by Marc Leavitt
My question was already abundantly clear. What is the Ultimate Truth of our existence, the very nature of Reality? The answer came, but it took years to unfold.
Immediately after leaving TMI, I started to have strange and mystical spontaneous experiences during the course of my everyday life. I was used to having different mystical experiences from meditation, salvia, hemi sync tapes etc., but all of these experiences were quite natural for what they were, and therefore almost expected. But what I was never prepared for were the intense “out-of-this-world” experiences that were happening to me spontaneously while I was just living my normal everyday life.
Some of the stuff just seemed random at the time, like when the whole world was revealed to me as being made of nothing but light. Just imagine sitting in your living room and suddenly everything grows so bright that it’s like someone turned up God’s dimmer switch. The light saturated the landscape to the point that all lines of distinction faded away, revealing only brilliant luminosity. That’s the kind of stuff that would happen at least monthly.
But for the most part, these events did not seem random at all. In fact, it became quite obvious to me that I was systematically being shown something by the Universe. Every once in a while one of these showings would manifest as a full-on vision. I had heard of Indians and various mystics having profound visions before but never in my wildest dreams would I ever expect to actually experience a vision for myself. However, this is exactly what would be thrust upon me several times a year from 2000 to 2002 and always when I least expected it.
The following is an account of the first time this happened...
Journal Entry: May 5, 2000
About a week after my return from my last visit to the Monroe Institute, I had a very profound vision. In one moment, I am standing by the countertop, looking at the refrigerator but not really noticing it because I was absorbed in this newfound state of expanded awareness (that I had discovered at the retreat). The next moment, I suddenly found that my perspective or “point of awareness” had popped out about two and a half feet behind me. Immediately after finding myself in this position, it was as if I penetrated beyond the visual field of the kitchen and saw deeply into the nature of Reality.
If memory serves me correctly, I would say that at the outer edges of my visual field, I could still see the corners of my kitchen but it was basically ignored in the same way that we ignore what’s outside of the movie screen when we are deeply absorbed in the movie. At this point, it was as if I were seeing beyond the appearance of my kitchen, and what was being shown to me instead resembled an ocean of sorts. It was like looking at a boundless shimmering ocean from a bird’s-eye view, yet knowing that what I was looking at represented the Infinite Universe itself. And then, as if I were being taught a lesson, the scene shifted ever so slightly to emphasize the countless individual tiny droplets that are making up this Infinite Sea of Energy.
But it wasn’t so much the visual aspect of the experience that I found so profound but the direct knowing that was at the root of the vision itself. The lesson was very clear. Is the Universe made up of one or many? I was being shown that it is both, depending on your perspective.
I knew immediately that what I was being shown was that the Supreme Source or what we have historically referred to, as “God” or the “One,” is actually manifesting as the Universe itself by dreaming infinite dreams simultaneously. Each one of us, as individuals, is ultimately just one of God’s dreams interacting with God’s countless other dreams.
As I realized that I was simply dreaming my life, I actually started to “wake up.” I can’t explain it but physically it felt like it does when you are knocked unconscious. I actually felt myself starting to lift towards the ceiling and reality began to feel “choppy.” I knew that I was waking from the dream and I immediately became terrified as I thought of my wife and daughter whom I would leave behind. I pulled back and scrambled for some paper to try to capture what I had just experienced.
For the next year, I was at my absolute peak in terms of spiritual seeking. The pursuit of God, Truth or the Ultimate Reality had already been an obsession for several years, but this next year was flavored with the knowing that I was closing in on my target. My practice was beginning to bear significant fruit which encouraged me to invest ever more increasing time and energy into my quest.
For the most part, this worked seamlessly into my daily life. Conversations with my wife or playing with my daughter provided perfect opportunities to practice, as I found the whole essence of spirituality could be distilled down to forgoing your sense of self in deference to the moment. So, if I was playing with my daughter, I would be completely absorbed in whatever fantasy we were creating together. And, if I was spending time with my wife I would lose myself in our dialogue to the point that nothing else in the world seemed to exist in that moment. Perhaps nothing did.
But in other ways, my spiritual pursuit had become such an obsession that it started conflicting with my daily life. For example, we had just moved out to the mountains and after renting for a year, my wife wanted to buy a house. From my perspective, that was simply impossible. I knew that I was on a collision course with God and I couldn’t look away from the road in front of me, at least NOT NOW!
I had so much momentum in training my mind to be still and unfettered that I just knew that to even start thinking about looking at other houses would all but destroy this placid mind space that I had worked so hard to achieve. Fortunately, my wife was very understanding when I would respond to her plans dismissively claiming that I couldn’t be bothered by any other pursuit except for the pursuit of God. At this point in my life, it was Truth or bust. I felt like I was so close that if I just stayed the course, I would eventually break through to finally discovering the answers to life’s ultimate questions: What are we, where are we and why are we?
I’m not sure of exactly what happened next. It may have been that I had worn myself down due to the intense seeking. It may have been that I had come to a point that I recognized how it was my desire that was fueling my spiritual search. Either way, both of these factors came together and manifested as what I termed, “the last desire.” I had become so sickened by the taste of desire that I came to the point that I desired nothing more than to be free from all desires, including my desire for Truth. I was sick of feeling needy, as if I were always missing something or waiting for something else to make me complete.
And this takes us back to where I began the book…
Journal Entry: May 31, 2001, continued
… I will try to explain what I mean by quitting. We are always doing and moving towards something. We don't realize it consciously, but in our own twisted way; what we are trying to do is to complete ourselves, as if this could actually be done. It is an endless game and it goes way beyond the 'rat race'. That is all we know, so we don't even recognize that we are constantly in the process of self-completion. We are constantly adding and moving, never sitting still. Our lives are dizzying and it is rare that we actually live them. Instead, they seem to ‘do’ us.
Isn't it odd that we just can’t sit still and remain quiet for an hour or so? We always need sound or visuals or some kind of mental masturbation because we are so damned afraid of ourselves, our silence. Stillness feels like death because we know no pleasure other than distraction.
So, that day, I quit. I declared myself done, complete, and finished. I was no longer working towards anything. No longer trying to complete or better myself.
The reason that I started the book at this point in my journey, when I decided to ‘quit,’ was because when reviewing my journey through my journal entries, it became obvious that the most important part of my spiritual journey was the very act of surrendering itself. In fact, the very essence of spirituality could be said to be nothing more than surrendering yourself to Reality. Whether you consider the Ultimate Reality to be God, Jesus, Allah, Shiva, the One or even Awareness does not matter in the least as far as
the act of surrendering.
The only thing that matters is the actual act of surrender itself. Trusting Reality unconditionally. Yielding your own will to Reality and wanting for nothing other than what Reality provides.
To illustrate why I feel so strongly about the profound nature of the act of ‘surrendering’, it’s important to point out that I had discovered meditation a full decade ago and I had been a serious practitioner for more than half of those years. But, it was only after this particular act of surrendering, four days later to be exact, that I would finally begin to receive the answer to the ultimate question of our existence. Here is what I wrote after this earth-shattering experience…
Journal Entry: July21, 2001
On June 4th, 2001 I was playing my guitar to George Harrisons' "My Sweet Lord" when I distinctly heard a disembodied voice telling me to look behind me. I did so, and then I saw IT. The Truth. I saw behind me and I have not been the same since.
When I looked behind me, I saw the Void. I saw the cosmic joke. And here it is. All of us only currently perceive at 180 degrees. But that’s only half of our story. There is a whole other half of our existence that we are amazingly unaware of.
The best way to explain to someone what I mean by perceiving at 180 degrees would be to have them stick their arms out like wings and then orient them just out of range of their perception. Then it would be easy for them to recognize that their current range of perception is at 180 degrees exactly. I would then point out that if they intend to see what they currently assume to be behind them, then they must draw their attention to what is assumed to be behind them. It is the shifting of our attention that changes what is appearing in our 180-degree scene. Reality is observer-dependent.
The reason we have remained unaware of the fact that we only perceive at 180 degrees is because the other half of our being is Unmanifest and therefore goes unnoticed. However, this time when I turned to look behind me, I SAW IN 360 DEGREES!!! The other side of what I was missing in my 180-degree normal perception is the Void!!! I swear to you, when I looked behind me, the filters dropped and I saw THE TRUTH! I was simultaneously seeing behind me, which was the Void, and in front of me, which was my living room but now I saw the living room for what it really was.
Seeing in this way, it was revealed to me that the living room in front of me was just a picture on a screen… a holographic picture. I was not in the room. I was just Awareness. I saw that I had always been pure Awareness pressed up against something like a movie screen. That is what we all are.
It’s just a big screen, a big fuckin' holographic screen. I could see the screen which revealed my living room and I could simultaneously see behind me… which was Infinity. I started writing everything down very sloppily and it kept coming on. All I had to do was stop writing and reality would unfold to reveal what is always behind us ... the Void ...
I am sane enough to realize how insane I must sound while carrying on about ‘Nothing’ behind us and some kind of ‘virtual reality screen’ in front of us. In fact, after this happened, I didn’t dare share the experience with anybody except my wife, because I realized how existentially devastating the implications of this experience were. I thought that this must be what it feels like to be a witness to a UFO, a near-death-experience or any other event that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. When you try to share an experience of this nature, it feels strangely intrusive because you are implying that there is something radical about the nature of Reality to the person that you are sharing with, and they probably know little or nothing about it.
In other words, if I really did see a UFO, then this implies that you also live in a world where UFO’s exist. I don’t know how you feel about that and its philosophical implications. If I tell you about an NDE during which I saw Heaven, then I am also implying that an afterlife definitely exists for you as well. So, you can imagine how uncomfortable it was for me when I finally did try to share my experience with friends and family.
After a month or so I did try to share with those that I had shared previous spiritual experiences with. What became apparent to me is that everyone I shared this experience with seemed to think that I was describing a situation like the movie “The Matrix” which posited that we are all trapped in a shared virtual reality. But the truth is that what I am suggesting is far more profound and perhaps even more disturbing than the simple plot twist that we are just having a shared dream of this world.
In “The Matrix,” the plot was about a real person having an experience. He had been tricked into thinking that he was seeing the real world when in fact he was only seeing a virtual reality… a simulation of the real world. If the character arose from his trance or somehow transcended the simulated world, he woke up to the real world. So, where my experience differs from “The Matrix” is that there is no real person and there is no real world to wake to. It may seem like a minor difference, but it’s a huge difference.
In my experience, when one transcends the illusion or awakens from the trance, one sees that what you really are is not simply another person, but instead, pure disembodied Awareness. What you see is not a fixed and solid world outside of you, but instead, the appearance of a world displayed on a screen. A screen of consciousness perhaps, but an actual screen nonetheless. Perhaps you can grasp the difficulties of explaining such an understanding.
Reading my account now makes me aware that I was emphasizing what I called a ‘movie screen’ too much. I can understand why. Because prior to that experience, all the contents that appeared in that screen made up my whole world. To have everything I ever knew with my five senses revealed to be images on or in a screen was absolutely earth shattering. But, in retrospect, I see my attachment to that particular aspect as a little misleading in terms of trying to communicate the actual experience.
What I would emphasize now, upon reflection, would be that my total perception suddenly and spontaneously expanded to encompass all directions simultaneously. Not only could I still see the world in front of me, which all sighted folks do, but my visual field was now expanded from the 180 degree range to a complete 360 degrees, thus revealing what was behind me. But what I saw ‘behind’ me, was not my couch and wall as would be expected. Instead what I saw behind me was the Void, the Unmanifest.
The simplest way to explain it is to say that I was the center of experience and what I was experiencing was both, the manifest world in front of me and the Unmanifest behind me. The only description that I could use in regards to explaining what the Unmanifest looked like, which I admit sounds almost comical, would be to say that it looked just like it does when you close your eyes. But its quality was not simply ‘nothing’ in the normal way we use the word, it was more of a ‘raging nothing.’ The qualities that I would attribute to the Unmanifest or the Void that was behind me would be that it was Aware, Empty and Eternal.
I was seeing completely. The world in front of me was revealed as a screen and that was contrasted with the world behind me, pure Emptiness. The reason that I kept carrying on like a madman about the whole world appearing on this ‘movie screen’ was because the experience was exactly like being so absorbed in a movie that you forget that you are in a theatre. Sometimes something interrupts your attention and the spell is broken. When that happens, you notice the theatre and the screen the movie is playing on. In a similar manner, when my attention on the world in front of me was spontaneously disrupted, it resulted in my seeing the Empty Space in which the world appears in.
The reason why I kept describing myself as ‘Awareness smooshed up against a movie screen’ was because normally, the world appeared to be at no distance from me. Therefore, it appeared to make up my total experience. However, during this vision, it was as if I had backed up far enough from the movie screen we call the Universe to notice the Aware Space that the Universe exists in. That Aware Space is the other half of the story that we call the world.
Seeing in 360 degrees reminded me of the classic Yin Yang symbol. The white
half was the world or universe in front of me and the black half was the Unmanifest behind me. The curving line that unifies the black and the white halves represent the inseparability of the world (in front) and the Unmanifest (behind).
Everyone is living from this design naturally and unavoidably, but we have become so accustomed to our fascination with the white half (world of form and change), we have become blind to the black half (Unchanging Aware Space for the world).
As a consequence of this complete identification with the world of form, everyone takes themselves to be merely a person in that world of form and overlooks their natural reality… that they are also Unchanging Infinite Aware Space having an experience of ‘personhood.’
This particular aspect of the experience has implications far beyond our earthly existence. It was immediately apparent to me that the basic subject/object design was also the root template for all existence. It doesn’t matter if you are an ant, a cow, a human, an alien from another planet or an amoeba. The design is always the same. You experience yourself as the Subject located ‘back here’ perceiving the world as the object ‘out there.’
It doesn’t matter if you are awake, dreaming, or if you die and go to Heaven. Because even with Heaven, the fact that you are having an experience implies that you will perceive in this basic subject/object format where you are Awareness ‘back here’ experiencing Heaven ‘out there.’
The recognition of this eternal design immediately destroyed any illusion I had of a permanent and fixed world that somehow exists independent of this basic subject/object template. Seeing that all of manifestation, whether it be our familiar daily world, the mental landscape in which we dream, or even the highest Heaven, are all just changing appearances on the screen of Consciousness, obliterated any sense of solidity that I had been projecting on the world as I had thought I knew it.