A friend recently sent me an article Who Am I? The question of one’s identity This article describes a “spiritual” experience that I have myself experienced. I would like to comment on the following experience from this article.
“I was lying in bed not yet asleep when my consciousness shifted and I became aware of another reality. The sense of being in my bedroom and even of being in my body disappeared. I expanded in a spherical way and finally found myself in an unlimited space. Imagine yourself being somewhere in the universe. You can see the stars all around you. Then take the stars away, that was the space I was in. Just me and unlimited space. It impossible to describe it accurately. I have to resort to our mundane language to give you some idea what it was like. The vastness of that space is beyond description. My perception was spherical, and there was a strong sense of duality of me and that infinity. There were no directions, there was nothing else. Nothing to grab on to. That made me extremely afraid. I desperately wanted to get back to my body. At least that was something I could grab on to. I needed limitations, I could not deal with unlimited emptiness. It was a long and hard struggle, requiring all my will power to get to my body.”
This is very similar to my experience that I documented in Chapter 18 of My Introduction to America. It still sends chills through me whenever this happens again. I have gotten somewhat used to it now.
What do I make of this experience? Well, it is something quite subjective. It contains a very unusual sensation that is difficult to get used to completely. It usually happens soon after hitting the bed after an active day. It cannot be willed. It simply happens.
Since working on the Philosophy Project, the “I” appears to me as if it is the center of all the considerations that I hold. By considerations, I mean, thoughts, ideas, assumptions, expectations, suppositions, conjectures, speculations, etc. The existence of “I” seems to depend on all the considerations that I feel attached to. It seems that if I could let go of all my considerations, and view them objectively only, then the “I” would simply reduce to a perception-point. There would no longer be an individuality or identification remaining.
So, what is happening in that experience described above. I have read several people, such as Swami Vivekananda and Aleister Crowley, giving account of a similar experience. It is almost like the considerations detaching themselves from the “I” and receding from it, and the “I” being reduced to a perception point. It may be described as a process in which “I” is undergoing a de-condensation.
So, the infinite space that is experienced may simply be the impression coming from the final few considerations left. It is what the “I” is reduced to. “I” has nothing to grab on to but itself; and if this is not acceptable then appropriate considerations would be pulled back in. Though after this experience, the person may not feel the same again.
However, I do not think that at any point the life is threatened. The body is still there and very much alive. What may go away is the subjective attachment to it. The perception may become clearer, and the sense of rationality simpler. One may start looking at everything questioningly as if from a new pair of eyes.
What the above article calls ‘mind’, I refer to it as ‘unknowable’ in the many posts that I have written on this blog. This is because anything that may be stated about the ‘unknowable’ would simply be a consideration arising out of whatever ‘unknowable’ is. We are then looking at the consideration that has arisen and not at what it has arisen from.
There is nothing absolute or permanent. ‘Unknowable’ is unknowable because we cannot even say if it is absolute or permanent. So, I disagree with the following statement from this article.
“This is called the Dharmakaya, the body of realty, the essence, the absolute. This is the essence of our being, it is always there, it will always be.”
Otherwise, it is a good article.
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