Going Really Deep

I find the circumstances in which this experience occurred interesting, Chris. Aro [as well as other Vajrayana lineages that emphasize Dzogchen] has a number of practices called 'integrating with the elements' [of air, water, and fire, especially] that involve gazing, non-conceptually, at an element whose nature is to move.

In my own experience, feeling 'communicated with' by clouds, in some way that is beyond telling, has also instigated entry into a further dimension. And I know we're not alone in this experience. For instance, Wallace Stevens points at it, in "The Snow Man"--

One must have a mind of winter

To
regard the frost and the boughs

Of
the pine trees crusted with snow;



And
to have been cold a long time

To
behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The
spruces rough in the distant glitter



Of
the January sun; and not to think

Of
any misery in the sound of the wind,

In
the sound of a few leaves,



Which
is the sound of the land

Full
of the same wind

That
is blowing in the same bare place



For
the listener, who listens in the snow,

And,
nothing himself, beholds

Nothing
that is not there

and the nothing
that is.

[italics mine]

My first experience like this which I think some people call "unitive" happened while hiking around a lake in Texas about 1985. I just glanced over at a small stream, with plants growing around and up within it and with thousands of bugs buzzing above the surface and I saw ---

all that I was seeing and the object that was my living body were all together in some quiet simple and real world that my thinking mind had no relation to. I saw two worlds - one vast and real and vivid and kind of "indifferent" and one tiny and clunky and desperate and "ineffectual."

While this experience has rarely been repeated it changed me forever and I've never doubted that I saw things as they really are.

I'm hoping to draw some of our Mahayana practitioners in without his topic as I think the Mahayana practices are meant to induce what I'm about to describe.
I was blessed somehow to gain access to a non-dual state some years ago. I was sitting on a plane and was looking out the window at the passing clouds when the universe changed and all of the usual mental processes, the conceptual ones especially, that make up my existence fell away. I was left in a "place" that I cannot describe with words. It was a unity, an experience of Oneness. This was nothing like the experiences I've had while practicing vipassana and samatha (investigation and concentration). Those practices seem to lead to different states. What happened on that plane ride did not appear as a state but as a removal of some of the veils that normally cloud perception.
I've been working with this experience ever since. It has become available at almost any time but it can also deepen while on the cushion or at other very quiet times. In fact, it seems to go so deep that all relative "things" cease to exist. Space and even time become obvious constructs that apply only in relation to "things," and "things" appear as one in this "place."
Am I just fooling myself?

-cmarti

Hi Chris,

You are not fooling yourself.

However, the sort of experiential event you described comes in different types or degrees. Let's refer to the range of degrees as lower to higher, for simple convenience, even though the implied metaphor of ascent can be misleading.

The range of degrees begins with a basic "I became One with [pick your term: Nirvana, Buddha-Nature, the Absolute, God, the One, etc.]." This defines the low end of the range because it contains subtle distinctions: there's an "I" that conjoins the "One" and then afterward, sort of looks over its shoulder at what just happened. So, even though the experience is mind-blowing and unforgettable, it leaves in place the basic subject-object distinction. It creates a yearning to again have that distinction removed -- even permanently -- but cannot accomplish this because of ongoing misunderstanding about the nature and condition of objects and identity.

The middle of the range consists of degrees of "I see things as they really are." The degrees in this middle range will differ in accordance with one's increasing understanding of the nature and conditions of objects and identity. What grows here, in fits and starts, is a softening of the mental (and visceral) barriers we have constructed. We are continually becoming more comfortably intimate with non-duality, but we're not yet fully committed to it. At the low end of the range, it's as if we were delighted to have been taken into the lap of God the Father. Here in the middle range, the relationship is no longer like something filial, but more like something erotic. It's more like the sexual communion of Shiva and Shakti.

The high end of the range is "I Am Reality" where the word "I" is a mere placeholder. The actual felt sense of it is more like "Reality IS Reality" with nothing remaining outside or observing from some external point of view. Truly, this is indescribable, because it layers paradox upon paradox. Nothing that may be said about it is completely accurate. Love and laughter are its truest expressions.

-- Mike "Gozen"

Thank you, Gozen. You have a gift for clear and meaningful communication.

Chris, what you describe in your last post reminds me a lot of the Mahayana model of eightfold consciousness, specifically how the eighth, the "all-ground", is like a potential-to-experience which arises into discrete experiences in the five sense and one mental consciousnesses. The 7th consciousness in the model is the afflicted consciousness which grasps at the feedback between the potential and explicit states as if there was a "self" in that empty feedback, while in fact the whole process is empty/open.

Furthermore, in Dzogchen models there is a difference between this all-ground or source and the "ground-that-is-not", the clear expanse of sheer openness, which simply "is" yet is no-thing; i.e., unborn awareness. The is-ness of this open ground-awareness is exactly the same in all the conditioned experiences which arise from the all-ground, but even when recognized in open-awareness, this sheer is-ness is often not recognized in phenomena. Recognizing is-ness or Rigpa (unconditioned open awareness) in phenomena which seem to arise and pass is a very distinct "experience" in which the whole phenomenal universe including thoughts, feelings and perceptions and so on, is seen as itself unborn! Does this connect with your experience at all?

Emaho!

How perfect that as the year completes its circuit, the description of the enso of practice/view should make this first turning-- and in such a collaborative way.

Thanks, guys.

Lately when I'm sitting and doing my best to just stay with what is going on instant by instant withhout going away into thoughts about what is going on -- one of my thoughts is ( ) "this breathing is actually real, this sensation is actually real. These are all that is real. My thoughts -- ALL my thoughts are not actual, not real, just puffs of smoke, just grooves in the tunnels of my brain." Or something like that. This thought is a comment on what I am seeing.