I’m swaying to the music at my neighborhood Starbucks, which is like an office to me.
The bliss returned at 1:30 this afternoon. Now at 2:30 I’m blissful enough not to hide my enjoyment of my music without caring who sees me. I’m gradually coming out of my shell, my hidey-hole, around bliss.
But what I wanted to record here is that bliss has a remarkable effect on a person’s ability to know. I’ve had my profoundest realizations under the impact of bliss.
For instance, the 1987 vision of the total journey of a soul from God to God established for me that “Enlightenment is the purpose of life.” (1) That whole experience was steeped in bliss. In it, the realizations were coming fast and steady and I knew that bliss was the reason.
It was bliss that allowed me to look upon the figures in that wordless movie and say to myself, “That’s the Father, Brahman.” “That’s the Christ, Atman.” “That’s the Holy Spirit, Shakti.”
Of course longtime readers will recognize those statements as the seed concept that allows for the integration of the spiritual teachings of many religions – creating a cross-cultural view of spirituality. The fact that Father, Son and Holy Ghost = Brahman, Atman and Shakti is the Rosetta Stone of religions for me.
Aldous Huxley called the cross-cultural fundamentals of spirituality the “perennial philosophy.” Others called it the “ancient wisdom.” It’s the truth underlying religions, what their originators were really pointing at before their followers had a go at their teachings.
Today the perennial philosophy is freely available to us from channeled sources and a plethora of ancient texts now sold at bookstores throughout the world or available on the Internet. But their availability is a recent phenomenon.
On two other occasions, bliss spurred realization. Both were about the nature of Light. In the first, in 1986, which I called the Flame in the Heart, I broke through to the transformed space of bliss. What caused the breakthrough was recognizing that love and light both came from my heart.
And I also saw that I’d been seeing the advent of Light in a certain way all these years. Breaking through to this space, I expected to see a brilliant and discrete Light, the Light of the Self, the Christ or Atman. But instead all I saw was … well, just what I saw, but ever so much more vividly and distinctly.
And then I realized that what I saw was Light. Light did not have to be brilliant. To think otherwise is to limit Light.
As a follower of the path of awareness or consciousness, I realized I might never see a brilliant Light (although others will). I aim to deepen my awareness of exactly what’s before me – we might add nowadays, on whatever dimension I’m operating on at the moment. We get what we expect to see.
It isn’t a question of one viewpoint (Light as brilliance and Light as what we see) being right and the other wrong. Both are right, depending on the person, their path, and their expectations.
But it isn’t that insight that I want to draw attention to, as interesting as it was, but the accompaniment of bliss, which made the knowing possible. If I had not been experiencing bliss, I daresay I would not have realized what I did about the Light. Bliss heightens everything – whether the senses of the seer or the sight of the seen. Bliss unfolds our capabilities so that we have a wider net, a finer discerning instrument, and contact with higher inspiration.
On another occasion, in around 1990, my wife and I were … well, let me be discrete … but at the exact moment when I was feeling love, I was also aware of Light and I instantaneously tracked both love and light again (as in the Flame in the Heart) back to my heart. (2)
At that moment, I experienced another explosion of bliss that left me unable to remember my own name but knowing with certainty that I was God.
I called that experience the Silver Bullet. It certainly anaesthetized my lower self for the duration (about an hour).
Again bliss was what I found myself in and then, under its influence, I realized that I was God. (3) I knew that with the same certainty that I know I have a hand. Bliss was the midwife and catalyst of that experience as well.
Add to the earlier discussions, then, this research note that bliss, to paraphrase the Bible, brings all things to remembrance. As a result of these experiences, my working hypothesis has become that bliss brings about the unfoldment of our innate capabilities.
Footnotes
(1) For a description of the vision, see “The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/.
(2) Yes, I did realize way back what transformative love was then but the realization did not remain with me for long, I’m afraid. If you’d have asked me then, I’d have said that I experience perhaps minutes of transformative love a year – perhaps less.
(3) No, I do not consider this enlightenment. It was a transformational or peak experience and only lasted perhaps an hour.