The process of growing accustomed to having no individual self continued to unfold. The mind watchfully monitored how differently the events of life were being experienced, noting and commenting (as minds do) upon the negatives and positives of each and every moment. Since the mind had already judged the entire shift of consciousness to be negative, there was little room for the positive to be perceived. In those rare moments when the emptiness appeared to move to the background, even slightly, the mind seized the opportunity to note a return to a “normal” state of awareness. This shifting of the emptiness to a background position was the only thing that qualified as positive to the mind.

The mind’s hypervigilance was exhausting. Because it was constantly engaged in rejecting the experience of emptiness, there was very little attention available for anything else. My life was filled with seeing no-self, fearing no-self, judging no-self, trying to forget no-self, rejecting no-self, worrying about no-self, and raising questions about no-self. Even in sleep the emptiness of personal identity continued unperturbed. No mental activity ever changed the experience of no-self in any manner, and none of the attempts to figure out, organize, or

evaluate it ever brought back a sense of an individual identity.

The mind seemed driven to understand what had occurred, but its search for answers within the mind itself was not yielding results. Consequently, the notion that someone else might explain this phenomenon began to predominate. Who might understand what had occurred? The fear of insanity was still the most prominent concern, and, although I had had no previous luck in finding a psychotherapist who could help me understand my experience, psychotherapy still seemed like the only place to turn.

A friend who worked at a suicide hotline told me about a psychiatrist who was treating one of the more frequent callers. The patient raved about his uncanny ability to help her find the humor in life—something my daughter had certainly shown me was vital. I called him to make an appointment and the following week drove the hour south to meet with him in his office in Los Gatos, near San Jose.

Carl Trimble’s office was located in a small complex just off the highway that winds through the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. He greeted me warmly and invited me to sit in one of the comfortable chairs opposite his wooden rocker. He lit his pipe and sat back, asking me how he could help me. I started describing my experience to him, watching carefully for his reactions. He listened silently for some time and then raised several questions about my life in Paris, my marriage, and my feelings about

being pregnant. I answered as fully as possible, aware that he was trying to evaluate whether there had been some particular stressor that might have given rise to the experience. I told him that my father had died just six months before, a fact that he noted on the pad in his lap where he was making occasional notes as we talked. 1 asked him if he had ever heard of an experience like this one before, and he said he had.

“You have?” I said hesitantly, with some anxiety in my voice. “Really? Well, what is it, exactly?”

“It’s called depersonalization disorder,” he said, without changing his expression. “It’s common for people to have this experience after encountering a deep shock, like when someone they love dies, or they hear some really bad news, or even when something overwhelmingly positive happens, like they win the lottery. It usually comes and goes over a period of a few hours, or a few days at most. Frankly, I’ve never heard of it lasting as long as it has with you. But I’m sure thats what it is, and I’m certain I can help you with it.”

“Help it to go away?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “It should go away over time if we can help you to discover what shocked you so much. It may have been something in your childhood long ago, or maybe something that happened in Paris. But once we get to the root of it by talking about your past, it should stop. Of course, it may take some time. It’s hard to know how long.”

“Depersonalization disorder?” I said. “Is that what you said it’s called?”

He nodded.

“Do other people really experience this same exact thing?”

“Yes,” he responded. “It’s quite common, in fact.”

“Common,” I repeated, shaking my head. “It’s common to feel like you have no personal identity?”

“It’s just uncommon that it’s gone on for so long without ever stopping,” he responded. “But people feel this in short spells quite frequently. I would also like to have you try some anti-anxiety medication to see if it might alleviate some of the symptoms.”

I shook my head. “No thanks. I really don’t like medication. My mother has been taking antidepressants for years, and I don’t like the whole idea of them—especially the way she regards her psychiatrist as some sort of god for having prescribed them.”

“Fair enough,” he said, smiling. “We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

Carl and I launched into our pursuit of the “cure” for the experience of no-self. I would drive to his office once a week and talk about my childhood, my relationships, and my interest in studying psychology. Maybe I was going to find some answers. Maybe the torturous fear would finally go away. Maybe my “I” would really come back if I discovered the underlying reason for its having left.

Inspired by Carl’s complete trust in the healing power of the therapeutic process, I started looking seriously into psychology graduate programs. In the fall of 1986 I enrolled at John F. Kennedy University and began taking classes in their clinical psychology masters program. Carl reminded me often that he had confidence that “I” would return; it was only a matter of time. We both regarded our goal in therapy to be the return of the “I-ness,” an endeavor we pursued together wholeheartedly.

After I had been seeing Carl for about three

months, I noticed a distinct change in his manner toward me. He started talking more frequently about himself, dropping small tidbits of information about his desire to have children and his purchase of a new home in the Santa Cruz mountains. When I would follow up on his statements with further questions, he would respond openly, and our discussions began to take on a decidedly personal flavor. He brought pictures of his new home and his dog to show me, sitting next to me on the couch as we looked at them together.

I was pleased with Carl’s attention. He was the first person from whom I had received any modicum of hope, the first one who had made any definite statement about what he thought my experience meant. Although I realized the experience had been pathologized when he had labeled it depersonalization disorder, it didn’t seem to matter since he thought the prognosis was so good. At least I had a name for the problem. And Carl would help to make it go away. His growing interest in me simply increased the hope that I wasn’t going to be permanently stuck in the emptiness of “I.” It also meant that I wasn’t hopelessly crazy; otherwise, this obviously sane, personable man wouldn’t be showing all the signs of becoming utterly infatuated with me.

Five months from the start of therapy, Carl ended our therapeutic relationship. He said that he wanted to continue to get to know me in other ways and that he could no longer be my therapist. We embarked on a romantic relationship, and he was soon a regular weekend visitor at my home in San Francisco. He began introducing me to his friends, careful to dis-

Analyzing Emptiness • 91

guise how we had met and inventing various stories until he settled on telling them we had been introduced through mutual friends. Soon we were spending every weekend together, either in San Francisco or in Los Gatos, and talking to each other every evening on the phone during the week.

As I got to know Carl, I realized that he did not have the same enthusiasm for talking things out in our relationship as he had in our therapy. As often as not, he would tell me he had already ‘given at the office” and wasn’t interested in discussing issues that might arise between us. He also assumed that my experience of no-self had somehow disappeared. He may even have intimated that I had really needed him to be my romantic partner in order to get my “self’ back. And because I still believed that my experience was a problem that had to be hidden, I no longer discussed it with him.

After six months my relationship with Carl finally ended when I told him I was returning to therapy.

“Why?” he said. “I thought you were cured of your problems.”

“Carl,” I responded, “you won’t talk to me about anything anymore. You think everything is fine, but it isn’t. I still don’t experience an ‘I,’ and I have to find some help in understanding what that means. There’s still an incredible amount of fear.”

“You mean that experience never stopped?”

“Never. There is not a single moment when the sense of being an individual person with a personal identity returns. It’s been five years now. Maybe it’s hopeless...”

“Here I thought you were feeling better,” he said. “But you know, depersonalization disorder

comes and goes over time. In some cases it never really goes away.”

“Carl,” I retorted, “this so-called depersonalization disorder has never come and gone. Don’t you get that? Five years ago it started, in a moment, and it’s never changed or gone away, even when I’m asleep!” *

“I don’t know what else it could be but symptoms of depersonalization,” he replied. “Maybe you’re just getting overly dramatic about the whole thing. I mean, you’ve been saying for a long time that you don’t exist as an individual person, but here you are right in front of me talking to me. You’re here, you know. You just think you’re not.”

“Why does everyone say the same thing? Do you think I’m just making the whole thing up? The fact that you see a body in front of you and hear a mouth speaking words doesn’t mean a thing. The fact is, in my experience there is no person. It isn’t something you can see from the outside. I’ve been telling you this for almost a year now!”

Carl’s face hardened. He stopped the discussion with a wave of his hand and told me he was going for a walk. When he returned to his house, I was loading my bags and my daughter into the car. He stood in the driveway as I backed up and waved as we turned onto the road heading toward San Francisco. That was the last I saw of him .

In the weeks after leaving Carl, the fear grew stronger, turning my mind into a battleground where the emptiness of self appeared to be the enemy

army. The emptiness deepened considerably as the fear waged its battle against it and would not remain in the background no matter how much the mind engaged in its various pursuits. I attempted to pour my attention into my classwork at John F. Kennedy University, plunging into an interesting academic life that kept the mind occupied reading new books, memorizing psychological theories, and writing papers. The emptiness rode along with every moment of attention, always present, never changing, like an uninvited guest that one is forced to accommodate.

Remembering Carl’s diagnosis, I spent extra time reading up on the ' dissociative disorders,” including depersonalization, derealization, and dissociation. Clearly, certain characteristics of those disorders were or had been present in my experience, although none of them described the most prominent feature—the absolute absence of personal T-ness” accompanied by unimpaired (and even improved) functioning in the world.

What did it mean that no answers were to be found in the psychological texts? Nearly six years of no-self and I was still no closer to finding anyone who even knew what it meant. I had fleeting memories of my friend Alan’s statement, ‘People spend years in caves trying to have this experience.” If the psychological literature didn’t have anything to say about it, could it actually be a spiritual experience? But the mind still rejected this possibility. There was no bliss, no joy, no happiness at all. And it was so empty. But why had Alan reassured me, even after I had told him how horrible the whole thing was? Maybe I should at least find someone who knew something about spiri-

tual experiences. There didn’t appear to be anywhere else to go.

At this point I wasn’t ready to venture too far from the psychological realm, so I tried therapy once more. This time, however, I chose a therapist who held degrees in both transpersonal and clinical psychology. He appeared to possess the perfect blend of training to solve the dilemma of whether I was encountering a pathological or a spiritual state. His ad in the local transpersonal journal was eloquently written, indicating a familiarity with spiritual experiences as well as a desire to compassionately accompany others through whatever struggles they were encountering.

I arrived late for our first appointment after taking the wrong freeway exit and breathlessly followed Sam Goldfarb into his house, which was located in a quiet neighborhood in the Richmond hills. He led me to a room in the back that he used as his office, and I plunged into my story, telling him in as much detail as possible about the emptiness, the lack of self, and the fear.

“Well,” he said, “it seems to me you are either encountering a dramatic seventh chakra opening, a profound spiritual experience, or you’re in a dissociative state in which you’re fleeing from reality.”

“That doesn’t tell me much,” I responded, “unless you know how to tell the difference between those two states.”

“Well, it’s not that easy to tell the difference,” he said. “I guess we’ll just have to start working together and see if it becomes obvious one way or the other.”

I spent three years in therapy with Sam analyzing and unearthing childhood memories and feel-

ings. Early in treatment Sam discarded the possibility that the experience might be a spiritual one, and we proceeded with the (unspoken) assumption that no-self was a state I had entered, in Sam’s words, “to escape feeling fear, sadness, or other difficult emotions.” It was, in other words, a defense mechanism, a psychological strategy for survival. Sam maintained that I had not received sufficient “mirroring” as a child, and the wounds that had developed by “not being seen” by others when I was young were now manifesting as this emptiness. He said I was narcissistically injured and had this “huge hole” inside me that I was trying but would never be able to fill.

Sam pushed me to express my pain by yelling, sobbing, and hitting pillows. He told me that the pain kept instigating my flight into emptiness because I was unwilling to face it fully, and until I faced it without running away, I wouldn’t be healed.

Emptiness of self was again pathologized, which by no means changed the experience, but simply increased the fear of it. There were days when I could not even leave my house because my body was literally shaking with terror. My talks with Sam led the mind to believe that my problem was much more serious than I had ever imagined.

“The fear is getting worse, Sam,” I cried, week after week.

“What are you so afraid of?” he asked, in his softest, most compassionate voice.

“I’m afraid of going crazy, of not being able to function at all, of not being able to take care of my daughter. I can hardly stand the fear anymore.” Tears were pouring down my face.

“Go ahead and try to go crazy,” he said. “Go on. I’ll be here to pull you back.”

“Sure,” I yelled at him, “you’ll be here. But so what? I’m totally terrified, and you’re* telling me I should jump right into it and you’ll rescue me? I think what’s happening is that you don’t have a clue about what’s really going on here, and you don’t know what else to try. Maybe you should just be honest and admit you don’t know, rather than making me more afraid than I was before.”

“You know, Suzanne,” he retorted, “you’ve been extremely difficult these last few months. You’re always angry with me; I feel like I can’t do anything right. Fd like to read you my notes about our last session. Would that be all right? I want you to know how I’m seeing all this anger you’re directing toward me.”

“You want to read me your notes?” I asked, incredulous. “Why do you want to do that?”

“I want you to know my impressions, my thoughts about what you’re going through.”

“Sure,” I said, still puzzled. “Go ahead and read them if you really want to.”

“OK, here goes.” He flipped through his spiral notebook for a minute until he located the correct page. Then he took a deep breath and began reading. “‘She’s been devaluing me for several months now because I won’t gratify her need to feel special. She used to see me as the ‘good breast,’ the nurturing object who was all-good, perfect, worthy of emulation. Now she sees me as the ‘bad breast,’ the all-bad, fallen-from-grace, deeply disappointing, frustrating, non-fulfilling object. Her pre-Oedipal wounding is more and more apparent, and her primitive defense mechanisms are operating full force. She’s splitting,

seeing me as the all-bad punisher. She’s infuriated that I won’t love her as the special one in my life.’”

I stared at Sam with my mouth open for several moments in utter disbelief, unable to speak. Was this how he had been seeing me for the past three years? All the time I’d been talking to him about the terror, the confusion, the difficulty of experiencing the cessation of personal identity, had he really interpreted it as a sign of object-relational splitting and borderline personality disorder?

I looked into Sam’s eyes. He seemed calm, happy even, a smile curling the corners of his mouth as he gazed peacefully at me. He was proud of his analysis and proud to have shared it with me. He waited for my response for several minutes, and then, when none was forthcoming, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. I was still speechless; the mind had been shocked into silence. I was still staring at him as I rose to my feet, gathered my jacket and purse, and started slowly for the door. Sam opened his eyes as I stood to leave. He looked at the clock, which showed a half hour remaining in the session, then turned a puzzled look in my direction.

“We aren’t finished,” he said. “Where are you going?

“I’m leaving,” I responded, hardly able to form the words. “I have nothing more to say. I can’t believe I really heard what you just read. I...”

There was no more to say. I left his office in a fog, shaking off his insistent pleas for more talk. What more was there to say? He had made it clear that he interpreted the experience of no-self to be a sign of pathology, of deep wounding in the early stages of life for which the prognosis was poor. This

was the same voice that spoke through my fears—

the icy, reverberating voice of terror that circulated

in the mind, piercing any moments of peace or con-

*

tentment like a sharpened blade.

While I was in therapy with Sam, I became involved in a relationship with a man I had met during one of my classes at JFK. As it turned out, he had been a good friend of Sam’s for many years. Steve and I came together in the context of a psychological perspective. We spoke about psychological material, theoretical models, and relationship issues in ways that constructed a bond of life pursuits. And we agreed that the intense fear that was constantly coursing through my life, which I described to him at regular intervals, was a sign of some deeper psychological problem.

Since both of us were training to be psychotherapists, we adopted a psychological view of everything that arose between us. We analyzed and interpreted behaviors, we talked regularly about the symbolic meanings of things, and we learned each other’s family histories in order to understand the deeper '‘patterns” or “issues” that influenced our relationship. Like Claude, Steve had difficulty understanding what I meant when I said there was no “me.” As far as he was concerned, he was relating to a woman who had every appearance of being someone.

Within the mysterious workings of the emptiness, the relationship with Steve developed and continued for nine years. Yet staying together didn’t

Analyzing Emptiness • 99

occur for any identifiable reasons, and the relationship itself never brought back a reference point, even though the appearance of being someone was pursued by the mind. Because we came together in fear, the mind felt compelled to make the act of relating appear to be personal by constructing from memory what it thought it looked like to be a woman in relationship. Never for a moment in all those nine years, however, did Steve and I have a personal relationship, since there was never a “me” for him to be in relationship with.

From the occurrence of the emptiness of individual self in the spring of 1982 until the end of my therapy with Sam, I had consulted with ten psychotherapists. Although none of those therapies had done anything but substantiate the fears, I still believed there were no other socially sanctioned places to turn for help in understanding what had happened. So, after Sam, I sought out yet another therapist.

Lauren Spock was a clinical psychologist in her early fifties who had a solid reputation in the transpersonal community as both a therapist and a spiritual teacher. After listening to the description of my experience, she told me I should never go into the emptiness; it was simply too dangerous. What she meant by dangerous I will never know, because once those words were uttered, the fear became so enormous that it was impossible to ask for clarification. She further warned that I should never listen to anyone who recommended I go into the empti-

ness, because that very recommendation would signify they knew nothing about it. She said that she was worried about me, and that I would soon be unable to function if I kept going as I was.

During the three months I saw Lauren, I became more and more terrified about what had happened to me. When she left for her annual summer sojourn in New York, we continued our therapy by telephone. During the third phone session, she told me I was so unstable she couldn’t be responsible for me at a distance. She had decided to end our therapy, and she gave me the name of another therapist who lived close by. She asked me to leave a message on her answering machine to let her know I had found someone else to work with.

Despite the fear, something always knew that Lauren was wrong. It was the same something that knew that all the therapists who had sided with the voice of fear had been wrong. It seemed foolish to seek out yet another therapist who was likely to hold the same perspective, so I tried a new approach. I found a traditional, psychodynamically oriented psychologist, a woman who taught at some of the local graduate schools, and started therapy with her. The new approach consisted of not telling her anything about the experience of no-self. Needless to say, the therapy was useless. She never knew what I really needed to talk about, and I never trusted her ability to see my experience from a non-pathologizing perspective. I spent one year in therapy with her, talking about graduate school and relationships and psychological theories. When it was obvious I was never going to tell her my real concerns, I quit.

Analyzing Emptiness • 101

Several months later, I tried a therapist recommended to me by a friend. She had been seeing David Kaye for years, and she trusted him implicitly. He was outspoken, upfront, and confrontational, and he concluded, a month into our therapy, that if I didn’t know who I was I had no business becoming a therapist. He thought the experience of emptiness meant that I was having a psychotic experience and that I needed to have twice-weekly therapy to help me “work through” all the “pain I was repressing.” Ten minutes into our sixth session, when he told me he felt that whatever he did was never enough for me, I stood up, told him I was quitting, and left.

My final experience with psychotherapy didn’t even get to a first session. I had been asking around for therapists who had come through their own personal experiences of depersonalization. It seemed that if I was going to continue searching within the psychological context, I might as well call the experience by a clinical name in the hope that someone in that world would recognize it. I was put into contact with a woman who told me she couldn’t see me because her practice was full. She asked if I wanted the names of other therapists I might call.

“That’s OK,” I declined, “I don’t think so. What I really feel is that no one can help me.”

“What an awful way to feel,” she responded.

“Well, it just seems like after all these years in therapy, after seeing twelve different therapists, either I’m totally beyond help or I should give up on therapy altogether.”

“Let me know if you change your mind,” she said. “I might have an opening in a few months.”

j

When I finished therapy with Sam, I was already in the second year of a doctoral program in psychology. In the fall of 1987 I had transferred to The Wright Institute after spending a year at JFK because I wanted to get a Ph.D. instead of a masters degree. All the subsequent experiences in therapy took me through the end of my graduate training.

The Wright Institute was a traditional, psychody-namically oriented psychology program, and most of the faculty and supervisors associated with the school held a rigorously analytic theoretical orientation. I was being trained to practice psychotherapy according to the Freudian “blank screen” model, in which the therapist says as little as possible while simultaneously attempting to come up with brilliant analytic interventions that will dramatically change their patients’ lives.

We were encouraged to “work in the transference” and “pay attention to our countertransference” in order to use this material in the therapeutic process, since everything in therapy “happened in the relationship” between patient and therapist. We were repeatedly cautioned never to “gratify patients,” which seemed to mean everything from not telling them how old we were or how we were feeling if they asked, to not giving them more than a cursory handshake after a particularly difficult session or even at the close of years of therapy.

The analytic stance felt like a straitjacket, and it was difficult to understand how it might be useful to patients, who in many cases ended up feeling worse

about themselves than when they started therapy. I never took this stance toward any of the clients I saw through the Wright Institute training program, although I never mentioned this to my supervisors. I simply could not rebuff the natural human gestures of my clients, or turn those gestures back on them, or meet their inquiries with silence.

The analytic position delineates that if clients have positive feelings about the therapist, they are told that this is transference that needs to be worked through. If they have negative feelings about the therapist, they are told that this too is transference that needs to be worked through. If the therapist feels something about the patient, it’s either countertransference or projective identification, a defense mechanism in which the patient projects repressed feelings onto the therapist and makes the therapist feel them instead.

I could never understand why someone would want to pay good money to a person who says little to them, refuses to respond to the simplest of questions, sees in their actions hidden, negative motivations (‘ the fact that you’re two minutes late for therapy means that you’re resistant to treatment’’), and pathologizes their experience by interpreting everything they do as a sign of some deeper, underlying problem. Traditional psychotherapy seems to be based on a primordial fear of mystery, and this fear creates the tendency to reduce, interpret, or pathologize all manifestations of consciousness that do not fit the cultural norm.

Although I am well aware that not all therapists work in this manner, this was the model in which my training took place. It was equally disturbing to hear

what analytically oriented psychotherapists said about their patients amongst themselves. I rarely heard expressions of compassion, sympathy, or even human understanding. Instead, each patient had a label according to their diagnosis. “You won’t believe what my borderline patient did yesterday.’’ Or, “The obsessive-compulsive I see at 10 o’clock is driving me crazy.”

As I neared the end of my training, it became clear that I was looking in the wrong place to understand the experience of no-self, since, psychologically speaking, this experience was something of which I needed to be cured. The notion of “cure” involves trying to eliminate, stop, or change something that you, or more importantly your therapist, cannot accept as appropriate. But there was obviously no way the experience of individual identity was going to return, and it was now appallingly clear that the field of psychology hadn’t the slightest clue about what was going on. Nevertheless, I finished the doctoral program and obtained licensure as a psychologist because it was just the next obvious thing to be done. I couldn’t have explained why I was doing it. I never proceeded according to reasoning arrived at through the mind.

Of course, the fear was still pumping out its own brand of logic, which reasoned that I had to pursue a career as a psychologist because I needed to assume the appearance of being someone. Knowing you are no one doesn’t fit the cultural model. In this world, emptiness is not an acceptable goal. Years later, my brother would make me laugh when he commented that I was the only one in our family to “make something of myself.” The mind had apparently succeeded

in its efforts to make me appear to be a person like everybody else.

'

'

.

'

7.

Emptiness Recognized as Vastness

For the listener who listens in the snow And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there And the nothing that is.

—-Wallace Stevens

A decade had passed since the personal reference point had disappeared, a decade spent searching for understanding while tormented by fear. No matter how much fear was experienced, however, the emptiness never fluctuated for a moment. I had looked to those who were considered the wise of our culture, those educated souls whose intellects had been developed through the rigors of academic training. Those “teachers of the postmodern age,” known as psychotherapists, had tried their best to provide me with some understanding of the experience I had described to them. They had attempted to find words to explain something they did not understand.

Although well-meaning, all the therapists I spoke with were imprisoned by their ideas about how life

should be interpreted and were unable to stay open to the possibility that reality could be experienced in many different ways. In the end, no one was willing to admit they simply didn’t know.

In the spring of 1992, one year after finishing graduate school, I began to seek a spiritual perspective on the emptiness of personal self. I read voraciously, prowling bookstores endlessly for anything that might shed light on my experience. These efforts paid off handsomely when I discovered Buddhism. There were entire volumes written about anatta (no-self) and shunyata (emptiness), page after page devoted to describing, discussing, and investigating the experience I had lived with for the past ten years.

I read everything I could find. It was amazing that I had never discovered any of this material before. I was particularly struck by the following passage by the Dalai Lama: “Selflessness (no-self) is not a case of something that existed in the past becoming nonexistent. Rather, this sort of ‘self’ is something that never did exist.”

In Buddhist circles, I learned, one is not met with stares of confusion and horror when describing no-self. In fact, I was getting the impression that not only was my experience considered a positive one, it was seen as the goal of every person who embarked on the Buddhist path.

One aspect of my experience that Buddhism was particularly helpful in explaining was that although individual identity had dropped away, all the personality functions remained completely intact. Now, however, those functions floated in a vastness that referred to no one. All the same experiences still

Emptiness Recognized as Vastness • 109

happened, there just wasn’t a “me” to whom they were happening. And the appropriate responses just happened as well, arising out of and then subsiding into themselves. Everything appeared and disappeared on the broad screen of the infinite-interactions, emotions, talk, actions of all kinds.

Without an individual self to direct action and speech, the concept of service took on an entirely new dimension. Now action and speech were seen to arise not out of any personal purpose, but out of what was needed in the moment for the situation at hand. There was no personal functioning, yet functioning in its entirety continued unimpaired—a copresence of functioning and not-functioning, existing and not-existing.

The Buddhist texts explained this by saying that what remains in the state of no-self are empty functions (empty, that is, of individual personhood) called skandhas, or “aggregates.” What speaks, then, is the speaking function, what thinks is the thinking function, what mothers is the mothering function, what feels is the feeling function, and so forth. These functions do the job of living in the world, and they are empty of individual self.

The five skandhas are generally translated as form; feelings and sensations; perceptions; mental formations; and consciousness. All experiences associated with the sense of self, according to the Buddhist teachings, can be analyzed into these five skandhas. There is no persisting self to be found over and above their functioning. These five “aggregates” do not in any way constitute a self. Rather, their interaction creates the illusion of self.

The worst fear we encounter as human beings is

the fear of annihilation. What happens, then, when annihilation occurs and still something remains? The Buddhists say that we have then stepped into truth. The skandhas remain but their truth (which is that they are empty) is revealed. This was my direct experience. But why had no one ever mentioned how bizarre and frightening the “step into truth” can be?

I still had not found any written descriptions of the transition or adjustment period that occurs when the self-consciousness abruptly disappears. Perhaps it was unusual for the experience to be so dramatic and abrupt; perhaps others had experienced a more gradual drop into emptiness and therefore not encountered the same extreme terror. It seemed improbable, however, that any true encounter with emptiness would not include at least some fear. The reality of the infinite must inevitably be terrifying to the flimsy illusion of the finite self. How could it not be? And why hadn’t anyone discussed it?

A closer look at the language and assumptions of modern-day spirituality provided some possible answers to these questions. There are widely shared, unquestioned notions in spiritual circles about what constitutes a true spiritual experience— notions that are undisputed primarily because they form a closed system. If you dispute their validity, the system insinuates, you must not be having the true experience, and therefore you have no basis on which to dispute.

Fearlessness is regarded as one of the signs of a valid spiritual awakening. Along with infinite love, bliss, joy, and ecstasy, fearlessness is considered one

of the indisputable markers of an enlightened life. People have always looked for things they can navigate by, signs that point the way and tell them when they have arrived at their destination. The interpretations of spiritual experiences have been managed or organized by this need to navigate and have thereby lost their validity.

We have become convinced that the presence of particular thoughts, feelings, or actions is the only way we can really know if someone is enlightened. The checklist of enlightened attributes is both lengthy and complex. Is this really love, we ask, in the presence of a supposedly enlightened being? Or bliss? Do they still have thoughts, we want to know, since we have heard that a mind empty of thoughts is surely a sign of spiritual advancement? And what is this? Is fear present? Well, the presence of fear proves they couldn’t possibly be having a true spiritual experience. In fact, however, the presence of fear means only that fear is present, and nothing more.

At this point, an old friend from my TM days called, and I talked to him about my experience. He reminded me of something Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had said a long time ago. Evidently Maharishi had made it clear that Cosmic Consciousness (the first stage of awakening) was a horrible experience and that the guru’s presence was essential to help the person move quickly through the stage of witness awareness. Without the guru, Maharishi claimed, the person could be lost indefinitely in confusion and fear. The guru did not actually give someone the experience of enlightenment, he said. Rather, the guru verified such an experience by saying, ‘Yes, that’s it!”

My friend also reminded me that Maharishi had said the same thing about God Consciousness—not

i

that it was as disturbing an experience as Cosmic Consciousness, but that the guru was needed to verify the state so the next stage of consciousness could reveal itself.

One of the books I read in my search through the spiritual literature was a compilation of interviews with a variety of contemporary spiritual teachers entitled Timeless Visions, Healing Voices. The book was written by Stephan Bodian, a therapist in Marin County who also edited a well-known spiritual magazine. One of the interviews in particular, with a teacher named Jean Klein, seemed to describe my experience precisely, and I made an appointment to talk with Stephan, although not without trepidation, given my past experiences with therapists.

Stephan had a calm, quiet presence, and I found him surprisingly easy to talk to. I described the experience of emptiness as completely as I could, mentioning the tremendous fear and anxiety. He asked me several clarifying questions and then said something I had never expected to hear from a psychotherapist: “You seem to have experienced a profound spiritual awakening. This appears to be the state of freedom that all the spiritual traditions, particularly the advaita (nondual) tradition, describe. This is wonderful!”

When I asked why he thought I was experiencing

so much fear, he said he did not know, but he recommended that I talk with his teacher, Jean Klein, who happened to be coming to Berkeley the following week to give some talks. Jean, he said, taught in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and other great advaita sages that the individual self is simply a fabrication of the mind, and that the real Self is a nonpersonal, all-inclusive awareness.

About ten days later I joined a group of about sixty people at a community center in north Berkeley to await the appearance of Jean Klein. He entered the room from a side door and walked slowly to his chair in the front of the room. He was a slender man, elderly and frail, with a kind face and sparkling eyes. He sat down and closed his eyes, sinking everyone into silent meditation. He remained in the silence for at least fifteen minutes, then slowly opened his eyes and began speaking. His voice was heavily accented, and everyone leaned slightly forward to catch each word. He talked briefly about freedom of awareness, making several suggestions to his students about perceiving without projections. He then asked for questions. I stood up and asked if I could have his comments on an experience I had been having for the past ten years.

“Ten years ago, quite abruptly, my sense of being an individual self dissolved, stopped, turned off,” I began. “Ever since then I have never felt like there’s an T there anymore. When I drive a car or speak these words or walk down the street, there is never an experience of a person who is doing these things. No person is there anymore.”

“You mean there is no experience of a ‘me’?” Jean asked.

“That’s right,” I answered, “there’s no ‘me.’ There used to be one, but now there isn’t anymore.”

“Well, that’s perfect,” Jean replied. “Perfect.”

“But Jean, why is there so much anxiety? And why is there no joy?”

“You must stop the part of the mind that constantly keeps trying to look back at the experience,” he responded. “Get that part out of the way, then joy will come.”

No one else in the room could possibly have known how appropriate his words were. There was a part of the mind—perhaps what we call the self-reflective or introspective function—-that kept turning to look and, finding emptiness, kept sending the message that something was wrong. It was a reflex that had developed during the years of living in the illusion of individuality, a reflex we commonly consider necessary to know ourselves. We “look within” repeatedly to determine what we think and feel, to make a study of ourselves and track our states of mind and heart. Now that there was no longer an “in” to look “into,” the self-reflective reflex was adrift, but it persisted. It kept turning in and turning in, unable to come to terms with the fact that there was no “in” anymore, only emptiness. What Jean taught me that evening was crucial, and I am forever grateful to him.

After his talk, Jean extended an invitation through one of his students to meet with him privately the following week. I drove to Marin County and found him sitting in the garden next to the house where he was staying. He greeted me as I approached and motioned me to sit next to him. He asked me to tell him the whole story of the change

of consciousness, while he listened carefully, smiling sweetly and nodding his head as I spoke. He then made a few comments about how I was perceiving purely, freshly, out of the immediacy of what is.

We talked for about forty-five minutes, then he inquired about my health. I told him my health was excellent, and he responded that he was glad. We sat side by side in silence for another fifteen minutes before I rose to leave. He shook my hand and said how happy he was to know that I was living in the ‘knowing.”

After meeting with Jean, I began contacting other spiritual teachers whose books or articles made mention of the emptiness of personal self. I wrote to a handful of the best-known Buddhist and Hindu teachers, describing my experience in detail and asking for their comments. From all of them I received wonderful, interesting letters filled with praise and excitement. Each in their own way made it clear that what had happened was wonderful. Each letter verified the experience as the realization of the true nature of all creation.

A profound relief accompanied the reading of each one. But the experience itself still brought no joy, and fear was still present. How could that be? I corresponded and met with several teachers to solicit their response to this one central question: If what I am experiencing is a true awakening, then where is the joy, and why is fear still arising?

Christopher Titmuss, an English teacher of Bud-

dhist vipassana meditation, told me how significant it was to realize the insubstantiality of the “I.” Addressing my fear that the experience meant that I was insane, he wrote, “In spiritual language, insanity is the absence of such experiences as yours, since it (the absence) renders absolute authority to the ‘me, me, me’ culture. The madness of the belief of that culture has personal, social, and global consequences.”

He said that he thought the reason there was an absence of joy or deep appreciation of the experience was that I didn’t understand it. “How could you?” he wrote. “You have no previous reference for it. How can T understand ‘not I?’” He recommended that I find someone locally who I felt “understands my experience, has had such experiences, and who knows the value and joy of realizing the emptiness of T.’”

In further discussions held when he was in northern California to lead a summer retreat, Christopher described how the calm acceptance of the experience would inevitably bring a quieting of any movement in the thoughts and feelings that gave rise to fear.

“You need to be reassured,” he said. I could feel the quiet integrity behind his words. “The reassurance will allow a quieting of the fear. Out of the quieting will arise the bounty of the experience and a deepening of insight.”

He continued, “When someone comes to me and tells me they have realized the emptiness, I usually tell them, ‘Come back in a year and a day, and let’s see where you are then.’ If they can say the same thing to me then and if their lives have been profoundly affected, then I’ll say, ‘OK, that’s it.’”

“Is twelve years enough?” I asked.

“I would say you were eminently qualified — overqualified even,” he responded, and we both laughed heartily.

Without question, what I had lacked during the entire twelve-year journey was calm acceptance. For twelve years I had received no reassurance; I had been completely alone. The mind did not know what to make of it all, and it searched constantly for understanding and meaning. It took close to eleven years to finally accept that the mind was simply incapable of grasping the vastness of the experience of no personal self. This acceptance cleared the way for the mind to comprehend that an ungraspable experience is just that. It’s neither wrong nor crazy—it’s simply ungraspable.

“Why don’t we go into my office. We can talk there,” said Reb Anderson, the abbot of Green Gulch Zen Center, located on coastal farmland just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. I followed him up the stone pathway set into the steep hillside, past the small wooden building that served as office and bookstore for the Zen community, and stepped out onto a wide expanse of lawn dotted with huge eucalyptus trees and colorful flower beds. We sat on a low wooden bench in the autumn sunlight. “Nice office,” I remarked. He smiled and then fixed me with his solid, intense gaze. I told him my story and asked him his opinion about why I wasn’t finding any joy in the experience.

“The experience of emptiness of self is bliss,” he said. “The emptiness knowing itself is bliss, but it’s a bliss that is not the same as relative bliss. It’s obvious to me that you are completely in bliss at this very moment.”

118 • Collision with the Infinite

He went on to explain that the relative mechanisms of the skandhas cannot perceive the bliss of emptiness, and therefore it made sense that the bliss that was occurring was hard to recognize. Reb’s description loosened a rigidity in the way the mind had been interpreting the experience.

Jack Kornfield, vipassana teacher and cofounder of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, and Ram Dass, well-known author, lecturer, and disciple of Neem Karoli Baba, also sent helpful, encouraging words, both doing his best to provide reassurance and accompaniment. Both of them reminded me that it takes years to grow into and integrate such a profound shift in consciousness. In a phone conversation, Jack said, “This is a wonderful experience. There’s nothing to be afraid of...In the East the word akinchina is used to describe a person who is fully awakened. It’s translated to mean one who has nothing, longs for nothing, stands upon nothing, and becomes nothing.”

Ram Dass said that you have “done remarkably well with this, in being able to develop and maintain the life you have with family and practice, which shows incredible strength.” He also told me that we “share no-self together, along with Maharaji,” and that there is a Tibetan great wish that one says in honoring one’s guru: “May your wisdom mind and mine remain inseparable. Wisdom mind,” said Ram Dass, “is the place of no-self.”

Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas), a spiritually oriented psychologist and author, responded to my letter as follows: “I recognize your experience as something real, as a spiritual awakening. It is definitely not pathological, and it makes sense that many peo-

pie will not understand it. I have had similar awakenings as part of an ongoing process and hence find your descriptions familiar.

“The way it happened to you is different from how my process of awakening occurred, and from the way I teach in my work. And the fact that your experience goes through stages and developments is also real and corresponds to how the process of awakening happens to many individuals. I believe your childhood experiences have prepared you for it, and the meditation and retreats you did also contributed. The fear and terror you mention is usual under such conditions, and it requires a great deal of understanding to see through it and go beyond it. It seems you have done well on your own without the guidance of a teacher. ”

But the clearest acknowledgment I received of my experience was from a spiritual teacher who was no longer alive. When I “met” Ramana Maharshi through his dialogues with his disciples, I knew I had met my spiritual father. He described my experience in such a direct and simple fashion that it left absolutely no room for doubt about what I was encountering.

Ramana: After transcending the dehatma buddhi (I-am-the-body idea), one becomes a jnani. In the absence of that idea there can be neither doership nor doer. So the jnani performs no actions. That is his experience.

Question: I see you doing things. How can you say that you never perform actions?

Ramana: The radio sings and speaks, but if you

open it you will find no one inside. Simi-larly, my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the radio, there is no one inside as a doer.

Question: I find this hard to understand. Could you please elaborate on this?

Ramana: The potter’s wheel goes on turning round even after the potter has ceased to turn it. In the same way, the electric fan goes on revolving for some minutes after we switch off the current. The predestined karma which created the body will make it go through whatever activities it was meant for, and the jnani goes through all these activities without the notion that he is the doer of them—because he is not. It is hard to understand how this is possible, but the jnani knows and has no doubts.... He knows he is not the body, and he knows that he is not doing anything, even though his body may be engaged in some activity. These explanations are for the onlookers who think of the jnani as one with a body and cannot help identifying him with his body.

Question: It is said that the shock of realization is so great that the body cannot survive it.

Ramana: If a man must at once leave his body when he realizes the Self, I wonder how any knowledge of the Self or the state of realization can come down to others.... The fact is that any amount of action can be performed, and performed quite well, by the jnani without his identifying him-

self with it in any way or ever imagining that he is the doer. Some power acts through his body and uses his body to get the work done.

Question: You say the jnani sees no differences, yet it seems to me that he appreciates differences better than an ordinary man. If sugar is sweet and wormwood is bitter to me, he seems to realize it so. In fact, all forms, all sounds, all tastes, etc. are the same to him as they are to others. If so, how can it be said that these are mere appearances? Do they not form part of his life experience?

Ramana: I have said that equality is the true sign of a jnani. The very term equality implies the existence of differences. It is a unity that the jnani perceives in all differences, which I call equality. Equality does not mean ignorance of distinctions. When you have the realization, you can see that these differences are very superficial, that they are not substantial or permanent and what is essential in all these appearances is the one truth, the real. That I call unity.

Reading more and more of Ramana s words led me to an astounding passage. Wlien asked by a disciple if it was necessary to be associated with the wise ( sat-sanga ) in order for the Self to be realized, Ramana answered: “Yes, [what is required is] association with the unmanifest sat or absolute existence.... The sastras say that one must serve (be associated with) the unmanifest sat for twelve years

in order to attain Self-realization...but as very few can do that, they have to take second best, which is association with the manifest sat, that is, the Guru.”

Poonjaji, a well-known and respected disciple of Ramana Maharshi, wrote that “in between the arrival of the bus and your waiting to board, there was the Void where there was no past and no future. This Void revealed itself to itself. This was due to your merits gained in many previous lifetimes. This is a wonderful experience. It had to stay eternally with you.... This is perfect freedom.... You have become liberation (moksha) of the realized sages.”

Gangaji, a teacher in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi and Poonjaji, wrote back, clearly excited about what I had described to her. “I was thrilled to get your letter!” she said. “Of course we must meet. I am very, very happy that you have directly discovered yourself to be no individual ‘I.’ This realization of the inherent emptiness—-which is pure consciousness—of all phenomena is true fulfillment. In the face of conditioned existence, much fear can be initially felt. Ultimately, the fear is also revealed to be only that same empty consciousness.”

Andrew Cohen, a spiritual teacher who also studied with Poonjaji and wrote several books describing his experience of awakening to the awareness that there is no personal self, replied that he would love to meet with me to discuss the experience I had described in the letter. We spent several hours speaking about the emptiness of personal self. He conveyed how exciting it is to live in the awareness that there is not and never has been a personal reference point for anything.

I wrote him again to share how delightful our

talk had been and how the awareness of “being no one was starting to show itself as the awareness of the non-locatable mystery that had always been the doer behind everything.” After my talk with Andrew I began seeing how the emptiness of a “me” was full of exquisite infinity. This awareness was to deepen and move to the foreground radically in the next month.

Andrew wrote back that he was “delighted to hear that our meeting had had a profound effect on your already awakened condition. I had felt the first time we spoke that you had more ideas about enlightenment than you were aware of. You are indeed a rare individual because in most cases when an individual has come as far as you have (which is rare in and of itself), they usually unknowingly take a position in their experience which makes it difficult if not impossible to proceed any farther. Your openness and receptivity is a sign of true humility, which alone makes all things possible.”

In the summer of 1993, a friend told me about a Zen teacher he had been studying with for several years. Dharma heir of a well-known Western Buddhist roshi, this teacher, I was told, was a highly competent spiritual guide. He lived fairly close to my home, where he both taught Zen practice to a community of students and maintained a private practice in psychotherapy. From the first time I met Richard McGuire, I knew I had found an understanding friend.

After listening to my story, Richard told me that it seemed I was still in the winter of the experience and that the blossoms of springtime would bring the joy I sought. His description of spiritual development in terms of seasons was a reassuring and highly appropriate one. Seasons arise and dissolve with an ancient rhythm of their own. They are the work of the mystery, not constructed by an individual doer, rising one after the other in an eternal, dependable rotation. Spring always arrives. Always. Richard was assuring me that I was encountering just one season of the emptiness and that I could trust it to change, just as surely as the spring always arrives, even after the longest winter.

Richard was able to provide me with the solid context of a tradition that was intimately familiar with the emptiness of individual self. He told me Zen stories and anecdotes about ancient Chinese masters. He showed me how I was “seeing with the same eyes” as the ancestors. When he said I was having the most classic experience he’d ever encountered—straight from the ancient texts—I laughed and said, “And here I thought it was just insanity!”

“That’s classic too,” he responded.

In the end, Richard’s greatest gift to me was the knowing that spring would arrive. And arrive it did.

A winter that lasts eleven years is a hard one to bear. Maharishi’s statement that the guru is needed to say, “That’s it!” indicates the extent to which being alone can leave one open to being overwhelmed by fear when the fear passes itself off for truth. The apparently personal aspects that still remain, even in the emptiness of a personal self, are constantly affected by fear. They still get stuck in

their functioning, like a record stuck in a groove, when terror operates at such a high pitch. When they get stuck, the experience becomes fixed, clamped into place, and the seasons cannot follow their natural, easy cycle of unfolding.

I had gotten stuck in the emptiness—what Richard called the “Zen sickness ’-—and it had become a vicious circle. Afraid of what had happened, I had isolated myself out of fear, which then just created more fear and more isolation.

He also told me how unusual it was to transition into the emptiness so abruptly and completely. With others he had observed, the transition had occurred in a piecemeal fashion, with discrete openings over time that allowed interludes of acclimation. Because such an abrupt shift in consciousness is uncommon and thus lonely, it can lead to an increased level of fear until one can “catch up with the experience” and give it a context. The mind must learn that it can’t grasp the experience of emptiness; in fact, it doesn’t need to grasp it. But the mind doesn’t take kindly to ungraspable experiences and tends to pathologize them simply because it can’t understand them. Out of its own inability to understand, it sends the message that such experiences are wrong or crazy.

I continued to ask Richard why the fear kept arising. He took the traditional Buddhist view that the presence of fear meant that something was incomplete, and he started to suggest practices I might do to get rid of it. I responded by telling him that there was no one who could do any of those practices, since there was not a locatable doer to be the practitioner.

This period in our friendship became a turning point. By suggesting that I find some way to get rid of the fear, Richard was clearly operating on the presupposition that there was a personal doer who could accomplish this task. He was also implying that the presence of fear meant that something was wrong and needed to be eliminated. Apparently, he did not actually experience the emptiness of personal “I-ness.” He was taking the presence of fear to mean there must be a personal reference point who was afraid. However, in the entire time I had been discussing the experience with him, I had insisted that the fear never referred to a someone.

I began to wonder aloud whether Richard shared the experience of knowing in a moment-to-moment way that there was no personal doer. Finally he admitted that, though he had given the impression that he did, he in fact did not. He was verifying my experience on the basis of his years of study of ancient texts and on glimpses into the emptiness of all phenomenon that had lasted minutes, days, or weeks.

Speaking with authority from the position of traditional Zen Buddhism, he had appeared to be more of an expert than he actually was. He couldn’t help me with the fear because he didn’t fully understand the emptiness. He had also been influenced by psychological theories as well as by the belief in Zen that one must do “character work” in order to evolve. When he began to tell me I needed to work on my character, I knew his advice was predicated on the assumption that there is an individual doer who can work on its character. I had realized that such a doer does not exist, so the idea of character work seemed absurd.

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I reminded him that I experienced no “I” who could do inner work. As a matter of fact, there was no “inner” to work on. Once it was clear that Richard didn’t share the experience I was describing to him, I thanked him for the accompaniment he had provided and took my leave.

8 .

The Secret of Emptiness

Midnight. No waves, no wind, the empty boat is flooded with moonlight.

—Dogen

I am not, but the Universe is Myself.

—Shih Tou

A lthough I had received a great deal of reassurance from the people I had contacted about my experience, the wintertime of no-self was still not yielding much joy. As it turned out, the joy was to arrive all at once, crashing onto the shores of awareness suddenly and irrevocably, just as the first wave of the dropping away of self had occurred twelve years before.

From the clear experience of emptiness of self, my state of consciousness was about to transition abruptly into the next season—the experience that not only is there no personal self, there is also no other. In other words, I was about to shift perma-

nently into unity awareness, in which the emptiness that dominated my consciousness was seen to be the very substance of all creation. Once the secret of emptiness was revealed in this way, I began to describe it as the “vastness.”

In the midst of a particularly eventful week, I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence,

I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw.

In the wake of this transition to the vastness of emptiness, I began to meditate intensively. I spent hours each morning and hours again each night just sitting in the vastness, as blossoms began appearing on the tree of emptiness. A strong pull arose to do a solitary retreat, so I arranged to stay for a long mid-January weekend at a Buddhist retreat center in the Santa Cruz mountains.

As I drove through the wintry landscape on my way there, everything seemed more fluid. The mountains, trees, rocks, birds, sky were all losing their differences. As I gazed about, what I saw first was how they were one; then, as a second wave of perception, I saw the distinctions. But the perception of the substance they were all made of did not occur through the physical body. Rather, the vastness was perceiving itself out of itself at every point in itself. A lovely calm pervaded everything—no ecstasy, no bliss, just calm.

At the same time, something else began emerging

which continues to this day—something I can only describe as a “thickening into unity” that was both experiential and perceptual. From that day forth I have had the constant experience of both moving through and being made of the “substance” of everything. This is what is experienced first—the stuff of unity, its texture, its flavor, its substance. This non-localized, infinite substance can be perceived not with the eyes or ears or nose, but by the substance itself, out of itself. When the substance of unity encounters itself, it knows itself through its own sense organ. Form is like a drawing in the sand of oneness, where the drawing, the sand, and the finger that draws it are all one.

On my own with the vastness, I had encountered the very insight that did the work of exposing the fear and releasing its hold. I realized that the mind had been clinging tenaciously to the erroneous notion that the presence of fear meant something about the validity of the experience of no-self. Fear had tricked the mind into taking its presence to mean something that it did not. Fear was present, yes, but that was it! The presence of fear in no way invalidated the experience that no personal self existed. It meant only that fear was present.

Fear didn’t need to go anywhere for the personal self to be seen to be non-existent. After all, where could it possibly go? It had never existed. Nothing needed to change or be eradicated; nothing needed to do anything at all but to be. Everything occurs simultaneously—form and emptiness, pain and enlightenment, fear and awakening. Once seen, it seemed so incredibly simple.

Fear’s grip now broke, and joy arose at once. The

experience of emptiness had given up its secret. The emptiness was seen to be nothing but the very substance of everything. I finally saw what had been in front of me the whole time but had been obscured by fear: There is not only no individual self, but also no other. No self, no other. Everything is made of the same substance of vastness.

Arriving at the retreat center in the late afternoon, I unloaded my bags at the cabin and went for a walk in the surrounding woods. I knew myself to be made of nothing and everything, just like all of creation. How could I have missed it before? It was right there in front of me the whole time, as close as the emptiness, as empty as the emptiness, and as full.

All the Zen stories Richard had told me came flooding back, and I began laughing and crying uproariously, unable to stop. Finally I fell to the ground, weak with the vision of it all. For twelve years I had known, seen, breathed emptiness, and now it extended throughout the universe in great tidal waves of empty fullness. That everything was unified in the emptiness now seemed like the most obvious thing in the world, but it had taken so long for me to stumble on it. I guess it had stumbled on itself.

Needless to say, nothing has ever been the same since. The fact that “I” no longer existed, that there was no person anymore, gave way finally and completely to the realization that there is nothing that is not myself. What remains when there is no self is all that is.

Maharishi’s description of the three stages of awakening—Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, and Unity Consciousness—now appeared to be incredibly relevant. The initial months of my experience, in which witness awareness persisted throughout waking, dreaming, and sleeping, was clearly the state of Cosmic Consciousness. Because of the abrupt and radical alteration of every previous manner of perception, this state of consciousness horrified the mind.

The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident. When the substance of all creation is perceived first and distinctions second, there is no doubt what state of consciousness is prevailing.

However, I still found myself wondering what Maharishi had meant by God Consciousness. He had always described it as a state in which all of creation is perceived to be infused with the sacred, the divine. The perceiver is perceiving directly out of the awareness of God. Nothing I had ever experienced fit that particular description. Nor had I ever heard Maharishi describe anything resembling the experience, so clearly delineated by the Buddhists, that one is not an individual self.

It was not until I discovered a story about Shakespeare written by Jorge Luis Borges that I entertained the possibility that God consciousness was really the consciousness of being no one. ‘In him there was no one,” the story begins, and goes on to explain that, when he was a child, Shakespeare thought that everyone knew they were no one as well. When he talked to his friends about the experience, however, he encountered blank looks, which “showed him his mistake and made him realize that an individual had best not dif-

fer from his species.” The story describes a life lived in the wintertime of the emptiness, where the mind, juiced by fear, tried everything my mind had attempted to spark the return of a personal reference point. It searched for it in familiar people, intense emotional states, and sexual involvements, but never for a moment did those things refer to a someone.

When Shakespeare became an actor, the story goes on, he found the perfect profession, where he got to “play at being someone before an audience who played at taking him for that person.” Although he spent his entire life attempting to reconstitute a sense of being someone, he never succeeded, though to everyone around him he certainly appeared to be someone.

The story concludes: “The tale runs that before or after death, when [Shakespeare] stood face to face with God, he said to Him, ‘I, who in vain have been so many men, want to be one man—myself.’ The voice of the Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, ‘I too have no self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dreams are you, who, like me, are many men and no one.’”

According to this account, which admittedly is fictional, Shakespeare was constantly being seduced by fear into regarding the emptiness as wrong or problematic. He took the presence of fear to mean that the emptiness was a “strange ailment” and therefore spent his life trying to make it appear that he was someone. I know this experience well. The ten years that followed the abrupt awakening to no-self were spent trying to look like I was someone. The fear that fuels such a pursuit is relentless. The mind’s contact

with the unimaginable, ungraspable, unthinkable vastness sends it into a frenzy of terror, in which it insists that something must be horribly awry; otherwise, it argues, the terror would not be present. This is the wintertime of emptiness.

The final paragraph of the story declares that the consciousness of God is the realization of being no one. From the perspective of the infinite, it is obvious that the individual self absolutely does not exist. The idea that we have a self that controls, arbitrates, or is the doer behind our actions is absurd. The individual self is nothing but an idea of who we are. Ideas are ideas—and nothing more. An idea can never be the doer or creator of anything; it can only be what it is— an idea.

♦

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9 .

Living the Vastness

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there lies a field.

YU meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

— Rumi

T his life is now lived in a constant, ever-present awareness of the infinite vastness that I am. In this state, there is absolutely no reference point, yet an entire range of emotions, thoughts, actions, and responses are simultaneously present. The infinite— which is at once the substance of everything and the ocean within which everything arises and passes away—is aware of itself constantly, whether the mind and body are sleeping, dreaming, or waking.

In every moment, this body-mind circuitry is consciously participating in the sense organ through

138 • Collision with the Infinite

which the infinite perceives itself. There is never a locatable “me.” In fact, the non-locatability of the vastness is the predominant flavor of the experience, and the infinity of this non-locatability is forever revealing itself to be more and more infinite.

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 v 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? However, an entire range of “self-referential” emotions, such as embarrassment, self-consciousness, shame, envy, self-pity, self-reflection, and introspection, have simply ceased to arise. Since the individual self to which they referred no longer exists, they have nothing around which to form.

The same is true for the self-referencing aspect of all thoughts, body sensations, emotions, and actions. Although these experiences continue to occur, they no longer refer to a someone, a me. Nor do they arise anymore to serve a personal purpose or to achieve a goal. Thinking never precedes action or speech. Everything has an immediacy that is empty of personally directed intention. The presence of any thoughts,

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feelings, or actions is never interpreted to mean anything other than that they are present. The vastness perceives purely that thoughts are thoughts, feelings are feelings, actions are actions. There is no longer any wondering about whether a particular thought is right or wrong. In fact, no judgment about good or bad or right or wrong ever arises; everything is simply what it is.

In this state, nothing is ever experienced as a problem. To see anything as a problem, one would have to assume that something needs to change or go away for the problem to be solved. But I never relate to circumstances, experiences, or people as if they need to be anything other than what they are— because what they are is the infinite 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.

Take, for example, the relationship to strong emotions like anger. The relationship of the vastness to anger is similar to the relationship of the ocean to the seaweed floating around in it. The ocean would never complain about the presence of seaweed and insist that it be removed for the ocean to be the ocean. In a similar manner, the vastness would never complain about the presence of anger or anything else that arises in it—and is simultaneously made of it—or insist that this arising cease. The vastness is never altered, no matter how numerous or intense the arisings. Nothing that occurs is ever regarded as a problem.

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It is only quite recently that the vastness has begun to encounter itself directly in every person it meets. In the first decade of the experience, which I call the wintertime of the emptiness, there was tremendous fear that being no one was wrong. How can relationships exist, said the fear, if there is no one here relating? But exist they did, though they never referred to a someone, a me. The mind was totally confounded by the mystery of relationships occurring for a non-personal purpose and in the absence of a personal self. Over the years, however, the mind was forced to acknowledge that, despite its fears, ordinary functioning never diminished—whether in relating, mothering, working, studying, or paying the bills.

In the wintertime of relationships, there was a constant attempt to look like I was someone in relation to a person who took me to be that someone, even though I always knew I was no one. The memory of what it was like to be someone lingered, and the mind’s fear about being no one inspired so much anxiety that relationships evoked a fear-constructed outline of somebodyness. Once it became clear that the presence of fear and anxiety meant only one thing—that they and everything else were present simultaneously in the vastness—then the relational season changed.

The springtime of relationships was awesome. To see with the eyes of the infinite—which is the substance of everything and perceives itself from within every particle of itself using its own sense organ—that relationships had also never involved a personal doer was so radical a vision that the mind “rolled over” and admitted that it simply could not grasp this inconceivable truth. Once the mind admitted to the parameters

of its own sphere and stopped pathologizing what lay outside it, the non-personal, indescribably joyful flavor of the vastness experiencing itself moved radically to the foreground forever.

With the realization that everything was made of the same substance, relationships ceased to exist, since there was no longer any experience of an other. Without an other, there was simply nothing separate to be related to. Of course, the relational function continued as before, and it always looked like relationships were proceeding unimpaired.

What seems to have occurred at the bus stop in Paris is that the human circuitry of this life started to participate consciously in the sense organ with which the vastness is constantly perceiving itself. The vastness is the substance of all things, existing everywhere simultaneous with the appearance of form. Form exists simultaneously as that vastness and in that vastness, like a drawing in the sand in which the drawing itself is made of the same substance as what is “inside’’ and “outside” of it. In the same way, everything that appears to be form is not separate from the vastness.

The human circuitry is made of the same substance. When it consciously participates in the sense organ that the vastness is always using to perceive itself, the human circuitry becomes aware—not through its own sense organs, but through the sense organ of the vastness—-that the substance of the infinite is its naturally occurring state. Seeing this, the

circuitry joins the undulation of the vastness in a conscious way and begins to experience unceasing awe at everything that is.

As I have said before, when it becomes clear that there is no personal reference point, it also becomes apparent that there never was a personal reference point, and that everything is done and has always been done by an unseen doer. This doer doesn’t start doing only when it is seen to be the doer. It has always been the doer; the personal self has never been the doer. Thus, life as usual continues to unfold; everything gets done, just as it did before the realization of the vastness occurred. Since there has never been a personal doer in any case, the realization of this truth does nothing to change how functioning occurs. All the functions continue as before—thinking, feeling, acting, relating. The difference is that it is now clear that they have never referred or belonged to a someone.

In the same way, the personal pronouns that appear in this book do not refer to a someone. There is no “me,” no “I,” no “mine.” The descriptions that have been given are simply a flavor of the vastness, the infinite experiencing itself out of itself—there is absolutely no someone to whom these descriptions refer.

While the functions continue to function, it is now seen that they have always been engaged not for a personal purpose, but to do whatever the vastness deems obvious in the service of freedom. The vastness has its own non-personal desire to perceive itself directly through itself using the circuitry of every human being. This conscious participation by the circuitry in the sense organ of the vastness is the state of freedom—the naturally occurring human state. The

mystery of the vastness knows within itself the most direct means to employ for that freedom to show itself. This circuitry is employed in a moment™to moment way in service to this mysterious vastness and always has been.

In relationships as well, all the functions continue as before, except that self-referencing thoughts, emotions, and sensations have ceased to arise. For example, sexuality still functions, but without the lust or longing that are the self-referencing aspects of that function. Sex serves no personal desire and has no deeper meaning that makes it anything but what it is at the moment. Like all the other functions, the sexual function is engaged when the vastness deems obvious, for a mysterious, non-personal purpose. When lovemaking occurs, there is no one making love to no one. How could this possibly be comprehensible to the mind?

The continued operation of all the functions in the state of freedom is an awesome way to live. It bears no resemblance to the stark emptiness that fear might paint it to be. People who tell me they don’t want to give up the personal because they believe they would be giving up love or joy or deep feeling don’t understand that the personal never existed. Nothing is given up. Love that appears to be personal is based on a mind-constructed sense of being separate. Love in this separate state involves a longing to merge with an other in order to be fulfilled. From the perspective of the vastness, the other does not exist. When the vastness sees everything out of itself to be made of itself, this is the ultimate intimacy. The moment-to-moment flavor of the vastness undulating within itself as it perceives itself through every particle of itself

everywhere brings a love that is limitless, far surpassing anything the mind could construct as the ideal love it seeks.

Joy and pleasure are also awesome in their nonpersonal appearances. To live in the vastness of the naturally occurring state is to bathe in the ocean of non-personal pleasure and joy. This joy and pleasure, which belong to no one, are unlike any joy or pleasure that appear to refer or belong to a someone. The emptiness is so full, so total, so infinitely blissful to itself.

These eyes see the incredible benevolence of the universe, which is completely trustworthy in all respects. There is nothing to fear. Everything in each moment is so well taken care of-~and always has been. As the vastness peers out through these eyes onto the postmodern world, it feels moved to speak somehow to the myriad forms of suffering that are occurring.

Because the collision with emptiness occurred in my 28 th year—without any search for it on my part, without a teacher or a traditional lineage, and before I had ever heard about no personal self—it seems that the vastness was training this circuitry to address the value of spiritual practices. The way the experience took place made it clear that the emptiness thrusts itself forward without waiting for any go-ahead from the mind. The infinite does not wait for the mind to grasp it in order for it to exist. In fact, realization of the infinite is outside the sphere of the mind. The infi-

nite realizes itself out of itself.

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.

But this reference to a personal doer runs totally counter to how the infinite exists. In this life, it has been clear ever since the experience at the bus stop that there never is, nor has there ever been, a personal doer anywhere. Prescribed techniques and lifestyles that insinuate an “I” who must “do” in order for awakening to occur presuppose a cause-and-effect relationship that simply does not exist. How can a personal “I” who doesn’t exist be the one who must do something in order for awakening to occur?

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?

Many techniques also suggest that something must be eliminated, stopped, or purified in order for us to become who we really are. But the vastness is everything at all times. Nothing exists outside it, and nothing needs to be excluded from it. After all, we are

talking about the infinite here.

In particular, there are spiritual traditions that imply that the mind must be stopped for the vastness to be realized. The assumption is that the relative activity of mind correlates with awakening. Of course, if a practice is undertaken to quiet or stop the mind, the result may be a quiet mind. But the infinite is not perceived through or grasped by the mind. The infinite realizes itself.

In this life, awakening did not occur because the mind stopped. No psychological or spiritual technique was involved, nor was there any locatable or apparent cause. Rather, the vastness showed itself in a mysterious manner—I was simply standing at a bus stop. How then can it be argued that some particular method or technique is required for awakening to occur?

Since I followed no prescribed techniques to realize the absence of the personal self, I cannot now encourage the practice of them. Strict practices may encourage the creation of more ideas about what the awakened state looks like as the mind attempts to figure out or approximate it. But how can the mind approximate what it cannot grasp? The vastness is unimaginable. Although it is always present, the mind cannot recognize it because the infinite is not perceived through the mind. The infinite perceives itself.

In no way, however, am I suggesting that practices should not be done, only that there is no practitioner who is the doer behind them. This is true of every activity: There is no walker, but walking occurs; no driver, but driving occurs; no thinker, but thinking occurs. Just because there is no practitioner (and never has been) does not mean that practice will not

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take place. If it is obvious for a particular spiritual practice to occur, then it will. If it is obvious to meditate, chant, journey, circumambulate, travel, set up an altar, eat certain foods, perform certain acts, or visit certain teachers, these will be done, as things have always been done, by the mysterious, non-locatable doer that is behind everything. To base such practices on the idea that if they aren’t done, you won’t realize the vastness you already are—and will therefore be a spiritual failure—is to found your life on the successful functioning of some nonexistent “me.”

The infinite reveals itself to the mind in mysterious, unimaginable, and ungraspable ways. But the mind, by its very nature, tends to reject what it cannot grasp. Thus, when it does encounter the vastness, it makes compelling attempts to devalue it. For example, many people have said to me, “I’ve experienced the vastness you’re talking about, but it felt totally empty and flat. I’m not interested in going toward it again.” What they’re describing is not the ungraspable experiencing itself, but rather the mind contacting the ungraspable. When the mind sees experiences as being empty of the “someone-ness” it thought they were full of, it freaks out and begins to mount some convincing arguments for why the emptiness is totally undesirable.

In my case, the mind mounted an all-out effort to pathologize the emptiness of personal self in an attempt to get rid of it. This attempt proved unsuccessful. But many people have told me their minds were able to accomplish the task of making the emptiness appear to go away, only to be left with the memory of how unpleasant the contact with the ungraspable was for the mind. The mind then uses this memory as evidence that the emptiness must

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be avoided at all costs.

The contact of the mind with the emptiness of no personal reference point should never be taken to be the direct experience of the vastness, which in any case does not go through the mind. Rather, it is the experience of the mind’s response to the vastness, and nothing more.

I have said before that there is no personal doer, but this should not be construed to mean that nothing gets done. In fact, there has never been a personal doer, yet it’s obvious that the car gets driven, the children get fed, relationships get taken care of. As the mind sees things getting done, it concludes that there must be a someone who does them, otherwise doing would not occur. But the vastness has never waited for the mind to recognize that there is no doer for doing to occur. Doing has always occurred out of a placeless origin that is confounding to a mind that thrives on interpretation and insinuation. The vastness itself does not interpret doing to mean that there must be someone who does. It sees quite naturally that doing arises out of the same placeless origin as everything else.

The vastness carries a non-personal desire to experience itself. This appears to be the purpose of human life—for the vastness to meet itself everywhere it turns. The notion of personal growth or inner development is contrary in every respect to the way the vastness exists. The quest to awaken implies a sense of futurity that precludes basking in what actually is right now. I

am unable to see the value in any method of evolution that implies getting somewhere or becoming something different. As soon as one embarks on a path to somewhere, the awesomeness of what is, here and now, becomes unavailable. More important, the somewhere people are trying to arrive is actually not locat-able, since it is everywhere all the time.

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 nonexistent someone who can figure out how to surrender. We need to see that both 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.

A problem occurs only when the mind interprets the presence of thoughts to mean something—for

example, that I’m bad or unspiritual and I’ll never succeed in my meditation practice unless I stop the arising of thoughts. Thoughts and ideas are never a problem unless they are taken to be something they are not. If they are seen to be just thoughts and ideas, then they are not being identified with. Seeing things to be only and exactly what they are is the state of realization itself, because this is how the vastness always sees everything.

To see things for what they are is to see with the eyes of the vastness itself. This seeing is always occurring, whether or not we are consciously aware of it. Rather than getting caught by the mind, the vastness sees all the ways the mind attempts to hoodwink us into believing that we are an individual “I” who runs the show of life. It sees how the idea of who we are muscles its way into the front row of the mind and insists it is not just an idea, but who we really are. And it sees the infinite everywhere (where else could it be?) and then sees everyone searching for it.

The most common predicament people bring to me is the experience of feeling “cut off’ from the infinite. They find this particularly painful if they have had clear experiences of the vastness which they then feel have “gone away.” They want to know how they can stay in contact with the infinite at all times. This very question contains two implicit assumptions that pass themselves off as truth—that there is an “I” who is cut off from the infinite who could “apply itself’ to reconnecting if it had the proper technique, and that the infinite has gone somewhere. These are prime examples of how ideas masquerade as truth.

In fact, there is no individual “I” who can figure out how to find the infinite again. More importantly,

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where would the infinite go? I mean, we aren’t talking about something that could hide under the rug. If you could see things as only and exactly what they are, you would see that the “you” that is seeing is the vastness itself.

The “character work” prescribed by psychotherapy, as well as by some spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, leads to a similar trap created by not seeing things to be simply what they are. A relaxation of being naturally arises if one is not seduced into taking ideas to be truth. This relaxation is antithetical to “character work,” with its clear position about how we would be if our characters were worked on. When we knock on the door of “character work,” we are invited into the labyrinth of futurity. It is inherently impossible to arrive at a goal that is predicated on an “I” that will get us there. Character work is based on the same erroneous belief that there is an individual doer who runs the show of life and can train itself to be a better “I.”

Working as a psychologist has provided me with a front row seat in the theater of human suffering. It is apparent that traditional psychotherapy is founded on principles that pathologize human experience across the board and measure success according to how well we conform to definite ideas about what our human experience should look like. We are taught that we must “work through,” “release,” “deal with,” “come to terms with,” or “rid ourselves of” various aspects of our experience in order to live a satisfying life. We

must “get in touch with our feelings,” “find ourselves,” “know what we want so we can get it,” “not let anyone take advantage of us,” and “find our true voice.” Seen from the perspective of the vastness, all these ideas are just what they are—ideas. We should not mistake them for truth.

Over the years since the flowering of the springtime of the vastness, my work with psychotherapy clients has changed radically. In fact, I can no longer call what I do psychotherapy, since it in no way adheres to any standard principles of psychological theory or intervention. My goal for everyone is freedom—total freedom. I don’t want them to change how they feel, work through childhood trauma, or get symptoms to stop. I want them to be free by seeing that things are just what they are.

I begin with everyone by asking them to tell me who they take themselves to be. This generally involves an in-depth exploration of all the ideas they have acquired from other people and have taken to be statements of truth about who they are. From early on, we’re given a clear picture by our culture of the right somebody we’re supposed to become, and most of us wholeheartedly undertake the enormous task of becoming that somebody.

Everyone I’ve worked with has become aware that they have constructed their “identities” out of information received by inference. They have inferred who they are from what other people have said to or about them and from the ways other people have treated them. Based on an interpretation of what all this information means about them, they have constructed who they take themselves to be. For example, Dad ignored me, therefore I must be unlovable or uninter-

esting. Or Mom always called me lazy, therefore it must be true.

These constructs exist in multiple spheres, not just in the mind. Personal reference points can be constructed in the emotional, physical, and energetic spheres as well. These multiple reference points for a sense of who we take ourselves to be can seem confusing at first, but all of them operate in a similar manner: They pass something off for what it’s not. In the mind sphere, thoughts and ideas are passed off as who one really is. In the emotional sphere, it’s feelings; in the physical sphere, sensations; in the energetic sphere, energetic vibrations or patterns.

The modern psychological world substantiates this deception when it encourages people to distinguish between the “true self’ and the “false self,” the true thoughts and the false thoughts, the true feelings and the false ones, the true and false sensations, even the true and false energetic frequencies. Who distinguishes between the true and the false? And true and false for whom? Thoughts, feelings, sensations, and energetic frequencies do not mean anything about some imaginary someone; they simply are what they are.

A further entanglement that occurs in the face of these ideas about who we are is that the negative is usually taken to be the truth. After all, the negative is so compelling and seems so deep. The positive is regarded as superficial and temporary but, ah, the negative! When it arises, we believe were really in the presence of truth.

Connecting with others in our Western therapeutic culture is often based on a sharing of problems. When someone refuses to reveal what is most difficult in their lives, they are said to be “withholding” or

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“cut-off’ or “untrustworthy.” When their problems are known, however, they are thought to be revealing the truth about themselves.

This overvaluing of the negative is rampant in our culture. Just about every person who sits across from me in my office and speaks to me about their lives believes that what is negative about them is the most true. They are convinced that they carry something rotten at their core, that they are bad deep down, and that they will always return to the negative, which is the real bottom line. People have taken their worst fears to be the truth, and no one has pointed out to them that fears can only be what they are—fears.

The pathologizing of human experience, which has been perpetuated by the overpsychologizing of our culture, is another horror that has been masquerading as truth. We have been psychologized into believing that only certain experiences are appropriate. We have been given words that label our experience and thereby put us into an aversive relationship to it. The vastness is rigorously non-pathologizing because it is unable to perceive anything as wrong.

It is absurd to think that we have to get rid of certain aspects of our experience to be acceptable. As mentioned before, it would be like the ocean saying that it simply can not be the ocean as long as there is seaweed floating around in it. The ocean is the ocean, no matter what it contains. We are the vastness, and we contain everything—thoughts, emotions, sensations, preferences, fears, ideas, even identifications. Nothing has to go anywhere. In any case, where would it go?

Psychological directives that aim at a cure imply that certain thoughts or emotions are a sign we aren’t

acceptable. Spiritual directives that aim at a goal called realization or transcendence suggest that certain thoughts or emotions are impediments to spiritual unfolding. After all, they say, how can we be the vastness if we’re experiencing confusion or fear, anger or sadness? But the presence of thoughts and feelings means only that thoughts and feelings are present. We interpret our experience to mean something (generally negative) about who we are. This interpretation creates suffering when it passes itself off for truth. But if it’s seen to be what it is—an interpretation—it presents no problem; it’s simply there too in the vastness.

Of course, we have to be careful not to use “seeing things for what they are” as a technique to get rid of emotions or mind-states that the mind deems undesirable. There is no experience whose presence is an indication that you are not the vastness. Therefore, there is no need to get rid of anything. Suffering is caused not by the presence of certain circumstances or experiences, but by the mind’s interpretation of them.

After I speak to people about seeing things for what they are, they frequently go home and practice this “technique” rigorously, then conclude they have failed because what was seen didn’t go away. But the vastness has no goal of ridding itself of anything. The vastness, which is what we really are, never suffers. Therefore, it never asks that anything be eliminated for suffering to cease.

The purpose of human life has been revealed. The vastness created these human circuitries in order to

have an experience of itself out of itself that it couldn’t have without them. Through this humanness, the substance we are all made of has an opportunity to love itself—and the love of the infinite for itself is awesome. The words “love,’’ “bliss,” and “ecstasy” only begin to describe the hugeness of the infinite’s appreciation of itself that occurs through these circuitries.

We are all in this together. We are all made of the same infinite substance, and when a number of circuitries are consciously participating in the infinite simultaneously, there is a substantial increase in the volume of the love the infinite experiences for itself. This is the power of what has been called community. The wondrousness, the love, the ecstasy, the bliss of the infinite is constantly increasing as it surges within itself in a never-ending crescendo. There is no end to the vastness becoming vaster as it undulates within itself and amplifies the ecstatic love it has for itself out of itself.

This life is now lived in a state wherein the infinite is perceived as residing within an infinity. This is truly a non-experience that defies description, yet it seems to be how the infinite naturally shows itself to itself.

There is no end to all of this, just as there was no beginning. There are constant “bus hits,” as I now call them, in which the infinite expands yet again and again. The substance of the vastness is so directly perceivable to itself in every moment that the circuitry at times requires another adjustment phase to get used to more infinite awareness. When asked who I am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything—just as you are.

Epilogue

Conversations with the Vastness

Since there is nothing to meditate on, there is no meditation.

Since there is nowhere to go astray, there is no going astray.

Although there is an innumerable variety of profound practices,

they do not exist for your mind in its true state.

Since there are no two such things as practice and practitioner, if, by those who practice or do not practice, the practitioner of practice is seen to not exist, thereupon the goal of practice is reached and also the end of practice itself.

—Padmasambhava

Q: You say you can’t really recommend any practices because there is no doer to do them. What about those of us who have not had bus stop experiences like you have? What do we do in the meantime?

A: Whatever is being done by the non-locatable doer that has always been the doer. There isn’t a you who

has to decide what needs to be done in order for doing to happen. I’m not saying there are no spiritual practices. There is just no practitioner. When practices are based on getting a someone to do the practice properly so the right result will be achieved, they sustain and even amplify the belief in a separate, individual self.

The non-locatable doer that’s behind everything shows itself in obvious ways. If it’s obvious to meditate, you’ll be meditating. If it’s obvious to be politically active, you’ll be politically active. There’s not a someone who has to do your life in a particular way for it to be worthwhile or valuable. There is no one to whom any of it refers—thoughts, feelings, actions, events. It just is what it is and always has been. It’s truly awesome.

We experience this awe when we look at nature— at trees or flowers or mountains or oceans. “Aren’t they incredible?” we say. It seems easy to see there is no locatable doer behind nature; there is not a someone to whom it refers. Yet people tend to feel that they are separate from the natural sphere. They recognize that nature is awesome in its mysteriousness, but they take their own lives to be about a someone who is responsible for making things happen. If certain things are occurring, it’s interpreted to mean something about this illusory someone, and if other things are occurring, it means something else. Then they go into therapy to try to change themselves—to make themselves into a better someone so they can have a better life.

But to this circuitry it’s perfectly clear that everyone and everything is the vastness. When another circuitry presents a constructed “I-ness” and tries to

pass it off as who they are, it is immediately seen for what it is—a bunch of ideas or feelings or body sensations. It’s a construct that is just there too, like everything else. •

Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not—-a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.

Q: What about the experience of choosing one action or direction over another?

A: The moment-to-moment experience here is that it’s a choiceless life because there is no one choosing. Actions are never preceded by thoughts or feelings or by any attempt to figure things out. Everything is very immediate. Choicelessness is the experience of the obvious in a moment-to-moment way.

Of course, in most lives there is the sense that there is a “me” making choices and that, based on these choices, particular actions occur. There are ideas about who is choosing and ideas about what constitutes the right choice as opposed to the wrong one. These ideas set up what I call the sphere of the constructed reference point. When the eyes of this reference point are being seen through rather than

the eyes of the vastness, it looks to the mind like only a very limited range of actions is available, when in fact the possibilities are limitless. The mind then appropriates the action and says, “I did it,” and the action appears to relate to a someone behind it. But this never changes the fact that there is never a personal doer behind anything. Because the process is so infinite and ungraspable, the mind creates the notion of choice in an attempt to understand it.

Q: Given what you just said, could you comment on the fact that you offer these talks?

A: There are a lot of pictures about what this naturally occurring state looks like. This life seems to have been trained by the vastness not to match any of those pictures. I mean, I was standing at a bus stop, for goodness sakes! How can you say what I was doing that caused the experience to happen? This life is just a describer, and one of the things it sees is that this state does not belong to anyone. It’s not something you can get from someone. It’s who everyone is. From here, the highest volume is the sound of the infinite ocean that we all are.

Q: Since this isn’t something that can be grasped by the mind, it’s been said that certain teachers who live in this state can transmit it to others. Of course, you didn’t receive this from a living teacher. But do you think it’s possible for one person to transmit it to another?

A: The idea of transmission suggests that it belongs to somebody and can be given to somebody else. But that

is not at all how the vastness perceives itself out of itself. It is who everyone already is. How could it be transmitted? All this circuitry can perceive is the vastness that everything is made of. When other circuitries are related to only as the vastness, it may tend to bring the vastness foreground in their experience.

Q: Is the vastness you are referring to perceived as love and light?

A: The mind has to know that it can’t grasp what I’m about to describe. The vastness is perceiving itself out of itself at every moment within every particle of itself everywhere simultaneously. This is what I call the sense organ of the infinite. It doesn’t have a flavor to it; it is simply perceiving itself.

At the bus stop this circuitry was thrust into consciously participating in the sense organ of the vastness which is perceiving itself out of itself all the time. The moment the circuitry begins to consciously participate, the vastness has a particular flavor. I can’t describe it in personal terms because everything I see now is only apparently personal. Instead of light or love, I would use the term undulation—the undulation of the vastness. For example, if you are sitting in a hot bath and don’t move, you don’t feel the heat of the water. As soon as you move, the heat is felt. In the same way, the human circuitry gives the vastness the possibility of experiencing its own vastness through what I call the undulation.

The mind can’t grasp this. But who you are is always grasping itself all the time. There’s no one that has to start grasping for it to be grasping itself. It is occurring simultaneously with everything that is taken

to be who you are. If you want to call it love, I’ll agree, but I wouldn’t want it to be mistaken for the love that refers to a personal self.

The vastness definitely experiences pleasure in experiencing itself. As a matter of fact, this pleasure seems to be the purpose of human life—to have the human circuitry consciously participate in the sense organ of the vastness that it is made of. After all, it is who we all are. It’s hard to give a visual description because it lies outside the sphere of perception. What I can say is that every form that is ordinarily taken to be full of something—particular importance or meaning to a particular reference point, for example—is seen to be empty. It’s like a line drawn in the sand. The line as well as what is inside and outside of it are all made of the same sand.

Q: Is there anything I can do to accelerate this happening in my case? Or is it just grace?

A: There is no one I could instruct to do something to make you the vastness. That’s already and always who you are. The instruction to perform certain practices is predicated on a reference point, but to the vastness this reference point simply doesn’t exist. The question of who can do what to get to where you already are seems absurd.

As to whether it happens by grace, I don’t know. I was just standing at a bus stop. There’s an incredible mysteriousness about all of this. There wasn’t a someone who was trying to trust or accept or surrender the best she could in order for this to happen. I didn’t even want it. So I can’t tell you what to do because that would be referring to a someone who is taken to

be the doer. That which is the non-locatable doer is taking care of everything all the time in such infinitely mysterious ways.

Look at this world. What if trees or clouds or planets or stars waited for the mind to figure them out in order for them to exist? Or imagine if the body waited for the mind to figure out how to grow a baby before it became pregnant. “How do I make this brain? Where do I put this heart? Maybe I should get the blood moving now.” This is all taken care of by that which lies so completely outside of the mind’s ability to perceive it that trust isn’t even an issue.

That’s why I give only two suggestions. The first is to see things to be just what they are, because that is how the vastness is always seeing things. Thoughts are thoughts. Emotions are emotions. The body is just the body. It’s the mind’s interpretation of things that ends up creating suffering—the sense that there is a problem, that fear or anger or sadness means there’s something wrong with me, that certain emotions or experiences have to be eliminated for me to be OK, that something needs to be practiced or achieved in order to become the infinite. The mind is constantly interpreting in this way, while the vastness just looks around and sees that things are just what they are.

The second suggestion, which is actually a nonsuggestion, is to follow the obvious, because that is how the mysterious doer behind everyone’s life is constantly revealing the truth of each moment. Now Fm not saying you need to figure out what the obvious is and then follow it. The mind doesn’t usually perceive the obvious, and it tends to devalue what it can’t perceive. Take the expression “it’s just too obvious,” for example. It’s not complicated or painful enough. The

mind is drawn to complexity and struggle. That’s the sphere of the mind.

Q: When you do what seems like the obvious, how do you know your mind isn’t subtly deceiving you to make you think you’re doing the obvious when in fact you’re not?

A: What you’re describing is the mind constructing a reference point that then scans with its own standards for the true obvious. “How do I know I’m following the obvious? Is this really the obvious or is it a false obvious? When I find the true obvious, I’ll go with that.” But the obvious is not identified by the mind. And the vastness that we all are is actually seeing the mind to be exactly what it is, doing exactly what minds do.

Q: I’m not aware of scanning. I feel compelled to do what my intuition tells me is obvious, and in the moment it feels very natural and graceful. But I know I’m being manipulated.

A: You are describing how the mind tends to be looked to as the perceiver of truth. But the obvious doesn’t wait for the mind to perceive it for the obvious to be lived. Now the mind doesn’t like to be bypassed, so it raises doubts about whether the obvious was the right action or the wrong one. Was it the obvious, or was I hoodwinked? That’s just the mind responding the way it does to what it cannot grasp. The vastness doesn’t require that the mind be different. It just sees it for what it is. It’s not a problem. It’s only when the doubts the mind raises are taken for

the truth—or for some problem or issue that has to be resolved before you can really know what’s obvious— that suffering occurs.

Q: Aren’t you just talking about a vaster, more universal mind here? I don’t think the mind should be disregarded.

A: The mind has to be seen for what it is. It’s made of the same substance as the infinite, just like everything else. To say that the vastness is infinite mind is really no different than saying it is infinite body or infinite emotions. Why say infinite mind? Why not just say it is the infinite, which sees the mind to be what it is?

I m certainly not suggesting that you devalue the mind. The vastness doesn’t see the mind as a problem, as a sign that there is something wrong that needs to be changed in some way. The mind is there too, and it’s made of the same substance. In the West it’s important to see the mind for what it is, because the Western mind has been trained to take the driver’s seat, to construct and hold the reference point.

Q: What drew you to become a psychotherapist after having this experience?

A: One of the missions of the vastness through this circuitry seems to be to reach psychotherapists. I have started training groups for therapists because I want this to be conveyed to those who are in the business of trying to help end suffering. There are so many rigid ideas about how we are supposed to be and what is considered healthy and unhealthy. Instead of supporting people in seeing things to be what they

166 • Collision with the Infinite

are, the profession has compiled a diagnostic manual that pathologizes a broad range of human experience. Everything that arises is interpreted to have some psychological meaning, and certain things are considered undesirable—abnormal, dysfunctional—and in need of being eliminated for “healing” or “cure” to occur. But who is going to get rid of them, and why would they? The infinite doesn’t ask anything to be eliminated. The presence of any thought, feeling, or behavior does not for a minute affect the infinity of the infinite.

Q: What about suffering? Is there unnecessary suffering, or is suffering just perfect, like everything else?

A: Suffering occurs when something is taken for what it’s not, rather than for what it is. Taking the negative reference point, the negative self-image, to be the truth is rampant in the West. The negative seems so much truer and deeper than anything else. When people share their problems, they feel like they really know one another. The glorification of the negative is incredibly powerful.

If the negative ideas or beliefs or feelings are simply seen for what they are, there is no suffering. But when they are taken to be who I am, there is the sense that something must be terribly wrong with me and unless I change and rid myself of this negativity, my life isn’t going to be acceptable. This is what I call the case for the prosecution: the negative reference points are constructed and then are used to generate all this evidence for why they are really the truth.

People say to me, “Of course this is who I am.

Look at how I behave and feel and think. Clearly there’s something wrong with me,” They may even point to therapists they have seen or books they have read to support their case. ‘ You see! I don’t act the way this author says you’re supposed to or the way my former therapist told me was healthy or spiritual.”

In aikido, you are taught that when your opponent attacks you, you actually use his momentum to set him off balance. If you try to resist him, you create unnecessary conflict. It’s the same with all the thoughts and feelings and other experiences that arise in the ocean of ourselves. The ocean never resists them; it never creates a negative reference point, saying, ‘‘Damn, that seaweed is still there. There must be something terribly wrong with me.” When they arise, the ocean just sees them for what they are, and they pass away naturally.

These questions and answers were excerpted from public talks given in the spring of 1996.

.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment follows for those who have had their part in the mysterious functioning of the infinite as it has manifested in this life. There are many who have shown themselves to be significant in their participation in bringing forth the description you have just read.

•

Lisa and Myron Segal, my parents, for bringing this life into the world. Daniel and Robert Segal, my brothers, for being co-participants in the life of family. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for describing the transcendent field. The Parisian mass transit system, for providing a bus stop in lieu of a bodhi tree. All the psychotherapists who were unsuccessful in their efforts to cure the vastness. Steven Kruszynski, for being a companion in the wintertime and a father for Arielle.

•

All those who provided recognition of the presence of the vastness in the winter of its expression: Jean Klein, jack Kornfield, Christopher Titmuss, Andrew Cohen, Gangaji, Hameed Ali, Reb Anderson, Poonjaji, Ram Dass, John Tarrant.

Ramana Maharshi, present in the change of seasons.

With the emerging of the springtime, the following have shown themselves to be playmates in the vastness: Stephan Bodian, for bringing the vastness out of the closet and for being a talented editor and friend; Michael Batliner, for his radical enthusiasm; those in the first wave who came and then shared with a larger community what they recognized: Richard Miller, John Prendergast, Judith Shiner, Elliott Isenberg, Peter Scarsdale, Lela Landman, Krishna. Neil Lupa, for his camaraderie in the vastness. And all those who have participated in the description of the vastness in discussions, private sessions, and small groups.

0

To Arielle, who was born into the infinite.

Afterword

When this extraordinary autobiography was completed, in the spring of 1996, Suzanne Segal had begun offering regular public presentations and weekly dialogues and leading a biweekly “training group” for therapists in which she demonstrated her unique way of working with people. She was full of energy and embodied a radiant, unconditional love that drew people to her like a magnet. Yet she never considered herself a teacher, insisting that we are “all in this together”—we are all the vastness that she so immediately experienced and so articulately described. Nevertheless, those of us who were close to her frequently found that our own experience of the vastness became even deeper and clearer in her presence.

In the late spring, Suzanne began having a series of powerful energetic experiences in which, as she put it, “the vastness became even vaster to itself.” She laughingly called them “bus hits” (referring to her original awakening at the bus stop). Although they were rapturous at first, she seemed increasingly to be disturbed by them and would often have to stop and rest after a particularly powerful occurrence. At the

same time she found it more and more difficult to relate to the notion of “other” at all—and so her therapists’ group became another opportunity to share our “descriptions” of the vastness together.

Soon the “bus hits” were happening frequently, and by the end of the summer Suzanne realized that she was physically exhausted and would have to withdraw from public life temporarily to recuperate. The doctors she consulted concurred that her vital energy had been depleted and prescribed hormones and other supplements to help restore her. Around this same time, she also noticed that the fear, which had disappeared several years before, had returned.

Suzanne precipitously ended all of her groups and public appearances, except for the therapists’ group, which she continued for an additional month. To some in the group it seemed that she had lost touch with the vastness, and that her presence had noticeably diminished. At one point she got out of her chair and joined the others who sat on the floor, symbolically abdicating her role as a guide and source of insight. Where she had been easily accessible to her friends for chats on the phone or walks on the beach, she cut off almost everyone and withdrew into virtual seclusion.

Throughout the fall she spent most of her time at home, alone and with her family, taking regular walks by the ocean and sitting on her patio looking out at the Bolinas Lagoon in Stinson Beach, California, where she lived. During this period she recovered memories of childhood abuse, which seemed to explain some of the fear she had experienced during her 10 lonely years of being no one before realizing that she was everything. When I suggested that perhaps the fear originated from a part of herself that

was split off or dissociated from conscious awareness, she immediately agreed.

At one point she excitedly called me to describe her recent discovery that she did in fact exist—and insisted that all the spiritual teachers who taught the non-existence of an abiding self were mistaken. I spent an hour on the phone with her explaining the difference between having no self and not existing.

During this period Suzanne seemed to drift in and out of experiencing herself as the vastness. At times she talked about God, and once, during a walk on the beach, she described seeing angels. At a certain point she acknowledged that she had used the vastness as a defense to protect her from her feelings and from the painful process of coming to terms with her childhood.

In the first few months of 1997 Suzanne felt less and less connected with the vastness—and more and more disoriented, apparently because of all the new insights she was having. “This human life thing is really something, isn’t it?” she often mused, almost to herself. Those of us who were close to her now looked forward to a prolonged integration process, in which she gradually learned to be someone as well as no one. But her health would not allow this to occur.

By late February Suzanne had difficulty holding a pen, remembering familiar names, or standing on her own without feeling dizzy. At the urging of her chiropractor, she entered the hospital on February 27, and X rays revealed that she had a brain tumor. She elected to have it removed but chose not to undergo radiation or chemotherapy. When the surgeons operated on her one week later, they found that the tumor was too widespread to eliminate completely. On March 8 she returned home, and on March 10 she and

her fiance, Steve Kruszynski, were married at a small ceremony at her home. Shortly thereafter they traveled to Oklahoma to seek out alternative treatment. But when Suzanne relapsed, the trip was cut short, and it became clear that she had come home to die.

Several days after returning from her trip, Suzanne lapsed into a coma. A small group of close friends visited daily to join her family in sitting with her, breathing with her, and saying goodbye. Early on the morning of Tuesday, April 1, Suzanne Segal died. Following a Tibetan custom, the body was wrapped in a cloth, surrounded by flowers, and left untouched for three days. On the third day we sat with her body as a local rabbi performed a traditional Jewish ceremony at her mother’s request.

The following Saturday, nearly 100 people— Suzanne’s many friends and relatives—gathered to celebrate her life, appreciate her gifts to us, and share our grief. At sunset, her husband, Steve, her fourteen-year-old daughter, Arielle, and her brother Bob waded out into the cold spring surf and scattered her ashes into the sky. Some people say they saw the form of an angel materialize briefly and then disintegrate into the sea.

Those of us who were close to Suzanne never doubted the depth or the authenticity of her realization. Yet toward the end of her life we could only watch as that realization slipped between her fingers like so much sand, leaving her frustrated and confused. No doubt her brain tumor helped precipitate this confusion. But other factors seemed to contribute, especially the surfacing of abuse memories and the insights that ensued.

Suzanne’s example speaks to us of the importance

of integration—of the personal and the transpersonal, the psychological and the spiritual—and raises questions about the relationship between dissociation—in which parts of the psyche split off from one another—and genuine, abiding awakening. By dying before this integration had occurred, Suzanne left each of us with the koan of discovering it for ourselves.

Stephan Bodian Fairfax, California April 1998

The author would like to thank Neil Lupa and John Prendergast for contributing valuable information that helped to chronicle the events depicted in this afterword and for reviewing the final draft for accuracy.

i

t

Sources

Padmasambhava poem, p. 157 © 1975 Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, translated by Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, Shambala Publications, 1975

Rainer Maria Rilke poem, p. 1, © 1991 Stephen Mitchell (translator), from The Enlightened Mind, Harper Collins, 1991 Rainer Maria Rilke poem, p. 85, © 1982 Stephen Mitchell (translator) from Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Random House, 1982

Rumi poems, pp. 11, 45, 137 © Coleman Barks, by Rumi, translated into English by John Moyne and Coleman Barks and contained in Open Secret, Threshold Books, 1984 Rumi poem, p. 73 © Coleman Barks, by Rumi, translated into English by John Moyne and ColemajBarks and contained in Unseen Rain, Threshold Books, 1986 Theodore Roethke poem, p. 35 (from “Journey to the Interior”), © Theodore Roethke from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, Anchor/Doubleday, 1974 Wallace Stevens poem, p. 107 (from “The Snowman”), © 1923, renewed 1951 by Wallace Stevens, from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951

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