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May 16, 2005
Beyond The ‘Blank Nothingness’ Of Spiritual Attainment
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.
Posted by Upwinger at May 16, 2005 09:18 PMHey there,
It's a good text, but I think you are making a mistake according to the concept of nothingness. Most schools of buddhism that operates with this concept, does not operate with it in a nihilistic way. They stress everythings inderdependent co-arising, meaning that a phenomenon in itself does not exist, a phenomenon exist with everything else... ergo, in itself it is empty of meaning.
The ontology dealing with Nothingness, is an ontology that deals with a substanceless dynamic universe, instead of a substanced static universe.
Not saying nothing exists, but saying all exists but in dynamics, it changes, it is in itself empty.
A good way to view it, is the difference between nothing, which is very nihilistic minded, and Nothingness, which is a metaphysical size. This is inspired by Heidegger. The differences between the two concepts of (N)(n)othingness, is that the nothingness with small n, is absolute nothingness, not as a Nothingness which is in Heideggers thoughts, the ground of being, and in buddhism Nothingness is often seen more as where the phenomenons are having its play together.
Enough for now.
-Odden
Posted by: Odden at May 17, 2005 08:05 AMI agree with you about the nothingness as it is often articulated. I think part of this is mereley the different semantic mind set of east versus west. The way I have expereienced it, the nothingness that mystics describe is the paradox of the experience. It is from that nothingness that everything emanates - it is in the void, that we realize we are co-creators in the universe, that everything is possible, and there are no limits of ANY kind. So it is not nothingness, so much as it is beyond the duality of something and nothing, it is a state of utter bliss beyond description - and some say even beyond bliss - what John Lilly and Franklin Merrell Wolf call the High Indifference - Consciousnsess without an object. However you want to conceptualize it, it is most reassuring realization, because it means that consciousness is the ground of all being, and the true reality, not this crude matter as Yoda said. :)
Therefore contained in nothingness is the realization of its opposite - FULLNESS - a total experience of infinite bliss, light and possibility, or Alternity as John Lilly liked to describe it.
Posted by: PAul at May 17, 2005 10:39 AMI concur that these differences are mostly semantic in nature. But I would like to further clarify my point.
The Eastern notion of the 'blank emptiness' is not a 'nothingness' per se; it is not an absence of being, but rather a lack of objective qualities. It symbolizes a Presence unblemished by attributes and signifiers -- the unqualified, unmodulated waveform of nonobjective Consciousness.
But this nonobjectivity is in actuality a state of boundless potentiality. As the Ground of all being, it is also omni-objective, a cloudless reservoir of limitless possibility. It is pure, unadulterated Consciousness -- Consciousness-without-an-Object, as Paul noted -- Consciousness whose 'emptiness' is only relative to its spotless nonobjectivity.
This unalloyed Consciousness is everywhere and everywhen. It is the 'Suchness' in which we live and move and have our very being. Every created thing is saturated with it; it is the subquantum Urgrund upon which the dazzling display of manifest existence enacts its playful dance.
The prerequisitive neuro-chemistry slots into the unmodulated flux of this Omnidimensional Consciousness, and is thus flooded with enough vital thrust to objectively manifest its own personal pattern identity -- its own unique modulation of the omni-objective waveform that is Life itself.
Consciousness is thus the etheric dynamo that powers and propels all atomic structures -- from mere protoplasm to homo sapiens to heavenly supergiants. Its unmixed state may be empty of qualities, but it is this very nonobjectivity that unifies all creation with its magnanimous gift of infinite possibility.
that's not a mistake he intentionally said it. he's talking aboutthe process,
and upwinger think about this: that one stage before void and nothingness(the great brinking into heavens) has not escaped from the gift of thinking.
then it is the most pure form of thought.
oops, i didn't read that last post.
upwinger: we are not vulnerable to the pattern consciousness because of a flaw in something we do, it's because we DO something.. truly free will is the honest illusion that you are missing or denying(doing the 'wanting' to not wanting to believe what i am saying)
simple
Posted by: tuna at May 17, 2005 10:47 PMtuna --
I honestly have no idea what you mean by some of these terms or how they relate to what I posted (--being 'vulnerable' or 'flawed'?).
Are you saying that the drop of selfhood that vanishes into the sea of Divine Anonymity is one's 'free will' and not the total pattern identity of self? In which case I would like to point out that our freedom of being is the one salient feature that we do retain upon 'entering the Light', so to speak. ("See the Light, Enter the Light, Become the Light, and Shine!") It's no longer a simply personal freedom, but the experience does represent a complete break with all boundaries as we know it. And not to be imprisoned in some kind of overloaded stasis -- but rather as a nonlocal waveform free to wing to whatever corner of the cosmos compels.
Please elaborate and I'd be glad to explain my position further.
Thanks.
--Upwinger
Posted by: Upwinger at May 18, 2005 06:40 AM"This unalloyed Consciousness is everywhere and everywhen."
-- this is the purest form of thought not bound by pattern.
"instantaneous annihilation of our consensual waking reality"
-- awareness of the patterns, and organizing it by using thinking.
"Swallowed up all in all by its inviting phosphorescence"
-- it is enticing
"succumbing once more to the illusions and fallacies of our waterlogged waking consciousness"
-- HERE is what i mean: so if you surrender to it's lovely phosphorescence then you are VULNERABLE to this waking consciousness(pattern) way of being.
HOWEVER, to do this is to DO something, and to DO something is to have faith in the future, when knowing something is a pattern itself.. the only reason one would do this is because of the illusion of free will.
To say once again, to do something is to make a choice and to make a choice is to imagine the future.. since we can not know the future we have faith in it. to believe in the future is to believe in free will.. free will is the problem
I would have to reply that it is the supreme act of free will to shed the robe of personal selfhood and reunite one's own little drop of Consciousness with the oceanic flux that girds the cosmos.
I do indeed have great faith in the future. But no matter what I DO, I am applying my faith towards an act of creation, of creating the future.
I believe that there is indeed a Goal for the upward evolution of the human race. That Goal was set as the purpose of life itself long before there were ever homo sapiens around to debate it. Though the Goal is already existant, though one might say it is our 'fate' or 'destiny,' there still remains any number of pathways towards that Goal. We are each of us free to cut our own pathway, or to follow another's, or to ignore the looming peak altogether. It is our choice, our choosing, our act of free will.
We are never 'vulnerable' to falling into the (supposedly) fallacious trap of our own personal selfhood -- because we are always free to edit or upgrade or reprogram our pattern identity at will. Our own particular self-identity is our unique interface with material reality; we may indeed jack-out and return to the Source for the refreshment of a programs upgrade, but it is always back to the playful matrix of dimensional reality we must again return to enact the next scene in the cosmic drama. Its like the shaman returning to the ground after his breathtaking flight: he re-enters the village to disseminate his fruitful seeds of wisdom.
In time our interfaces will adapt and evolve further, and reshape our reality in ways we can now scarcely dream, the better to manifest the purity of nonobjective Consciousness in inventions of otherworldly complexity -- and that time may indeed be soon upon us. But that is a topic for another time.
Posted by: Upwinger at May 18, 2005 10:25 PMupwinger, thanks for clearing it out. I am quite pleased with knowing what you shared here
Posted by: tuna at May 18, 2005 11:04 PMmostly because I can now say that even when there are several ways of getting to the destiny, there are many that we know already about: explosions and death and happiness, etc.
honestly, if you live a life of memory-thinking then that's all that you will -do
if you live a life of war then that's all that you will do
and if you live a life of happiness and sadness, then life will be so simple to you and that is all that it will be... side effects of war and diversions will go with it
Right on, tuna -- dream the future, will the future, and then live the future.
Dream big -- and see it through. It is our creations, our inventiveness, our resourcefulness, that will see us through to the Goal -- and then further beyond. THAT's what separates us from the other species on this planet; THAT's what makes us the leading prototype of Consciousness' gradual forward advancement into nth-dimensional Hyperreality.
Let us not deny our heritage or our destiny, but forge ahead -- each to his own, and each as a god among gods.
Namaste!
--Upwinger
Posted by: Upwinger at May 19, 2005 07:27 AMOdden: You say, "Not saying nothing exists, but saying all exists but in dynamics, it changes, it is in itself empty."
-- It is not some vessel... it is.
_______
Regarding the free will and future and faith...
All I can say is that faith in the future IS THE MYTH. Free Will is the aligment of past experience with the elements at hand that do in fact ensure the future.
NOW is all that exists.
NOW exists because past and future make it so.
'ciao
Mr.B
Read that in context ;)
I am merely clearifying some basic buddhist points.
And they and i of course know it is! :)
But sometimes it is good to clearify so people wont get too lost in confusion and their own mind-tricks ;)
Posted by: Odden at May 20, 2005 03:01 AMOdden,
Please clarify, if you will, what "it" you refer to in the text "Not saying nothing exists, but saying all exists but in dynamics, it changes, it is in itself empty."
In order to futher discuss....
Posted by: Mr. B at May 20, 2005 08:10 AMOh ok..
Yes, the it here is pointed at single phenomenas in itself. Like a chair, or an emotion, or the Ego. Etc. These phenomenas all exist, but they dont exist all alone in themself, according to buddhist, they exist as ever changing substances, that has no core.
I hope this clearified it :)
Posted by: Odden at May 22, 2005 04:08 AMIn response.... I can only quote Upwinger:
"But this nonobjectivity is in actuality a state of boundless potentiality. As the Ground of all being, it is also omni-objective, a cloudless reservoir of limitless possibility. It is pure, unadulterated Consciousness -- Consciousness-without-an-Object, as Paul noted -- Consciousness whose 'emptiness' is only relative to its spotless nonobjectivity."
Posted by: Mr. B at May 24, 2005 08:11 AMI'm currently working on refining that definition further. For a rough draft, please see
http://upwinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/omnidirectional-waveform-of.html
A more final version of which shall be posted here @ Future Hi someday soon.
--Upwinger
Posted by: Upwinger at May 24, 2005 08:29 AMMr. B.
That quote shows an ontology based on a nothingness, "giving birth", or emanating to use a neoplatonic word, to phenomenas, which seems very neo-platonic, or Taoist inspired. Which is not the same way of viewing the void as i am expressing it. I took a view inspired by Nagarjuna, and Madhyamika buddhism, which is talking about the void on the phenomenons directly.
So there is a difference there, on where the view ontologically is put. Taoists, f.ex. view the play between phenomenons, and non-phenomenons.. or the That's it and the That's not, as coexisting and as the playfull dynamic force. Madhyamika for example goes into the phenomenons directly and look at the void of a phenomenons more.
So a slight difference. Which, if one is not clear on it, can cause some confusion. And I am not saying one is more correct than the other. They expres differently some of the nature of reality from their aspect, and gives some good discourses on the area.
Posted by: Odden at May 24, 2005 09:53 AMThe quote in question being mine, I suppose I should respond.
Odden is right in saying that it is an 'emanation;' neo-Platonic indeed, though I didn't plan on that. That is a correct enough explication of what I was saying, but I still have a problem with terming the nonobjective reservoir of all Being a 'nothingness.' I know that in western translations of eastern texts the word 'nothingness' is used frequently -- though the actual expression is closer to 'unqualified absolute.' The original term is truly untranslatable.
My original post never set out to debate the term's use in Buddhism, Taoism, or any other -ism. It was more of a reaction to the way the word 'nothingness' is flaunted about here in the west as a blanket term for the ineffable Ground of all Being. I personally feel the word 'nothingness' as it is understood here in the west (especially post-existentialism) does the real meaning of the eastern texts a great disservice.
And I would like to very staunchly reassert my personal belief that the felt presence of the Void during any limit experience is a fleeting phenomenon. It does not represent the end of the journey -- it just represents the moment when we truly know there can be no turning back.
--Upwinger
Posted by: Upwinger at May 24, 2005 07:06 PMAaah. Ok... In that context :)
Well then, nice post indeed. hehe.
Though the discussion has been giving and interesting anyway. :)