Vastness might be us, not a separate self

Somebody in my house picked up Suzanne Segal's book, "Collision With the Infinite, " this morning. Outwardly, it seemed to be me. But inwardly, it didn't feel that way.

Even though I've got a bunch of books in my meditation area that were ripe for reading, I was drawn to move into an adjoining bedroom and look over the contents of a couple of bookcases. My right hand followed my eyes after I spotted the book.

Holding it, I didn't have a sense either that I'd made a decision, or that a decision had made me. Something simply had happened.

A few seconds later I was thumbing through "Collision With the Infinite," reacquainting myself with Segal's description of how, while waiting for a bus, she experienced a sudden sense of emptiness -- that the self she'd considered herself to be didn't really exist.

Back in 2007 I wrote about the book in Consider a cosmos that is only consciousness. It was nice to make friends with Segal's thoughts again -- and my own highlightings of favorite passages.

She writes lucidly, honestly, and refreshingly non-dogmatically. I suppose she could be called a "non-dualist," but if this word is used in her book, it isn't often. "Vastness" is her preferred term for what she now feels connected with.

At the bus stop in Paris, the "me" was annihilated, and it has never reappeared in any form. With this annihilation, there occurred the realization that a "me" has never existed who is the doer behind what has appeared to be "my" life. In recent years, it has also become clear that not only is there no "me," there is also no "other."

The "no other-ness" is now so dominant that nothing else is perceived. Life is being lived out of the infinite substance of which it is made, and this substance -- which is what and who we all are -- is constantly aware of itself out of itself. What an extraordinary way to live!

The vastness never requires that something must go away for it to be the vastness. After all, where could anything go in this vastness? ... Nothing has to change, go away, or transform itself into something else for the vastness to be the vastness. The vastness is always who and what everything is.

Now, this outlook is pretty darn close to a bunch of philosophies. Advaita Vedanta. Buddhism. Taoism. Other forms of monism and non-dualism. However, Segal almost entirely writes from her own experience, not from concepts.

For a long time her feeling of emptiness was accompanied by fear. She went to quite a few therapists and spiritual types in an attempt to understand what was going on. A Zen practitioner gave her advice. Then she asked him, "Have you experienced what I'm talking about?"

He admits that he hasn't. She moves on, eventually coming to some conclusions on her own:

This raises questions about the value of performing spiritual practices, studying ancient texts or even living a "spiritual" life. Most practices imply the existence of a "me" who can do the practice and eventually accomplish a particular goal.

But if a practice is undertaken by such a "me" in order to attain the non-locatable vastness of no personal self, then a conundrum or paradox presents itself. A personal doer is presumed to exist who must do the practices properly in order to achieve the realization that there is no personal doer.

...Further, most spiritual practices presume that awakening is someplace else and must be reached or attained. But we are always the vastness -- always! It is the naturally occurring human state.

Where would the vastness go? Where could the infinite hide? What could we possibly need to do to become the vastness, when we already are it?

I liked Segal's contention that any supposedly "spiritual" practice requiring the giving up, elimination, stopping, or purification of something (mind, desires, thoughts, etc.) is misguided.

This fits with my own lengthy experience, thirty-plus years, of practicing a meditation system that emphasized the negativity of Mind -- which earns a capital "M" because it was considered to be not only what goes on inside the human cranium, but also a universal "negative power" that misleads the spiritual aspirant and keeps him/her from entering the realms of Soul.

You can't get much more dualistic than that, which helps explain why the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) teachings, a.k.a. Science of the Soul, frequently cited quotations from the Bible.

Just as Christianity posits a Devil or Satan who stands between us and God, so did RSSB claim that Kal or the Negative Power operates through the human mind, which therefore can't be trusted.

Of course, this teaching was communicated by gurus who had a human mind and used it to share their thoughts about spirituality with disciples who received those ideas through their own minds.

Which is a paradox. And points to a way out of these sorts of contradictions: Segal's hypothesis (for her, a certainty) that the individual self/soul/ego or whatever doesn't really exist, but only appears to.

She speaks of how crazy it would be for someone to decry all the seaweed in the ocean. Hey, oceans have seaweed! That's part of what makes them oceans, and not purified water.

Segal also talks of the cosmos as being akin to sand. A finger made of sand draws figures in the sand. It's all sand! Nothing else. To say "the finger, and the forms drawn by it, interferes with the oneness of Sandness" is misguided. There's only sand, no matter how it appears.

Is Segal right? I don't know. Is there such a thing as right and wrong when talking about the ultimate nature of the cosmos? I don't know that either. I simply resonate with what she says.

All ideas about accomplishing spiritual awakening are based on the assumption that there is a someone, a you, who can perform the practices and accomplish the goal. But this someone doesn't exist.

Take, for example, the popular spiritual notion that we need to "get out of the way so the infinite can just flow through us." It is predicated on a non-existent someone who can figure out how to surrender. We need to see that spiritual and psychological practices, every single one of them, are based on taking ideas about who we are to be the truth of who we are.

The idea that we are the doer behind our actions does not make us the doer, no matter how often we get hoodwinked into taking this idea to be truth.

Then there is the notion that we must stop the mind in order to be free. But who will stop the mind? Like everything else, the mind is just what it is. A mind that generates thoughts is not a problem; it is simply doing what minds do. The mind is made of the same vast emptiness as everything.

Whether the mind is active or quiet, this emptiness never changes. Nor does the infinite wait for the mind to do or stop doing something in order for the vastness to reveal itself to itself. If the mind should stop, it simply does so as part of the unfathomable mystery.

 

 

Comments

[Stephen S Fine]

Dear Brian,
Suzanne Segal died from a brain tumour.It should not be ruled out that her entire experience could have been due to this.There is an article on her at wikepedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Segal
Stephen S Fine

[Brian Hines]

Stephen, I'm not sure if the brain tumor makes any difference. I suspect that Segal would have said that the tumor also was part of the Vastness.

I note on the Wikipedia page that she felt less in touch with the Vastness as the tumor progressed. This could argue against it being in a part of the brain that produced her experiences. (Or maybe a mild tumor acted differently from a large tumor.)

[Stephen S Fine]

Dear Brian,
Indeed,your point is an excellent one.Her disease does not detract from the message she seemed compelled by cicumstances,which she had no control over, to give.
I have read her book several times and each time her story fascinates me.The ideas of no doer,no ownership
always resonate with me.Yet feeling and intelligence do seem to be part of the Vastness.
How does one bring this message into an ordinary life and how can one equate "evil" with the Vastness are for me difficult to understand.
All the best
Stephen

[Mike Williams]

Hi Stephen,
Good post. It seems very difficult for new seekers
to understand this concept. With all the ambiance
of so many Gurus and all the excitement of all
so many promissed inner experiences.

The self (WHO), wants to wax itself with God
and spiritual attainments. Many years down the
seekers path, a person begins to realize that
all paths fail.

The person gets stuck in one method or another
and simply hopes something will eventually happen.
If nothing happens, they can depend on their Guru
for salvation anyway.

Then doubts creep in. One Guru to another. One
method, or another.

No way out of the circle.

[Willie R.]

When folks with a tendency toward introspection first begin to question the nature of "Reality", there is a sort of uneasiness about the thoughts that begin to form. Up is up, down is down, black is black, white is white, alive is alive, dead is dead, pleasure is pleasure, pain is pain.
Why? What for? Who or what is formulating these questions?
Perhaps the root of the questioning occurs when the brain sort of "recognizes" the impossibility of survival on an indefinite basis. It's very existence is purposed toward survival, but it is composed of elements that are themselves transitory in nature.

It seems likely (to me) that one's perspective on "Reality" is primarily a function of brain chemistry. Ms. Segal's "collision" with the "infinite" just happened to occur while her brain retained enough of it's functionality to support the organism. She died at the bus stop - her brain did not acknowledge the fact (so to speak) for many years.

Existence itself is "Reality", which already is equivalent to the unbounded condition which is euphemistically referred to as "infinity".

That's what my brain says - to no one.

[tucson]

I only am as all beings, I only exist as all appearances.I am only experienced as all sentience,I am only conceived as all knowing.

Only visible as all that is seen, every concept is a concept of what I am. All that seems to be is my being, because what I am is not any thing.

Being whatever is phenomenal, whatever can be conceived as appearing, I who am conceiving cannot be conceived, since only I conceive, how could I conceive what is conceiving? What I am is what I conceive;
Is that not enough for me to be?

When could I have been born, I who am the conceiver of time itself? Where could I live, I who conceive the space wherein all things extend? How could I die, I who conceive the birth, life, and death of all things, I who, conceiving, cannot be conceived?

I am being, unaware of being, but my being is all being. I neither think nor feel nor do, but your thinking, feeling, doing, is mine only. I am life, but it is my objects that live, because your living is my living.

Transcending all appearance, I am immanent presence everywhere and nowhere, because all that is - I am, and I am no thing.

[Roger]

tucson,

You wrote all that needs to be said...

OK, I need to get back to inflating one of my tires.....Roger

[Dogribb]

To easy to dismiss Seagal's experience as a product of brain cancer.Could have been her pregnancy ? But what type of brain cancer ?What was the progress of the cancer?How many years between her awakening and her unsuccessful attempts at getting the right diagnosis (brain cancer)And does that jive with the pathophysiology of cancer of these types.Any other people with her cancer in the same region have the same experience ?Nondual"awakening" doesn't seem to correlate with pathology unless the selfing mind is the cancer we are talking about

[Grace]

Yes, the universe is vast, but I revel in my individuality, in the feeling of my finger touching that sand, the sun in my (yes, MY) face, in my thoughts, in the fact that I have a unique personality that I bring to the human experience. Why would I want to obliterate that, 'transcend' that, and be empty?

Life is meant to be lived.

[Willie R.]

Grace - you have no choice but to revel in your individuality. To point it out is akin to belaboring the obvious.
You may not want to obliterate your individuality, but it will be obliterated just the same - naturally. If you are constantly mindful of that fact, then there is no problem you cannot face.
If you have any problems, that is.

[Grace]

When that time comes (when I'm dead) I'm fine with it. I see no need in becoming an amorphous blob with no individuality, unaware of being, at the present time. Meditation is seriously boring, I like being out in the world experiencing it, see no reason to hide from it.

[star]

I was going to post a link for you to Jill Bolte Taylor's TED.com talk on her "stroke of insight" but I see you have mentioned it in previous posts. She does such an admirable job in that video of describing an experience that sounds similar to Segal's. If Segal's tumor put pressure on parts of her brain the way Taylor's did, and it changed shape/pressure over time, that might explain why the "vastness" faded. Also, the other side of the brain may be rewiring to try to compensate.

If the oneness/vastness these people experienced was a result of brain trauma, and is the same as described by mystics and sought after by their followers, that makes it no less amazing, nor the paths teachers offer any less worthwhile -- they are worthwhile or not on their own merits.

If we have two brains, being able to choose to access them, being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each, and learning to use them well and avoid their drawbacks would be even more amazing.

We have such a hard time understanding these things and communicating them to others largely because we don't have the language for it -- how can we? language starts from shared experience, and these experiences are rare.

[Chris Crookes]

I found the most intriguing aspect of Segal's testimony was what she didn't write but which was added to her book as a prologue. namely that at the end of her life, the identification with her limited body-mind 'self' resumed. I.e. the realisation that no self exists only the cosmic empty oneness of 'vastness' was NOT permanent nor absolute, which to my mind demonstrates a basic fallacy of the neo-advaitist philosophy. Karma's gonna get you whatever you think or believe about it. And that is said to apply to all whoever and however highly 'realised' they/we become.

[Mike Williams]

Hi Chris,
You may learn something from this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(1940_film)

By the way Chris, does your leg itch ?

[Chris Crookes]

To Mike W. I don't understand either of your references (‘Pinocchio’ and ‘leg itching’?). Can you explain?

The bigger picture remains that Segal's narrative ¬¬ as I understood it was that her alleged spontaneous and random realisation had no ‘self’-related cause. Her resulting awareness that there is no 'one' or ‘individual’ lead her to believe that there is nothing to 'liberate', and thus no practice to be performed to achieve what cannot and need not be 'achieved', etc., etc. The basic idea being that the illusion of an individual 'self' is transcended in its own sweet time in its own sweet way. All paths, practices, performances to achieve this are therefore actually hindrances as they perpetuate an illusion of duality and 'self'. The ‘reality’ being suggested is that all our actions, emotions, and their repercussions are therefore non-binding once this reality is experienced as there is nothing (no thing) to which reactions can be bound. Thus no merit, no gain, no loss, no pain, etc., etc.
I'm suggesting that 1.) the end of her own life appears to contradict this. She did AGAIN BECOME CONFINED TO A LIMITED SELF, one that experienced pain and suffering some of which were the results of her previous 'limited-self' experiences*. (*If I remember correctly it was suggested that she experienced considerable mental distress, confusion and disorientation as a result of what she thought were her own repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse).
Another apparent inconsistency that I noticed in her narrative is that 2.) despite claiming her experience of the vastness was totally unrelated to any action or effort on her part she also wrote that she had previously accepted the philosophy of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and had practiced TM meditation very assiduosly and intensely for a number of years prior to her Paris 'bus-stop' experience.
Any thoughts on these two points?

[Mike Williams]

If your leg does not itch,
you are not Chris Crookes.
You are someone else.

The real Chris stated recently,
"Though it remains an indisputable fact that neither Pratap,
nor Jaimal ever adopted Radhasoami nam in so sectarian and so absolute
a fashion as did the followers of Saligram."
end quote

Jaimal named Beas satsang, RADHASOAMI Beas
Satsang.

Jaimal did not name Beas, Sat Nam Beas Satsang.

The name Radhasoami did not exist until
Salig Ram started his new religion.

Jaimal adopted Salig Ram as successor
and attended his satsangs,
where he learned the new faith from
Salig Ram, its founder.

[john barbieri]

A wonderful book. What i came away with was :

Which path to liberation
does not matter
in the least. What you
think or believe or
practice makes no difference.
What you are doing to
achieve liberation is an
effect and does not cause
it to happen. The real
happening is the burning
behind the scenes that
cares not one whit what
contortions it produces
in the world of form. The
inclination to be liberated
is a fire. Ashes of practice
may or may not result.
Practice is only an attempt
to make the journey sit ok
with the world while you
burn away.

[Roger]

" The real happening is the burning behind the scenes that cares not one whit what
contortions it produces in the world of form."

---"Silence is the backdrop to noise; it is always there in the background. With noise we break the silence but still the silence remains behind the noise. Silence permeates all of creation, behind the noise it exists. Another word for silence is “peace.” We need not add anything to our lives to have peace; all we have to do is remove the noise, and peace is there waiting for us in the silence. Silence has a rich, thick presence that exists in stillness. It is the fabric of the moment, the eternal now. Silence is the nothingness from which all things come."