by Marc Leavitt
This was an experience like no other. It resulted in a very real and significant shift in my everyday perspective. My normal perspective was to view myself as a physically separate being looking from the inside of my body outside into a solid and fixed world. But I had been spontaneously jolted out of this perspective into a more expansive perspective. One that revealed that what I normally considered to be an outside world was actually just an appearance taking place inside of my mind’s eye. From my new perspective, I saw that the outside is actually inside.
There is an expression in mystical circles that speaks to what I had experienced and why this would forever change the way in which I would perceive the world. The expression says that “once you recognize the snake to actually be a rope, you can never mistake the rope to be a snake again.” So, now that I had seen the world for what it actually was …mere content on the screen of Consciousness, I could never again imagine the world to be the fixed and solid independent mass that I had once assumed it to be. In a very real way, the world as I knew it died that day.
But oddly enough, I didn’t actually experience it as the death of my world. In fact, it actually felt like the death of my ‘self’ in a way I could have never imagined prior to this. My very sense of ‘self’ was shaken to the core. I was now brutally aware of the eternal Void which I had always been operating from. Up to this point in my life, I had exclusively identified with the changing world in front of me, never aware of the changeless backdrop which is Awareness itself, our true and unchanging nature. But with my discovery of this forgotten half of the picture came a sense of dying as if my old limited sense of self was engulfed and encompassed by this new sense of self, a self that acknowledges the Eternal unchanging half of our experience.
After this experience, I became fixated on this unchanging Eternal half to the point that it had become an obsession. I noticed that all of the content of my mind, whether it be my thoughts and feelings or the myriad objects that I perceive in the world are all simply the Mind in motion while the Void is the very same Mind, yet unmoved. I continued my search for Truth and The Ultimate Reality. My meditation practice progressed as Stillness became my new beacon.
Chapter Three
The One and the Many
After six months of investigating this newly discovered Unchanging and Eternal half of my existence, I journalled the following…
Journal Entry: December 1, 2001
Yesterday I slipped into a peculiar state of awareness while meditating. I found myself in a state of deep inner silence and I recognized this Stillness as my basic state. The very recognition of this Stillness caused a stir in the silence making me aware of the movement of my mind. In a flash I saw the whole thing and I understood it perfectly. I even played with it for a while and committed it to memory.
In this meditation I was complete Stillness itself and as soon as I was aware of it being blissful, I realized that I had entered the arena of movement. In this state of movement, I was still aware of the bliss that I was in just a moment ago but it felt like a whole other world. I entered back into Stillness and was once again in the realm of bliss. I continued to oscillate back and forth realizing that the two states are like two sides of the same coin. Movement cannot fathom Stillness as the very act of moving (thinking, grasping etc.) disrupts the Stillness. So in short, the mind can never know Truth or the Infinite. The very presence of the mind negates the Truth.
What I saw seemed to be a symbol for who we really are and the whole situation of our existence. I had been obsessed with something very similar for a while now and this was just a variation on the same theme. I saw that we exist in two modes simultaneously: still and moving.
When we get the philosophical bug, we pursue the truth but we find it to be elusive and paradoxical. Well, that’s because we relate to ourselves as the moving entity and not the silent/still entity. The moving entity is the mind in action or thinking. Think about how silly it is for movement to try and understand Stillness. It is a blatant contradiction. This actually happened to me in a meditation a couple days ago and these experiences are bleeding together which makes it even stranger…
And later I continued …
It seems that no one can know the Truth; one can only be the Truth. But in order to be the Truth, the person who seeks the truth needs to die. In fact, it is only the seeker that obscures the sought. So, it is the 'person' that wants the Truth but the very nature of the Truth necessarily kills the 'person' who sought it in the first place. This is true because of the very fact that it is our personhood or sense of personal identity that makes the search seemingly necessary in the first place.
Hmmm, let me try to simplify it. The other night, I was contemplating a pendulum as a symbol for Reality/God. Let’s say that God is a pendulum and the nature of a pendulum is to oscillate between movement and Stillness. The pendulum swings back and forth but as it peaks to one side there is a moment (however brief) in which it is perfectly still before it swings back to the other direction. It doesn’t matter how long a clock would measure the moment of Stillness because Stillness is Infinite in nature. (Actually, we couldn’t even measure the moment of Stillness even if we tried because it would be imperceptible to us as entities in time.)
OK, so when the pendulum (God) is still, it is the Unmanifest/Infinite and when the pendulum (God) is moving, it is the manifest/finite. So, you can imagine how ludicrous it would be for the moving pendulum, which is me/you, to try to know or comprehend this Stillness. That is our situation. We are the moving pendulum looking for the still pendulum, but we can’t recognize 'it' because of the very fact that we won’t stop moving.
The only way for movement to be aware of the Stillness would be to stop. But stopping is the death of the mover so the mover will never see Stillness. This reminds me of my first taste of this at the Monroe Institute. I realized that no one could get Enlightenment because there is no one actually ‘there’ to be Enlightened. Instead, there is only Enlightenment which is the end of all separation.
So, once again, taking ourselves to be part of the world, we can never approach the Truth without facing certain annihilation. Contrary to being gloomy, this is very liberating. The Truth is that we have always been liberated as there has never been any bondage to begin with. We already are complete and Self-perfected, just doing damned good jobs at pretending otherwise. Like actors in a play who are so good that they have taken their roles to be real. Isn’t that what makes a good actor, and we are all very good actors.
At this point in my journey, I was journaling regularly on my computer. So, I will rely mostly on these journals to tell the rest of the story.
Journal Entry: February 2, 2002
It’s just past 3AM and I feel compelled to write in my journal. I had finished a very nice meditation and afterwards I knew the connection was back. I was back. I had been increasingly establishing a deeper connection for some time now but this one feels very permanent. It feels like this connection is my new baseline. I have been encouraging myself to keep a better journal and try to capture in words what I have never attempted before. It is perfect timing too because another wave is just beginning and this time I will be sure to express the whole thing from the very beginning, which is now.
I have been so drawn to Stillness lately. It’s like the everyday world lies just above the sea of Stillness. We can sink into this Infinite Ocean of loving divinity at any time but our addiction to movement keeps us on the surface, unaware of that which is waiting for us, if only we were to relax into what is. When you do sink into this Space, it is so familiar and so much like home that you are no longer concerned with staying there because you know that you are always there whether you are aware of it or not.
But lately I have been getting the feeling that something more permanent is coming. I feel like one of these meditations is going to get so deep that I will make a crossover from which I can never return. Perhaps what I am experiencing is the ego’s fear of its own demise. Sometimes I
see no point in ever thinking again. No point of ever coming out of that Stillness. I have lived in that mode before from time to time but what I am anticipating now is a radical and permanent break from my egoistic mind.
Journal Entry: February 15, 2002
I have been experiencing a certain peace and easiness that I really can’t put into words. It is a sense of supreme contentment that is anywhere from front and center to looming in the background but it never disappears. I have been attracted to silence more than anything else. I find myself not attracted to the usual distractions of life, instead just preferring to rest in contemplation or an inward probing into pure Awareness. I find myself wanting to spend more and more time just attending to my basic state and then just pressing or leaning into that Source.
I discovered a new meditation for myself last night. I saw that what I had been identifying with as my ‘self’ was merely a tension that breaks up when inspected directly. I was reminded of my previous discovery of this same thing, months ago. But this time was different.
After I recognized that tension, I saw that everything that I was aware of were merely objects. The tensions, the thoughts, the feelings, everything in my mind were just objects and I decided that I was not interested in any objects. I wanted to know the Subject. I wanted to probe that which was aware of those objects.
So, I let them all go and just remained as the Subject. I felt like the Subject was just behind where I usually find myself and I felt like just leaning in that direction until the wall gave way under the weight of my probing. This will be my new practice.
Journal Entry: February 25, 2002
A very awesome and profoundly simple practice that I called ‘backing up’ came to me while on the treadmill.
Verify For Yourself...
First, I simply noticed the world and that it was outside of me or directly in front of me. I realized that no matter what, I was always oriented just behind whatever it was that I was observing. Then I noticed that I was not only behind the world that I was observing, but that I was behind my body as well. I could actually observe the body just as I observed the world.
If you do this, then you are practicing ‘backing up' and that is all there is to it. Now notice your thoughts and continue to back up so that you are observing them much as you observe your body. Now notice the sense of "I am doing this practice of backing up" and just observe that sense of "I am..." while subtlety taking note that you are even behind that.
Now notice that whatever exists, it exists in you, as YOU are merely the Space or the Capacity and nothing more. Keep doing this with all the subtle movements until even "being" dissolves in YOU. The results should be profoundly interesting to say the least. After practicing this on a regular basis, you should be able to get Home instantly at any time of the day in any situation by simply intending to "back up."
Journal Entry: March 3, 2002
I had a beautiful experience not too long ago where I was just lying in bed probably just contemplating being or something along those lines when I suddenly became curious what my basic experience was. I can't explain it but it was so innocent and so sincere that without thinking about any specific teaching, I just naturally and quite abruptly looked for my basic experience.
I didn't think about it or say, OK, let’s probe. I just got the curiosity bug and without hesitation, I just stopped and looked for my most fundamental nature of being, and Blammo, next thing I know, it is like I am sinking away from the noise that I had just thought to be me and I can see it. The next frame in my memory is just ‘Being.’
I feel that I can describe it. It had a definite flavor or familiar feeling to it. When I tried to describe it to my wife, I found myself using a cigarette lighter to describe the experience. It was like the constant whooshing that the lighter makes after you ignite it. That constant whooshing is always there and that whooshing is Awareness itself but it always goes undetected by the moving mind because of its Still and Eternal quality.
Ahh, I see where I was going with this. Basically, ‘Being’ is always present but whether or not I am aware of this fact depends completely on WHERE I place my attention. If I am only paying attention to movement/noise then I don’t see what is always present. But if I am paying attention to my most basic and fundamental nature then I recognize my ‘Being’ which is eternally present.
At times, I’ve described this experience as finding myself floating on the surface of a rocky ocean, full of activity and then descending under the surface of the water, where it becomes increasingly still the deeper I go. Ultimately… there is no movement whatsoever. Water is always water, whether it manifests as bubbling frenetic boiling water or deep frozen still water. In a similar way, Awareness is always Awareness, whether it manifests as a limited sense of an individual self or the unlimited sense of Eternal Self.
Perhaps the most important realization that I drew from this experience was the discovery that the Still aspect of our nature and the moving aspect of our selves are occurring simultaneously. The implication being that Heaven, Nirvana or any other description of an Ultimate Reality is not some future event that we will be magically transported to after this earthly life but rather right here and right now. It is only obscured by the movement of our minds. This was a radical discovery because it revealed a completely new baseline for my reality.
Consider this; when we dream every night, we mistakenly take our dream landscape and our dream bodies as real or rather, a fixed and permanent reality. The only reason that we don’t consider dreams to be real when we wake up is because the perspective of being awake provides a sense of a continuing baseline experience. We consider our waking reality to be our baseline reality only because our waking reality is continuous compared to our dreams which vanish upon waking.
What I discovered was that what we consider to be our baseline experience, this apparent waking life, is not our true baseline. Even this waking reality comes and goes just like our dream realities. Our true baseline can only be Stillness itself, the Unchanging, the Eternal Awareness that is always taking place whether we are aware of it or not.
What exposes Stillness as our true baseline experience is its eternal quality and the sense of familiarity. In my experience, I saw that my basic and fundamental nature was this Eternal state of Being. This familiarity stood out. This state will always be there just the same as when we waken from a dream.
After my experience, I was convinced that all there is … is God/Awareness and it exists in two modes: one, as Stillness or the Unmanifest, the Eternal, the Unchanging, the Undifferentiated etc. … and two, as the manifest, the measureable, the impermanent, the moving etc. This realization distilled all my previous questions into one final question that I would torture myself over for the next few months. The final question for me was, “How does the One manifest itself as the many?”
Typically, the big question is “How was the Universe created?” The challenge is that it is almost invariably asked from a position of our perceived dualistic nature. For the most part, we see ourselves as distinct individuals living in a world that is separate from us and separate from God or the Ultimate Reality. But this dualism is only one perspective, and in my experience, limited and quite insufficient.
Another perspective, one that has remained obscure until very recently, is the Nondual perspective. This point of view holds that there is not ‘two’ of anything. There is no separate individual ‘you,’ AND a world, AND a God that created you and that world. From this Nondual perspective, there is only God and God appears as you and the world. The trick of all this is that when you and the world appear, God dis-appears, and when God appears, you and the world dis-appear.
Having seen this for myself through my meditation practice, the question loomed ever larger for me … if the One manifests as the many, HOW exactly does it do it? Specifically, just what is the mechanism that makes the whole Universe appear at all? If there is truly only One, then just how the heck does “two” appear?
I didn’t have to look any further than my basic black and white diagram to find the answer to this conundrum.
I remembered when I first drew the diagram; I was struck by the realization that all I really had to do to create the diagram was simply to draw a line.
The circle part of the diagram is not even necessary. The only reason I drew the circle in the first place was to create a space inside which I could draw the line. It is the line itself that is important, because it is the line that creates the only differentiation necessary to create a contrast. In order for there to be an appearance of two, you need contrast. That line is the one differentiation necessary to create the contrast.
OK, so now that I knew that what was necessary for two to appear was a simple contrast, I realized that any differentiation at all in the One would be the only thing it would take for the One to manifest as many. So, what could that one differentiation be? Well, I thought about what the One actually represents and what it might be. I was satisfied that the One thing that does exist is Awareness.
If everything truly is One, then that One thing can only be Awareness, because that is the only common denominator with any experience. Anything that has ever been experienced has depended on Awareness for its existence. Awareness is always the second half of any object’s existence. Even modern science, specifically quantum physics, recognizes that it is impossible to observe an object without affecting it. And it is only Awareness that makes an observer an observer in the first place.