuitry is made of the same substance. When it consciously participates in the sense organ that the vastness is always using to perceive itself, the human circuitry becomes aware—not through its own sense organs, but through the sense organ of the vastness—that the substance of the infinite is its naturally occurring state. Seeing this, the circuitry joins the undulation of the vastness in a conscious way and begins to experience unceasing awe at everything that is.
when it becomes clear that there is no personal reference point, it also becomes apparent that there never was a personal reference point, and that everything is done and has always been done by an unseen doer. This doer doesn’t start doing only when it is seen to be the doer. It has always been the doer; the personal self has never been the doer.
Thus, life as usual continues to unfold: everything gets done, just as it did before the realization of the vastness occurred
it is now clear that they have never referred or belonged to a someone. In the same way, the personal pronouns that appear in this book do not refer to a someone. There is no “me,” no “I,” no “mine.” The descriptions that have been given are simply a flavor of the vastness, the infinite experiencing itself out of itself—there is absolutely no someone to whom these descriptions refer.
While the functions continue to function, it is now seen that they have always been engaged not for a personal purpose, but to do whatever the vastness deems obvious in the service of freedom
The vastness has its own non-personal desire to perceive itself directly through itself using the circuitry of every human being
This conscious participation by the circuitry in the sense organ of the vastness is the state of freedom—the naturally occurring human state. The mystery of the vastness knows within itself the most direct means to employ for that freedom to show itself.
This circuitry is employed in a moment-to moment way in service to this mysterious vastness and always has been.
In relationships as well, all the functions continue as before, except that self-referencing thoughts, emotions, and sensations have ceased to arise. For example, sexuality still functions, but without the lust or longing that are the self-referencing aspects of that function.
Sex serves no personal desire and has no deeper meaning that makes it anything but what it is at the moment. Like all the other functions, the sexual function is engaged when the vastness deems obvious, for a mysterious, non-personal purpose. When lovemaking occurs, there is no one making love to no one. How could this possibly be comprehensible to the mind?
People who tell me they don’t want to give up the personal because they believe they would be giving up love or joy or deep feeling don’t understand that the personal never existed. Nothing is given up. Love that appears to be personal is based on a mind-constructed sense of being separate
Love in this separate state involves a longing to merge with an other in order to be fulfilled. From the perspective of the vastness, the other does not exist. When the vastness sees everything out of itself to be made of itself, this is the ultimate intimacy.
The moment-to-moment flavor of the vastness undulating within itself as it perceives itself through every particle of itself everywhere brings a love that is limitless, far surpassing anything the mind could construct as the ideal love it seeks.
Joy and pleasure are also awesome in their nonpersonal appearances. To live in the vastness of the naturally occurring state is to bathe in the ocean ot non-personal pleasure and joy. This joy and pleasure, which belong to no one, are unlike any joy or pleasure that appear to refer or belong to a someone. The emptiness is so full, so total, so infinitely blissful to itself.
These eyes see the incredible benevolence of the universe, which is completely trustworthy in all respects. There is nothing to fear. Everything in each moment is so well taken care of—and always has been. As the vastness peers out through these eyes onto the postmodern world, it feels moved to speak somehow to the myriad forms of suffering that are occurring.
The infinite does not wait for the mind to grasp it in order for it to exist. In fact, realization of the infinite is outside the sphere of the mind. The infinite realizes itself out of itself.
This raises questions about the value of performing spiritual practices, studying ancient texts, or even living a “spiritual” life. Most practices imply the existence of a “me” who can do the practice and eventually accomplish a particular goal. But if a practice is undertaken by such a “me” in order to attain the non-Iocatable vastness of no personal self, then a conundrum or paradox presents itself: A personal doer is presumed to exist who must do the practices properly in order to achieve the realization that there is no personal doer.
But this reference to a personal doer runs totally counter to how the infinite exists. In this life, it has been clear ever since the experience at the bus stop that there never is, nor has there ever been, a personal doer anywhere. Prescribed techniques and lifestyles that insinuate an “I” who must “do” in order for awakening to occur presuppose a cause-and-effect relationship that simply does not exist. How can a personal “I” who doesn’t exist be the one who must do something in order for awakening to occur?
Further, most spiritual practices presume that awakening Ls someplace else and must be reached or attained. But we are always the vastness—always! It is the naturally occurring human state. Where would the vastness go? Where could the infinite hide? What could we possibly need to do to become the vastness, when we already are it?
Many techniques also suggest that something must be eliminated, stopped, or purified in order for us to become who we really are. But the vastness is everything at all times. Nothing exists outside it, and nothing needs to be excluded from it. After all. we are talking about the infinite here.
In particular, there are spiritual traditions that imply that the mind must be stopped for the vastness to be realized. The assumption is that the relative activity of mind correlates with awakening. Of course, if a practice is undertaken to quiet or stop the mind, the result may be a quiet mind. But the infinite is not perceived through or grasped by the mind. The infinite realizes itself.
Since I followed no prescribed techniques to realize the absence of the personal self, I cannot now encourage the practice of them. Strict practices may encourage the creation of more ideas about what the awakened state looks like as the mind attempts to figure out or approximate it. But how can the mind approximate what it cannot grasp? The vastness is unimaginable
Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself.
In no way. however, am I suggesting that practices should not be done, only that there is no practitioner who is the doer behind them. This is true of every activity: There is no walker, but walking occurs; no driver, but driving occurs: no thinker, but thinking occurs. Just because there is no practitioner (and never has been) does not mean that practice will not take place. If it is obvious for a particular spiritual practice to occur, then it will
If it is obvious to meditate, chant, journey, circumambulate, travel, set up an altar, eat certain foods, perform certain acts, or visit certain teachers, these will be done, as things have always been done, by the mysterious, non-locatable doer that is behind everything
The infinite reveals itself to the mind in mysterious, unimaginable, and ungraspable ways
But the mind, by its very nature, tends to reject what it cannot grasp. Thus, when it does encounter the vastness, it makes compelling attempts to devalue it.
When the mind sees experiences as being empty of the “someone-ness” it thought they were full of. it freaks out and begins to mount some convincing arguments for why the emptiness is totally undesirable.
The contact of the mind with the emptiness of no personal reference point should never be taken to be the direct experience of the vastness, which in any case does not go through the mind. Rather, it is the experience of the mind’s response to the vastness, and nothing more.
As the mind sees things getting done, it concludes that there must be a someone who does them, otherwise doing would not occur. But the vastness has never waited for the mind to recognize that there is no doer for doing to occur. Doing has always occurred out of a placeless origin that is confounding to a mind that thrives on interpretation and insinuation.
The vastness itself does not interpret doing to mean that there must be someone who does. It sees quite naturally that doing arises out of the same placeless origin as everything else.
The vastness carries a non-personal desire to experience itself. This appears to be the purpose of human life—for the vastness to meet itself everywhere it turns.
The notion of personal growth or inner development is contrary in every respect to the way the vastness exists.
The quest to awaken implies a sense of futurity that precludes basking in what actually is right now. I am unable to see the value in any method of evolution that implies getting somewhere or becoming something different. As soon as one embarks on a path to somewhere, the awesomeness of what is, here and now, becomes unavailable. More important, the somewhere people are trying to arrive is actually not locatable, since it is everywhere all the time.
Take, for example, the popular spiritual notion that we need to “get out of the way so the infinite can just flow through us.” It is predicated on a nonexistent someone who can figure out how to surrender.
All ideas about accomplishing spiritual awakening are based on the assumption that there is a someone, a you, who can perform the practices and accomplish the goal. But this someone doesn’t exist.
both spiritual and psychological practices, every single one of them, are based on taking ideas about who we are to be the truth of who we are. The idea that we are the doer behind our actions does not make us the doer, no matter how often we get hoodwinked into taking this idea to be truth.
Then there is the notion that we must stop the mind in order to be free. But who will stop the mind? Like everything else, the mind is just what it is. A mind that generates thoughts is not a problem; it is simply doing what minds do
The mind is made of the same vast emptiness as everything. Whether the mind is active or quiet, this emptiness never changes. Nor does the infinite wait for the mind to do or stop doing something in order for the vastness to reveal itself to itself. If the mind should stop, it simply does so as part of the unfathomable mystery
A problem occurs only when the mind interprets the presence of thoughts to mean something—for example, that I’m bad or unspiritual and I’ll never succeed in my meditation practice unless I stop the arising of thoughts. Thoughts and ideas are never a problem unless they are taken to be something they are not
If they are seen to be just thoughts and ideas, then they are not being identified with. Seeing things to be only and exactly what they are is the state of realization itself, because this is how the vastness always sees everything.
To see things for what they are is to see with the eyes of the vastness itself. This seeing is always occurring, whether or not we are consciously aware of it.
Rather than getting caught by the mind, the vastness sees all the ways the mind attempts to hoodwink us into believing that we are an individual “I” who runs the show of life. It sees how the idea of who we are muscles its way into the front row of the mind
The most common predicament people bring to me is the experience of feeling “cut off from the infinite. They find this particularly painful if they have had clear experiences of the vastness which they then feel have “gone away.”
They want to know how they can stay in contact with the infinite at all times. This very question contains two implicit assumptions that pass themselves off as truth—that there is an “I” who is cut off from the infinite who could “apply itself’ to reconnecting if it had the proper technique, and that the infinite has gone somewhere. These are prime examples of how ideas masquerade as truth.
In fact, there is no individual “I” who can figure out how to find the infinite again. More importantly, where would the infinite go? I mean, we aren’t talking about something that could hide under the rug. If you could see things as only and exactly what they are. you would see that the “you” that is seeing is the vastness itself.
The “character work” prescribed by psychotherapy, as well as by some spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, leads to a similar trap created by not seeing things to be simply what they are.
A relaxation of being naturally arises if one is not seduced into taking ideas to be truth
This relaxation is antithetical to “character work,” with its clear position about how we would be if our characters were worked on. When we knock on the door of “character work,” we are invited into the labyrinth of futurity
traditional psychotherapy is founded on principles that pathologize human experience across the board and measure success according to how well we conform to definite ideas about what our human experience should look like.
We are taught that we must “work through,” “release,” “deal with,” “come to terms with,” or “rid ourselves of various aspects of our experience in order to live a satisfying life. We must “get in touch with our feelings,” “find ourselves,” “know what we Want so we can get it,” “not let anyone take advantage of us,” and “find our true voice.” Seen from the perspective of the vastness, all these ideas are just what they are—ideas. We should not mistake them for truth.
I can no longer call what I do psychotherapy, since it in no way adheres to any standard principles of psychological theory or intervention. My goal for everyone is freedom—total freedom. I don’t want them to change how they feel, work through childhood trauma, or get symptoms to stop. I want them to be free by seeing that things are just what they are.
I begin with everyone by asking them to tell me who they take themselves to be. This generally involves an in-depth exploration of all the ideas they have acquired from other people and have taken to be statements of truth about who they are. From early on, we’re given a clear picture by our culture of the right somebody were supposed to become, and most ol us wholeheartedly undertake the enormous task of becoming that somebody.
Everyone I’ve worked with has become aware that they have constructed their “identities” out of information received by inference. They have inferred who they are from what other people have said to or about them and from the ways other people have treated them. Based on an interpretation of what all this information means about them, they have constructed who they take themselves to be. For example. Dad ignored me, therefore I must be unlovable or uninteresting. Or Mom always called me lazy, therefore it must be true.
These constructs exist in multiple spheres, not just in the mind. Personal reference points can be constructed in the emotional, physical, and energetic spheres as well. These multiple reference points for a sense of who we take ourselves to be can seem confusing at first, but all of them operate in a similar manner: They pass something off for what it’s not. In the mind sphere, thoughts and ideas are passed off as who one really is. In the emotional sphere, it’s feelings; in the physical sphere, sensations; in the energetic sphere, energetic vibrations or patterns.
The modem psychological world substantiates this deception when it encourages people to distinguish between the “true self’ and the “false self,” the true thoughts and the false thoughts, the true feelings and the false ones, the true and false sensations, even the true and false energetic frequencies. Who distinguishes between the true and the false? And true and false for whom? Thoughts, feelings, sensations, and energetic frequencies do not mean anything about some imaginary someone; they simply are what they are.
A further entanglement that occurs in the face of these ideas about who we are is that the negative is usually taken to be the truth. After all. the negative is so compelling and seems so deep. The positive is regarded as superficial and temporary but. ah, the negative! When it arises, we believe we’re really in the presence of truth.
Connecting with others in our Western therapeutic culture is often based on a sharing of problems. When someone refuses to reveal what is most difficult in their lives, they are said to be “withholding” or “cut-off’ or “untrustworthy.”
When their problems are known, however, they are thought to be revealing the truth about themselves.
Just about every person who sits across from me in my office and speaks to me about their lives believes that what is negative about them is the most true
They are convinced that they carry something rotten at their core, that they are bad deep down, and that they will always return to the negative, which is the real bottom line. People have taken their worst fears to be the truth, and no one has pointed out to them that fears can only be what they are—fears.
This overvaluing of the negative is rampant in our culture
The pathologizing of human experience, which has been perpetuated by the overpsychologizing of our culture, is another horror that has been masquerading as truth
We have been psychologized into believing that only certain experiences are appropriate. We have been given words that label our experience and thereby put us into an aversive relationship to it. The vastness is rigorously non-pathologizing because it is unable to perceive anything as wrong.
It is absurd to think that we have to get rid of certain aspects of our experience to be acceptable. As mentioned before, it would be like the ocean saying that it simply can not be the ocean as long as there is seaweed floating around in it
The ocean is the ocean, no matter what it contains. We are the vastness, and we contain everything—thoughts, emotions, sensations, preferences, fears, ideas, even identifications. Nothing has to go anywhere. In any case, where would it go?
Psychological directives that aim at a cure imply that certain thoughts or emotions are a sign we aren’t acceptable
Spiritual directives that aim at a goal called realization or transcendence suggest that certain thoughts or emotions are impediments to spiritual unfolding. After all, they say, how can we be the vastness if we’re experiencing confusion or fear, anger or sadness? But the presence of thoughts and feelings means only that thoughts and feelings are present. We interpret our experience to mean something (generally negative) about who we are. This interpretation creates suffering when it passes itself off for truth. But if it’s seen to be what it is—an interpretation—it presents no problem; it’s simply there too in the vastness.
Of course, we have to be careful not to use “seeing things for what they are” as a technique to get rid of emotions or mind-states that the mind deems undesirable
There is no experience whose presence is an indication that you are not the vastness. Therefore, there is no need to get rid of anything. Suffering is caused not by the presence of certain circumstances or experiences, but by the mind’s interpretation of them.
After I speak to people about seeing things for what they are, they frequently go home and practice this “technique” rigorously, then conclude they have failed because what was seen didn’t go away. But the vastness has no goal of ridding itself of anything. The vastness, which is what we really are. never suffers. Therefore, it never asks that anything be eliminated for suffering to cease.
The purpose of human life has been revealed. The vastness created these human circuitries in order to have an experience of itself out of itself that it couldn’t have without them
Through this humanness, the substance we are all made of has an opportunity to love itself—and the love of the infinite for itself is awesome. The words “love,” “bliss,” and “ecstasy” only begin to describe the hugeness ol the infinites appreciation of itself that occurs through these circuitries.
We are all in this together. We are all made of the same infinite substance, and when a number of circuitries are consciously participating in the infinite simultaneously, there is a substantial increase in the volume of the love the infinite experiences for itself. This is the power of what has been called community.
There is no end to the vastness becoming vaster as it undulates within itself and amplifies the ecstatic love it has for itself out of itself.
There is no end to all of this, just as there was no beginning. There are constant “bus hits,” as I now call them, in which the infinite expands yet again and again
The substance of the vastness is so directly perceivable to itself in every moment that the circuitry at times requires another adjustment phase to get used to more infinite awareness.
When asked who I am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything—just as you are.
Since there is nothing to meditate on, there is no meditation.
Although there is an innumerable variety of profound practices, they do not exist for your mind in its true state. Since there are no two such things as practice and practitioner, if, by those who practice or do not practice, the practitioner of practice is seen to not exist, thereupon the goal of practice is reached and also the end of practice itself. —Padmasambhava
When practices are based on getting a someone to do the practice properly so the right result will be achieved, they sustain and even amplify the belief in a separate, individual self.
The non-locatable doer that’s behind everything shows itself in obvious ways. If it’s obvious to meditate, you’ll be meditating. If it’s obvious to be politically active, you’ll be politically active. There’s not a someone who has to do your life in a particular way for it to be worthwhile or valuable. There is no one to whom any of it refers—thoughts, feelings, actions, events. It just is what it is and always has been. It’s truly awesome.
We experience this awe when we look at nature— at trees or flowers or mountains or oceans. “Aren’t they incredible?” we say. It seems easy to see there is no locatable doer behind nature: there is not a someone to whom it refers
Yet people tend to feel that they are separate from the natural sphere. They recognize that nature is awesome in its mysteriousness, but they take their own lives to be about a someone who is responsible for making things happen
If certain things are occurring, it’s interpreted to mean something about this illusory someone, and if other things are occurring, it means something else. Then they go into therapy to try to change themselves—to make themselves into a better someone so they can have a better life.
Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not—a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are.
Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.
The moment-to-moment experience here is that it’s a choiceless life because there is no one choosing. Actions are never preceded by thoughts or feelings or by any attempt to figure things out. Everything is very immediate. Choicelessness is the experience of the obvious in a moment-to-moment way.
Of course, in most lives there is the sense that there is a “me” making choices and that, based on these choices, particular actions occur. There are ideas about who is choosing and ideas about what constitutes the right choice as opposed to the wrong one. These ideas set up what I call the sphere of the constructed reference point. When the eyes of this reference point are being seen through rather than the eyes of the vastness, it looks to the mind like only a very limited range of actions is available, when in fact the possibilities are limitless.
The mind then appropriates the action and says, “I did it,” and the action appears to relate to a someone behind it. But this never changes the fact that there is never a personal doer behind anything. Because the process is so infinite and ungraspable, the mind creates the notion of choice in an attempt to understand it.
Q: Since this isn’t something that can be grasped by the mind, it’s been said that certain teachers who live in this state can transmit it to others. Of course, you didn’t receive this from a living teacher. But do you think it’s possible for one person to transmit it to another? A: The idea of transmission suggests that it belongs to somebody and can be given to somebody else. But that is not at all how the vastness perceives itself out of itself. It is who everyone already is. How could it be transmitted? All this circuitry can perceive is the vastness that everything is made of. When other circuitries are related to only as the vastness, it may tend to bring the vastness foreground in their experience.
Q: Is the vastness you are referring to perceived as love and light? A: The mind has to know that it can’t grasp what I’m about to describe. The vastness is perceiving itself out of itself at every moment within every particle of itself everywhere simultaneously. This is what I call the sense organ of the infinite. It doesn’t have a flavor to it: it is simply perceiving itself.
At the bus stop this circuitry was thrust into consciously participating in the sense organ of the vastness which is perceiving itself out of itself all the time. The moment the circuitry begins to consciously participate, the vastness has a particular flavor. I can’t describe it in personal terms because everything I see now is only apparently personal. Instead of light or love. I would use the term undulation—the undulation of the vastness. For example, if you are sitting in a hot bath and don’t move, you don’t feel the heat of the water. As soon as you move, the heat is felt. In the same way. the human circuitry gives the vastness the possibility of experiencing its own vastness through what I call the undulation.
The mind can’t grasp this. But who you are is always grasping itself all the time. There’s no one that has to start grasping for it to be grasping itself. It is occurring simultaneously with everything that is taken to be who you are. If you want to call it love. I’ll agree, but I wouldn’t want it to be mistaken for the love that refers to a personal self.
The vastness definitely experiences pleasure in experiencing itself. As a matter of fact, this pleasure seems to be the purpose of human life—to have the human circuitry consciously participate in the sense organ of the vastness that it is made of. After all, it is who we all are. It’s hard to give a visual description because it lies outside the sphere of perception. What I can say is that every form that is ordinarily taken to be full of something—particular importance or meaning to a particular reference point, for example—is seen to be empty. It’s like a line drawn in the sand. The line as well as what is inside and outside of it are all made of the same sand.
Q: Is there anything I can do to accelerate this happening in my case? Or is it just grace? A: There is no one I could instruct to do something to make you the vastness. That’s already and always who you are. The instruction to perform certain practices is predicated on a reference point, but to the vastness this reference point simply doesn’t exist. The question of who can do what to get to where you already are seems absurd.
That which is the non-locatable doer is taking care of everything all the time in such infinitely mysterious ways.
Look at this world. What if trees or clouds or planets or stars waited for the mind to figure them out in order for them to exist? Or imagine if the body waited for the mind to figure out how to grow a baby before it became pregnant. “How do I make this brain? Where do I put this heart? Maybe I should get the blood moving now.” This is all taken care of by that which lies so completely outside of the mind’s ability to perceive it that trust isn’t even an issue.
That’s why I give only two suggestions. The first is to see things to be just what they are, because that is how the vastness is always seeing things. Thoughts are thoughts. Emotions are emotions. The body is just the body. It’s the mind’s interpretation of things that ends up creating suffering—the sense that there is a problem, that fear or anger or sadness means there’s something wrong with me, that certain emotions or experiences have to be eliminated for me to be OK, that something needs to be practiced or achieved in order to become the infinite. The mind is constantly interpreting in this way, while the vastness just looks around and sees that things are just what they are.
The second suggestion, which is actually a nonsuggestion. is to follow the obvious, because that is how the mysterious doer behind everyone’s life is constantly revealing the truth of each moment. Now I’m not saying you need to figure out what the obvious is and then follow it. The mind doesn’t usually perceive the obvious, and it tends to devalue what it can’t perceive. Take the expression “it’s just too obvious,” for example. It’s not complicated or painful enough. The mind is drawn to complexity and struggle. That’s the sphere of the mind.
the mind doesn’t like to be bypassed, so it raises doubts about whether the obvious was the right action or the wrong one. Was it the obvious, or was I hoodwinked? That’s just the mind responding the way it does to what it cannot grasp. The vastness doesn’t require that the mind be different. It just sees it for what it is. It’s not a problem. It’s only when the doubts the mind raises are taken for the truth—or for some problem or issue that has to be resolved before you can really know what’s obvious— that suffering occurs.
To say that the vastness is infinite mind is really no different than saying it is infinite body or infinite emotions. Why say infinite mind? Why not just say it is the infinite, which sees the mind to be what it is?
The vastness doesn’t see the mind as a problem. as a sign that there is something wrong that needs to be changed in some way. The mind is there too, and it’s made of the same substance. In the West it’s important to see the mind for what it is, because the Western mind has been trained to take the driver’s seat, to construct and hold the reference point.
There are so many rigid ideas about how we are supposed to be and what is considered healthy and unhealthy, instead of supporting people in seeing things to be what they are. the profession has compiled a diagnostic manual that pathologizes a broad range of human experience. Everything that arises is interpreted to have some psychological meaning, and certain things are considered undesirable—abnormal, dysfunctional—and in need of being eliminated for “healing” or “cure’’ to occur. But who is going to get rid of them, and why would they? The infinite doesn’t ask anything to be eliminated. The presence of any thought, feeling, or behavior does not for a minute affect the infinity of the infinite.
If the negative ideas or beliefs or feelings are simply seen for what they are, there is no suffering. But when they are taken to be who I am, there is the sense that something must be terribly wrong with me and unless I change and rid myself of this negativity, my life isn’t going to be acceptable. This is what I call the case for the prosecution: the negative reference points are constructed and then are used to generate all this evidence for why they are really the truth.
People say to me, “Of course this is who I am. Look at how I behave and feel and think. Clearly there’s something wrong with me.”
In aikido, you are taught that when your opponent attacks you, you actually use his momentum to set him off balance. If you try to resist him, you create unnecessary conflict. It’s the same with all the thoughts and feelings and other experiences that arise in the ocean of ourselves. The ocean never resists them; it never creates a negative reference point, saying. “Damn, that seaweed is still there. There must be something terribly wrong with me.” When they arise, the ocean just sees them for what they are, and they pass away naturally.
Suzanne began having a series of powerful energetic experiences in which, as she put it, “the vastness became even vaster to itself.” She laughingly called them “bus hits” (referring to her original awakening at the bus stop). Although they were rapturous at first, she seemed increasingly to be disturbed by them and would often have to stop and rest after a particularly powerful occurrence.
Soon the “bus hits” were happening frequently, and by the end of the summer Suzanne realized that she was physically exhausted and would have to withdraw from public life temporarily to recuperate.
Around this same time, she also noticed that the fear, which had disappeared several years before, had returned.
To some in the group it seemed that she had lost touch with the vastness, and that her presence had noticeably diminished. At one point she got out of her chair and joined the others who sat on the floor, symbolically abdicating her role as a guide and source of insight
During this period she recovered memories of childhood abuse, which seemed to explain some of the fear she had experienced during her 10 lonely years of being no one before realizing that she was everything. When I suggested that perhaps the fear originated from a part of herself that was split off or dissociated from conscious awareness, she immediately agreed.
At one point she excitedly called me to describe her recent discovery that she did in fact exist—and insisted that all the spiritual teachers who taught the non-existence of an abiding self were mistaken
During this period Suzanne seemed to drift in and out of experiencing herself as the vastness. At times she talked about God. and once, during a walk on the beach, she described seeing angels.
At a certain point she acknowledged that she had used the vastness as a defense to protect her from her feelings and from the painful process of coming to terms with her childhood.
In the first few months of 1997 Suzanne felt less and less connected with the vastness—and more and more disoriented, apparently because of all the new insights she was having. “This human life thing is really something, isn’t it?” she often mused, almost to herself.
Those of us who were close to Suzanne never doubted the depth or the authenticity of her realization. Yet toward the end of her life we could only watch as that realization slipped between her fingers like so much sand, leaving her frustrated and confused