How will you recognize the end of the search?

[lightmystic]

Yes, the different angle seems to be immensely helpful and awesome. It makes us go deeper into our direct experience, and then more is able to come out....

Yes, it is a little confusing for ZD to use the term "concrete answers", but he clearly knows That which is beyond concepts and so it must be meant in a way that does not involve trying to get the "right" concepts, which, I guess, is what the term would imply for both of us. It's just another way of talking about it.

But perhaps he would explain. It would be interesting to hear his experience on this.

Oct 30, 2009 10:38:59 GMT -5 astenny said:

Oct 29, 2009 10:06:08 GMT -5 lightmystic said:

Not necessarily, but truth is truth, and it can be recognized in many forms. And there seems to be a value to getting on the same page, as it increases the understanding of what one is already experiencing. So I like it.

By getting together and talking/chatting/posting as we do, it helps me to see things from a different angle sometimes. Too often I will only see a certain "truth" from one direction, and it helps to be jarred into seeing it differently.

I cannot remember who, but someone mentioned that they were looking for concrete answers for certain questions and that their search ended with concrete answers. For me, I never do such a search. Too often if I try to search for something like that I end up like a horse with blinders, and I later discover that I missed a very important lesson.

[zendancer]

LM & Astenny: Because I have a very strong "T" (thinking) function, I always related to the world through my concepts. Most people do this, but I am off the chart on the MB test in this regard. Consequently, I began my search with what I felt were very concrete questions, such as, "Is there a God?" "How did life appear in an esssentially inanimate universe?" "What is time or space?" "Is there a heaven or hell in any classical sense?" "What is the purpose of life?" and so forth. As time went by, I added tons of other questions from my scientific studies, such as, "What could explain the observer paradoxes in every field of science?" "What could explain Bell's Theorem (which implies that the entire universe is unified)?" "What is a photon (or any other subatomic particle)?" "What are 'things'?"

All of these questions seemed very concrete to me, but for twenty years I could not find any answers at all. After I began meditating, however, it quickly dawned on me that I was using my mind differently when I meditated than when I conceptualized, fantasized, or reflected. I began to suspect that the real world was hidden by my thinking. I therefore increased my meditation each day until I was spending almost three hours per day either watching my breath, or listening to sounds. After five months, I began falling into deep states of samadhi during which I, as an observer, disappeared. There was pure awareness without a "me," but there is no way to communicate what that state of mind is like to someone who has never experienced it. When I came back out of that state, and thoughts reappeared, I was amazed. I knew that I had not been present during that state, yet awareness had been there.

After three nights, during which I stayed in deep samadhi for one or two hours, I woke up and went to work. A few hours later, I had a mind-boggling kensho experience during which I disappeared (in fact, I forgot my name for about ten or fifteen minutes and even had a momentary out-of-body experience). Awareness was present, but there was no me. During the experience I had an intellectual illumination that came instantaneously through some unknown source or conduit. It was as if a direct downlink to the Absolute had been energized in some way. During that experience I became aware of a vast, intelligent, loving, Presence that was beyond human comprehension, and during that experience I learned many other things. The Presence that I perceived was so far beyond the concept of "God" that it is laughable, but I am sure that what I experienced is what most people commonly refer to as "God." It was both personal and impersonal at the same time. It seemed to care intimately about everything--down to the smallest blade of grass--and it radiated a benevolence that cannot be imagined. It was a unified whole that included everything.

I came out of that experience with what I felt were concrete answers to several of my questions. Afterwards, I knew that there is no space or time. These are human constructs--grids that we project upon reality. They have no more solidity than the lines that demarcate the edges of states. The grids are in our heads--in our thoughts, not in the real world. Second, I knew that there is an Absolute, whether we want to call it God, Allah, Tao, or the Ground of all Being. Third, I knew that what we call "the universe" is alive, intelligent, conscious, and unified." Fourth, I was able to distinguish between reality and "things," and I knew that "thingness" is just as much an illusion as time or space. I could look at a tree and see what the tree IS versus my old concepts about what I thought was a tree. Fifth, I saw through the "Mu" koan, the first koan that I had ever penetrated. Sixth, I knew that reality is not what I had always thought it was, and that the real thing was intensely alive.

That first experience fundamentally changed my understanding of the world, and changed many of my old ideas rather dramatically. Although "I" came back, and remembered my conventional identity, I lived in an extraordinary state of mind for two days. I lost all interest in material possessions and was ready to give away everything I owned (my wife and brother persuaded me to wait a few days). I tried to give my business to our employees, but they thought I had gone a bit nutty and were deeply suspicious. All kinds of strange and wonderful things happened during those two days, and a strange kind of power flowed through me. However, on the third day, I began to enjoy being egoless (watch out, watch out!), and I could feel something changing inside my body. Until then, I had never believed in "chi", but afterwards, I realized that "chi" is for real and I could feel energy moving through me in weird ways. I began to lose my direct connection to reality and I began to return to a thought-dominated world. I could no longer hold onto sounds effortlessly as more and more thoughts returned, and at one point I thought that I was going to die of a heart attack because my heart went totally crazy missing beats and thundering violently. It felt like I went through some sort of violent energy transition internally as I was disconnected from the free-flowing unity I had felt for two days. Coming back to a thought-based world was like being thrown out of the garden of Eden. I went from intense aliveness and unspeakable joy to a world that was dead and flat by comparison. Needless to say, I became mad to find a way back to that extraordinary world I had lived in for two days.

So, my ego returned, and my thinking habits returned. Now I had a ton of new questions to add to the others on my list that had not been answered during that initial experience. I was sure that my meditation is what had triggered that breakthrough experience, but I was astonished to find that I could not make myself meditate. All I wanted to do was think about what had happened and understand how that experience related to similar experiences in other religious traditions. I spent huge amounts of time in libraries reading every kind of mystical literature I could find. After several months, I heard about a Zen group in another city that held regular three-day silent retreats, and I immediately signed up.

During that first retreat I went through several highs and lows, but on the second night I found that I had become highly irritated in a most unusual way. Most of the chants were in Korean, and I wondered why we weren't chanting everything in English. As we chanted the Heart Sutra at the end of the chanting session, we came to the ending stanza--gate gate paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha. I knew that the words meant "gone, gone beyond, gone to the other shore." My fury had risen to a fever pitch by the time we got to those words, but then suddenly the bottom of my mind fell out and tears began flowing down my face. I suddenly knew why most of the chants were in Korean (because the Zen Master who had founded the Zen Center was Korean, and my ideas that the chants should be in English were just an idea), but it didn't stop there. It went deeper and deeper. I saw that there was no (conceptual) purpose or meaning to anything. Purpose and meaning were other thought-projected illusions--another kind of grid that our minds create. I thereby found three more concrete answers to my questions.

During the next fifteen years I went on many more silent retreats, practiced a lot of looking/listening/breath awareness exercises, and had many more unity-conscious experiences. Gradually, all of my other questions were answered in the same concrete way as the first ones. For example, I learned that what we call "a photon" is just an idea--a way of cognizing and imagining what is happening as a result of conducting various experiments. There is no such thing as a photon in the real world. In the same way, there are no trees in the real world. The idea of "treeness" is also just an idea. I learned that the subatomic world is not different than the macrocosmic world--aspects of each can be experienced but they cannot be "known" conceptually as they really are. I learned that the implication of Bell's Theoreom is accurate; the universe IS a unified whole.

My last question was "Is it possible for me to stay in a unity conscious state of mind?" After a year of contemplating this issue, I had an experience after which I realized that "me" was an illusion just like time and space, and who I really was had always been in a unity-conscious state. I realized that who I am experiences all kinds of states, but that only oneness is having those experiences.

In each case, I felt as if my questions had been concretely resolved in some embodied sense quite apart from any kind of intellection. The knowledge "I" acquired was not conceptual (episteme); it was all non-conceptual (gnossis). Today, I know (gnossis) who is typing these words, but it is not a human being. I do not know (episteme) what it is, but it is who and what I am. It is a mystery and a wonder that these hands move by themselves, hitting various keys with intelligence and precision. It is mind-boggling (episteme) that blood flows through these fingers and that hairs grow out of this skin. A hand rises and scratches the back of the neck and goes back to the keyboard. Little me had nothing to do with it. I do not understand anything. I do not know anything. I am rendered speechless concerning the isness of what is. Somewhere behind me a secondary computer is humming. A TV across the room is full of people chattering about the financial markets. Sunlight streams through the blinds onto an adjacent desk. A motorcycle roars by outside the office window. All is empty. Nothingness pervades everything. I do not know what will happen next. Cheers.

[lightmystic]

Hey ZD,

Thanks for sharing. Interesting...I also had a serious experience of totality that lasted around 3 days and then went away and drove me onwards to integrate it permanently. That was the beginning of the fast, uncomfortable dissent into Enlightenment. It fully blossomed somewhere between 2-3 years after that, but I certainly felt like I went through the same amount of things you went through in 15 years, just stacked right on top of each other and back to back....

I knew when you were talking about concrete answers you must have been talking about gnossis. I always had a very refined intuition, so I could find the concrete answers to everything, but it was a direct, constant gnossis experience to a fulfilling extent, and so it wasn't enough. And so I become disillusioned with the intellect, yet learned that being able to talk about that which cannot be talked about helped me get clearer on it and integrate it. That was a very important part of my process.

Ultimately, both intellect and emotions meet in the same place, which I call the subtlest value of feeling, or the most refined value of intellect.... (really it's the same thing)

[dramos]

ZD, I thougt this may be of interest to you as well as others.

Now I have always felt different than those around me and I never knew why, it was only a few years back that things became clearer and I understood, a process that will always continue.

I remember being in my first biology class, many years ago, we were studying the cell. The science teacher was discussing how the cell worked and so on and so forth, however while he was discussing this I was looking at the picture of the cell and for some reason I recognized the similarity between the cell and the universe. I kept silent but it was a huge discovery for me. I have always carried this experience with me.

It wasn't til more recently that this all came back and lo and behold.... "Indeed"

I was asked my understanding of the Bible. People are living the literal sense of it and we see this all around, however I have come to understand that it is the story about YOU in finding your true essence. When it talks about Kings, Kingdoms, the Universe, what is It that you think it is refering to?

There is your answer. I know how powerful thoughts can be as well as words, they can become manifest. It is not the "I" knowing these things, it's the IS in the Mind of the All.

[lightmystic]

Hey dramos,

The universe in a cell? Yes! Good stuff....