Out of my great desire to have “Whistling Gypsy” put pen to paper, and with his permission, I post his further comments on his experience of God-Realization.
Thanks for your kind words, Steve. However, “I” can take no credit whatsoever for either the experience or the download. It was pure grace…. totally undeserved grace.
I now know that memory cannot hold such an experience (believe me, I’ve tried in vain to recreate it). It can only ever be experienced here and now.
But when “I” reflect back in a quiet moment to that shift, my heart often breaks wide open. Mother is all embracing. She is all inclusive. Nothing is left out. It’s all Love. That’s why there’s no longer any fear. It’s all my Self. All Mother. All Oneness. All inclusive.
I say this as a point of clarification: I did not experience the Absolute (however much I like the Yoga Vasishta quote ;o). (1) The experience as it unfolded through this body/mind was God as Divine Mother / Consciousness / Oneness seeing Herself as everything.
In this aspect (if we can call it that), God was seen to be the Big Activity (as the Zen folks like to call it). It is the Divine vibration (Shakti, Spanda), or pulsation of Life. (2)
As you say, the Absolute (Heavenly Father) is not knowable or experience-able. In my understanding, the Absolute is prior to Oneness even, prior to Divine Mother.
We can’t know or experience the Absolute; it is prior to all experience; there is no subject or object and therefore, no experiencing. However we can Know and Experience the Oneness (Divine Mother); or rather, the Oneness can see/know Itself by using these body/minds as perceiving instruments (the eyeglass metaphor).
These things are always a challenge to talk about, because words by their very nature are dualistic. But its fun to give it a try, don’t you think?
My go-to sage is Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That). He was one of a handful of sages (Ramana, Ramakrishna, Krishnamenon, et al) that were awake to the Absolute. I did some digging, as you might suspect, after the big breakthrough. Here’s what I discovered in Maharaj’s talks:
“Reality (the Absolute) is beyond description. You can know It, only by being It.”
He also referred to the Absolute as Awareness (his nomenclature). Here is how he differentiated the concepts of Awareness (Father) and Consciousness (Mother):
“Awareness becomes Consciousness when It has an object….. in Consciousness there is movement [as you said in your email]; Awareness (the Absolute) by Itself is motionless and timeless, Here and Now.” (3)
In the following quote he puts it all together:
“Awareness is absolute; Consciousness is relative to its content. Consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful. Awareness is Total. Changeless. Calm. And silent. It is the common matrix of every experience.”
I have had brief glimpses of this during other openings. “I” disappeared and all that remained was an absolutely silent, still, immovable granite mountain that was Infinite and Eternal, beyond time and space, completely dimensionless. What can be said about this?
“The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao.” (4)
In other places Sri Nisargadatta said that even though Awareness is the common matrix of all experience; he clarified that Awareness Itself could not be experienced; nor can It even experience Itself, being the Ultimate Subject (the eye can’t see itself).
[Some very nice complementary words deleted.]
Footnotes
(1) “[The] absolute cannot be realized or experienced by another; only the absolute can realize itself.” (Sage Vasistha in Swami Venkatesananda, ed., The Concise Yoga Vasistha. Albany: State University of New York, 1984, 46.
(2) Also Aum/Amen, Shabda-Brahman (Sound-God), the Word of God, Logos, the Voice of Many Waters, the Sound in the Silence, etc.(3) Compare with Franklin Merrell-Wolff, The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. New York: Julian Press, 1973.
(4) “There are ways but the Way is uncharted;
There are names but not nature in words:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.
“The secret waits for the insight
Of eyes unclouded by longing;
Those who are bound by desire
See only the outward container.”
(Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 53.
