found at: http://www.futurehi.net/archives/cat_consciousness.html
I for one am deeply bothered by the all-too common misperception of
the highest degree of spiritual attainment -- most often labeled
'satori' or 'samadhi' -- as an encounter with the ‘blank nothingness’
or ‘emptiness’ of an ineffable Wholly Other.
I wont deny that limit experiences do indeed absolve the aspirant’s
consciousness of the bric-a-brac clutter of ordinary waking life. But
it seems to me that much of what is referred to as states of high
trance or mystic realization is more akin to a mountaineer mounting to
the peak of his or her chosen capstone -- and then (oddly enough)
closing his or her eyes to the breathtaking expanse above, around, and
below.
Hence the ‘nothingness,’ the ‘blank emptiness.’ Somehow in all the
strenuous endeavor of clambering to the tip of the pyramid, the
aspirant’s cognition, before alert and impeccable and intuitive to a
fault, has in some unforeseen way atrophied. (One simply can’t see the
forest for the trees!)
Now, I don’t mean to denigrate the pure astonishment which must
invariably accompany our trek to the precipice of the Eternal. Far from
it. -- Crashing through to what lies outside and above the microcosmic
envelope of one’s waking consciousness almost always results in a
temporary obliteration of one’s habitual pattern identity. The world
becomes suffused with a blinding radiance, a Light almost suffocating
in its intensity, rendering one’s usual conception of selfhood null and
void.
It is perfectly understandable that many find themselves easily lost
in this seemingly boundless, somehow affectionate glow. One has spent
long hours diligently skating the ice that customarily limits our world
of fluid matter from pushing up into the world of windy Spirit. Etching
ever more intricate fractal outlines into the seemingly impenetrable
periphery, searching for a fault into the Unknowable, a rupture into
the Ineffable.
And then at last the glassy veneer gives way, the ice splintering
into a dizzy maze of incandescent explosions. Heaven itself has been
breached -- the once impermeable permafrost of the Beyond collapsing
into a sun-drenched shower of millions of dazzling fireflies.
Its almost enough to stop the heart, this instantaneous annihilation
of our consensual waking reality. For after the bewildering tumult
attending our burglary into the Treasure-House of Consciousness has
been stilled, after the thunder of fracturing ice has subsided, we are
confronted with an uncanny stillness, an awful silence unlike any ever
endured in waking life. This absolute calm is such a profound
antithesis to the clamorous crashing that attended our final break with
consensual reality that it initially appears as a blank nothingness --
an emptiness wholly Other and uniquely in contrast to our
three-dimensional substantiality.
And it is here, at this critical impasse, that most aspirants lose
awareness of the phenomenon entirely. Swallowed up all in all by its
inviting phosphorescence, most surrender to the complete lack of
self-identity that it encourages -- and so lapse into utter
unconsciousness, acquiescing their finger-hold on the spiritual
mountain-top, succumbing once more to the illusions and fallacies of
our waterlogged waking consciousness.
The real trick, I believe, the secret technique, is to not abandon
self-identity to the winds -- but to identify oneself instead with the
Light that fills and surrounds you within and without. Declare your
presence anew as a Being of imaginal brilliance. Shed the thorny shell
of nihilism and be embraced by the ethereal glow of ‘Omnisism’ instead.
Above all, remain conscious enough to realize that this effervescent
illumination you now find yourself adrift in is not far apart and
distantly removed from the world of waking life -- but is rather its
most fundamental and informative strata.
It is not an ‘empty nothingness’ we are confronted with at the peak
of spiritual attainment. That is simply a common misperception arising
from the sudden lack of personal selfhood, from having our little
personal pattern identity temporarily restitched into the seamless
network of the world’s causal Hyperreality.
Its dangerously easy to lose one's lucidity when that 'lack' is felt so
overwhelmingly. It usually takes several attempts (and perhaps several
years) before the aspirant can master his or her own astonishment to
the point that he or she is capable of remaining fully conscious even
though the former boundaries of his or her pattern identity have been
dissolved. Its very easy to feel overwhelmed, and very difficult to
ride the crest of the upward momentum to its ultimate resolution. But
it can be done.
Its akin to a single drop of water falling back into the ocean --
what is really happening is that you have returned to your true
element. The boundaries where personal selfhood formerly ended and the
rest of the universe began are relinquished -- and a ghostly 'lack' is
felt at that moment. And this misperceived ‘nothingness’ of self is the
last illusion to shatter, the final Rubicon to cross, a vaporous mirage
at last dissolved by becoming fully identified with the all-subsuming
Light in all of its splendid omnipresence.
It is only then that the final barrier between Man and God will
fall. Not by mere tasting of the sublime ‘blankness’ -- but by
transcending the nothingness of the little personal self in favor of
the vivid tapestry of the Collective Divine.
* * *
In the above I hope I have demonstrated that the ‘blank
nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ commonly held to be the peak experience of
the Absolute is in all actuality only the last vestige of the vanishing
personal self.
Therefore, in contrast to the entrenched nihilism so popular today in discussions of spiritual practices, I propose an ‘Omnisism’ which instead restores the proper all-inclusiveness to the fully conscious experience of the Divine.
The Prayer To Our Father in the Original Aramaic
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