I was nineteen, I was blessed with a wonderful mystical vision: I experienced the light of God. That is, I experienced what Tibetan Buddhists call Osel (or “Primordial Clear Light”), and Hindu yogis describe as Sahasradala Padma (“Thousand-Petal Lotus of Light”). Chinese Taoists call it Ming (“Transcendent Luminosity”). Sioux Indians name it Wakan Tonka (“Great Spirit”). Muslims refer to it as Noor (“Divine Resplendence”). It is also Kavod (“Eternal Flame”) that shines at the altar of Judaism; the same radiance of which Jesus said, “If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.”
The word light is not used here as a figure of
speech (symbolizing a brighter, sunnier, higher aspect of ourselves and the
cosmos). All these names and images refer to actual light: self-luminous, all-pervading energy. It is the living force—radiant consciousness—ablaze
with bliss. Communion with this holy light, absorption in it is unspeakably
pleasurable. Yet in my case, the event of drowning in the ocean of brightness
left a great disturbance in its wake that took decades to resolve.
Let me tell you my
story.
In 1972 I was a
sophomore at Boston University, a teen-age son of 20th-century America, who
listened to Led Zeppelin cranked up loud enough to vibrate my teeth. I was not
exactly preparing body and mind for a direct encounter with the divine. My
Jewish religious training had consisted of attending Sabbath services and
Sunday school as a boy, which felt like sitting for several hours a week in
front of an unplugged radio. Until the age of about nine, I had believed in and
prayed to the Judeo-Christian Deity, but by the time I was ten or so, I began
to aggressively disbelieve in an anthropomorphic Father-God. Natural science
and science fiction became far more inspiring, meaningful and beautiful to me
than conventional religious dogma. At age eleven, I had quit attending the
synagogue.
Even so, there was a
mystical streak in me that I had noticed from my earliest memories. It showed
itself as a keenly felt sense of the mystery of the natural world and human
life. This feeling of wonder or awe would sometimes rise in me as a bodily
thrill until I had to laugh or shout.
As a college freshman
I took a world religions course because I intuited something fundamental to the
religious urge in people, something prior to arguing over the different notions
of God, something primitive, below the abstract verbal mind that has created
all the historical schisms of exoteric beliefs. I wanted to find this most
basic truth at the root of all faiths. I longed to be like a lover—a naked
beginner in the embrace of Living Nature. I personally wanted to know “It”—the real
God—for I somehow understood “It” to be the depth and ground of my own heart.
Thus, I sought contact with my deepest heart, from which I was seemingly in
exile.
The next year, as a
sophomore, I took an excellent class on Eastern philosophy. We read the Heart Sutra of Buddha and essays on Zen
by D.T. Suzuki; Psychotherapy East and
West, by Alan Watts and Modern Man in
Search of a Soul, by Carl Jung; the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad
Gita of the Hindus; the Tao Teh Ching
of Lao Tzu; the Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali. I began to have grand insights into my own condition, though I
understood only a fraction of what I read.
Then some classmates
invited me to their apartment for a dinner discussion of the profound teachings
we were studying. Steve had been a Theravada Buddhist monk in Thailand for two
years, meditating seventeen hours a day; John was an avid student of yoga and
Vedanta; and Sean had deserted the French Army and walked through India for
three years, meeting holy persons. In contrast, I had neither meditated, nor
done yoga, nor spent time in the company of anyone who was especially wise and
free.
After dinner, riding
the crest of the moment, everyone but Sean took LSD together. It was my sixth
psychedelic trip. We took turns reading aloud from the Old Testament’s Genesis and from Be Here Now, a primer on Hindu mysticism. After a while, Steve read
to us from The Psychedelic Experience,
a “trip manual” by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner, based on the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (also called Tibetan Book of the Dead).
Early on in the
six-hour LSD high, I began to feel the same deep awe that I’d enjoyed as a boy,
only stronger now than ever. The emotion seemed to expand and fill body, mind
and room as a tangible presence: a sphere of invincible energy and happiness. I
was sitting on a ratty carpet on the living room floor of a cheap apartment in
Cambridge, immersed in a force field of great joy. I looked at Steve with
drunken love and said, “The Holy Spirit is upon us.”
But I began to notice
an apparent limit to the spirit, like a knot or cramp within the otherwise
boundless force and presence. It gradually became obvious that the knot was
“me”—or everything I held onto as “myself”. I saw that the whole melodrama of
“me” (as a separated or independent and limited identity) was based on this
unconscious habit of withholding (contracting, recoiling from whole and
infinite being). “Me” was only a construct, not ultimately real (not a real
entity or identity), but merely an act
(like a fictional stage character) within Free and Total Being. And mistakenly
(ridiculously!), the sense of identity had been bound to this mere role, this
temporary personality, this psycho-physical ego (as if Life and Consciousness
were an isolated self that is born to change and die). Such phony (separate)
identity was the cause of all fear—the refusal to love and shine completely;
the resistance to change and death, and thus, to all of life and relationship.
Within Consciousness,
the dream of “me” was suddenly released. In that instant, came the deep heart
of understanding: The totality of conscious being is the real and living
“Person”, the all-inclusive Identity of everyone and everything. As the sages
have put it, “There is only God.”
I fell onto my back
in tears with the overwhelming relief of this realization of transcendental
(unlimited) life. I surrendered utterly to my felt-intuition of the Great One.
Rapidly, a marvelous change occurred. Layers of subtler self-holding fell away
and I melted into the heart of God. I did not just watch this
self-transcendence occur, as if from the bleachers. Ego-“I” dissolved in the all-effacing light of
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
To the extent the
experience can be described, it was something like this: In the first few
seconds of self-surrender, a glorious golden light filled mind and body and all
of space. Mind (or attention) was captured by the light and drawn inward and
upward toward an infinite locus above. Outer awareness disappeared as
attention, body and world were resolved into the unity of the light-source—like
an iris blossom refolding and returning to its bud. Just at the brink of
ego-death there was an instant of fear, but I knew there was no turning back,
no stopping this expansion beyond all limit. And I knew that whatever this
sacrifice led to, it simply was Reality.
Therefore, I silently
prayed, “Have mercy on me,” and in the next instant the light became so
supremely attractive it absorbed the fear along with everything else into its
dazzling singularity. As the last bit of self-hold evaporated, the golden light
increased to “white,” or rather, it became perfectly clear, pure, unqualified, original. There was no more expansion, no
more ascent; indeed there was no more “up” or “down,” “in” or “out,” but all of
existence was radically equal and whole—the same absolutely bright fullness (or
emptiness).
I was conscious as
limitless radiant being, identical with the Self or Source of the universe. I
don’t know how long I remained consumed in that domain of ecstasy, but it was utterly familiar, not new or shocking.
It was Home, eternally. That Which IS
(or the One I AM).
Of course, I came
down. With a splat!
Crashed, as they say;
and back again from the ego-centered point of view of a white, middle-class
American kid who had grasped only a fraction of what he had read from the
Oriental mystics, the experience of the light was not only incomprehensible, it
was terrifying. By the following afternoon, I felt so upset, I was pale and
shaky. After all, what was so attractive about the dissolution of ego, the
death of “me”? I had developed a painful case of psychic indigestion.
At first I tried to
resist the revelation of the light, the divine intrusion on my independent,
private life. I wanted to say, “Go away, I’m not ready for this. I just want to
be me. I want to stay me.”
Lost and scared, I
compulsively tried to secure the threatened ego, reinforce its boundaries and
make it solid, immune to change. It didn’t work. There is no way to go on as an
isolated self once you’ve tumbled into the heart of infinite life, even if only
for a timeless instant. (As the Muslim poet Kabir said, “I saw that for thirty
seconds, and it has made me a devotee all my life.”)
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, READ THE DIRECTIONS.
I did.
I began to study the
teachings of the Eastern and Western mystics in earnest. (It is noteworthy that
all of them warn not to delve into mystical experience without proper
preparation and a guide who knows the territory.)
It took time, more
than a decade, but gradually my anxiety and confusion waned and was replaced by
a growing understanding. Along the way I discovered scores of historical
sources in which ego-loss in the radiant, transcendental being is described.
Classical yoga provides a Sanskrit term for the experience: nirvikalpa samadhi. [1]Many
teachers quickened my awakening; not the least among them my wife and our two
sons.
This does not mean I
fitted the revelation of the divine to my everyday life—like pocketing a shiny
new coin and then continuing on my private way. No. The divine is senior to self
and world and will not be owned. Therefore, I did the reverse: I submitted my
life to the divine; I became a devotee of God. Not the Almighty Absent Parent
who never speaks through the dead radio, but the same wonderful, living Source
and starry Process that a naturalist can love with awe.
Also, I began to
meditate. I practiced a simple technique of focusing on the in and out of my
breath while sitting quietly. After fifteen years of this simple practice, I
experienced a “return” to the light. While deeply in tune with the breath, my
attention spontaneously became focused in the mid-brain, between and behind the
eyes. Thus my “eye” became “single.” My whole body was filled with light, as
Jesus promised. I sat in a swoon and received the golden light into all my
parts. At the time, I wrote an essay proclaiming: “Holy light is not a
metaphor. Dazzlingly alive is the eternal spirit.”
But I was still
afraid.
I was afraid of
madness—the utter sacrifice of self and all limit. No knowing. No controlling.
No “me.” I was afraid of drowning in infinity.
Six years later, in
February 1993, a turning point arrived. I stood on my balcony in a
contemplative mood, feeling into life, and I recalled a line a friend had told
me years before about “meeting God halfway.” That notion now seemed absurd, as
I saw that God Is Here, already all the
way present. Nothing is hidden or withheld. I said aloud a motto that
summed this up: “The gift is always given.” It was a beautiful, religious sense
of being lived and loved and breathed by God.
Suddenly, a
tremendous Force pressed down from above my head, through my brain and nervous
system, with such mighty light and bliss that I fell to my knees and was
pinned, overwhelmed bodily by the tangible brightness, as one might be
overwhelmed by a terribly powerful orgasm. I gasped and sobbed from the potency
of the joy. The God-pleasure—the saturating fullness and Touch of the
light—became so intense I felt my bones might crack.
When I stood up, I
had changed physically.
And my meditations changed.
For several years, I’d been aware of powerful, “electrical” surges in my
nervous system during meditation. I had focused on the breath and ignored these
stirrings of the kundalini.[2]
But now my meditation sessions became sheer energy work-outs. Even so simple a
practice as following the breath now felt like contrived self-effort. My method
of meditation had been rendered obsolete. Instead, I would sit and the
kundalini would flame through my head and eyes and spine and toss me around
like a mad dancer. I laughed and cried. I growled. I shouted. I made
spontaneous chant-like intonations. I saw archetypal visions.[3]
It was painful and
blissful—indescribable. I was suffering, but unable to budge a finger; afraid,
but unable to make a single response. I was being meditated.
I became constantly
aware of the tension around my heart, the tension of “me”—of holding on to
myself. The presence of spirit had become a great current and my misery was my
resistance to it. But I was reluctant to sacrifice “my life” completely.
Eight months later,
in October 1993, I had grown so exhausted with the effort of preventing my own
death, that I lay down on my bed and said, Okay,
I give up. Take me insanity, or take me God, or take me whatever you are,
mighty river. Sweep me to my destiny.
Abruptly, I began to
lose “face.” Panic came on strong. I cramped up in a ball like a fetus. I
became an electric buzzing cloud and then everything dissolved and I entered
the light and bliss and freedom of ego-death; beyond the golden light into the
clear light of void. No self. No thing. No bounds. The rapture only lasted a
few seconds, but it was enough to see that all was okay. I had allowed death to
occur, and it was not annihilation. It was only the loss of an imaginary
limit—a phony identity.
The next day, I
spontaneously entered nirvikalpa samadhi again, while soaking in the bathtub.
The episode lasted several minutes and was completely free of fear from the
beginning. The bright pleasure simply increased until the separate “I”-sense
was overwhelmed in light.
From October on, each
time I sat to meditate, I entered the shining void (at times remaining in
samadhi for an hour or more). It is like entering deep sleep while remaining
wide awake. It is luminous clarity: dreamless awakeness—pure consciousness
without content other than its own uncreated bliss.
After a couple months
of this, I dreamed one dawn in January 1994 that I was on a stage before an
audience. A coffin was displayed on a stand and I was lying in it, facedown and
naked. An emcee was on stage, and it was clear that I was to perform a
Houdini-like escape act: I was supposed to free myself and emerge from the
coffin.
I began to chuckle.
What was the big deal? I was already free. The coffin lid was open, and I had
no chains or shackles on me in the first place. I simply stood up.
Next, I was holding
beautiful blue pearls in my hand, and the emcee told me to string them together
as fast as I could. I started slipping the blue pearls onto a string, as a
timer with TV-game show music ticked in the background. The emcee shouted,
“Hurry, get as many beads on the string as you can!” For a few seconds I
rapidly strung pearls, but then I stopped and looked across at the emcee. Why do I need to do this? I thought. This is your game, not mine. I gazed at
the audience and all eyes were upon me. I smiled at the people as I stepped off
the stage and began handing out the blue pearls, one to each person.
Then I woke up. It
was a sunny winter morning in Tallahassee, Florida. I went downstairs and sat
to meditate . . . and . . .
There was nowhere to go.
I strolled outdoors
into the woods around my home. I saw no dilemma at all, within or without. No
thing to seek. No experience to shed. No limit. I was not a something that
could travel to someplace. I could not go deeper or higher through any means.
I burst out laughing
from down in my belly. THIS IS IT.
What a punch line! I thought the moment of satori would never end. But by the
afternoon, when I went to pick up my sons from elementary school, I realized
that satori, too, is only a state. It comes and goes. Nothing lasts.
And guess what? I
don’t care in the least. I am not dismayed when ego appears, or when it
disappears. I am no longer at war with ego or void. They are twin aspects of
consciousness itself. I don’t take sides at all.
Reality is not
samadhi, the extinguishing of all forms. Reality is not even satori, the
natural mode of egolessness. Reality is no special state at all; no special
condition. Reality is the IS of all possible states, their
origin and unqualified basis, perfectly open and unbounded; pure capacity.
Fundamentally, nothing has changed or ever will, and what I’ve come to
understand was already only so: Just this.
From a certain
perspective it can seem a big deal: I’ve grokked
my own essence, and it is reality (or Buddha-nature). Or, as the Persian poet,
Omar Khayam, put it: “I am myself, Heaven and Hell.”
But on the other
hand, Buddha-nature and a buck will buy me a buck’s worth of groceries. No big
deal. No special status. Nothing special at all.
These days, I
sometimes meditate for pleasure and refreshment, like drinking a delicious tea.
And I occasionally enter spontaneous mystic states during meditation. Even so,
not any of it is necessary; and none of it is greater than simple happiness.
Samadhi or no samadhi, satori or no satori, ego or no ego—there is no limit,
already. No dilemma.
Nothing is more than wonderful. This moment is
wonderful. Nothing is more than
whole. This moment is complete. THIS is as God as it gets.
Truth (or joy) is not
exclusive, not hidden, not vague or abstract, not elsewhere, not different
than the stream of life. Birth and change and death are aspects of a single
process, the only event: the activity of (or within) Reality. Nothing
exists but Bright Mystery, which forever flows as all the possibilities of life
in all the worlds. As Lao Tzu put it: “The Way that can be deviated from is not
the Great Way.”
It is not that I am
now at every moment floating along in a mood of blissful clarity, or that my
neuroses have utterly evaporated. “After enlightenment,” I still at times feel
frustrated, angry, and so forth. I also feel saddened by the intense sufferings
of our human world family. But I do not resist any of it. Whether
pleasure or pain is arising, I understand the empty and inherently free nature
of the stream of endless changes, and I see there is no escape, nowhere else to
go. I can only be whole (without alternative), abiding as the Heart.[4]
It took twenty-two years of spiritual searching
from the moment I first encountered the “clear light mind” to finally accept
the wholeness that I am, the same totality that is true of everyone.
Friend, hear what I
say: The Divine you seek is your own
identity, before all ego-dilemma. Therefore, be already at ease. Relax into
your own life-process. Trust in happiness, luminous and clear. Reality is
Wholly Spirit, the Light that, while transcending every personality, also
shines as all our life stories. In the midst of experience we are fundamentally
free, beyond words and beyond worlds.
[1] Translation: sam (“total”) adhi (“total absorption”) nir
(“without”) vikalpa (“mental
formations”). It describes the trance state of complete absorption in
consciousness itself, without the appearance of any sensory or mental object.
[2] Kundalini and Kundalini Shakti are Sanskrit terms
for the primordial life-force or universal energy as it functions in the human
body-mind. The closest Western term would be Holy Spirit. The arousal and
release of this latent power in the course of meditation or devotional prayer,
etc., is what Western mystics call “spiritual baptism.”
[3] An oft-recurring vision was of the hexangular “Star of David” of
Judaism, which is also a common symbol in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. The
upward- and downward-pointing interpenetrating triangles, formed of brilliant
light, stood in space before my inner eye, with my seated form (in
lotus-posture) fitting inside the mandala star. I understood bodily that this
archetype expresses the harmonized fullness of the ascending and descending
currents of the life-force (kundalini shakti).
[4] Following the
tradition of Indian sages of non-dual wisdom (Advaita), I often use the term “Heart” (Hridayam) to refer to unqualified consciousness or uncreated
(inherent) intelligence.
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