The Experience of No Self A Contemplative Journey
Highlights
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This is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss, rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried in fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in “that” which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union, and even beyond love and trust itself.
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they have confused these two movements by failing to adequately distinguish between them: that is, to distinguish between a radical change of consciousness and the cessation of consciousness; between going beyond first, the lower (ego) self, and later, the higher True Self; between union with God, and God beyond union. Since viewed as a whole, the contemplative life is on a single continuum, it is often difficult to draw a line and see clear distinctions until one has personally encountered these landmarks, at which time the difference between these movements becomes obvious and unmistakable. My purpose then, in writing this account, is to help clarify the second movement, to make it more recognizable and to bring to light, if possible, the ultimate, final realization of the Christian notion of loss-of-self.
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It seems that the nature of this passage is a total state of unknowing which, while it lent a certain beauty and air of mystery to its unfoldment, also lent a sense of bewilderment which was responsible, I believe, for certain hardships that might have been avoided if some explanation had been forthcoming. It was only when the journey was over and I could view it in retrospect that I came to a better understanding, and was able, therefore, to offer the explanations given in the final chapters.
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I knew that if I did not record this transition as soon as possible it would soon be forgotten, because one of the first lessons learned on this journey is that the passing of each experience leaves nothing in its wake, hardly a footprint, and certainly not a vivid memory. In a word, one learns to live without a past.
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Here now, begins the journey beyond union, beyond self and God, a journey into the silent and still regions of the Unknown.
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Through past experience I had become familiar with many different types and levels of silence. There is a silence within, a silence that descends from without; a silence that stills existence and a silence that engulfs the entire universe. There is a silence of the self and its faculties of will, thought, memory, and emotions. There is a silence in which there is nothing, a silence in which there is something; and finally, there is the silence of no-self and the silence of God. If there was any path on which I could chart my contemplative experiences, it would be this ever- expanding and deepening path of silence.
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On one occasion, however, this path seemed to come to an end when I entered a silence from which I would never totally emerge
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on previous occasions, I had come upon a pervasive silence of the faculties so total as to give rise to subtle apprehensions of fear. It was a fear of being engulfed forever, of being lost, annihilated, or blacking out and possibly never returning. In such moments, to ward off the fear, I would make some movement of abandoning my fate to Goda gesture of the will, a thought, some type of projection. And every time
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I did this the silence would be broken and I would gradually return to my usual selfand security. Then, one day, this was not to be the case.
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there was a pervasive silence and once again I waited for the onset of fear to break it up. But this time the fear never came. Whether by habit of expectation or the reality of a fear held in abeyance, I felt some moments of suspense or tensionas if waiting for fear to touch me. During these moments of waiting I felt as if I were poised on a precipice or balanced on a thin tightrope, with the known (myself) on one side and the unknown (God) on the other. A movement of fear would have been a movement toward the self and the known.
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Would I pass over this time, or would I fall back into my selfas usual? Since there was no power of my own to move or choose I knew the decision was not mine; within, all was still, silent and motionless. In this stillness I was not aware of the moment when the fear and tension of waiting had left. Still, I continued to wait for a movement not of myself and when no movement came, I simply remained in a great stillness.
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in the past, having to abruptly pull out of a deep silence was difficult, for my energies were then at a low ebb, and the effort of moving was like lifting a dead weight. This time, however, it suddenly occurred to me not to think about getting up, but to just do it. I think I learned a valuable lesson
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I left the chapel as a feather floats in the wind. Once outside, I fully expected to return to my ordinary energies and thinking mind, but this day I had a difficult time because I was continually falling back into the great silence. The drive home was a constant battle against complete unconsciousness, and trying to get dinner was like trying to move a mountain. For three exhausting days it was a battle to stay awake and ward off the silence that every second threatened to overpower me. The only way I could accomplish the minimum of chores was by persistently reminding myself of what I was doing: now I’m peeling the carrots, now I’m cutting them, now I’m getting out a pan, now I’m putting water in the pan and on and on until, finally, I was so exhausted I would have to run for the couch. The moment I lay down I immediately blacked out. Sometimes it seemed I was out for hours, when it was only five minutes; at other times, it seemed like five minutes when it was hours. In this blackout there were no dreams, no awareness of my surroundings, no thoughts, no experiencesabsolutely nothing.
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as the days went by and I was once more able to function as usual I noticed something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something, or some part of me had not returned. Some part of me was still in silence. It was as if some part of my mind had closed down. I blamed it on the memory because it was the last to return, and when it finally did, I noticed how flat and lifeless it waslike colorless slides on an antique film. It was dead. Not only was the distant past empty, but also the past of the previous minutes. Now when something is dead you soon lose the habit of trying to resurrect it; thus when the memory is lifeless you learn to live as one who has no pastyou learn to live in the present moment.
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even when I regained my practical memory, the effortless living in the present never left. But with the return of a practical memory I discounted my earlier notion of what was missing and decided that the silent aspect of my mind was actually a kind of “absorption,” an absorption in the unknown, which for me, of course, was God
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I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks. Instead of the usual unlocalized center of myself, there was nothing there, it was empty; and at the moment of seeing this there was a flood of quiet joy and I knew, finally I knew what was missingit was my “self.”
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I thought of St. Paul’s experience, “Now, not I, but Christ lives in me,” and realized that despite my emptiness no one else had moved in to take my place. So I decided that Christ WAS the joy, the emptiness itself; He was all that was left of this human experience. For days I walked with this joy that, at times, was so great, I marveled at the flood gates and wondered how long they would hold.
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This experience was the height of my contemplative vocation. It was the ending of a question that had plagued me for years: where do “I” leave off and God begin? Over the years the line that separated us had grown so thin and faded that most of the time I couldn’t see it at all, but always my mind had wanted desperately to know: what was His and what was mine? Now my quandary was over. There was no “mine” anymore, there was only His. I could have lived in this joyous state the rest of my life, but such was not in the Great Plan.
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It was just a matter of days, a week perhaps, when my entire spiritual lifethe work, the suffering, the experiences and the goals of a lifetimesuddenly exploded into a million irretrievable pieces and there was nothing, absolutely nothing left.
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When the joy of my own emptiness began to wane I decided to rejuvenate it by spending some solitary time gazing into my empty self. Though the center of self was gone, I was sure the remaining emptiness, the silence and joy, was God Himself. Thus on one occasion, with full hedonistic deliberation, I settled myself down and turned my gaze inward. Almost immediately the empty space began to expand, and expanded so rapidly it seemed to explode; then, in the pit of my stomach I had the feeling of falling a hundred floors in a nonstop elevator, and in this fall every sense of life was drained from me. The moment of landing I knew: When there is no personal self, there is also no personal God
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For a while I sat there mentally and emotionally stunned. I couldn’t think about what had happened, nor was there any response in me at all. Around me there was only stillness, and in this complete stillness I waited and waited for some kind of reaction to set in or something to happen next, but nothing ever did
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no sense of life, no movement and no feeling; finally I realized I no longer had a “within” at all
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The moment of falling had been such a complete wipe-out that never again would I have any sense of possessing a life I could call my ownor any other type of life. My interior or spiritual life was finished. There was no more gazing within; from now on my eyes could only look outward. At the time, I had no way of knowing the tremendous repercussions that would follow this sudden event.
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I had to learn bit by bit on a totally experiential level. My mind could not comprehend what had happened; this event and everything that followed fell outside any frame of reference known to me. From here on, I literally had to grope my way along an unknown path. My first thought was: oh, no, not another Dark Night! I was accustomed to those experiential disappearances of God and was rather disappointed to think there were any of them left.
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I simply had to cope with the reality of the here and now, a reality in which there was no sense of life in me. So I sat there fully awake, healthy, faculties unimpaired, obviously alive; in a word, all systems were functioning as usualbut I felt no life. What do you do now? I decided I might as well get an early start preparing dinner, but as I did so, all the usual movements now seemed so mechanical I felt I had suddenly become a robot, for I could no longer endow my work with any personal energies.
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I lay down on the grass, palms downward, looking up through the branches of the pine tree and felt the moving air flow over me. It was good to be there; everything was okay. Somewhere there was life all around me, even if there was no life in me.
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Just to be there was all that mattered. The next weeks were spent mainly out-of-doors. Life indoors had become almost intolerable because it was now so routine, lifeless, and devoid of personal energies that it was all I could do to accomplish the minimum of chores. But out-of-doors somewhere life was flowingpeaceful, forgetful, unknowableand this was where I had to be. So I roamed the hills, the river-banks and the seashore just looking, watching, and being there. Though I had looked and watched all my life, this time was different because I could, no more find life in the trees, the wild flowers or the waters than I could find it in myself
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It was here that nature finally yielded its secret to me in a simple, still moment in which I saw how it all worked. God or life was not in anything, it was just the reverse: everything was in God. And we were not in God like drops of water that could be separated from the sea, but more like … well, the only thing I could think of was the notion of trying to pinch out a spot on an inflated balloon; if you pinch out a spot and try to cut it off the whole thing will pop because it can’t be done. You cannot separate anything from God, for as soon as you let go of the notion of separateness, everything falls back into the wholeness of God and life.
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to see how this works and to explain it are two different matters. One thing is for sure: as long as we are caught up in words, definitions, and all that the mind wants to cling to, we can never see how it works. And until we can go beyond our notions regarding the true nature of life we will never realize how totally secure we really are, and how all the fighting for individual survival and self-security is a waste of energy.
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I began to see things differently and, above all, I quit wandering around looking for lifeobviously it’s everywhere, we’re in it; it’s all there is. Solely in retrospect I would like to mention a certain lesson learned on this journey. I learned that a single insight is not sufficient to bring about any real change. In time, every insight has a way of filtering down to our usual frame of reference, and once we make it fit, it gets lost in the milieu of the mind
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the mind, which has a tendency to pollute every insight. The secret of allowing an insight to become a permanent way of knowing and seeing is not to touch it, cling to it, dogmatize it, or even think about it. Insights come and go, but to have them stay we have to flow with them, otherwise no change is possibl
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when an insight fell outside my frame of reference I felt more lost than was really necessary. Thus I could have saved myself a lot of trouble looking and searching for my own unanswerable questions.
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under the cypress tree on the day already mentioned, I consumed the host and saw all things were in God, that he was closer and more personal than I ever dared to expect. To suddenly realize you live and walk in God is a unique discovery that forever dispels the sense of loss that ensues when the feeling of a personal life falls away.
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this incident (and many that remain untold) attests to my continual effort to cling to the usual frame of reference, a clinging that revealed nothing until the hold was released.
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It was not I, who had abandoned the self to God, rather it was God who had abandoned the self completely; and once beyond the self, everything goes, even ”that” which I had expected would remain.
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I was standing on their windy hillside looking down over the ocean when a seagull came into view, gliding, dipping, playing with the wind. I watched it as I had never watched anything before in my life. I almost seemed to be mesmerized; it was as if I was watching myself flying, for there was not the usual division between us. Yet something more was there than just a lack of separateness, “something” truly beautiful and unknowable. Finally I turned my eyes to the pine-covered hills behind the monastery and still, there was no division, only something “there” that was flowing with and through every vista and particular object of vision. To see the Oneness of everything is like having special 3D glasses put before your eyes; I thought to myself: for sure, this is what they mean when they say “God IS Everywhere.”
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after a while I thought it was all too good to be true; it was some hoax of the mind and when the bell rang, it would all disappear. Well, the bell finally rang, and it rang the next day and for the rest of the week, but the 3D glasses were still intact. What I had taken as a trick of the mind was to become a permanent way of seeing and knowing which I will do my best to describe as my whole world turned slowly inside-out
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the obliteration of separateness is meaningless in itself. What is important about this way of seeing is THAT into which all separateness dissolves.
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It seems I had first to move through the personal and then the impersonal before I realized God was closer than either and beyond them both. The notions and the experiences of God as being personally within or impersonally without are purely relative experiences, pertaining to the self and its particular type of consciousness. God, however, is beyond the relativity of our minds and experiences; indeed, he is so close he can never be localized
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to realize this closenessto see itis to discover that the very definition of God is “Everywhere.” Thus God IS Everywhere and all that truly exists, because wherever we look there is nothing else to see. In truth then, God is neither personal nor impersonal, neither within nor without, but everywhere in general and nowhere in particular. Simply put: God is all that truly existsall, of course, but the self.
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Having been robbed of the energies necessary to dominate, control, and stay on top of the frequent chaotic conditions in the home, my effectiveness as a mother to four teenagers dropped sharply to zero.
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Until the rug (my “self”) had been pulled out from under me, I never realized how utterly dependent I was upon getting around under my own steam
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steam of the mind and emotions
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It seems we possess an endless array of subtle energies we don’t know we have until they are gone
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later I was to see clearly how these energies are, in fact, the
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self’s defenses against its own annihilation
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For right now, however, it was taking a long time to learn how to survive without the experience of any energy. Learning to live this way was like learning to live all over again, and though I now understand it in retrospect, at the time I was as bewildered and groping as a man who has suddenly lost the power of his limbs.
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What I seemed to need were great blocks of time for uninterrupted silence and contact with nature, because it was only in such a milieu that I felt at home and at one with the flow of life.
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I went to the mountains to learn how to live a new type of existence, an existence without time, without thought, without the emotions, feelings, and energies of self. I hadn’t the slightest idea how things would go; all I knew was that I had to go and find out. While the discoveries were numerous and I have much to say about this adventure, I think I can sum it up in one phrase by saying: until I went to the mountains I had never truly lived. Not for a single day in my life had I ever lived before. Without a doubt I was in the Great Flow, so totally at one with it that every notion of ecstasy, bliss, love and joy, pale by comparison to the extraordinary simplicity, clarity, and oneness of such an existence.
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There is nothing haphazard, idle, or easy-going about forest life. On the contrary, everything there is vital, fully awake, dynamic, and intelligent. It is not a free life. The Great Flow takes its own direction, sweeping everything along, and whether it would go or not, is of no consequence. There is no time to step out of the flow
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what is it that sees this Oneness everywhere?
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when I visually focused in on a flower, an animal, another person, or any particular object, slowly the particularity would recede into a nebulous Oneness, so that the object’s distinctness was lost to my mind. Visually of course, nothing changed, the change was merely in the type of perception itself. Until this happened, it never occurred to me how I had always taken for granted the individuality of all objects of visual perception. But now, with the imposition of the 3D glasses, it became impossible for the mind to perceive or retain any individuality when all visual objects either faded from the mind, gave way to something else, or were “seen through”I do not know which is the best description to use. I might also add, I do not understand the mechanism of this change in perception, yet I regard this change as one of the most significant events in the entire journey
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It not only remained as a permanent irreversible fixture of perception, but it seemed to be the necessary vehicle by which I eventually came to the final “seeing.”
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I am always reluctant to use the word “God,” because everybody seems to carry around their own stagnant images and definitions that totally cloud the ability to step outside a narrow, individual frame of reference. If we have any conception of what God is, certainly it should be changing and expanding as we ourselves grow and change. This is the very nature of our life’s movement: to expand, to open up and blossom. Like flowers that will turn completely backward to face the light, sometimes we too must do an about-face if we would see what IS.
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Since we do not know in which direction to turn, we must wait like the flower for the morning sun, and with no effort or resistance, be pulled in the direction of the light.
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Whatever we care to call the ultimate reality, we cannot define or qualify it because the brain is incapable of processing this kind of data.
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The mysterious aspect of this type of seeing was that while I could focus on the objects around me, I could never focus on myself. To do so would have been as impossible as looking into my eyes without a mirror. For this reason I felt like an outside observer looking upon a Oneness that included everything but myself
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For myself, the opening up of everything upon which I gazed revealed a reality that was the same throughout, be the object animate or inanimate. For this reason I called it, Oneness
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was as if I was not a part of this Oneness, not even a part of the universe; in fact, I couldn’t see where I had any existence at all. Besides the body, all that was left was just this seeing and yet, even this did not really belong to me for it was not localized anywhere in my mental or physical make-up, but instead, seemed to be on top or a little above my headtoward the front and over the forehead.
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I was sure this seeing was actually outside the ordinary mind and physical body as well.
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While trying to figure out the nature of this seeing, I came upon the notion of man’s original consciousness, or the type of consciousness we all have from the beginning. As a one-time student of child development, I knew that the infant possesses a non-relative consciousness in which there is no distinguishing between subject (himself) and object; consequently, he has no notion of a self.
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consciousness, nor does he have anything to remember. All of us then, were born without a reflective, self-conscious type of mind which, to me, is an apt definition of “seeing.” Thus for the adult, seeing may be a kind of return to this original form of consciousness, a form that surprisingly does not seem to hamper the ordinary activities of practical living. Therefore, in the process of reverting back to our original consciousness we have to learn how to live without any self-consciousness
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which is not an easy adjustment to make. But it’s exciting to think we can make it at all, and even more exciting to think of what would happen if every man could live as he was originally intended to live.
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For a while then, this idea of man’s original consciousness seemed to clarify the nature of this seeing, but one day I discovered a hole in this conclusion. While there may be no self-consciousness in this seeing, the seeing alone constitutes some form of subject, just as the Oneness it sees, constitutes an object, for the distinction between the seeing and the Oneness was clear to me and never lent itself to any form of identity. In this case, then, seeing (observing) is not identical with the seen (observed), which put me right back on a purely relative plane of existence
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What this means is that the infant’s consciousness may actually be relative even though it is not self-reflecting
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One thing is certain: with our thinking, rational mind, we’ll never come upon these answers because our mind, limited tool that it is, is so continually taken up in the service of self that it cannot come upon that which lies beyond all such concerns.
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there was still the unresolved question of what remained in the absence of self. What is this that walks and talks and is aware of the eye upon Oneness? As obvious as it was, I had no mind for such a mystery and could not come upon any satisfying explanation
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Ultimately I discovered that the only resolution to the many questions that arose, is time. Time means change, and in the process of change my initial questions either changed, dissolved, or were resolved in the process.
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I had learned long ago that the es-
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sence of life’s movement was not contentment or security; rather, it was growth, change, and challenge, wherein the external circumstances of life merely reflected the needs of each moment in the thrust of life’s flow.
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I thought to myself: no man can see this and live! My body froze to the spot. The immediate reaction was to ward off the view, to make the vision go away by finding some explanation or meaning for it; in a word, to rationalize it away. But as I reached for each defense, the knowledge that I had not a single weapon dawned on me like a sudden blow to the head, and in the same instant I understood this thing called self: it is man’s defense against seeing absolute nothingness, against seeing a world devoid of lifea life devoid of God. Without a self, man is defenseless against such a vision, a vision he cannot possibly live with. Realizing I could no longer project a single defense, I waited for some reaction, especially an inner movement of fear. Somehow I knew that with the birth of fear, self would spring alive with all its weaponry, for it was now obvious that fearthe mother of all inventionswas the core around which the self was built and upon which its life so depended, that self and fear were here, all but indistinguishable. But when no reaction came, when there was no movement of fear, I concluded that self had been frozen and entombed within me in full consciousness of its state of immobility, death, and total helplessness. Unwittingly I had been lured and entrapped in this monstrous state of no- self, an irreversible state because, once gone, the self can never return.
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I seemed doomed to remain in the unlivable condition of having to stare out at a horrible nothingness without a single weapon of defense.
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right now, the silence within was not seen as freedom from self, rather, it was seen as an imprisoned self, a frozen, immovable self that was all part of the scene, part of the insidious nothingness choking the life out of everything. Even now it had frozen my body to the spot. How could I survive another moment? It seems the one remaining resource was my two legs, two legs that could still run even though they felt frozen and immobile. I had learned before how to move without any need for personal volition
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which is to act instantly, without thinking, without any need for self-consciousness or will-power. Once again it worked, and I found myself running down the beach, but as I did so, it was as if something else was running with me, urging, forcing me beyond all physical endurance to “Run! Run as you’ve never run before! You are running for your life!” And I believed it. Now I wasn’t even a jogger, and there was two miles to go, some of it up a steep cliff; but when I reached my car I seemed mindless of any exhaustion
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I decided that having no-self was as bad, if not worse, than having a self; because once beyond the self, man was just as likely to come across an unlivable nothingness as he was a marvelous, unnameable “something”as I first seemed to do. To put aside the self is a premature laying down of our weapons before we know for sure what lies ahead. It’s all an insane risk. Without a self, man is totally vulnerable to the winds of chancebode they good or ill.
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I was glad they had a self; in fact, the greatest blessing I could wish upon all the peoples of the earth was to have a self. That way, they would never be able to see what I had just seen and what no man could see and live with. For myself, of course, it was too late. I had survived this time, but who knows what tomorrow may bring? Fortunately I could not think a moment ahead or imagine how anything more could go wrong; instead, I tried to figure out where, in the past, I had somehow made a wrong turn that had brought me to such an impasse and landed me in this terrible predicament. All I could think of was that I had trusted God too much … but is that really possible? I used to wonder if we could ever abandon too much of our self to God, or if there was a limit beyond
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which a man should not go. Should we abandon our mind, our memory, our whole existenceforfeit all we know in order to come upon Him, the Unknown?
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there was only one way to account for this predicament: in thinking I had abandoned myself to God, I had, in reality, abandoned myself to nothing. So, yes indeed, it is possible to trust God too much, but only if there is no God, only if there is nothing beyond the self.
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That was the real question: if there is no self and no God, what then? I had just seen “what then” and couldn’t live with that either. There’s nothing blissful about sheer nothingnesseven Sartre declared it nauseous
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We blame greed on the self, but it may not work that way at all; materialism may not stem from the self but from the nothingness that lies beyond the self
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I stayed away from the beaches because there was no life there anymore. What I had to deal with now, was this frozen self, the very idea of which could be personified as “icy fingers” of an unknown terror and dread that had a way of appearing when my mind was unoccupied. Though seemingly held in abeyance and never approaching too close, I knew they were lurking in the background of my mind and were liable to appear at any time. Right here, I realized how totally my life depended upon the toughness of the immovable stillness within; I knew that the slightest feeling of fear or panic and these icy fingerswhich were like sudden flashes of light in my headwould invade my entire being, resulting in madness. But I had no control over this silence, it wasn’t even me, rather, it was all that remained of a self-that-was. Thus my fate now lay in the precarious balance between the stillness within and an unknowable terror that could suddenly appear in my mind.
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I could not keep running from this thing all my life, I had to get it out in the open, face it head-on and deal with it, because I could no longer stand its continual lurking around every corner of my day. I decided to go outside, sit on the hillside, and stare it in the face until one of us gave wayor went away. Now I cannot convey what it is like to stare at some invisible horror when you don’t know what it is.
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I never doubted for a moment that only a miracle could save me; yet, I never expected one, didn’t even hope for one, nor could my mind have formulated the simplest prayer. All I wanted to do was get it over withto die if necessary.
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fish swimming around looking for the Sea he is already in;
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how could I ever see when I no longer had eyes to see? Constantly before me there was only emptiness and nothingness. Because of its terrible restrictiveness I called this state of affairs “The Great Passageway.” I had no idea where I was or where I was going. If the first part of the journey was, in fact, the movement from self to no-self, this second half was the movement from no-self to nowhere, for I do not believe self enters the Passageway because it could not endure what must here be endured.
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At times it was tempting to regard this great stillness as God, but I think I was mistaken and later shall explain why.
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despite its relentless, merciless, non- compensatory commands to “see” and “KEEP GOING,” I instinctively felt it knew where it was going and what it was doing. There were moments when I thought of going in search of some type of medication to relieve my burning brain
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I learned that the passing away and becoming of anything is not the way life really works; for despite the coming and going of what we call life and energy, something remains that never moves nor participates in these passages. Something that is just there, just watching, and “that” is true life, while all the energies that come and go are not true life. But what is “that” that remains and observes? And what is it that endures this passage? What is this form that keeps melting away? And what is it that remains when there is no self? Certainly it was not me. Could it be God then? Well, if it was, I did not know for I could not see a single thing.
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it was a time of learning how to survive without having the slightest sense of personal energy. To begin with, I found it necessary to keep constantly occupied with resources outside my own mind, for in this Passageway I could not truly think, reflect, or formulate a single idea or thought. Yet I suddenly discovered I could listen to the thoughts and ideas of others while maintaining a perfectly silent and unthinking mind, for my understanding of practical affairs was unimpaired. As long as I listened, my mind was silent and there was no pressure on it to ”be silent.” From here, I next discovered I could also read books that demanded no thinking and that left my mind without pressure. Though I couldn’t handle philosophy, I found it helpful as well as interesting to read every book on mountain climbing the library had to offer. Finally, the day came when I discovered I could also talk and converse with this same silent, unthinking mind, but only as long as it came right “off the top”that is, spontaneously, without thinking or reflecting. At first, such conversations were necessarily brief
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but in time, the knack of talking off the top of the head became a permanent function. Later I called it my “non-reflective mind” and gradually recognized it as far superior to the ordinary thinking mind because it allows a great clarity
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I eventually came upon a new type of activity, the activity of an unthinking, unknowing mind in which there are no self-invested energies, no goal but survival, and not an ounce of satisfaction anywhere.
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my own condition of being completely cut off (dissociated) from the known, the self, without any compensating factor to take the place of the void so encountered. It meant a state of no feelings, no energies, no movements, no insights, no seeing, no relationships with anything, nothing but absolute emptiness everywhere you turn. The utter sterility of this state is all but humanly unendurable, especially for any length of time; to bear the burden of complete unknowing is a weight that moment by moment threatened to crush me, but crush me without bringing death.
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This state cannot be compared to a Dark Night, it is more (and far worse) than the purification of the mind and will in its ignorance of the Unknown; rather, it is a radical state wherein the mind cannot dwell on anything known or unknown
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the preconditioned habits of a balanced, integrated, adult mind were absolutely essential for making the passage. Hence, the years prior to taking the journeyyears of trying and testing the psychic balancewere of the utmost importance; so much so that everything now depended upon this stability of conditioned behavior.
Page61
On the few occasions I came upon divine relief, there was no mistaking its origin. These events occurred toward the end of the Passagewaya fact I can only see in retrospectand were always preceded by a piling up of all the intolerable aspects of this state: its duration, its apparent endlessness, the fatigue, the pressure behind the eyes, the precarious state of sanity, the total lack of understanding; in a word, the terrible burden of unknowing and unseeing. All this and more, suddenly became overwhelming, and under its monstrous weight, something collapsed.
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Whatever remains without a self, disintegrated, melted away
Page66
It was the obliteration of all but the joyous, humorous smile of the divine, a smile that somehow was completely subjective. Its most poignant, immediate word of description was “melting”a veritable melting in which God was all that remained.
Page66
as if my own hardness had melted and it was saying, “I told you, you could see! You are seeing all the timeand you know this! You cannot possibly doubt it.” Indeed, there was no doubt, the nature of the passage does not permit of intellectual doubt; but then, neither does it permit of certitude. In truth, it permits of nothing.
Page66
the mind was immersed in a dire void wherein it had nowhere to look since it could focus on nothing
Page66
Here I was reminded of Christ’s saying he had nowhere to lay his head
Page66
there was nothing in this world on which he could truly focus his attention, nothing to which his mind could be either perceptually or conceptually attached.
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Eventually it became clear that this Passageway was beyond despair, and even beyond insanity; for “who” is left to go insane or “what” remains to experience despair? If self had been alive it would have gone mad on the spot; and if nothing else, it would have jumped at any chance to throw in the towel and back out. But our psychological notions of despair and anxiety are mere toys of self-defense compared to the burden-of-unknowing
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Probably the mechanism of getting through is built into the Passageway itself, if for no other reason than that it’s the only way to go. There are no options and no outs, no death and no insanity; it’s there and you’re part of it, and that’s what isjust a Passageway.
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I eventually became acclimated to the void when I discovered that time alone took care of it, for after a while it was hardly noticed anymore.
Page66
when the emptiness of existence is no longer important, “doing” becomes everything
Page66
felt bad about the fact that man lives his whole life in the false expectation that some ultimate reality lies hidden somewhere behind, beneath, or beyond what is. And I remembered my own life of searching and looking and now saw what a complete waste it had been.
Page66
All the experiences of my life had been nothing more than a head-trip, a great psychological hoax, a pointless circular affair whereby I was now back where I started
Page66
think of all the wasted energy: studying, speculating, practicing, looking, striving, suffering, experiencing, and all of it? A perfect waste! In truth, everything man knows is one hundred percent speculation and wishful thinking, egged blindly on, no doubt, by a self persistently demanding its own survival. What a trick of the mind! What total deception!
Page66
Initially I had been willing to give up this thing called self because I was somehow assured that God lay beyond it. So I had trusted and I had loved, and until the Great Passageway had not been deceived. But now that trust had finally been broken to pieces for I could find it nowhere. In its place was a gentle disappointment and the final acceptance of what iswhich means: what you see is all you get.
Page66
I had finally come upon the great truth: that all was void; that self had merely filled in the void; and that all man’s words were empty labels foraged by a mind that doesn’t know a thing about its world and cannot tolerate a state of unknowing
Page66
Although coming upon these great truths had almost cost me my life, finally I was discovering how to live with them; after all, this is what the journey was all about: to find the truth and nothing less. I might continue to be sorry for all those still wasting their lives in the unwitting search for emptiness, yet I felt no zeal to inform them of the truth ahead of time, for knowing the truth doesn’t necessarily make for a better life, a life that must go on whether there’s any truth in it or not.
Page66
I walked down and sat on the river’s edge, watching the dead wood in its speedy descent to the sea. With neither reason nor provocation, a smile emerged on my face, and in the split second of recognition I “saw”finally I saw and knew I had seen. I knew: the smile itself, that which smiled, and that at which it smiled, were One
Page66
In my journal I called this “the grin-of-recognition.”
Page71
It was so utterly simple and so completely obvious it was impossible to understand why I had not seen it before; and yet, there is no way I could come to this seeing of my own accord
Page71
it had to be revealed
Page71
What I learned was that the unknown object (of the smile) was identical with the subject, and not only that, but the smile itself was identical with these
Page71
what is the smile? It is “that” which remains when there is no self. The smile is neither the unknown subject or object, yet it is identical with it. It is that aspect of the Unknown which is obviously manifest.
Page71
the pressure behind the eyes never returned, and my mind knew an effortless silence
Page71
the usual void was replaced by something else, something that was not localized as a presence, but something more pervasive and intense than even the Oneness I had seen with the 3D glasses. Immediately I took this for an absolute sham, a trap, a trick of the mind; besides, it came too late, I was now beyond all such enticements that had landed me nothing but trouble in the past. So I ignored it, refused to give it space or look at it; and if I’d had a self, I probably would have felt toward it a feeling of disdain
Page71
You cannot look at what Is, for it cannot become an object to the mind, nor for that matter, can it be a subject, for what Is is “that” which can never be a subject or an object
Page71
the moment you look with your relative (subject- object oriented) mind, what Is is gone because you have tried to make it an object, and it won’t workwhy? Because there is no subject. The relative mind cannot apprehend this reality; only a non-relative mind sees because what Is is equally non-reflective or non-self-conscious. Since what Is is all that Is, it has nothing to see outside itself nor within itself, and thus it has no such thing as a relative, reflective, self-conscious mind. Nor is it a mind at all, nor consciousness
Page71
Therefore, once we have been rid of a reflective, relative, self-conscious mind, then and only then can we come upon what Is, which is neither subject nor object, but “seeing” Itself
Page71
all references to “object” in this book refer to the object of consciousness, not to an object of the senses. The immediate object of consciousness is always and only itself; whereas the object of the senses is anything we can see, hear or touch. Failure to distinguish the object of consciousness (self or subject) from sensory objectstrees, mountains, and you name ithas been the cause of some confusion in contemplative literature.
Page71
Thus when the contemplative refers to God as “object” he is referring to God as the primary object of consciousness, not to God as an object of the senses. Beyond consciousness, however, there is neither subject nor objectno self and no God. Beyond this, Truth is its own revelation and manifestation, there being no one (no consciousness) to which it is revealed. The mind, however, cannot comprehend or grasp this non-subjective, non-objective Truth.
Page71
the final and complete close-down of the relative mind, which then heralded a new way of seeing, knowing, and acting
Page71
Now I could understand, and because of this, now I could rejoice. It seems that as long as the mind is viable it needs to enter into some form of understanding, otherwise the greatest revelation, while it would not go unnoticed, could not enter into the fullness of its human manifestation.
Page71
Part of what I understood is how what Is never comes and goes; instead, what comes and goes is the relative mind that is intimately entwined with the self, revolves around the self, and of its own accord can never get out of itself
Page71
once the self has disappeared, this reflective, self-conscious mind goes with it, and what remains is what Is. You can no longer look out and see relationships, nor do you see emptiness anymore, all you see is what Is, which can be intense at times
Page71
it is not something ecstatic, ineffable, or transcendent. On the contrary, it is obvious, natural, and somewhat ordinary, for it is what we see everywhere we lookand yet, how difficult it is to see how this is so! Though what Is is everything that truly exists, there is one thing it is not, and that is self, which blocks the view that otherwise allows us to see that which remains when self is gonenamely, what Is.
Page71
This discovery then, was the end of the Passageway, and once I began to see, another new way of life opened up.
Page71
The term “effortless” here refers to the fact that no self-energies are involved even though, physically, we may still work up a sweat.
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with activity in which there is no self-investment or self-awareness, something is there; this activity is not empty and is what I call “doing.”
Note
This is flow state
Page71
The reason for using this term is because the doer, as well as that which the doer acts upon, falls into the realm of the unknown; only the act of doing falls into the realm of the known
Note
Clearly flow state, nothing of self remains in this moment
Page71
We do not know “that” which smiled or at ”what” it smiled, all we know is the smile itself
Note
No separation between things. Only what Is. Only the present
Page71
what Is can only be known because it is identical with its acts (or doing).
Page76
once on this journey the emphasis had been on a selfless existence, this existence was gradually seen to be empty and void and no longer of any use. But when this selfless existence disappears completely, what remains is doing, which is like a beam, a guide, and is the something that is what Is.
Page76
Who is there to be free? Who is there to choose and experience, to set the goals and chart the path? The free one is now gone, and that which remains now walks the beam like an unthinking tree must grow and function in a direction already set by its nature, a nature so intelligent that it is forever completely unknowable to the human mind. Thus knowing what to do or where to put your foot is fairly black and white: what is to be known is simply there, and what is not known is not there. In other words, what to do is built into the beam itself so that doing is identical with its content or what it does
Page76
What once created the division between doing and its content was the self with all its choices, values, judgments, ideas, and all the rest
Page76
it is blocked by all its so-called freedoms.
Page76
what Is moves in one sure, irrevocable, and unknowable direction, so that knowing and doing are the same. Nevertheless, this knowing is most unusual because it is not derived from a thinking, speculating, reflecting mind
Page76
How this works is unknown to me, but that it works at all is a source of amazement and all part of the clarity of mind now possible when on the beamwhich means being totally at one with what Is.
Page76
the silent mind is a mind that is void of reflexive activity or consciousness, and though all other functions of the mind seem to remain as usual, there is no experience of a mind at all. The reason self cannot come upon this silence is because this silence is what remains when there is no self
Page76
Apparently, with the falling away of self-consciousness there is also a certain loss of body-awareness. This may account for the continual melting away of physical form I experienced during the latter half of the journey.
Page76
Though physical pain remains, there is no longer the feeling of being tired, rested, satisfied, contented, and so much more; somehow these familiar feelings must have subtle connections with self-consciousness. But because of this, caring for the body becomes little different than caring for a plant: when you know it needs water, food, or sunshine, you give it what it needs. You cannot “feel” for the plant, but if you are observant and know something of its mechanism, there is no problem maintaining a bodily form that is in a constant process of change and subject to the limits of time. Though I regard the body as absolutely real, I find all forms that compose the universe extremely fragile or tenuous at best, because they can so easily dissolve into the one Existent, apart from which, no form has any individual existence of its own.
Page76
I had first to recognize this same stillness and emptiness as pervading everything, not just myself
Page81
Thus only when I saw how it could never be localized anywhere in particular or in any subjective form, I finally saw how this great silence was indeed Everything and Everywhere, and is truly what Is.
Page81
The mind, will, emotions and feelings, in a word, all our experiences in the interior life are merely our own reactions to “that” which we cannot otherwise know, see, or experience
Page81
we sometimes refer to God as the great emptiness and nothingness, though God is not that, not at all. What we call emptiness and nothingness is self’s relative notion and experience, which moves from the positive to the negative before both eventually fall away and all that remains is what Is.
Page81
I could no longer find any relative difference between having a self and having no-self
Page81
life is not in anything; rather, all things are in life. The many are immersed in the One, even that which remains when there is no self is absorbed in the One. No longer a distance between self and other, all is now known in the immediacy of this identity.
Page81
To see this new dimension of life is the gift of amazing glasses through which God is not only seen everywhere, but AS Everywhere. Truly, God is all that exists
Page81
all, of course, but the self.
Page86
Here it could be clearly seen that all the searching, speculating, and experiencing of a lifetime had been a gigantic waste, a head-trip of such proportions that only an infant mentality can bare such a truth: the end is like the beginning, and everything in between is pure deception.
Page86
The state of unknowing is permanent; since the mind can hold on to no content
Page86
The smile itself, the one that smiled and the one at which it smiled were as identical as the trinity
Page86
The smile is neither subject nor object, but the act and manifestation of the otherwise unknown and unmanifest; it is the form of the formless
Page86
Godcan never be the object (or subject) of vision because it is the Act of vision itself. Here the gap between the subject and object of the Eye seeing itself was irrevocably closed; God is neither seer nor seen, but “seeing.”
Page86
After a long passage, the mind had finally come to rest and rejoice in its own understanding. Now it was ready and prepared to take its rightful place in the immediacy and practicality of the now-moment. There will be no more looking, no need for the mind to know what it now knows is forever beyond itself. In this unknowing the mind is content to dwell forever.
Page91
when there is no self there is also no other.
Page91
the mind has never had the ability to see itself as subjectwhich would be as impossible as the eye seeing itself.
Page91
I believed that the basic awareness of thoughts and feelings went right on and were present whether I reflected on them or not. Now, however, I see how both of these are true. It seems that on an unconscious level the reflexive mechanism of the mind goes on so continuously, it makes no difference if we are aware of our self on a conscious level or not. In other words, the mind is always bending on itselfand knowing itself as object to itselfeven when we are not aware of it or are unconscious of this fact
Page91
the known arises in the now-moment, which is solely concerned with the immediate present, thus making it invariably practical. This is undoubtedly a restrictive state of mind, but it is a blessed restrictiveness. Since the continual movement inward and outward, backward and forward, in time and in the service of feelings, personal projections and so on, is an exhausting state, it consumes an untold amount of energy that is otherwise left free when the mind is restricted to the now-moment.
Page91
there is no such thing as a totally silent mindunless, of course, the mind or brain (which I view as synonymous) is physically dead
Page91
One way to look at this journey is to see it as a process of acclimating to an unselfconscious mind, or as a transition from a relative to a non-relative way of know-
Page91
the initial, most noteworthy effect of the falling away (or cessation) of the reflexive mechanism, is a silent mind. This means that the silent aspect of the mind is actually the absence of self, or as I prefer to call itthe silence of no-self.
Page91
there is a step beyond no-self which is the objectless, subjectless seeing of what Is
Page91
To start with, it may be helpful to draw a comparison between man’s basic mental structure and that of a dry sponge, which is light and airy and can easily be carried by the breezes that come its way. Now, if we take
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the sponge and saturate it in the waters of selfhood, it becomes heavy, ponderous and bloated; and because it cannot respond to the breezes, it virtually goes nowhere. If, however, the sponge can stay away from these waters and no longer allow itself to be used, it will eventually, by sitting alone and aloof for a long time, dry out and return to its original structure. But there’s another way this can happen. This is for an outside agent to pick up the sponge and squeeze it dry
Page91
If we could fully realize how every cell of the mind is saturated with the waters of self continually oozing outward (projecting) and seeping inward (absorbing), we might have some idea of what it would be like if all such movements came to an end. Once the mind can no longer reflect on itself, all energy or movement of self is gone; the feelings and emotions are in silence; the memory has been so denuded that the past is lifeless, with no continuum at all.
Page96
Introspection becomes impossible; and projection is also out of the question since we can no longer endow any object with its usual values, meanings, and purposes; nor can we touch upon objects when there is no water forthcoming to go outward. Our ordinary frames of reference have disappeared leaving an empty mind, and since the mind can hang onto nothing, it must remain in the darkness of its own un-understanding. Initially it is not only the thinking powers of the mind that are silent, but it is every cell of the sponge that has been wrung out and must wait in emptiness for the breezes that will carry it along. Here we have encountered a mysterious, unique type of silence; and since it is not of the self, it is as nothing ever experienced before. In truth, it is the permanent silence of no-self.
Page96
non-thinking produces mere nothingness, whereas a silent mind is not a blank mind. Rather, it is a mind in which the reflex arcor whatever it is that allows the mind to become an object to itselfhas been broken in two or ceased to function, so that thinking goes right on, but now bypasses the synaptic self that continually colors incoming data before sending it out again. When this break occurs, it naturally eliminates a great deal of thought and thinking, but only that which was constricting and irrelevant in the first place
Page96
the thoughts that now come to mind do not arise from within, but from the outside or ”off the top,” so to speak, and then, only when dealing with the obvious data at hand at any given moment.
Page96
Initially, it seems that “doing” replaces thought because when we listen, talk, read, or work, we are (at first, at least) accompanied by a mysterious silence, which is nothing more than the relative absence of a functioning self-conscious mechanism.
Page96
at some time or other, everyone has undoubtedly touched upon no-self.
Page96
In retrospect, I also understand why, at that time, those foretastes could not have become a permanent state. The ground must first be prepared so there will be no rude awakenings or contrasts between what appears and what Is; and we come to this gradually by continually readjusting our lives in order to see deeper into what exists. Indeed, it takes a lot of living before no-self can become a permanent state.
Page101
I entered the Passive Night of the Spirit, a night of terrible psychological pain, a burning out of the faculties of mind and will, which lasted nine months without let-up. I was fortunate, however, in having the only spiritual help I was to find in my life, a Discalced Carmelite priest that I had known for several years. His joy over this darkness seemed proportionate to my misery, for he had this theory that the lower you go, the higher you rise”like a ball,” he said.
Page101
the still-point is a place of peace and imperturbability lying below the surface of life’s events and surroundings.
Page101
while all foretastes of an advanced state (such as we experience in ecstasy, for example) appear glorious and impermanent, by the time we have actually grown into this state or reached it, it will have become our ordinary, everyday statea fact we often forget.
Page101
This is why I mistrust those who claim to experience constant bliss and ecstasy, for if this were their true state they wouldn’t know it, it would be so ordinary and everyday.
Page101
It seems that from the day we are born, or from the day self begins to develop, we are getting ready for a life without a self. It is as if the mechanisms of self-preservation and self-extinction are living in balance and guiding us to our true destiny. And if the former predominates in the first half of life, it is the latter that comes to fore in the second half
Page101
What this means is that all our experiences of silence are nothing more, yet nothing less, than the silence of no-self
Page101
It means that the waters of self are gradually being wrung from the structure of being; that the mechanism of consciousness is coming to an end in a way we may never understand.
Page101
. No-self is not God; rather, it is the gap between self and God and the gateway to what is not only beyond the self, but beyond no-self as well.
Page101
The first contemplative movement then, is the transition from self to no-self, while the second movement is the transition from no-self to nowhere
Page101
nowhere in particular, yet everywhere in general. It is a transition from the relative silence of self to the non-relative silence of what Is
Page101
no words can be used for Its description. It can be known, however, known as it knows Itself, for what Is knows not words
Page101
Once the journey was ended I discovered the increasing ability to sustain more fully the great intensity without the light going outthat is, without going unconscious, blacking out, or dropping into an unknowable nothingness.
Page101
The step beyond no-self is like the dissolution of that which remains when It draws back into Itself as if overcome by Its own intensity.
Page101
what we ordinarily know of It, is only that which falls into the realm of the known
Page101
there seems to exist a fullness of act that does not fall into the known or created, and to be overcome by this fullness means that at any moment, all we know to exist may easily, instantly and painlessly, be dissolved into what Is
Page101
I do not understand this mechanism, but I do know this dissolution, this enduring intensity, is the ending and the last of all silences.
Page106
in the end, God will be seen without the medium of either the senses or the relative mindour subject-object type of knowingwhich is self or consciousness.
Page106
on a strictly non-relative plane, what Is is the Eye seeing itself and wherever it looks it sees only Itself and nothing else.
Page106
My own notion of illusion is that it is merely an error in perception which, I now see in retrospect, goes on as long as self colors the world as something it is not. Compared to a non-relative reality, all our thoughts about the real are illusions of a sort, but until we ”see,” we have no way of knowing this, and therefore have no way of recognizing an illusion
Page106
Once beyond self we see our illusions or errors in retrospect and realize they were only what we thought about reality, thoughts that had nothing to do with the real world
Page106
of objects and forms as they are in themselves.
Page106
At the same time, I recognize that all form is fragile, subject to change, and that it may easily and quickly dissolve into the Oneness from which it came; but none of this is an illusion.
Page106
I figure the day I can no longer see anything through the veil, or see anything else but Onenesswhen there is no form left to seeI too will be gone, dissolved, as all form will, into Eternal Form or what Is. In the meantime, I cannot regard the continual coming and going of my children as the interruptions of mere illusionthough I admit it would be helpful, at times, if this were true.
Page106
When it comes to maintaining psychic balance on a journey of this nature, time is yet another important factor. It would be impossible to acclimate in a single day to the falling away of self. Beyond self lies a whole new dimension of existence, a change so radical that it requires a revamping of every aspect of our lifemind, feelings, senses, on down to physical sensations
Page111
how many can honestly appreciate the triumph of being common and ordinary? Who can understand what it means to learn that the ultimate reality is not a passing moment of bliss, not a fleeting vision or transfiguration, not some ineffable, extraordinary experience or phenomenon, but instead, is as close as our eyes, as simple as a smile, and as clear as the identity of “that” which remains when there is no self?
Page111
It may only be deceiving to think the ultimate reality is love and bliss since such experiences may have nothing to do with God at all. As said before, I am convinced we continually see this Reality all our lives but do not recognize it because it is so usual, common, and ordinary that we go off in search of more tantalizing experiencesexperiences more gratifying to the self.
Page111
The notion of doing is difficult to convey because we usually think of it in terms of a doer, of doing “something,” or of “what” we do; but all this is the content of doing and is a divisive factor we are not ordinarily aware of until there is no self. But when there is no longer any separation between act and being, then and only then, is there “doing.” It is not easy to get used to doing without a doer; indeed, the very thought of it is unthinkable. Yet the body functions this way all the time. No one is telling the heart to beat or how their liver must
Page111
function. So who is doing this, who is in charge here? We call this the “wisdom of the body,” which is a good example of doing without a doer.
Page111
There is a great difference between the union of God and self, and the immanent unity of God beyond all creation and self. Also, there is a great difference between the union of Uncreated and created energy (self), and Uncreated energy as it exists solely in itself. What self experiences is created energy, whereas Uncreated energy is non-experiential.
Page116
. It is said that St. Thomas Aquinas, after writing his masterful tomes on Christian theology, suddenly had an experience of God that so silenced his mind that ever after, he never wrote a single word. In fact, he said that everything he had written was “straw.”